Page 5 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

Darcy looked down. His palms were red and raw, puffed with white blisters from the heel to the fingertips. The left was worse than the right. He tried to close it. The skin pulled, and pain went up his arm to the shoulder.

"Do not do that," said Mr. Jones. "Do not do that for three weeks, if you wish to keep the use of them."

"Three weeks."

"At the least." The apothecary uncorked a bottle and soaked a pad of lint. "Lime liniment. Linseed oil and lime water. It will not smell pleasant, but it will draw the heat."

It did not smell pleasant. It did draw the heat, a little.

Mr. Jones laid the lint over each palm. He bound both hands in linen strips, around and around, until they were two white clubs. He pointed at Darcy's waistcoat. "And the rest, if you please. I saw the hole."

Darcy could not undo his own buttons. He sat while the apothecary unbuttoned it for him, and then the shirt beneath. Mr. Jones drew the scorched linen over his head. Cold air struck his bare chest. A long red weal ran along his left side, from the ribs down. Another ran up the inside of his forearm.

Across the kitchen, someone drew a quick breath.

Miss Elizabeth sat on the settle by the fire, wrapped in his coat. Mrs. Hill knelt at her feet with a bowl of cold water. Elizabeth’s hair had come down. Her face was smudged with soot, and she was staring at him.

She looked away at once. Color flooded into her cheeks.

Darcy found he did not mind being stared at. He minded that he cared so much about her attention, afterward.

Mr. Jones dressed the burn on his ribs and wound more linen around his chest. Then he wiped his hands and turned to the settle. "Now, Miss Elizabeth. Let us see this ankle."

Darcy should have left the room. There was no other room to go to. The front of the house was full of smoke and water, and the hall was full of Mrs. Bennet. He sat where he was, in his bandages, and told himself to look at the hearth.

He did not look at the hearth.

Mrs. Hill drew off Miss Elizabeth's ruined stocking. The ankle beneath was already swollen, purple at the bone. Above it rose the long, pale curve of her calf. Mr. Jones took her foot in his hands and turned it gently. She hissed through her teeth. Her fingers dug into the edge of the settle.

"A bad sprain," said Mr. Jones. "Not broken, I think. But you will not walk on it for three weeks, Miss Elizabeth, and you will not be jolted about the county."

"I am a very good walker, Mr. Jones."

"You were a very good walker. Now you are a patient."

She laughed at that, a short, pained sound. It went straight through Darcy. He looked down at his useless hands. Heat rose in his face that had nothing to do with the kitchen fire.

He wanted her. He had wanted her for weeks, at every dinner and every card party since the assembly. He had called her tolerable to Bingley's face because he could not bear to say what she was. And now she sat half-dressed across a kitchen from him, hurt by a crate of rockets. He could not stop looking at her leg.

You are a gentleman, he told himself. Act like one.

He looked at the hearth.

Mr. Jones bound the ankle tight and stood, groaning at his own knees. He set a small brown bottle on the table. "Laudanum. Ten drops each, in water, for the pain. Twenty if it will not let you sleep."

"No," said Darcy.

"No," said Miss Elizabeth, at the same moment.

Mr. Jones looked from one to the other. "You are a pair," he said, and went to wash his hands.

Darcy glanced at her across the kitchen.

She was already looking at him. There was a question in her face, and the beginning of a smile. "I prefer to keep my wits, sir," she said.

"So do I."

"Then we agree at last. I shall write to the newspapers."