Page 9 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

It stung.

A burden on somebody. That was what they were, all five of them. The entail would pass Longbourn to Mr. Collins, and five daughters would pass to whoever could be made to take them. She had always known it. She had simply made up her mind never to be carried. She would walk wherever she liked, and want nothing from anybody. She would be too amusing and too useful for anyone to resent.

And now she could not cross a room without help.

Mr. Jones's boy brought the crutch at dusk.

It was a plain ash crutch with a padded crosspiece. It had belonged to a farmer near Meryton who broke his leg last spring. The farmer had been a very tall man.

When Elizabeth stood up on it, the crosspiece came nearly to her ear. "It will do," she told Jane, who was trying not to laugh.

It did not do. She took four steps across the morning room, swung too far, and sat down hard on the bed. She tried again. The crutch thumped on the boards with every step, loud enough to rattle the washstand.

But she crossed the room. She crossed it without anybody's arm.

The house went quiet at midnight. By two o'clock, Elizabeth knew every rosette on the ceiling by heart. Her ankle throbbed with each beat of her pulse. She could not sleep, and she had nothing to read.

She knew exactly where the library was. It was the next door down the passage. She had heard Mr. Hurst snoring in it after dinner.

She did not ring.

Elizabeth pushed back the covers and sat up. Mrs. Hurst's nightgown was as long as the morning gown had been. Elizabeth found the wrapper on the chair and belted it tight. She had no stays, and her hair hung loose down her back. Nobody would see her.

She looked at the crutch leaning by the bed. It would thump on every board of the passage. It would wake Mrs. Hurst, who slept lightly and complained of it at breakfast.

She left it where it was.

She stood on her good foot. The room swayed, then steadied. She took the candle from the bedside table and hopped to the chair back, then to the door. It took a long while. By the time she reached the passage, she was breathing hard.

The library door stood open a crack. There was light inside.

She pushed it wider with her shoulder and stopped.

Mr. Darcy sat in a wing chair by the fire. He had no coat, no waistcoat, no cravat. His shirt hung open at the collar, and the linen of his bandage showed white beneath it. A book lay open on his knee. He was bending over it with great concentration. He was trying to turn the page with the edge of his bandaged thumb.

The page would not turn. He tried again. The whole book slid off his knee and fell to the floor.

He said a word she had never heard a gentleman say.

Elizabeth laughed before she could stop herself.

He looked up. For a moment neither of them moved. She saw him take in the candle, the loose hair, the wrapper, her bare feet on the boards. Color rose along his cheekbones, just as it had at the bonfire.

She knew exactly what her mother would say, and Lady Lucas, and every matron in Meryton. An unmarried woman, alone with a gentleman at two in the morning. In her nightgown, with her hair down. It was the stuff of ruin. Every rule she had been raised on told her to turn around and hop back to bed.

She did not turn around. The house was asleep. He could not so much as lift a book. And she had been good and grateful and useless all day, and she was tired of it.

One hour, she told herself. Nobody will ever know.

"Miss Elizabeth." He stood at once. "You should not be out of bed."

"Nor should you, sir. And you should not use such language in front of Mr. Bingley's books. There are so few of them, they may take offense."

"You are standing on one foot."

"I am aware of it."

"Mr. Jones said three weeks."