Page 29 of Not Without Me, Miss Elizabeth

He lifted his head suddenly, stilling. "Do you hear water?"

She fell quiet at once, listening past her own ragged breathing. "It is faint, but yes, I believe I hear a stream."

He nodded, already pointing in the direction he judged the sound to come from, his whole bearing sharpening back into purpose. "Are you ready to go on?"

"Yes." She nodded, drawing herself upright again, already falling into step behind his direction before he had finished asking.

"Onward, then, madam." He set off toward the sound without further word, his stride lengthening once more into the same brisk, driving pace he had kept since their flight began.

She fell in behind him, the brief laughter already fading into something more urgent, and followed him through the trees toward the promise of running water.

CHAPTER 15

Mr. Darcy was heartened to find so robust a stream ahead of them, its steady rush the first genuinely welcome sound he had heard in what felt a very long while. They went to it at once and knelt together at its edge, cupping the cold water to their mouths and drinking their fill, his relief considerable at the sight of it, water enough, at least, to keep them both from thirst, and, he recalled from the wanderings of his boyhood, a stream followed downward would generally join a river before long, and a river, in turn, would lead them to some town or other, some hope of proper help.

"We shall follow it down." He rose, offering her his hand to help her up in turn. "Can you go on? Night is coming, and we are not safe yet, not by half."

"Lead on, Mr. Darcy. I shall keep pace, whatever it costs me,” Elizabeth remarked with a look of determination in her eyes.

He set off again at a brisk pace, and Elizabeth followed close behind, her eyes fixed upon him and the uneven ground alike, her mind rarely far from the fear of discovery, every snapped twig behind them enough to send her heart leaping into her throat before reason reasserted itself.

Dusk gave way to full dark before long, thickening around them with unsettling speed, and he was obliged to slow their pace considerably, the thin crescent moon offering little enough light to see through the close canopyoverhead. They picked their way carefully around root and stone, feeling out the ground half by touch, as their eyes adjusted by slow degrees to the deepening shadows beneath the trees.

"Shall we rest a moment?" He stopped and turned to her, the first pause he had granted since nightfall, and she took it gratefully, sinking against the nearest trunk, her breath coming hard and ragged, his own chest just visible rising and falling in the gloom, both of them entirely spent.

He agreed, and beckoned Elizabeth to join him, as he knelt at the stream's edge. They both eagerly cupped water to their mouths with their hands. It did little to ease the gnawing hunger that had settled in, but it was something, and Elizabeth found her fear of capture crowding out most other thoughts regardless, urging her onward again before she had properly caught her breath.

***

Before long, Darcy nodded downstream, and she nodded in return, and they resumed their walk, the water's steady murmur now their only guide through the dark. As the night wore on, weariness began to press upon her in earnest, a heaviness settling into her legs and behind her eyes, and she thought conversation might help hold it at bay a little longer.

They walked on in silence for what felt many hours together, the dark closing steadily in around them, broken only by the stream's low murmur at their side. Elizabeth could feel tiredness seeping into her very bones, a heaviness in her limbs that no amount of will alone seemed able to master, and she thought some quiet conversation might help hold sleep at bay a little longer, might keep her feet moving when instinct alone would have had her sink down where she stood. She turned over, in the silence, the question that had been pressing at her for some while now, uncertain whether she ought to ask it at all.

"What did Wickham intend for you, Mr. Darcy?" she asked at last, her voice barely above a whisper.

The question startled him, she heard it in the small catch of his breath before he answered, and he was silent a moment, choosing his words with evident care. "Money. That much I am certain of. I should like to believe he meant to release us once he had it, but I cannot say I am certain of that either, and I would rather not deceive you by pretending otherwise."

She found she preferred not to dwell upon Wickham, nor upon uncertain fates, conscious as she was that capture might yet find them at any bend in this same dark path. She turned the subject entirely, grasping for something, anything, lighter to hold between them. "How old are you, Mr. Darcy?"

He repeated it, somewhat absently, as though the question had caught him mid-thought on some other matter entirely. "How old am I?"

She laughed softly, the sound surprising her as much as him. "Your age, sir."

He lifted his foot high, to move over a larger log that had fallen, "Eight-and-twenty. And yours?"

"I am not yet one-and-twenty." She said it with a small, private smile he could not see in the dark.

He turned to help her over the log, before asking, "What month were you born, Miss Bennet?"

"June, sir. And you?" She let out a small, thoroughly unladylike grunt as she hauled herself over the fallen trunk blocking their path, landing rather less gracefully than she would have liked on the other side, one hand braced against the damp bark to steady herself.

"November." He paused, as though turning the fact over, fitting it somewhere. "Have you always lived in Hertfordshire?"

She nodded in approval. "Always, sir, save for the occasional visit to town, to my aunt and uncle and their children, whom I love dearly."

"Are you fond of town?" He asked seriously.

"I cannot say I am entirely fond of it, though I do love the bookshops, and the theatre besides. There is something in London's noise I have never quite made my peace with," Elizabeth reflected, as she trailed him.