Page 6 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

I am halfway down the lane when I hear the hoofbeats.

They are coming fast. Too fast. Something in the sound is wrong, broken and uneven, the gait of an animal with no one to tell it where to go.

A horse comes round the bend.

It is enormous and black and wild about the eyes. Its stirrups are flapping empty against its sides, and its reins trail in the mud.

I press back against the paling. It thunders past so near that I feel the wind of it, then slows, and halts twenty yards on. It stands in the lane with its sides heaving and looks back at me, and I would swear it is as frightened as I am.

“Well,” I tell it, a little breathless. “And a good morning to you, sir.”

It blows through its nose.

I know this horse. I have seen it every day for three weeks, tied at the parsonage gate while its master sat in Charlotte’s parlor and said nothing whatsoever for a quarter of an hour together. I used to wonder whether the horse was as weary of those visits as I was.

“Where is he?” I ask it. “Where have you left him?”

The horse only stamps, and shivers, and stares back the way it came.

“Do not tell me,” I say. “Do not tell me he has gone and done something foolish.”

I begin to walk. Then I am running, my skirts gathered in one hand and my bonnet strings flying, back up the lane toward the bend, where the old oaks lean over the road and their lowest boughs hang scarcely higher than a mounted man’s head.

He will be standing at the side of the road, I tell myself. Cross, and muddy, and brushing at his coat. He will look at me with that cold face and say something insufferable, and I shall say something worse, and it will be a great relief to us both.

I come round the bend.

He is not standing.

Mr. Darcy lies on his back in the lane, one arm flung out, his hat upturned in the ditch. A low oak bough hangs over him with its bark scraped raw and pale. There is blood at his temple, dark against skin that is far too white.

He does not move.

“Mr. Darcy.”

Nothing.

I drop to my knees beside him. The mud soaks straight through my skirt. I do not care.

“Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy. Can you hear me? Sir, you must wake.”

His chest rises. I watch to be certain. Up, and down. Up, and down. I find I am breathing with it, as if I could help.

“You absurd man,” I whisper. My hands hover over him, useless. I do not know where it is safe to touch. “You absurd, impossible man. What could possess you to ride at such an hour? Where could you possibly have been going?”

He does not answer. Of course he does not. He never answers when I most want him to.

“I shall fetch help,” I tell him, as though he were listening. “Rosings is nearer than the parsonage. I shall be as quick as ever I can. You are not to—you are not to do anything while I am gone. Do you hear me? Not one thing.”

I do not want to leave him alone in the lane. I cannot think why I should mind it so much, and there is no time to think of it now.

I reach to loosen his cravat, because he is so pale and it is tied so tightly, the way he ties everything, and my fingers brush something stiff inside his coat.

Paper.

It has slipped half free of the inner pocket. It is thick, several sheets folded together, and sealed with dark red wax.

A letter.