Elizabeth's Refuge

by Timothy Underwood

  The earl’s mobile, lively, self-indulgent face. Still and bloody.

  Elizabeth vomited, leaving acid and food on the brown winter ground. Her vomit steamed in the cold for a moment. Her throat burned. She looked around her sightlessly.

  Still seeing the still earl. Still trying to know if she had killed him.

  She probably had.

  The pugilist master that had told her how easy it was to accidentally kill a man with a blow to the head.

  She’d had no choice.

  Her head was sore. Elizabeth touched for a moment the top of her unbonneted hair, and flinched her hand away. The top of her head felt bruised and sore where she had struck his face. This brought a smirk to her face for a moment. If her forehead hurt this much, he would hurt far more.

  Except he couldn’t.

  Elizabeth forced herself to stand.

  Cold grey sleety day. She had neither coat, nor gloves, nor boots. Her indoor slippers had been mutilated by her run. No purse, no reticule, no money, no anything that would do as a substitute. The day was not cold enough that she would freeze to death — perhaps not even after night fell — but she was miserably cold and shivering.

  Elizabeth could barely stand. The injured foot twisted under her, and the other leg felt rubbery and shook under the weight of her body.

  Elizabeth collapsed back onto the weathered wooden slats of the bench.

  She closed her eyes, and tears started to prickle in her eyes. She should just sit here for a while.

  Too cold to sit still; too hurt to move.

  She would go numb and stiff if she stayed long. Bizarrely, given the weather, she and her dress had become soaked in sweat during her run, and she smelled like an untidy barn now.

  The Gardiners. They were a long walk away, and she needed to start now.

  A few overcoated walkers took advantage of the beauty of the park, giving her strange glances from across their sideburns.

  Less than a mile to the south-east was St. James’s Park, with the Queen’s House in the old Buckingham House on one side of the park, and St. James’s Palace on the other side. To the south of that were the houses of parliament, and to the east were the slums around Convent Garden, and past that the old city of London, with Gracechurch Street right in the center, a few hundred feet from the Thames and the old London Bridge.

  She would walk there as fast as she could. Perhaps it was already too late, but she thought if she hurried to Gracechurch Street she would be able to get there before anyone raised a proper alarm and soldiers or Bow Street Runners were directed by the servants and Mr. Blight to wait for her at her aunt and uncle’s house. She would be able to gain from them some ready cash, a coat, and some food before she had to figure out how to disappear from the chase that would seek to find and hang the murderer of an earl.

  Elizabeth stood once again on her unsteady feet.

  She would not be able to walk the entire distance this way, but a branch on one of the overhanging oaks was thin enough for her to snap off in the cold that made the branch brittle and dry.

  Elizabeth hobbled to the tree, and gripped her chosen staff.

  It was illegal she knew, to disturb the trees in a royal park, trespassing, a crime, a fine and perhaps a period of jail. The value of the tree branch was certainly far below the hanging sum.

  She tried to pull the branch off the tree with a thin little laugh. Better to laugh. Assault, murder, and wanton and premeditated destruction of a tree. They’d have plenty of reason to punish her when they caught her.

  The branch bent, but did not snap off.

  The tree was still too healthy for a clean crack. Pulling it put pressure on her now swelling ankle, and the stab of pain made her close her eyes and breathe shallowly.

  She needed this stick.

  Elizabeth gripped the branch firmly, one hand next to where she’d already created a bend, and the other halfway down to the tapering, bare end.

  She started twisting the branch around and around, though her ungloved hands squealed in pain at the rough grip on the bark.

  Each time around more of the fiber holding the wood to the tree stretched and then snapped, and then the branch twisted around and around easily, with just a strand holding the tree together, and patiently, knowing that in such tasks a hurry always made things worse, Elizabeth twisted and twisted till it came free.

  Elizabeth’s hands were now scraped, though not bleeding, and they smelled of the tree’s juices and sap.

  The stick also was not a steady cane, it bent and shivered under her weight, but it was better than nothing. Elizabeth carefully hobbled towards the fashionable houses of the British monarchs, trying to not put too much weight either on her injured foot or on her makeshift cane.

  One step after another. One after another.

  When she reached the streets between the houses, she gratefully used her other arm to support herself on the gates and building walls as she stumbled forward. She faced a lengthy walk, a full three miles, straight across the city. Elizabeth’s frozen hobbling pace was slow, and exquisitely painful. At one time the sky burst into a full rain, soaking her till her underclothes clung around her, entirely immodestly.

  She really, really wished she’d chosen to run from the Lachglass House in the opposite direction, towards her uncle instead of away from him.

  The freezing wind blew through her. She was colder by far than she had ever been before. Step after step.

  When she went through the slums around Convent Gardens, the men there sneered at her, and one grabbed her arm, before he saw the bruises on her face and decided to go elsewhere. Perhaps it was something in her eyes. She had been prepared to strike him with her head or to twist her body to hit him with her elbow that had also purpled with bruises.

  It would be a silly irony if she killed an earl to protect her virtue, and then was raped by a beggar or a common ruffian. But the prospect did not scare her. She was always told to be frightened of this part of the city, and to never, ever wander there, ideally not even with footmen to protect her.

  Despite her hobbling weakness, she had killed one more man than most of the unwashed ruffians who ganged in this poor area.

  As she walked Elizabeth used the walls or fences that she passed for additional support beyond that provided by her impromptu staff. It took three hours for her to hobble the three miles. She knew that after it had taken so much time her hope that it would be safe for her to ask her relatives for help before running again was no longer sound.

  Whatever authorities would be sent out to apprehend her could have easily been already dispatched.

  She refused to think about that, and by now Elizabeth was so cold and so sore that she began not to have a care if they hung her in the morning, so long as they gave her a hot drink and let her sleep in front of a nice fire tonight.

  Finally.

  At last, as it was becoming dark, Elizabeth shiveringly reached Leadenhall market, where beneath sodden tents a few remaining desultory butchers and greengrocers hawked their wares to the last late evening shoppers, mostly the poorer sort, clerks or workmen for the banks and merchants who clustered in this area. The wealthier sort sent their servants early in the morning to get the freshest of the foods and meats from the markets. Her aunt and uncle still did so, as despite the reversals in fortune they had faced since the collapse of prices following the victory at Waterloo, they could easily afford two or three servants, and they still owned outright the house in which they lived.

  Across the street from her, safety.

  The three story house the Gardiners lived in sat on the opposite side of the street from the market. The attic and half the rooms were now rented out to lodgers, one of them Mr. Gardiner’s clerk, and all of them employed in business here in the city.

  A cheery light burned from the windows, and from half behind a banked pile of coals that a street vendor roasted chestnuts on, Elizabeth watched. Something stiff and sore in her kept her from crying out in greeting, as her u
ncle strode up the street, his beaver top hat keeping his head and ears warm.

  The door opened, he smiled at someone within, and the door quickly closed.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed deeply several times.

  Safe and home.

  The pursuit could not yet have arrived at the Gardiners, as Mr. Gardiner would have been called from his warehouses to see to the matter if it had, rather than walking home calmly at the end of the business day. And there would have been something less domestic in how he was greeted if the house was on fire with the news that she’d murdered an earl.

  Elizabeth put a hand on a cold lamp post. The weather was freezing, and getting colder by the minute as evening fell. Time to be warm at last.

  And then, just as Elizabeth was about to start across the street, a hackney cab, driven at the unsafe, hurtling pace that all cab drivers used, pulled up in front of the Gardiners’ house.

  Two men stepped out.

  One a uniformed constable from the parish association funded to protect the rich district that Lachglass lived in. The other’s face was wrapped up in bandages, Elizabeth could easily recognize him from his size and posture as Mr. Blight, the earl’s man of business.

  They walked up to the door and pounded for entry.

  *****

  Elizabeth hurried away, back the direction she had come. And then she went south, to the waterfront of the Thames.

  She reached the waterfront near the flat top of the old London Bridge. Old people still talked about how the bridge used to be packed four stories tall with houses. Boats with lamps swinging side to side floated up and down the river, barely visible in the dim foggy evening. In the distance the last reddish hints of sunlight faded by the second. The eternal bustle of commerce, barges, stevedores, cats, dogs, and all manner of people and creatures continued doing their business along the dockside at night.

  There was a barrel with a fire burning in it for warmth that dockworkers taking a break and chewing tobacco gathered around. Elizabeth cautiously stood next to them, warming her hands.

  “Eh, lady! Watcha doin out so late in that dress with no coat? Sick you’ll be.”

  “Apologies.” Elizabeth shivered and flinched away from the barrel and the workmen. The man looked after her with a head-shaking frown as she fled along the riverfront away from him.

  Cold wind blew off the river, freezing Elizabeth’s face.

  She was alone, helpless.

  There was nowhere she could go in London. No one she could turn to. Anyone who she stood upon close enough terms with that they would give her shelter without any money, was someone whose connection to her would be easily discovered by the investigators.

  And even if a friend hid her, their servants would talk, and turn her in for a reward. There would certainly be a great reward. She had, after all, killed an earl.

  She would freeze to death, in the wet and cold.

  Was there anyone she could trust to help her at this time?

  The name of one gentleman crossed her mind. He had been named as the inhabitant of a particular house on a square a few blocks from Lachglass’s house. She had been told that this man was present in the town after the spectacular society marriage of his sister a few weeks ago by a gossiping footman while Elizabeth walked her ward around the streets.

  It was a slender hope.

  But this man whose name occurred to her had once, in a more fortunate time for her, many years before, told Elizabeth with dark passionate eyes that he ardently admired and loved her. And then she refused his suit out of misplaced spite and misapprehensions.

  Wind blew through Elizabeth’s dress, and a proper soaking rain now entertained her. Elizabeth started back towards where she had started, going towards the scene of her crime once more. The night was full of cold sleety rains, caught halfway between hail and plain rain, with little flutters of snowflakes melting in the lamplight.

  One step after another. That was all it would take. One step after another.

  Elizabeth wanted to lie down and cry, and let darkness take her. Her stomach hurt with hunger, and her foot ached and twinged with every step.

  But Elizabeth kept walking.

  Chapter Two

  The moment Darcy entered the door to his finely appointed townhouse, his housekeeper Mrs. North greeted him in an unusual agitation. She flapped her hands and tugged at her bracelet. “Sir, sir, I’ve been waiting for you to return for the past hour. A strange gentlewoman is asking after you.”

  Darcy blinked. “A strange gentlewoman? Did she leave her card?”

  “In the drawing room. Told her to wait for you. Couldn’t send her off. Not in the cold. Not at all. I gave her a toddy, and told her to just sit there and keep warm. It’s all so irregular. I think she is in some trouble, but a very sweet and good natured young gentlewoman. I can tell, you know. I can tell. Someone did wrong by her.”

  With a small smile Darcy shook his head. “Mrs. North, this is most unlike you. I can hardly make out the direction of your communication. Who is the woman seated in my drawing room who saw fit to call at,” Darcy frowned in thought, “ten o’clock in the evening, since you said she has been waiting for me for an hour now. This is most irregular.”

  The thought crossed his mind that the entire situation might be some bizarre attempt to entrap him in marriage by entangling his reputation with that of the strange girl who had called. But that made no more sense to him than anything else that Mrs. North had said. Besides now that Georgiana was happily married to Mr. Tillman, Darcy had rather less reason to concern himself with the possibility of scandal.

  “Um. Yes. Um. Let me explain.” Mrs. North’s head bobbed up and down as she stammered. “Nothing like this ever happened before. But I am sure she is a good sort, even though I don’t know her. I’m worried she’ll be quite sick from all that cold, walking around all day she said, in just a thin dress — no coat. It’s been raining all day, off and on, and with that wind. She’ll be fortunate if she doesn’t catch her death of the cold.”

  “I begin to think that I will need to see this woman myself to gain any sense of the matter.”

  “Yes sir, that is likely best. I am sure the matter is not her fault, but I expect someone imposed on her. Miss Bennet’s face is bruised. And her forehead and arms too, I dare say that—”

  “Miss Bennet!” Darcy exclaimed, all hint of sleepiness and amusement at the situation suddenly gone. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

  “She did not say her Christian name, but—”

  “Around this height, dimpled cheeks, and eyes which are roughly the color of the Thames at twilight—”

  “No smiles to see any dimples on the girl tonight.” Mrs. North tilted her head and smiled a little. “But her eyes are like that.”

  “Good God.” Deep breath. And then Darcy took another deep breath. “I shall speak to her.”

  Perhaps it was one of her sisters.

  Perhaps it was a completely unrelated Miss Bennet.

  In the brief moment before he entered his drawing room Darcy wondered why Elizabeth would reenter his life at such a time. When he had finally entirely put that old affection behind him, and he at last was seriously looking for a prospect for wife, since he had reached the age when a man ought to marry if he had not already.

  Besides he thought he would be decidedly lonely in a few weeks with Georgiana gone to her husband’s estate in the north, and General Fitzwilliam soon to return to the division he commanded in the occupying army in France.

  Darcy stepped briskly into the room.

  She was Elizabeth.

  His heart leapt in his chest and pattered fast.

  Elizabeth clutched a blanket around her next to the fire and she seemed to not realize he was there. A small house kitten from the kitchen had climbed into her lap and was pushing its paws into her leg again and again, while she absently petted him and stared into the fire.

  Her hair hung loosely around her ears and eyes, and she looked small and young
, as if she had not aged a day in the four years since she refused his request for marriage. His heart went out to her, wanting to protect and comfort her. She looked like a wrung out rat, and she looked beautiful.

  And then she looked at him, and as Mrs. North had said, her forehead had a big bruise, black and blue. And there was another softer bruise, shaped like a handprint, on her face.

  Elizabeth.

  What happened to you?

  She stood up, the cat in her lap squealing as she absently put it on the arm of her chair.

  “Mr. Darcy!”

  He bowed. Darcy tried to speak but his voice would not come.

  She was beautiful.

  She shivered despite the warmth of the well heated room. And she was so bruised.

  “What happened?” He forced himself to speak slowly and quietly, as though he was trying to comfort an injured and skittish horse.

  But Darcy felt a roar of rage that screamed behind his ears. He added when she swallowed before answering, “Elizabeth, I am glad you came to me in whatever trouble you have found yourself.”

  “I was…” Something flashed in her eyes, and she did not speak for a moment.

  “You need not speak,” Darcy said, with the terror that she had been assaulted and defiled by some vicious man, “not if it is painful for you to recall. I trust you. Inform me how I might aid you.”

  “No, I must tell you. You may not wish to help me when you understand.”

  “I shall always wish to help you.”

  Elizabeth smiled humorlessly. “I must also ask you to withhold any promise until you have heard what I have done.” She tottered forward, limping terribly on one foot that looked swelled in her stockings to twice its size. He caught her arm to steady her as she tripped on the flat surface and nearly fell. Her closeness brought with it a strong scent of sweat that was somehow pleasant.

  She flinched, but then smiled up at him. “Thank you.”

  Darcy looked down at his hand on her soft yet strong arm. Beneath his fingers was a mottled blue and black handprint.