And if she moved or pushed on it too fiercely, it began to crack and crumble.
She had first tried to climb up, out of water. But the ice near her shoulders crunched and broke as she tried to pull herself up. Then she tried to jump, and lost half the submerged ledge she stood on.
Now she was barely balanced, her skirts heavy and sodden. She felt like they were dragging her under, though it might just be the cold. Though, as she glanced around the quiet world—so beautiful, so still, so silent—she realized she was not so very cold. Not anymore.
The snow fell harder now, and Elizabeth had to laugh. No, wait, she was crying.
She was doing both.
Because it was such a beautiful winter day. And because she had finally realized what had been pulling at her heart and playing at the edges of her mind for weeks:
She loved Mr. Darcy.
She loved him.
How perfect. What a perfect comedy—or tragedy. Or both! To realize that I have fallen in love…right before I fall to my…
Death?
Now she was crying.
Because no one would find her. Only her shoulders and head were above the water. She glanced around what was quickly becoming her entire world: she was alone in a clearing, of sorts. Behind her, there was the copse of snow-covered trees. She thought she had been following a path, but now she realized this was a swift-moving tributary of the deep river that flowed all the way to Meryton. It had been completely covered in snow, and she’d had no idea she was crossing ice.
I will not die here, she vowed. It’s too ridiculous.
But when Elizabeth opened her mouth to try and scream for help, she could not take I enough breath to make any noise. She curled her fingers over the ice in front of her—her fingernails were bleeding. When had that happened? She tried again to pull herself up, but the ice she could reach began to make an awful, ominous creaking sound.
The hole around her was getting bigger. What would happen when she could no longer reach any of the ice with her hands? What would happen when the ice beneath her feet gave way?
Elizabeth looked down into the water. It looked dark brown and felt…
It felt like nothing. She could not feel her legs. She wiggled her toes, but they were numb and she honestly could not tell if they moved at her command, or not.
She glanced again, up at the dark gray sky. She tried to shout again, and maybe she did, but it also felt so good to close her eyes. So warm, and soothing, and now the current of the river felt like a gentle rocking. Like a mother who loved her child, rocking a babe in a crib.
Did my mother ever love me, like that? she wondered.
No, don’t think of it. Don’t think of her.
Think of happy things. Jane and Bingley, smiling at one another.
Papa, looking up as I come into his study, his dark eyes so lively and loving.
…Mr. Darcy, in the moonlight. Mr. Darcy, touching my hand.
What would it be like to have kissed him?
“Help,” she said again, but it sounded like a whisper in her ears. But no. She would not fade away. She would not drown so easily, like Ophelia falling from a willow tree and not realizing her distress. She would fight.
She would fight.
Elizabeth spread her arms wide, trying to gain traction on as much of the river’s frozen surface as she could. Her bleeding nails left smears of watercolor-red on the ice. If I don’t try something—anything—now, I will succumb, she thought.
She would attempt to roll up and onto the river’s surface. If she could just push off from the submerged ledge of ice, perhaps she could raise herself up high enough to…
Save herself.
She tested it, but it was hard to even move her legs. She knew that rationally she must be freezing, but she no longer felt so cold. She felt quite numb, in fact. It would be easier to just stay here and wait, and hope that the maid she’d spoken to at Netherfield had noticed she’d been missing.
But for how long had she been gone? Perhaps not long enough to cause concern.
Move, she told herself. Was she shaking? Was her entire body shaking? And how had her hair gotten wet? Move, now. Or else you’ll never move again.
And so she bent her knees and tried—tried her very hardest—to kick up from the remnants of ice she stood on. She spread her arms and fingers and heart and soul and tried to roll up and over, onto the ice.
But it didn’t work.
Her skirts and cloak were too heavy, and stayed stubbornly in the water. She could barely get her chest out of the current, and when she tried to roll the only thing she succeeded in doing was breaking more ice off from the surface, and widening the hole around her.
“No,” she cried, for a moment waking from her stupor and realizing her danger. Her utter and complete danger. She was going to die, alone, all because she hadn’t—what? Stood up to her mother? Because she’d run off rather than face her father? Because admitting her feelings about Mr. Darcy was too much to bear?
How stupid and silly and childish. She knew people died for all sorts of horrible reasons. Standing too close to a fire in winter. A child’s blanket touches the edge of the embers, and disaster results. A cough that turns fatal, and no amount spent at the apothecary can help. A bad fall from the same horse you’d ridden a hundred days in a row.
So many ways to lose your one, precious life.
But how horrible—that she had caused this. All because of hurt feelings and pride and her own stupidity.
She couldn’t feel her hands anymore. She could barely keep her chin above the water. But suddenly the image of Mr. Darcy, and his sky-blue eyes, filled her mind. His hands had been warm, so warm, when he’d pressed his palm against hers.
What would it have felt like, to kiss his full, perfect lips?
She always thought she was so brave. But to truly open your heart to someone, to not hide behind your own clever defenses—she had not been brave. Not in that way. She wished she had learned that lesson earlier.
Perhaps she would have run to speak with him, instead of running out into the cold world, alone.
Elizabeth fluttered her eyelids, trying to focus on the white, shifting horizon. She must be in real danger now, because she thought she saw the man she’d been dreaming of. But it could not be Mr. Darcy, appearing on the hill, running towards her.
Was he shouting her name?
She opened her mouth but could not make a sound. If she were a bit less exhausted, she would be furious at herself…for drifting off into the afterlife so easily. But when she tried to bend her fingers and reach for the ice shelf again, her hands did not obey.
She watched the Mr. Darcy apparition get closer. He was speaking, but she could not hear his words. The only sound in her ears was that of rushing water, getting closer and closer.
And then she slipped beneath the surface and heard nothing at all.
Darcy
She disappeared, right before his eyes.
“No!” Darcy shouted, the word echoing that tiny, frozen pocket of the earth. “No, Elizabeth! No!”
He’d followed his instincts—and her footprints—from the back gardens of Netherfield, out into the wilderness. She’d veered to the right, trying to avoid a particularly deep area of snow. And then her tracks had led around a wooded area, up a small hill…
And directly onto a tributary of the river. Darcy recognized the area from when he and Bingley had first scouted the estate. He could see that, with the world covered in white, Elizabeth must not have known that she was venturing out onto a wide expanse of water.
When he crested the top of the hill and saw her, in the very middle of the water—his heart had dropped. He’d begun shouting at her to hold on, to wait. And then she had dropped from view.
He’d shouted. No, it was more than that. It was some animal sound jerked from his very soul. He’d flown down the hill, hoping to god the footmen and help were just behind him. He reached the river just as she disappeared into the dark water
below the ice.
“Elizabeth, God, no—hold on!” he shouted, racing out onto the frozen surface and hearing it crack.
Immediately.
He froze. If he went down here, he’d be no good to her. But she was at least fifty paces in front of him. He could not see her face but one arm, her hand pale, still stretched across the top of the water.
Was her face in the water?
“Holy God, save her,” he whispered. He could not remember the last time he had prayed—truly given his soul to God—but ever since he’d met Elizabeth, he’d felt himself opened up in new ways. And he had no time to think beyond God help her, God save her, God I would do anything to pull her alive from this water, and then he took another step onto the ice and felt the surface give beneath his weight.
He knew if the river were not covered in snow, he would be able to see the spiderweb cracks as his weight cracked the ice. In his mind the shards spread like lightning, and at any moment he felt he could plunge into the icy, black water.
And then he’d be no use to Elizabeth at all.
“Elizabeth!” he shouted. “I’m here! I’m coming. Hold on!”
If she heard or moved, he could not see—but her pale hand on the ice’s surface gave him hope.
An image flashed in his mind’s eye—something from long ago. From childhood. Winters when snow covered all of Pemberley, when he and Wickham were the only two children nearby. Memories he had pushed away, tried to forget. Erase.
But it came back to him then. Two little boys, wearing matching hats his mother had knitted for them, kneeling on the lake’s bank.
Snow had been everywhere, snow for days, and finally—finally—they’d been allowed outside to play. Darcy remembered being entranced by the trees covered in ice, and the lake covered in ice as well. He and Wickham had taken their mitten-covered hands and brushed off the thick layer of snow.
Beneath that was the ice, grey and white and hard and magical.
They’d ventured out onto it, almost old enough to know better, but not quite. Who knows how far from shore they were when they were discovered—by Wickham’s father, no less. He’d yelled at them something terrible, his hoarse voice made even more bear-like from cold.
And, Darcy now realized, from fear.
Darcy and Wickham had turned back, running toward the older man. It was only then, when they were still thirty paces from safety, that the ice began to crack. What a grand, loud sound it had been—until they’d realized what it meant.
“Down!”
Darcy could suddenly hear old Wickham’s shout, as if the man still stood behind him, on this Earthen shore.
“Down, boys!” he’d shouted, instructing them to lay flat and roll all the way back to the bank.
And it had worked. By dispersing their weight, they’d kept the ice from cracking and lived—
The memory faded as Darcy lowered himself. Quickly, as gently as his shaking limbs allowed. He found himself on his knees, and then on his stomach. And then he began to crawl, slowly, spreading this long legs and arms as wide as he could.
“Elizabeth,” he shouted. He called her name over and over again. As he made his way closer to her, the ice began to move under him. He could feel it swaying underneath his widespread fingers, his entire world unsteady. Cracking open.
If he looked down, he imagined he could see the dark waters rising. But God help him, he would not look down. He would not stop. What would his life be worth, if he let something as petty as fear stop him from—from rescuing the woman he loved?
The woman he loved.
“Elizabeth!” he cried. It had only taken him a minute, maybe two, to get this far, but it had taken an age too long. From behind him, he thought he heard Old Wickham shouting again. But then he realized, no, his prayers had been answered—it was the footmen. Perhaps there was Bingley’s voice, as well, but he could not turn to look for them.
“Here!” he shouted, never stopping his forward momentum. “On the ice!”
He heard men yelling for ropes, and to form a chain, but he did not stop. And then he was there, where the ice crumbled into a black hole of water.
“Lizzy, Lizzy,” he said. And then he touched her, grabbed her hand, cursing at how cold—how frozen—her flesh was.
How had she stayed afloat? And then as he wrapped one hand around her arm, she looked up, her face almost blue and her eyes fluttering weakly.
“I’m here,” she said.
She was shaking so badly she could barely speak, and though she did not smile, he felt her eyes recognize him. He saw some small spark shine through.
And then she whispered, “W-w-what took you so long, then?”
If he felt tears on his cheeks, then, he would never admit it.
“Grab onto me,” he ordered.
But he soon realized that she could not. Her limbs were frozen, and her hands—bloodied, bruised—could not even close.
“I’ve got you,” he said again. He stretched both arms forward, plunging them into the water. It was freezing. It was colder than he could have imagined, and how long had she been out here?
“Elizabeth, I’ve got you,” he said again. He had her arms now, but he couldn’t reach her waist. He tried to move forward, but the ice gave a terrible, warning groan. Darcy cursed her thick skirts. He knew she must weigh next to nothing dry, but with a cloak and water-logged skirts, trying to pull her felt like trying to pull an oak tree from the ground with his bare hands.
And then the ice beneath him began to shake, and he felt his entire body fall—just enough to scare him. Just enough to lower him into the water, the sudden shock of the cold making him shout.
“S-s-stop,” she said. “Don’t come any closer. Y-you’ll fall through.”
“I won’t,” he said. “And they’re coming—help is coming. They’re right behind me.”
He could hear them shouting his name. It was Bingley’s voice, shouting hoarsely that they’d get him, they were almost there. They were almost there.
“Hold on,” he said. “Hold on to me.”
She smiled then, so beautiful, so cold. “I’m trying. Don’t come c-c-closer without rope.”
They stared at each other, and even now he could not stand the beauty before him. Snowflakes clung to her dark, wet hair. Water lapped around her neck, like the most awful, living jewelry. Her deep brown eyes matched the woods behind her. She was like a fairy-tale creature come to life, a siren he’d gladly give his soul to. His chest hurt so much he thought it might break and shatter before the ice did.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “Hold on. Hold on. I love—”
And then her tired eyes widened and she gave a slight gasp, her hands reaching up and for him. And then her weighted body fell straight down into the icy deep.
Darcy scrabbled forward, heard himself shout no, over and over and over again, until he took a great, deep breath and dove in after her.
Darcy
He had never known cold like this before.
Shock. Utter shock, stilling him into ice.
Cold, dark. The world was black-green, and his eyes burned in the freezing river and he floated, stunned, hands outstretched, eyes now closed and unseeing.
Move.
He jerked, shaking his head and opening his mouth. Too many bubbles escaped from his held breath. He couldn’t even call her name. Where was she?
Elizabeth, Elizabeth! He shouted in his mind but knew it was for naught. He struck out wildly, fingers opened and trying to feel something, anything.
His body floated upwards, naturally, and that’s when he hit his head on the sky—no, the ceiling. The ceiling of ice. Good God, the current had pulled him under the ice. He couldn’t breathe, and he began to panic but then—
No.
He could not panic. He would either save her life or—or he would die trying.
He forced himself to open his eyes, but it wasn’t sure the pain of the freezing water was worth the view. He could see nothing, or next to nothing. Bu
t there—there ahead of him—
A flash of white and then he was on her, and she was still alive, still fighting. Her face was pressed up against the ice, and her fists—though he could not see clearly, he imagined her fists were beating futilely against the ice. He imagined that, because as soon as he touched her, realized he’d found her, he’d got her, she turned and began to beat him.
He must have scared her beyond measure, but then she realized what it was—who it was—and her hands fell. He wanted to pull her to him, kiss her, but no—air. They needed air. His lungs were burning, and his vision was going dark. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pounded on the ice above them.
And pounded. And pounded again. Please God, let Bingley see them.
But no one came. He turned to try and pull them back toward the hole they’d fallen through, but the current was so strong, and he was—he was losing energy and breath and the ability to think. And then her hands were on his face, her palms cradling his cheeks. And then her lips, so cold and still, touched his. A cold, close-mouthed, frozen kiss.
She was saying goodbye.
“No,” he said, wasting precious oxygen. He pulled her closer and raised his fist and willed himself to break every bone in his hand, if only it would break through the ice.
And then it did! Wait, no—there were more hands—grabbing him. Pulling him up. And then Darcy was up and onto the ice, in Bingley’s arms.
“Elizabeth. Get her, get her!” he managed to gasp.
Bingley wrapped a cord of rope around Darcy’s arm, before releasing him and reaching behind him. Bingley’s men were shouting, pulling, grabbing Darcy and pulling him to safety. He couldn’t move to help them, he was so very cold. But he turned, lying on his back, the sound of his body being dragged backwards on the ice. All he wanted to see was her. Elizabeth.
Snowbound with Darcy Page 10