Chapter Twelve

In the depths of the night, whilst all was still and quiet I was awoken suddenly with a terrified shock.

A great cry of pain.

An agonized scream.

I thought the sound came from above. My face was numb as I lay in my bed, and the hair stuck out from the goosebumps. According to my fancy the sound came from the tower, perhaps Grace Poole… perhaps Grace Poole was engaged in her deviltries again.

I waited, frightened in my bed, and wishing that I had taken my own advice and sealed and bolted the door each night. It seemed to me I heard a struggle, coming from above and nearby — likely through the window of the tower to my room. And then a voice called out, a woman's voice, "Help, help, help" — each cry weakening.

A sound of running, and footsteps in the gallery, and the door to the tower slamming open and then shut.

I shivered under my bed. Then the stamping of many feet in the galleries and halls. Then voices. The company of many fellow humans. After such an eerie noise I wished the company of others. The company of fellow man can make one feel safe in the most terrible and strangest of circumstances.

I arose from my bed, and blindly placed a robe around my shoulders, and opened the door. I saw in their dressing gowns some twenty persons crowded around, exclaiming and talking, shouting for candles, speaking about fear of fire, speculations and wonders.

I instantly calmed.

Whatever had happened had no tinge of the supernatural. There was nothing here that was beyond understanding. This was, I was sure, an outgrowth of Grace Poole's malevolent strangeness, and nothing else.

You see here how even a person with a sound mind can grow used to anything quite quickly — even the presence of a person who set the draperies aflame, and made savage cries and struggles in the night seem an ordinary occurrence.

One of the guests, a sallow faced man named Mr. Mason, put up the cry, "Mr. Darcy! Mr. Darcy! Where is he? I cannot find him in his bed? — Where is Mr. Darcy?"

Everyone took up the cry of looking for their absent host, and then coming out from the upstairs tower door, Mr. Darcy came down. "Enough shouting. Enough. Enough! It is late — there is nothing amiss. Nothing unusual or strange."

Darcy spoke in a wry voice.

I knew him well enough to see from the twist of his face that what he meant was that there was nothing which he was unused to. Much like he had shown no surprise at having fire set to his bed, he showed no surprise at a horrid cry of pain in the night. But I knew that whatever the true story behind this cry, it was one which if we knew the truth in every particular our hair would stand up prickling on our heads, and not one of us the unknowing hearers of the cry would call it a usual circumstance.

"What was it! What was it!" a dozen voices cried at once.

Mrs. Bingley and Miss Bingley clung onto Darcy's arm begging him desperately to speak to them. Darcy stepped back, looking solemn to extricate himself. He paused for a long moment — I could see how difficult it was for him to find a lie that he would be willing to tell.

His eyes flashed dark with suppressed and controlled anger. I could see — I saw in the way his hands were held that he was a man who was in such a mood that he might shoot a man if given a pistol.

Darcy was no facile man, able to easily say anything. I wondered, seriously perhaps for the first time, what extremity had put him under the power of Grace Poole. What cause could ever draw a man so upright in his manners and preferences as Mr. Darcy into a course that clearly had some aspect of deceit within it?

"A nightmare," Darcy said, and I could see in his eyes that whatever the reality of the situation was, he spoke truly here. He looked at me as he spoke, and at the appearance of his eyes, my heart sank. "A nightmare struck one of the servants — she cried out at the horrors seen, phantasms in her mind. That is all. A nightmare."

There was a cry and a hue as the guests asked for further details. Darcy just smiled and listened to everyone, then he raised his hands again. "All of you to bed. All to bed. Return to your chambers now, there is nothing of importance left to disturb our sleeps." Darcy looked at me directly as he said "all go to bed."

Our eyes met; he nodded to me.

With more chattering, everyone soon determined that the excitement was over and they dispersed. The yawning Mr. Mason was the first to return to his room, and Mr. Bingley the last. He clapped Darcy on the arm and spent a few minutes talking to him as all of the guests dispersed.

I dispersed as well, returning to my room, but I did not throw the bolt, or remove the robe I'd wrapped around myself when I entered the hallway. Rather I walked to and fro for a half minute, and then quickly dressed in day clothes, and pulled on my shoes, so that I would be ready if Mr. Darcy had a need for me.

The time was interminable.

I sat still and upright on my bed, dressed simply and I waited.

The last sounds of softly spoken conversation from the hall died away.

I waited.

The birds made no sound, for they slept. There were a few creaks of the house. Familiar old sounds. The stillness sat upon everything.

Minutes passed by.

I had begun to think that I was mistaken and Mr. Darcy would not need my aid that night. Then a soft tap on my door. I arose, and opened it.

Darcy stood at the door, a grim line to his mouth. He held a silver candelabra high in his hand. The candlelight glinted off his tousled hair. He looked every inch the tall commanding gentleman. He wore his embroidered silk robe, tassels to the sleeves, and the Darcy coat of arms embroidered on the chest.

"Am I required?" I asked softly.

"Awake and dressed?" he replied with a softening of the unhappy line of his jaw, a softening that I thought meant he approved of me.

"As you see."

"Be slow and quiet. And follow me."

Without a further word I followed Mr. Darcy to the entrance of the tower.

He held a key in his hand, and inserted it into the lock, but he hesitated before opening the door. "Miss Bennet, do you faint at the sight of blood?"

I paused to think.

"No, I do not believe I would." I swallowed. I felt cold.

Mr. Darcy nodded seriously and opened the door.

This was my first opportunity to see anything of the tower's interior, and while the light from the candle was too dim to see anything clearly, the walls were hung with tapestries, and the whole seemed surprisingly well appointed for the rooms that had been given to a woman like Grace Poole. From its appearance, I would have guessed this to be the room of a gentlewoman. Neat sofas and armchairs, light delicate tables that looked pink in the dim light, and a shelf of books.

On the side there was a large bed which occupied much of the room, and round it hung curtains that occluded it. There was a soft pained groan I heard from behind the curtains.

There was a door deeper into the apartment that was closed, with a tapestry that it seemed usually blocked it rolled up and hooked above the door. Darcy put his hand on my arm. "Stay here."

I nodded.

He walked to the inner door, and as he entered there was that hooting of laughter. The eerie laughter that I had heard many times before, but never from so close. There was a sound of growls, and then that sound quieted.

A low voice spoke to him, and then Mr. Darcy returned and closed the door behind him. He twisted the lock, and the bolt fell into place. I confess I was vastly more at my ease once I heard the heavy thunk of the thick lock than before.

He led me to the bed where the dim figure of a woman sat against the plumped up bed cushions. Darcy raised the candle over her.

It was Lady Catherine. She listlessly leaned back against the bed, dreadfully pale and her eyes were closed.

Her dress, from the high neck down to the breast, and the silk along the right arm was soaked in blood.

I gasped.

She seemed to be insensible, but Mr. Darcy had acquired a set of smelling salts, and he waved them under her nose. Lady Catherine started awake coughing and gasping.

Darcy pulled her dress away from the rounded arm that had been wrapped with a bandage that was entirely soaked with her blood. "It'll need a surgeon." He sighed. "It'll need a surgeon."

Lady Catherine frowned upon seeing us. "Do you warrant there is any danger to my life? — Why is she here? Have you sworn her into your secrets?"

"Our secrets — no. Say nothing to her. She shall sponge the blood away from your shoulder, and provide you water as I go to bring the surgeon. That is all."

Lady Catherine seemed to see something else, someone else who was not present in the room. Someone terrible. "She said she wished to drink my blood! My blood."

"Lucky you are that she did not have opportunity to drain more of the liquid." Darcy growled stalking back and forth. "Not a word to Miss Bennet! You hear, you will not speak a word to her — I'm off to Lambton to fetch the doctor. And, Elizabeth, not a word in return to her. No conversation — neither of you could enjoy the company of the other overmuch, being quite opposite and contrary in characters."

"You must care for her — Darcy, swear you'll care for her, and not let her be harmed."

"You know I will always act as my… honor has no place here, but I'll not be a brute."

"Swear, swear on your Darcy honor to care for her and—"

"Damn you, madam — I say that intentionally, without hesitating to curse you though you are a woman. You lacking all honor beg me upon my honor?"

"Remember! Remember my daughter."

Mr. Darcy gritted his teeth. "Never, never — never can I forget her. You will remain here, and I say again, not a word, not another word to Miss Bennet. And do not worry, you'll not bleed to death before I return."

I did not feel myself bound by Darcy's demand for silence. But the fact was I had no particular desire to make a close acquaintanceship with Lady Catherine, and from the expression on her face, I did not think she was likely to tell anything that would answer my deep curiosity about what tale led to us sitting here in this situation.

A terrible long time seemed to pass, her blood dripping out, my wiping it away at intervals. The bowl of water Darcy had provided me with to wet the sponge became bloody and red in the candlelight. Slowly it began to lighten outside the windows, and I could see the first hints of the dawning of a new day.

I do not know how long passed, hours, perhaps less. Lady Catherine breathing heavily — for a period, a half hour, or perhaps only fifteen minutes, her quiet sniffles presaged tears that dripped down her face, and onto her arm.

"Does it hurt so much?" I asked quietly.

But Lady Catherine's angry and haughty sneer was the only reply I gained, and she wiped off her eyes with her free hand and a silk handkerchief. She angrily stared out the window, not looking again towards me once.

Finally there was the sound of heavy male boots on the hallway outside, then the creak of the door in the anteroom, and then again the creak of the door to the room, and Mr. Darcy and the physician from Lambton entered to find us sitting there.

The physician was surprised to find the injury on Lady Catherine's arm. "A bite! From—"

He glanced at me. "Is the young miss…?"

"Just do your job. Do not talk — Elizabeth. Your duties are done for tonight. I thank you though. I thank you from the depths of my heart — hurry to bed. You may yet sleep a few hours, though I know I shall not."

"But what is the tale?" I asked, unable to help my curiosity.

Darcy's dark and intense eyes looking upon me were the only answer I received, and the frowns of Lady Catherine and the doctor.

"To bed, Miss Bennet, to bed," Darcy ordered, this time not using my Christian name.

I was too full of curiosity and energy to go to bed.

The night had grown light and the air was cool and sweet. The birds were beginning their morning chorus.

I went downstairs and found an arbor with a pleasant rustic seat, surrounded by the morning dew. I sat and closed my eyes, thinking, turning over and over in my mind the question of what had occurred — why did Grace Poole bite Lady Catherine? And why had Lady Catherine entered Grace Poole's room in the first place?

There was a sort of horror in my soul from the hours spent at Lady Catherine's side that could not be dispelled simply by the outdoors and the rising sun.

After a while I heard a sound, that of footsteps and the carriage rolling over gravel. I stood and walked down the parkway until the shrubs opened so that I could see the avenue along which the carriage rolled. Pulled by its team, Lady Catherine's carriage dragged her away. She sat proud and tall in the open window of the high sprung carriage, pale, haughty, her arm wrapped in white bandages.

The doctor travelled ahead of her, on his horse, hurrying away from Pemberley.

As I watched, the gravel crunched underneath Mr. Darcy's boots, and he strolled up to step next to me. There was a peaceful sense of communion between us, and I wondered if I dared to ask again to know more of the tale between him and Lady Catherine.

"And good riddance," Darcy said, after the carriage had climbed the distant hill behind which the gate to the park stood, and disappeared from sight. "Good riddance — I would to God that there was the end of it all — I see you could not sleep, Elizabeth."

I turned around to look at him.

He was tall, a head above mine, with a shadow on his face that showed that he had not shaved since the previous day, but his bright eyes seemed in no way dimmed by the lack of sleep. I smiled at him. "Mr. Darcy, you ordered me to bed, and you know well how I reply to any definite and decided order."

He laughed, seeming to be almost in a good mood. "If one needs help, you will strive beyond any reason to provide it. I am most indebted to you for sitting by my erstwhile and unwanted mother by marriage and aunt by blood. But it is very much in your character to ignore any request that smacks tending to your own benefit rather than that of those you care for."

I shrugged a little insouciantly, but I was touched by what Darcy said. "I am as you see."

Darcy smiled at me and lightly touched my arm, just below the elbow. "I am glad for it." He gestured with a nod of his head for me to follow him, and we walked back to the little shaded arch that I had sat in earlier. The dawn was in full force now, and the sliver of the large sun had risen over the tree line. He patted the small wooden bench and sat down, saying, "Come, come. Sit with me a little — I cannot sleep. I do not wish to sleep. Sit with me. Let us watch the day begin."

I sat next to him, the bench was a little small for two persons who were not a couple, and as I made myself comfortable my leg brushed against his more than once, each time sending a thrill to my stomach.

I felt daring, and I thought that Mr. Darcy felt daring as well. We both were in that preternaturally alert state which one finds in the early morning when one has not slept sufficiently, and when there is no one but those whom you love to observe you.

He tilted his head back, his eyes studying the fluffy white clouds in dim sky, and the tangled green vines of ivy that had overgrown the arbor.

After a while he stood suddenly and walked to a blooming rose bush that stood across the way. He carefully removed a pink and red flower from the bush with his penknife, and after carefully stripping off the thorns, he offered it to me. "A flower, Elizabeth."

I blushed and took it, "Thank you."

He observed me carefully, with a smile, and then sat down again next to me, his hips brushing against mine. "A strange night. You are full of curiosity."

"Curiosity which you, cruel villain, will not assuage. I know that — but will you at last dismiss Grace Poole? At least from the house."

"Grace Poole?" Darcy seemed almost surprised by the question. "Whatever for?"

"For biting Lady Catherine?" I asked in a tone that made clear that I thought this the obvious reply to his question.

Darcy barked a short laugh. "For biting Lady Catherine. Yes, yes. But I would hardly blame her for something that I have half wanted to do more than once."

"Your life hardly seems safe and secure while she is present in the house."

Darcy laughed again, this time bitterly. "I live always suspended high above the greatest danger. The slightest tremble, and I may fall into it and drown. But to dismiss her would not reduce my danger an iota."

"What danger did you fear from Lady Catherine? What made you fear that she could rouse the crowd against you? Tell me how can I help you? Mr. Darcy, I dearly wish to help you, in any manner I might."

"In any manner you might? — but you do not know. Lady Catherine could not harm me — not without making them burn against her in a like manner. No she would not… she would not. But any hope of happiness. Good God, she still has a hold upon me, but she has sworn never to use such. I was foolish to fear last night. What occurred was the worst that reason should permit me to fear. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all."

"Then I am glad. But last night was most shocking." I played with the pink rose Darcy had given me, smiling at it, and twirling it in my fingers. I intended to press it and keep the rose safe with me, though it was silly to put any seriousness upon a gesture that he had perhaps made from idleness more than any thought or intention.

Darcy smiled at me.

There was something in his eyes that made my heart flutter.

"Lady Catherine does," Darcy said at last, sighing, "have that ability yet to block the one scheme I have ever thought of to return my life to something like happiness — yet it is strange, it was a scheme she suggested, and supported many years past. One of her reasons… yet… yet, I was always repelled by the wrongness."

"What scheme is this?"

Darcy rose again, and did not answer. He paced back and forth in the little space three times. I missed his presence at my side.

He then looked at me, with a gaze that was almost furious in its intensity. "Elizabeth. Oh, Elizabeth, I am torn. I am so torn — I beg you: Choose for me. I have seen it — I have seen a way… a way past every difficulty, yet… yet my duty, and my honor tells me I ought not take it. What would you do?"

"I cannot say." I smiled, though in my chest there was a catch, a seriousness. "I hardly understand the question."

"No, I beg you — say what you would. Say it. Duty and honor, or happiness."

"Happiness. You… your duty must not destroy you. Your honor — you have spoken of how you have not been helped by what duty you have shown to your family name or honor. Choose yourself."

"Choose myself? Choose happiness?" Darcy had a manic light in his eye. One which unsettled me as he stepped to and fro. "Ha! Is that your choice for me? Happiness, Elizabeth?"

I hardly knew what to say. My throat caught. I was held still by his gaze.

Then Mr. Darcy turned away, and paced again furiously. "Ah, but my conscience still criticizes me. I am trapped — I cannot make myself to reject and abandon all thought of happiness, and yet I cannot choose to break morality, or perhaps just convention, and grasp it either."

Before I could make any comment, or venture any speculation upon what he meant there was the sound of other persons woken and walking in the gardens — my mind was alive with speculation at this speech, which in its own way was even more interesting than the night I had passed.

Darcy half smiled at me, and then he straightened his shoulders and strode out tall. I heard him say loudly, "Excellent to see you, Mason. Awake so soon? — I rose at five to see my unwanted relation off. Half expected she'd hide in the gardens if I was not here to watch her out the gates."