September Storm Relay Story Part 7

We’ve had a sudden donation so we’re up to the next piece of the story by Nicole Clarkston!  Lady Catherine is Seriously Pleased! We really appreciate all the amazing contributions you’ve made to help!

If you are or were in the path of the hurricane, please let us know in the comments that you are safe, or if you are not and you need anything.

Donate to Americares here.

Read part 6 here. Now, on with the show!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Darcy, man, stop that infernal pacing!” Knightley bellowed.

Darcy stilled. “I am not pacing. Simply stretching my legs.”

“You have been walking the floor an hour or better, and I’ll be jiggered if you haven’t got your boots on. Perhaps you need no sleep, but some of us have to be civil in the morning!”

“I have hardly stirred from the chair,” Darcy protested. “Only once or twice to retrieve a book or refresh the candle.”

“More like a dozen times! How many books do you have in here? You cannot possibly mean to read all night. And that’s another thing. Can you really sleep propped in the chair with the candle still blazing? Egad, man, I heard before you were peculiar. I like the sleeping arrangements no better than you do, but we must make the best of it, mustn’t we? If you insist, I shall take the chair and you can have the bed.”

“No, no.” Darcy rose and reached for his waistcoat, then rejected it when he recalled that it was still crusted with mud, and his valet miles away at Netherfield. “Forgive me, Knightley. I fear I am a restless companion.”

Knightley turned over and bunched the pillow under his chin. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with that fine-eyed Bennet girl, would it? I wonder who her bed mate is, and if she is as agitated as you are.”

Darcy froze, a rock in his stomach. “You speak of a lady, sir—you would not sully her name with gossip!”

Knightley snorted. “No, but if I were you, I would be very careful where I went after hours. That mother of hers might be lying in wait just outside the door to conduct you to your lady.”

Darcy scoffed. “Even Mrs Bennet would not be so devious. And now, so that you will be less of a bear in the morning, I will leave you to the bed.”

Knightley’s only answer was a grunt, and, if Darcy were not mistaken, a low chuckle. He rolled his eyes in distaste when he looked down at his attire, but there was no help for it. Mr Bennet’s atrocious banyan was clean, if not dignified, and at least there was no one about to see him in the monstrous thing. Slipping out the door, he closed it softly and shone his candle up and down the darkened hall.

The stairs were out of the question. Not only was there the risk of encountering someone else, but already knew how they creaked. Miss Morland had been petrified enough the last time a sound was heard in the storm-battered house. They certainly needed no more rumours of ghosts and the like! He turned the other direction.

The room assigned to him and to Knightley was at the end of the hall, with only a small alcove just beyond their door. Had there only been a chair, he might have made himself comfortable, but…

By chance, he looked up, and remembered the hatch above his head. The attic! He recalled seeing that before, and thinking how curious it was that Longbourn’s attic was left open. Perhaps the servants had been going up and down to retrieve additional supplies to keep all the guests in comforts and feared closing it up and making more noise after everyone was abed. Or—that was right. He recalled now that one of the servants had reported a leak in the roof, and Mr Bennet ordered buckets to be placed in the attic. Sheer laziness that no one had shut it again to prevent a draught.

Not knowing precisely why, he tested the bottom step with his weight. The ladder held, and felt sturdy. Moreover, it made no noise when his other foot rested on the second step. Perhaps…

A sleepless man is not always a clear-headed man, nor is a man unrequitedly in love often wise. Therefore, Darcy ignored the check in his brain when his limbs began to ascend the stairs to the attic. He would not be able to move around much, above the other bedrooms as the attic was, but he would be alone with his thoughts. That was worth a bit of dust and cobwebs. And besides, he would be down again well before anyone else knew of it.

He lifted the candle up into the room as his head cleared the ladder, and cast its light around. Like every other attic, it seemed to be equipped with the requisite draped furniture, boxes of out-of-season clothing, and the heavenly aroma of…spiced cake? Curiously, he lifted himself into the entry and then gently eased Mr Bennet’s hideous fuzzy slippers over the framing.

There was a faint dripping sound, and several buckets darkened various parts of the floor, but not far from where he stood loomed an old shrouded chair. And in the chair…

“Purple, Mr Darcy?”

He gulped and looked down at the borrowed banyan. Egad, he was nearly naked, and what he did have to cover his person was perhaps the most humiliating garment known to mankind. He cleared his throat.

“I wore it to match your dinner gown of earlier this evening, Miss Elizabeth,” he declared boldly. “I heard purple was your favorite.”

She spluttered helplessly and laughed, as merrily as she had laughed at Lady Catherine. She held up a hand to speak, then merely covered her mouth and laughed more.

“Ah, you mock me, Miss Elizabeth. I daresay, I am dressed in the very height of fashion. Do you not think?” He held aloft his arm, displaying the rich lavender sheen of the garment, and then fluffed its puffy collar. “I think I shall order a dozen. Where did you say these were purchased?”

She doubled from the waist, shrieking quietly and pointing–or trying to point–at his knees. “You–you’re taller than my father.”

Darcy quickly wrapped the tail of the ridiculous garment around his legs the best he could, but she was right. He was woefully indecent. But, despite himself, he could do nothing but laugh. She was so lively, so enchanting, and he could no longer resist. Quiet, he tried to be, but it was a moment before he could master himself enough to say, “Forgive me for intruding, Miss Elizabeth. I will leave you now.”

“Please, Mr Darcy,” she implored, although she was still giggling softly. “There is no reason for you to leave–where else can you go? I presume you do not like snuggling with Mr Knightley. Fear not, I promise not to look at you.”

“How could you help it?” He grimaced at the garish sleeves again. “Where in the name of all that is holy did your father find this piece of theatrical costuming?”

“My mother. She has one made for him every year for his birthday, and he made such a fuss over the first one that she made a point of having a more outlandish one made every successive year. She did not understand that he was teasing her, I am afraid.”

He nodded in understanding, then they both fell silent for a moment. “Miss Elizabeth, truly,” he said after a pause, “I ought to go. But…is that some sort of pastry you have?”

She grinned and held a plate up for him to see. “I could not sleep. Jane was ever so fretful, and Mary was sharing our room as well, because Miss Morland was still too nervous in Kitty’s room. Mary suggested that no ghosts could possibly inhabit the same room as her Bible, so Lydia and Miss Morland switched. However, it seems that our guest’s fancies at last made my most pious sister afraid of her own room and Mary came to sleep with us! It was so dreadfully crowded and noisy with both of them tossing and turning that I thought a bite to eat and the cool air up here would help. Would you like some?”

“I would, indeed, if you are inclined to share.”

“I will share more than the cake. There is room on the chair here–that is, if you can find some way of covering your…”

“You promised not to look,” he reminded her.

She cleared her throat and set her own candle aside. “Indeed. Ah… yes, please, have a seat. We shall be entirely civilized and perfectly proper.”

“Indeed, we shall.”

He tiptoed carefully across the floor, his eyes fixed on her bewitching face in the glow of his candle. At last, a few private moments with Elizabeth! And in such a setting! Even in his wildest dreams, he had never considered meeting her alone, in an attic, in a storm. The groanings of the old house, the howl of the wind, the pattering of rain on the roof set the moment into a space and time all their own—like the harmony of an orchestra, but a thousand times more intimate.

Slowly he moved, taking care that not a creak should pass below. He heard only the storm, and he saw only Elizabeth—Elizabeth with her soft hair tumbling down; Elizabeth with that creamy night shift that no man but her husband should ever see; Elizabeth with that slight curve to her mouth and a welcoming hand extended to him…

And a rain bucket, sitting just before her chair. One he did not see until his foot had dashed painfully against it, sending a gallon of water across the floorboards of the attic and causing him to hop, wincing, on his uninjured foot.

Elizabeth froze, her eyes wide, and they both watched in horror as the water sank rapidly between the boards and into the wadding above the ceiling below. “Uhm…” she began.

“Which room is down there?” he asked in a strained voice. Please, oh please, let it not be Lady Catherine!

“Oh! I think we are over Lydia’s room…oh, no, the colonel and Mr Bingley!” She gasped in sudden recognition of the perils below and then bent—belatedly—to snatch the bucket upright again before the last drops could be spilled. However, Darcy had been attempting the same, and their heads crashed into one another.

Heaven only knew what bumps and scrapes could be heard below over the next several seconds, but the end result of it was that the bucket lay entirely forgotten between their feet, and Darcy’s candle was snuffed out in the deluge. The cake crumbs were scattered over the shrouded chair, and Darcy and Elizabeth’s hands entwined as each sought to comfort…or support…or something…the other.

Elizabeth was gazing up at him, her panting breath hot on his cheek. He only stared back, struck entirely mute. Her hands were warm, her skin glowing and soft, and…

“Your gown is wet,” he told her…although his voice sounded strangely high-pitched.

“You promised not to look!”

“I never promised any such thing.” He tightened his hands, and in another moment, she would be in his arms, her clinging gown pressed against his preposterous banyan, her lips gentle on his… She tipped towards him, a low laugh bubbling from her throat, and her eyes slid closed.

And that was when the screams began.

The next scene is close!    Donate here!