They lay there for a few seconds, gasping for breath and perilously close to the drop themselves, everything quiet except for the two of them trying to catch their breath.
Jane lifted herself up on her forearms. “Did I hurt you, Lizzy?” she asked with concern.
Elizabeth wheezed until she caught a good breath at last. She could feel the mud and the wet everywhere—down the back of her certainly ruined gown, in her hair, in her boots. Jane had some mud on her shoes and a little on her gown, but not much else. Typical, that she would come out of this as muddy as a hunting dog whilst Jane remained nearly pristine. She tossed her arms out wide, gazed up at the cloudy night sky, and began to laugh.
If she was crying as well, no matter. No one need ever know.
“Falling! The carriage is falling!”
Darcy heard the cries as if from a distance. He wrapped the rope around the trunk, his hands a blur as they moved in and out. Men hustled around him, but he paid them no mind. He pulled the knot tight.
“Gone!” a man shouted.
The weight of the carriage moving on the shifting mud of the slope suddenly pulled the rope out to its full length. The rough surface slid around the tree and across Darcy’s palm, slicing the skin as effectively as a knife.
Darcy cursed and instinctively pulled his hand to his chest, horrified for a moment that the hastily tied knot might unravel.
It held. He checked it twice before stumbling back to the road.
The ropes were both stretched tight. The carriage had not plunged to the river below, but half of it was hanging over nothing but air.
“Oh,” he breathed, clenching his injured hand into a fist and peering into the darkness. He had lost friends before, but this was different. Worse, somehow.
Bennet’s face was ashen in the lamp’s light. Darcy’s hand throbbed, but he ignored the pain as everyone stood deathly still.
The oppressive silence continued as they peered into the darkness. One man removed his hat and covered his face with it. Several others squatted near the road, defeated. Darcy waited, suspended between devastation and hope. Bennet could not lose his daughters, and he . . . he could not lose . . .
A faint sound wafted up to them, and Darcy strained to hear it. A man began to speak.
“Quiet!” Darcy commanded.
There it was again. Was someone crying? No. Someone was laughing.
Darcy would know that laugh anywhere.
A wave of relief crashed over him, and Bennet’s pallor receded. The old general released a shuddering breath, placed his hands on his knees, and hung his head. “That just took twenty years off my life,” he muttered. “I do not care what they say. I am locking them both up and throwing away the key.”
There was a commotion on the road as Bingley and Fitzwilliam rode up and dismounted. Fitzwilliam strode over to him right away. “What happened, Darcy?”
“You are late,” Darcy told him, a strange sort of giddiness overtaking him. The men surrounding them laughed, the same sort of hysteria tinging the merriment. He shook his aching hand.
“Apparently,” Fitzwilliam said, grabbing his arm and dragging Darcy over to a lamp to have a look at his hand. “Had I been here, you would not have injured yourself. Stuck that meaty paw inside the rope again, did you?”
Darcy shook his head. “Worth it.”
Fitzwilliam handed him a clean handkerchief. “Bind it up. We can clean it back at Longbourn.” He glanced about. “Where is Miss Bennet?”
“Yes,” someone said. Darcy recognised the voice. Bingley. “WhereisMiss Bennet?”
“On the slope,” Darcy replied. “With Miss Elizabeth.”
When she had finally recovered her senses, Elizabeth retrieved the end of the rope she had untied from herself and wrapped it around Jane. Elizabeth accompanied her sister as the men pulled Jane as smoothly as possible up the bank.
She heard a deep groan off to the right, and stopped moving.
Elizabeth watched to be sure Jane was well, but as her sister was pulled up and away, she went to investigate.
There was another groan, and Elizabeth saw a slight mound in the mud. Protruding from it were the tips of three fingers, a nose, and a mouth. Gingerly, she dug out all the mud from around the man’s face so he could see and breathe more easily.