Darcy wanted to reply to that, but when he caught up to Jane she immediately stepped onto the stile and, climbing to the top of the fence, pointed across the long, open meadow. “The place where you were found by the farmers should not be far. Just at the end of this field, I believe.”
He climbed over the fence and helped her down to the damp, grassy sod on the other side.
“Do you think you shall be able to return to your time as easily as you arrived?” she asked, holding onto his arm just a bit longer than necessary.
“I don’t know,” he said as they began to walk through the damp grass. Halfway across the meadow Darcy stopped and turned to face her. “Jane, about last night…”
Something like pain flickered behind her dark eyes and she suddenly broke away and ran ahead of him toward a low stone wall overhung with trees. “Oh, look!” she called. “This must be the very spot.”
Darcy followed her to the wall and looked up at the distinctive high arch formed by the branches. He gingerly placed his hand on the neatly stacked stones, noticing that the afternoon sun had warmed them. “Yes,” he said after a moment of silence, “this is it.”
Jane sat on the wall and turned her head to gaze through the arched overhang at the perfectly ordinary- appearing meadow on the other side. “How are you to return?” she asked, knitting her brows as if she were at her piano contemplating a difficult musical composition.
He looked over the wall into the adjoining meadow and his hopes for a simple return to his own world withered. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he admitted.
Stooping, he picked up a twig fallen from one of the trees and experimentally tossed it over the wall. It landed on the other side with a soft plop and lay there in the grass, exactly as one might expect a piece of thrown wood to lay. He could detect nothing at all out of the ordinary.
“Perhaps if you actually went across to the other side,” Jane suggested.
Darcy thought about that for a moment, and then he stepped up and across the wall. But once again nothing extraordinary happened. He was simply standing on the other side. He looked at her and shook his head. “Nope!”
“Nope!” Jane laughed. “I must remember that word. For it matches perfectly your expression at this moment.”
Feeling foolish, Darcy quickly clambered back over to her side. As he stood in the other field it occurred to him that if he had somehow managed to step back into his own time at that instant he would never have seen her again.
“Anyway, I can’t go back without Lord Nelson…my horse,” he added, anxious to cover his dismay at the near blunder.
“Sir, I did not think you were referring to Lord Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar,” Jane teased. She gave him a dazzling smile, obviously not at all displeased that he was safely back with her, for the moment at least. “I remember how shocked I was when you told me that your horse was named after my England’s greatest naval hero,” she said, “especially with poor Lord Nelson not long dead from a French soldier’s bullet.”
She paused then and her tone turned more serious. “I am sorry to say that was my first impression of you, Mr. Darcy. Such arrogance, I thought. But, then, what else was one to expect from an uncivilized American?”
Darcy winced at his dimly recalled memory of their painful first encounter. “I must have been quite a shock to you,” he said. “Brought dirty and bleeding into your house with my strange clothes, demanding to use your phone…”
He slowly placed his hand on hers. “Jane, I do hope I’ve managed to undo at least some of the unfavorable impressions you formed of me those first days.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Darcy,” she replied, smiling. “You have managed quite well. In fact, I confess that I shall not be at all happy to see you go. For Chawton has never before been so exciting a place—”
Jane’s voice broke and she turned away to prevent him from seeing the tear glistening on her cheek.
He raised his hand to her shoulder and gently turned her until they were again facing. “Jane…I wish we had met under different circumstances,” he breathed. “Knowing you has been the most wonderful experience of my life.”
“And of mine.” She sniffled bravely, smiling and brushing away the tear with the back of her hand. “For now I know at least a little of those tender passions and emotions which I have so often and yet so poorly attempted to describe in prose.”
Touched by the depth of feeling in her words, Darcy slipped his arms around her and held her close to him. “Has it really meant that much to you?” he asked. “The few hours we spent together last night?”
Jane looked up at him with an enigmatic smile. “Last night and the three days and nights before that, as you lay in my bed, watching my every move and listening to me speaking my heart.”
He pulled back, surprised. “You knew?”
“I cannot say I knew absolutely that you were not always asleep or in the deep swoon you pretended,” she told him. “But there were many times when I imagined that I felt eyes upon me when no one else was present. And poor Mr. Hudson’s perplexity over your failure to awaken had at last led me to suspect that you might not be so grievously wounded as you seemed.”
At the mention of the bumbling old doctor’s name Darcy laughed. “Let’s not forget that it was
Jane broke into a grin. “Actually, no,” she laughed. “Mr. Hudson confided to me his suspicion that you were perhaps more alert than you pretended and the dear old man assured me that in his long experience the mere mention of stinging wasps often worked miracles in restoring disingenuous patients to health.”
Darcy’s face turned red. “So I even underestimated him,” he said with chagrin. “You were absolutely right when you called me arrogant. For I stupidly assumed that the changed social customs and advanced technology of my time somehow made me superior in yours. I forgot all about wisdom and intelligence. Can you ever forgive me, Jane?”
She replied by lifting her face to his and softly kissing his lips. “I
She kissed him again, then stepped back and, glancing at the arch of trees above the wall, asked brightly, “When do you think you shall leave?”
Darcy shook his head, for although he was not ready to admit the possibility, even to himself, he was not at all certain that he
He closed his eyes, trying to remember every detail of the moments leading up to his leap through the arch. “I remember the sunrise was filling the space between the wall and the trees with blinding light,” he said, “so maybe that had something to do with it. I’ll try at dawn tomorrow.”
They sat on the wall in silence. Darcy fingered the medallion he’d worn since his mother had given it to him for his sixteenth birthday. He reached around and unhooked the clasp. Putting the medallion in the watch pocket of his waistcoat, he took Jane’s hand in his and turning it up placed the chain into her palm. Jane picked up the beautifully wrought necklace and looked at him questioningly.
“I heard you and Cassandra talking about the cross your brother sent and how you didn’t want to wear it on a ribbon,” he confessed.
Jane was overwhelmed, “Oh, Mr. Darcy, it is beautiful.”
He took the chain and draped it around her throat, bestowing small, gentle kisses to the back of her neck. Jane turned to face him again. She gently touched the necklace. “So near my heart, as you shall always be.”
Darcy leaned over and kissed her. They lingered on the wall in the warm afternoon sun of that long-ago year, exchanging secrets neither of them had ever revealed to another living soul. Exchanging kisses as well. For both were acutely aware that their miraculous but cruelly brief allotment of time together was nearly spent.
Chapter 30
