Blinded By Prejudice by KaraLynne Mackrory
Chapter One
Iwoke with a gasp, my chest burning for air. Air that was denied to me. Tentatively, my tongue edged out to slake the dust that coated my lips, chapped and bruised as they felt. The small effort was too much for the exhaustion pressing down on every part of my body, and my eyes fell closed again. It was useless to try to see anything anyway, for it was black as pitch whether my eyes were open or not. The relief of closing them, though, of succumbing to the sleep that beckoned me down to my bones, was nearly impossible to ignore. My mouth felt gritty with an earthy taste of moss and soil, yet I was too weary to care.
I was both hot and cold in an awful state of perpetual pain. The hard stone pressing, cutting into my back was cold and unyielding. I could not decide whether the freezing stone was a blessing or a curse. Its frostiness pushed into me like a tide, at times easing the agony I felt with a wave of numbness that saved me for a few moments from the biting, searing pain that raked through every inch of my body, but ever waiting for the numbing tide to recede.
At first I did not know the source of the heat. Other than to know that the heat was the reason I could not draw breath, its source did not press for space in my consciousness. Caught between the cold and the heat, I felt constrained between the two in a battle for dominance. The heat brought with it an oppression against my breast like nothing I had ever before felt, allowing only the slightest of breaths imaginable, each precious pull of air not enough, never enough.
I felt the seductive pull of sleep grasp me again, and I went willingly this time.
* * *
Dirt from above fell on my face and brought me back to consciousness for a second time. Or was it the third? It was difficult to keep track when my mind felt buried in sludge.
The ground shifted slightly, moaning in a way I wished I could. Low rumbles of grinding, flexing earth—and then silence. I never knew until then that such a silence could exist. As if every sound was forbidden and sucked into the darkness surrounding me.
This time my mind was more able to hold the edges of my awareness into a whole to evaluate what had happened. Like whispers of a breeze against my skin, I recalled parts of a picture now coming to my memory. After days of incessant rain, the skies had cleared enough to venture out, and a pleasure trip to Bodden Chapel ruins was proposed. For several hours, the skies remained dry, but soon a gentle rain began again.
If I had been alone, I would not have minded the rain so very much. It was perhaps not proper for a lady to enjoy a cleansing drizzle, but I had been known to stand among the trees on many a walk, facing up to the sky to catch the cool mist of rain upon my features. Suddenly, the fire in my throat raged to a conflagration. My tongue was thick in my mouth, and the want to taste a bit of rain to slake my thirst was a most primal impulse.
A choked sob escaped me, followed quickly by a shuddering breath, shallow and mocking the scream from my lungs for air.
I forced myself to thin my breaths, to relegate my heart into subsisting on the little my lungs could draw in once again. Calm. It was necessary if I wished for the edges of my mind to hold fast and not suck me back down into the depths of senselessness. And I did wish for wakefulness—despite the awareness of my injuries that came with it—for the rest of the day was forming in my memory.
Before the trembling began, we six had just stopped to seek a meagre shelter from the ruin walls. It would do little to truly keep us dry, especially as the drizzle turned quickly into a downpour. Yet there we stood against the uneven blocks to wait out the rain.
I had felt it silly to take cover when we were not but a walk down the hill—perhaps five hundred feet or less—from the carriages. The ruins were placed halfway up an incline of some significance for our usually lazy Hertfordshire hills, which was why they were an object of interest to visit. The old chapel ruins were tucked into the side of the slope, earth and bracken having long ago begun to swallow up the remaining walls as if the earth was determined to erase the unjust touch of man on its contours. Now it truly had swallowed us up.
Subduing the panic of such a thought, I revisited the moments I could recall. I had felt it was better to risk a little wetting to get to a more permanent shelter, for Jane’s sake at the very least. If Jane had not been among the party, I might not have minded seeking the temporary shelter to wait out the rain, but I had her comfort to consider, and I suggested going to the carriages while the weather was still mild. She had only recently recovered from a soaking that had forced her to bed with a fever for the better part of a week at Netherfield. I ought to have objected to keeping Jane in the rain, impertinent though it was to contradict a certain clergyman’s demand that we remain. Oh, how I wished now that I had. Instead, I conceded to the negligible shelter of the wall while watching the drizzle turn to a downpour.
Jane! The thought of her and where she might be pushed away the ever-present seduction of sleep. I discovered to my relief that, with effort, I could free an arm from where it had been trapped at my side. Though the energy it took to do such a nominal task left my head feeling light again, and had I been able to see anything in the dark, I was sure that my sight would have wavered. How long had I been thus trapped?
Once I recovered my wits, I practised the simple movement of my fingers, feeling thousands of currents of pain shooting along the length of my arm as my blood once again found its way into it. Finally, with a bend at the elbow, I prepared myself for the impossible task of moving the great burden weighing upon me, stealing my breath and trapping me against the cold of the rocks. When my hand encountered the supple leather of a greatcoat, I froze—the final moments rushed back into my memory and stunned my fevered mind.
Mr Darcy had been walking with Miss Bingley, Mr Collins paired with me, and the only satisfied grouping among us, Jane with Mr Bingley, walked ahead. It was with this unhappy party that I was spending the afternoon, waiting against the ruined wall for the rain to subside. At one point, Mr Collins, whose conversation was as steady as the incessant rain, blessedly stepped away from our party, ostensibly to inspect some bushes some thirty paces off. I shuddered to contemplate his business in the shrubbery; nevertheless I was pleased to have him leave my side. It was not long after he had begun his return walk to us that the trembling began. The earth moaned a low, ghastly sound.
Mr Darcy looked about as if to explain it. We all did, yet nothing appeared to provide clarity. Mr Collins was seemingly insensible, still trudging his way back up the hill to us with laboured breaths. Mr Bingley held my sister’s arm close to his side and looked to his friend for guidance.
“Darcy…”
I still remember the odd way Mr Darcy looked up, then at the chapel ruins wall, his focused eyes travelling beyond it, up the steep incline of the earth behind. The stern line of his brow showed the rapidity of his thoughts. I did not know why, but I could not tear my eyes off Mr Darcy as he surveyed our locality. The rest happened so quickly—it could not have been more than mere seconds—that the memory of it forced me to shut my eyes tightly as if I could erase the recollection assaulting me now.
I knew. I knew in my heart that something awful was happening. When lead settles into your stomach while your heart ascends to choke you, you know. Instead of searching out what it was that Mr Darcy focused on so gravely above our heads, I could do nothing but watch him. His face halted in horror, and then his eyes locked with mine. I saw his mouth open to shout, but the rushing in my ears prevented me from hearing what instruction left his lips as he forcefully pushed a startled Miss Bingley some distance into my cousin’s arms and leapt at me with the coiled grace of a lion. The rest had been blackness and noise and pain.
Oh, good God!
My hands, still pressed against dirt-covered leather, turned to ice as I realised the weight that pressed upon me, the source of the warmth seeping into me, was none other than Mr Darcy. And he was dead.