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on the sensitive skin of her neck not intervened. Her hand crept up to touch the spot, and she fell asleep with her fingers covering it.
     

 
     
    Chapter 3
     
    The sun was already high in the sky when Elizabeth awoke. The strange bed reminded her instantly of the events of the previous evening, and she burrowed her face under the pillow in hopes that it would somehow all go away if she just did not look at it. Unfortunately, life seldom cooperated in these matters, and now that she was awake, she could not understand how she had slept so late with children’s shouts punctuating the clatter from the kitchen, not to mention the rain thrumming against the window.
     
    She could not stay in bed with so much to be done. Apart from making certain that everything was in order before Charlotte and Mr. Collins returned, she should check on the injured girl. It made sense to do that first, since she would need to go to her room for fresh clothing and her hairbrush in any case. Yesterday’s dress had a narrow rip running several inches up from the hem. Still, she had to wear something, so she slipped it back on, managing to fasten all the buttons except the one in the very middle of her back.
     
    Fortunately, the passageway was empty, and the door to her usual bedroom at the opposite end stood wide open. Hoping to avoid notice while wearing her wrinkled and torn dress, she hurried in. To her dismay, the last man in the world she wished to see was sitting beside the little girl’s bed, talking quietly to her.
     
    Darcy’s voice broke off in midsentence. With a chilly expression, he stood and bowed in greeting, but said not a word. Elizabeth mentally cringed as her belated curtsey served to reveal a full view of her ankle through the tear in her skirt, just as she realized that he was once again in her bedroom . The presence of one small injured girl could not change that fact.
     
    To make it worse, that one small injured girl had tears running down her face, something Elizabeth could not ignore, even if it meant speaking to Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth crossed to the far side of the bed before laying a comforting hand on the girl’s arm. “Does it hurt so very much?” she asked gently.
     
    The girl’s voice quavered in response. “It’s terrible bad.”
     
    “I’m sorry to hear it. Is there anything I can do to help?”
     
    The girl turned pained eyes to her. “Can you find my mama, Mrs. Darcy?”
     
    Elizabeth turned a look of betrayal on Darcy, but before she could correct the girl, Darcy said, “Jenny wants her mama to sit with her, but her mother ran into the water after her brother, and she has not seen either once since then.”
     
    “The river was taking him away, so she had to catch him. We’re not supposed to play in the water, but he just slipped,” Jenny said, her calmness a certain indicator that she did not understand the implications.
     
    “Jenny has been waiting for her ever since,” Darcy said gravely.
     
    Their eyes met in mutual acknowledgment that their own quarrel had no place in the presence of tragedy. Darcy said, “I was about to make inquires as to the whereabouts of her parents.”
     
    “That is kind of you, sir,” Elizabeth said, meaning every word.
     
    His lips thinned. Without a word, he left the room.
     
    Elizabeth, feeling oddly as if she had been chastised, did her best to distract Jenny, asking the girl’s opinion on which of her several dresses she should wear and requesting her assistance in putting her hair up. She did not care to think of how she would look, but Jenny seemed delighted with the opportunity, so she resigned herself to whatever lopsided hairstyle resulted from the experiment.
     
    As she returned the favor by brushing and braiding Jenny’s thin hair, the girl began to open up, telling her about her father’s mill and the doll she had left behind in the flood. “I put her way up high in the rafters, so she’d be safe no matter how high the water