Carrie Bebris - Pride and Prescience

A sickening sensation overwhelmed Elizabeth at the sight of the mangled carriage. Though Darcy commanded her to stay back while he checked inside for Jane and Bingley, her legs shook so badly she could not have approached anyway. She at once couldn’t bear to look, and couldn’t bear not to look, at the splintered wood and twisted metal wrapped around a large tree. So her gaze ricocheted from the barouche to the surrounding terrain as she swallowed bile and took deep breaths of cold air, struggling to block out the smell of blood and the pained screams of writhing horses.

Their driver grasped her elbow to steady her and suggested she return to their own coach. She refused. “Go assist Mr. Darcy.” Jane and Bingley needed his help more than she did. She hoped.

“They are not inside.” Darcy quickly cast his gaze around the accident site. “Over there! They must have been thrown from the carriage.”

Jane and Bingley lay near a copse of tall evergreen trees, the lowest branches having obscured sight of them from the road. They were alive — unconscious and cold, but alive. Elizabeth blinked back tears of relief at the discovery. Bingley’s driver, crushed beneath the wreckage, had not been as fortunate.

“Jane? Jane?” She grasped her sister’s hand, willing her to awaken.

Jane stirred. Without opening her eyes, she slowly lifted a palm to her crown. “My head…”

“Hush, dear Jane. It’s all right.” She choked down a sob. “You’re going to be all right.”

Darcy roused Bingley, who also complained of a headache. Otherwise, though battered and bruised, the couple appeared to have escaped serious injury. Elizabeth and Darcy assisted them into the coach while their driver attended Bingley’s driver and horses. The unfortunate servant he discreetly wrapped in a blanket and secured to the back of the coach. One of the animals suffered two fractured legs and had to be shot; the other three appeared frightened but unharmed once disentangled from their harnesses.

Jane shivered, prompting Darcy to remove his mantle and drape it over her shoulders. She huddled into it. “I feel as if I’ll never be warm again.”

“We will get you home as quickly as possible,” Darcy said. “Others can come back and see to the wreckage. Was there anything in the carriage we should retrieve before leaving?”

“Perhaps Jane’s reticule,” Bingley said.

Jane shook her head. “It holds nothing that seems of any value to me right now. Let us please just leave this place.”

“We shall.” Darcy looked out the window. “My driver has almost finished securing your team to our coach.”

“What of our driver?”

Darcy hesitated. Bingley had already been told the servant’s fate, but Jane had not. His silence proved answer enough.

“Poor man.” Jane’s face, already ashen, somehow lost still more color. Elizabeth knew her sister felt responsible for the death simply because it occurred on a journey undertaken for her pleasure. “What a dreadful way to die. I hope he did not suffer.”

“It appears he died quickly,” Darcy said.

“He was in our employ only a fortnight. His mother is a widow — he was supporting her. I shall have to write her with the awful news. Charles, we must send her something.”

“Of course.” Bingley dabbed at a scrape on his forehead.

Elizabeth approved of the gift; she would have done the same thing. But how had the horrible event occurred in the first place? “Can either of you tell us what happened?”

“I think we lost a wheel,” Bingley replied. “Since Jane and I were within the barouche, we couldn’t see exactly what occurred. The carriage must have hit a rock or something in the road because it suddenly shifted. The disturbance spooked the horses. They took off in a gallop — or as close to one as they could come with the carriage careening behind them. The next thing we knew, we were rolling over.”

“That’s when we hit the tree,” Jane finished. “And that’s the last I remember.”

Elizabeth again expressed gratitude that the couple had survived the ordeal relatively unscathed. Darcy echoed her sentiments, then left to speak with their driver.

“I noticed some wild-looking tracks maybe a hundred yards back, sir,” Elizabeth heard the servant say. “I didn’t see a wheel along the road, but I wasn’t looking for one, either.”

Her husband’s footsteps retreated and soon faded beneath the sounds of the driver finishing with the horses. Above, grey clouds thickened with the threat of more snow, and an icy gust of wind flapped the coach’s window curtain. Jane coughed and burrowed into the borrowed mantle. Bingley suppressed a shiver, leading Elizabeth to insist he take her lap blanket, which he’d refused previously. They needed to get Jane and Bingley warm and comfortably resting.

Whatever was Darcy doing out there?

Darcy followed the erratic wheel tracks to their source, wanting to see for himself the object that had caused Bingley’s carriage to lose a wheel. They proved difficult to discern, despite their aberrant appearance compared to the straighter lines striping the path. Hoofprints and grooves from his own coach, and others that had preceded Bingley’s, obscured the marks, which had not been deep in the cold earth. The light dusting of snow covering the surrounding ground had melted on the highway under the weight of traffic.

Rocks and other obstacles in the road were no unusual thing for this thoroughfare or any other. Dips and ruts pocked the lane; stones, pinecones, and twigs studded it. But an observant driver should have spotted and tried to avoid an object large enough to damage the carriage. The failure of Bingley’s driver to do so earned him a share of responsibility for the accident — a large enough share that he, Darcy, hoped it would mitigate the guilt his new sister-in-law clearly felt over the man’s death. So, though aware of the necessity of haste in returning to Netherfield, he’d stolen these few minutes to seek proof of the driver’s own carelessness before additional travel on the road obliterated the evidence altogether. The peace of mind it afforded his friends would advance their recovery as much as any surgeon’s visit.

He reached the point where the crooked grooves gave way to straight. No obvious instrument of destruction presented itself. A few larger stones littered the path, but none substantial enough to wrench a properly secured wheel from its axle.

He shook his head in disgust. Bingley’s coachman must have practiced sloppy maintenance in addition to inattentive driving. The couple’s practice of hiring help based on need rather than competence had nearly cost them their own lives.

The wheel he found several yards away, having flown from the force of its removal. He left the heavy part where it had landed and returned to his own coach with long, quick strides. He’d seen enough.

A light snow had started to fall by the time the party returned to Netherfield. A coach with an unfamiliar crest stood in front of the house, but Elizabeth barely spared it a glance in her haste to call assistance for Jane and Bingley. She entered the hall to find Mr. Parrish descending the staircase.

“Mrs. Darcy! I thought you were all gone to Longbourn?”

“There has been an accident — Mr. Bingley’s carriage overturned.”

He took the remaining steps two at a time. “I hope he and Jane weren’t injured?”

“Not seriously. At least, I don’t believe so. But they need help coming in the house. If you could find a footman—”

“Only lead the way, and I’ll aid them myself. We should send for a surgeon. Do you have one in the neighborhood?”

“An apothecary. Mr. Jones.”