A Test of Fire Chapter 3
Mr. Darcy rode his horse along the dirt road leading to Netherfield Park and let the gray go at a trot. His thoughts were consumed with Elizabeth, and he turned over every possible treatment in his mind.
Doctor Frederick Stevens, an old friend and healer, would send back word by morning and Mr. Darcy planned to take his carriage to London in the afternoon, after the church service for the fallen.
His thoughts turned to Elizabeth’s ghastly face and a wicked feeling of uselessness tugged at his heart. His greatest hope in fetching his physician was to keep Elizabeth alive.
After a groom took control of his horse, he sighed in perfect rhythm to his footsteps up the worn, stone steps of the leased mansion. To his regret, Caroline Bingley stood there ready to greet him.
“I’m so glad you are back, Mr. Darcy. We shall have a pleasant dinner tonight, all in your honor, sir,” she offered, batting her eyes at him to elicit a compliment.
“Whatever for?” he asked, immediately regretting encouraging her engagement.
“For your heroism, of course!” she stated, scoffing, but the man held his hands up to discourage her.
“I will take a tray in my room. I need to pack and leave for London tomorrow, but I will return the following day.” He used the banister and changed the direction of his feet, to return to the ground floor. “I ought to speak to your brother.”
He managed to walk a half dozen steps across the Italian marble tiles in the foyer, separated by onyx diamond spacers in each corner, before Caroline called after him. She hurried to his side to thwart his progress.
“But why must you leave? We should all quit this dreary country and not return! Since the fire, no one wishes to entertain and be sociable,” she said with a pout.
Mr. Darcy battled an intense rage tightening in his chest. “Entertain and be sociable?” he began, turning away from her to choose his words more carefully. “They’ve lost . . .”
“Darcy! You’re back! Fancy a game of billiards?” Mr. Bingley entered the main foyer from the east side of the house as Darcy had nearly reached the steps. The two friends differed greatly in how they distracted themselves from tragedy.
“No, I don’t fancy a game,” he spat, and then thought better of insulting his host. “I will, in just a quarter hour,” he explained, calculating the time it would take to instruct his man to pack his things.
“I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour.”
“I was delayed.”
“Delayed? Doing what?” Bingley asked, most curious about Mr. Darcy’s constant disappearance away from Netherfield Park.
Mr. Darcy glanced over at Miss Bingley, wishing he had waited until he was alone with his friend to share his plans. Still, he did not wish to say more than necessary, and so he changed the subject entirely.
“Charles, I must away tomorrow and fetch my physician. But if your hospitality still holds, I should like to return the following day. The day after that at the latest,” Darcy added as a last moment addendum.
He considered that Doctor Stevens might have affairs to put in order before a protracted stay in Hertfordshire. His mind wandered to accommodating the doctor, unclear if Longbourn would have room, or if the man should stay at Netherfield Park.
“Are you ill? I believed you were not injured in saving Miss Eliza,” Miss Bingley suddenly fretted over Mr. Darcy’s person, approaching him to see more clearly the invisible injury or malady he had kept hidden.
Darcy waved his hand in the air to encourage her to keep her distance. He had suffered a minor cough from the smoke, but experience with fires had taught him what to do. Before he ran in after Miss Elizabeth, he had wet his cravat and covered his mouth.
Never had he felt such a rush as when he found her just by the door, able to save her from certain death. The housekeeper at Longbourn, Hill he believed her name was, had prepared him tea with licorice root and mint, and the slight congestion in his chest cleared up by the next morning.
“No, I am not unwell, the doctor is for the Bennets. Miss Elizabeth awoke this morning, but she is still gravely injured.”
“Was Miss Bennet well?” Mr. Bingley asked, earning a glare from both his sister and his friend. He stammered and then asked about the others in the household. “And – and, Mrs. Bennet, and the other sisters?”
Darcy sighed, gripping the banister tightly in his frustrations. “Mrs. Bennet is struggling with the loss of her sister, one of the card players above stairs, but I don’t believe I made her acquaintance.”
Mr. Bingley shook his head, contradicting his friend. “Her husband is the man who handled the contract for the lease.”
Darcy suddenly recollected the connection. “Ah, the woman was very kind when we visited the first time.”
“And loud and told us all about her unwed nieces and the entail on the estate,” Caroline added, not caring how ill-bred it appeared to speak poorly of the dead.
Mr. Darcy had ferried himself back and forth from Longbourn numerous times a day since the fire, and Miss Bingley wished she had thought to feign an injury from it as well. Then, perhaps, his attention would be on her as she had planned at the beginning of the trip.
Mr. Darcy shrugged. “It is still a heavy loss for the family, and if I have any resource in my power to prevent additional loss, I shall dutifully extend it,” he said solemnly to the siblings. Bidding them adieu, he finally walked up the stairs in peace.
Caroline took a step as though to follow him, but Mr. Bingley grabbed her arm.
“I thought you were going to visit the Bennets today, like we agreed,” he whispered, hoarsely.
“I—I—I—”
“I cannot go by myself, and you ought to have visited with Louisa to share your condolences and concern. Then I can visit the next time with you,” Mr. Bingley urged.
Caroline stepped away from her brother, looking up the stairs for the man she truly wished to please, and then back to the annoying older brother she abided until either she married or turned five and twenty to control her dowry.
“Mr. Darcy seemed able to visit on his own,” she scolded, with an accusatory tone.
“He is different.”
“How? Don’t say it’s his money, Charles, it’s vulgar. We have more status than the sonless Bennets.” Caroline began to walk away from the stairs back to her more pleasing activity of strolling up and down in the ballroom on the first floor.
There, she imagined one day being mistress of Pemberley and presiding over many of the best families in England at her first ball.
“It’s different because he has no designs on any of the daughters. He told me he did not think any of them handsome, except for Jane. And I believe Jane to be the loveliest woman I have ever set my eyes upon . . .” Mr. Bingley explained, with a dreamy expression on his face.
“You think Mr. Darcy likes Jane?” Caroline asked, coming to an abrupt halt. When her brother remained silent, she turned around to look at him, expecting an answer.
Mr. Bingley nodded.
“I don’t believe he will rival me, mostly he is fulfilling his Christian duty. But I don’t want her to become attached to him. I need you to visit, Caro,” he said with a plea in his voice.
He schooled his expression to one of pure need, not daring to reveal the truth of why he was so desperate to call on Miss Bennet without raising expectations. At least, not until he spoke to her privately.
Caroline stood still as she considered her options carefully. On one hand, doing nothing would prevent her brother from making a terrible match to a penniless nobody.
Yet, it also allowed for Mr. Darcy to possibly fall into the woman’s clutches. Or the other sister, Eliza, who was apparently on death’s door.
While Caroline felt superior to Jane Bennet in every way that mattered, that risk was one she could not take. And once she married Mr. Darcy, it wouldn’t matter who her brother married.
She quickly calculated the eldest Bennet daughter was the least repulsive in looks, temperament, and status. She would do for a sister-in-law if she had to choose one.
“We should go tomorrow while Mr. Darcy is away fetching his physician,” she said, feeling powerful again. It wouldn’t matter if she was truly kind or not on the visit, just the mere act of doing so would show Mr. Darcy that she, too, took her duty as a member of higher social standing seriously.
In fact, she resolved then to always refer to the family as the poor, unfortunate Bennets from now on.
“Good, I shall go with you. You made an excellent point that Mr. Darcy has regularly visited. Perhaps we can take them a gift,” he mused.
Caroline Bingley snapped her hands to her hips and stared at her brother with disdain. “Don’t be ridiculous, what could we possibly give them? New pairs of dancing slippers?” she asked comically, still aggrieved that her newest pair was entirely ruined from the mud and muck after the fire.
Still, she had managed to escape without injury. Their sister Louisa had been jostled and startled and taken to her bed claiming her condition required she rest.
“Now you are being ridiculous, Sister,” Mr. Bingley stated, walking away from her to avoid revealing anything more about his dealings with Miss Bennet. “I don’t know their sizes.”
You have been reading A Test of Fire...
He called her “tolerable.” Then he became her savior.
Mr. Darcy’s cutting dismissal should have been the worst part of Elizabeth Bennet’s evening. Instead, it was the fire that nearly killed her—and his desperate rescue that changed everything. Now the proud gentleman who publicly snubbed her has become a constant, concerned presence at Longbourn, and Elizabeth doesn’t know what to do with a debt she can never repay.
Survivor’s guilt meets devoted protector.
As Elizabeth battles serious injuries and grieves her lost friend Charlotte, Darcy brings his personal physician from London and becomes her chess partner during long recovery days. But every shared glance makes her heart race—and she can’t tell if it’s love or gratitude.
When pushy cousin Mr. Collins proposes and Darcy’s intimidating aunt arrives to forbid any attachment, Elizabeth’s feelings are put to the ultimate test.
Sometimes you have to survive the fire to find your forever.
A Test of Fire is a feel-good path of healing and overcoming survivor’s guilt for Our Dear Couple. You don’t want to miss it!†
†This story was produced using author‑directed AI tools. This is a re-release, newly edited with bonus scenes and other enhancements. Elizabeth is a founder and owner of Future Fiction Press.
