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“ Elizabeth.”

Darcy heard the croaking sound of his own voice as his eyes fluttered open. Clutching the sheets, he braced for movement of a ship, but none came, and he let out a shaky breath as he tried to twist his head and look around.

“ Doctor, he’s awake.”

Doctor? He was in hospital? Darcy tried to sit up, but gave up as his head swam. He closed his eyes again as someone reached around him and helped him sit up.

Wincing, he opened his eyes.

A woman in a white cap and a long-sleeved grey gown smiled in her struggle to get him upright. With all the strength he could muster, the two of them managed it, and before he could ask, she set a glass of water between his lips.

“ Take it easy… take it easy… slowly…”

He finally took a breath. “Thank you, sister. I was quite thirsty.” She smiled kindly at him and retreated before a balding man in a brown gaberdine suit, stethoscope about his neck, took her place, scrutinizing him.

“ You are a miracle, you are.” The doctor probed under Darcy’s jaw and then proceeded to open the white gown Darcy wore and apply the cold, tiny horn of the stethoscope to his chest.

Darcy shivered as his thoughts began to clear. “ Titanic . Did it sink?” He couldn’t remember. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Did she survive?”

“ Shush. Take a deep breath.” After listening attentively, the doctor turned to the nurse. “No sign of pneumonia… heart sounds good…” Then directing his attention to Darcy, he said, “You are a very lucky man. You seem to have come out of this unscathed.”

“ But the Titanic —”

“ At the bottom of the ocean taking more than fifteen hundred souls with her.”

“ Oh.”

The doctor turned to the nurse again. “Call the Red Cross and see if they can send someone over. I’m sure Mr… Mr…” He shot an inquisitive glance towards Darcy.

“ Darcy. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley.”

“ Yes, Mr Darcy… see to it that you get some food into him. Start with broth—”

“ But the ship… I need to find someone… I—”

The doctor moved on to the patient in the next bed, ignoring him. Fluffing his pillow, the nurse nodded to him. “I’ll get you something to eat and then I’ll answer all your questions. Just rest now.”

“ No, wait. I have to know…” But she bustled off.

A mass of confused thoughts hit Darcy all at once. What of Georgiana, his Aunt Catherine, even Bingley? Did they all think he was dead? How did he get here? Was Elizabeth rescued? If she was, why wasn’t she here?

The questions swirled about as sleep overtook him once again.

***

Entering the subway, Elizabeth knew that she wasn’t seeing sense, but she needed to get to the Red Cross building to inquire if any more survivors had been rescued after the Carpathia left.

Logically, her efforts were futile. Word reached New York that the body of John Jacob Astor was found along with other corpses, floating in the freezing, iceberg-infested waters where the Titanic lay in its watery grave.

At least the Astors knew for certain that their loved one was lost. Darcy was lost. She knew and yet she didn’t know.

Unsure of where to go, she walked over to an attendant. “Could you tell me how to get to 49 th Street and 10 th Avenue, please?”

He looked her up and down and shook his head. “Hell’s Kitchen…. That’s no place for a lady.”

The response made her even more determined, and she took a map instead.

She’d have to walk a few city blocks from the subway to reach it, and she’d have to walk unaccompanied.

Arriving at her destination and stepping out into the sunlight, she understood now why the attendant tried to discourage her.

Newspapers floated by in the breeze as piles of rotting vegetables and horse excrement littered the pathways.

Squalling infants sat in the laps of filthy children on tenement stairways.

Men who passed her mumbled obscenities. She wanted to run but knew that would be a mistake.

Instead, she walked at a steady pace, head held high, not speaking to anyone.

It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when she reached the Red Cross building. For the second day in a row, she scanned the list of survivors of the Titanic that was now displayed in the window. It hadn’t changed. Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy was still numbered amongst the lost.

Biting her bottom lip, she resolved not to give way to tears as so many of the women did who stood by her shoulder to shoulder, gazing up and down the lists.

No, she would not give up hope. Tomorrow, she would return and look again.

She would look again and again, up until the day her ship left for home.

***

Darcy finally set foot on the New York pavement.

Five days…. Five days from the night of his plunge into the frigid, inky blackness of the Atlantic.

A volunteer from Bellevue Hospital finally found the time to tell Darcy his remarkable tale.

Someone in one of the Titanic ’s lifeboats pulled him from the water just as the screaming aft hull of the Titanic plummeted to its grave.

He nearly drowned. They’d had a difficult time taking hold of him, covered in grease as he was.

These brave and heroic folk aboard the lifeboat kept him from freezing to death while they waited for the rescue ship, the Carpathia, to arrive.

He remembered none of it. He’d left the Carpathia unconscious on a stretcher.

He awoke in Bellevue Hospital three days after the sinking.

His rescuers must have brought him here.

No one knew who he was. He arrived in America in the state in which he arrived in the world as an infant.

As soon as he was strong enough to move about, he obtained a list of survivors of the tragedy.

Elizabeth, Lydia, and even that coward Wickham were all listed as survivors, but Darcy knew no more than that.

His only hope in finding Elizabeth was to visit the Red Cross headquarters in a place called Hell’s Kitchen.

He didn’t like the sound of the place, but there was nothing to be done.

The doctor gave him five dollars of his own, as Darcy refused to wait another minute at the hospital.

No doubt, his hotel reservation had been cancelled and he hoped against hope that the money he had arranged for at the Security Bank of New York was waiting for him there.

Of course, would anyone believe that he was Fitzwilliam Darcy?

According to all the records of the tragedy, Fitzwilliam Darcy was dead… and then there was his current attire.

Someone else’s underclothes, a shirt without a collar, a brown woollen suitcoat, gaberdine trousers held up with braces, but still puddling around scuffed shoes that were a trifle too small for him…

he was dressed in clothes donated to the indigent at the hospital.

They had no proper hat to give him, so he wore a flat cap that threatened repeatedly to fall down over his eyes.

Thusly attired, he walked up First Avenue in search of a Western Union office where he spent most of the five American dollars he was given by the Red Cross.

WESTERN UNION

CABLEGRAM

Harpenden, Hertfordshire

I survived sinking Titanic stop Telephone Bingley Aunt Catherine and Huntley. Elizabeth Bennet?

Fitzwilliam Darcy

The telegram cost more than he expected, and he thought ruefully that this was the first time in his life he was seriously worried about money.

He fingered the meagre bills and coins in his pocket.

He was quite weak from not having eaten in the three days he was unconscious aboard the Carpathia and refused to stay in the hospital past a day to regain his strength. He had to find Elizabeth.

Armed with a map of the New York subway, the address of his bank, the Red Cross, and the White Star Line, he set out first to retrieve his funds at the bank. Once he had money, he could reach the Red Cross office and get further information on the Titanic survivors.

The bespectacled clerk at the window squinted with beady eyes and a look of general distaste at Darcy. “Do you have any proof you are who you say you are?”

“ It is at the bottom of the ocean, my good man.” Darcy attempted to remain calm. It was fortunate for the clerk that there were bars across the teller window or Darcy would have lunged through it and taken the little martinet by the collar and shaken him until his teeth rattled.

The two men glared at each other like two fighting cocks, when the clerk sighed. “A moment please.”

He walked to a desk at the back of the bank where sat an impeccably dressed clean-shaven gentleman with white hair, wearing a rather expensive-looking grey suit and an air of authority.

The clerk kept gesturing towards Darcy and after some moments returned to the window with a clipboard and a paper.

“ Did you say your name is Darcy?”

“ Yes, I told you… Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

The clerk surveyed the paper in his hand, running his finger down the page.

Stopping at one spot, he twisted the paper towards Darcy.

“Fitzwilliam Darcy is listed as one of the lost. Shame on you for trying to withdraw his funds. Have you no respect for the dead?” Raising one eyebrow, he directed his gaze to the cap in Darcy’s hand and surveyed his ragtag appearance once again.

“Get out of here before I call the police.”

Darcy wouldn’t be put off so easily. “Let me speak to the manager. I can explain everything.”

“ Do you have anything to prove that you are this Mr Darcy?”

Darcy sighed. “No, I lost everything when I swam away from the ship.”

The clerk’s eyes crinkled, and he looked from one side to the other at his fellow tellers. “Did you hear that, boys? This jolly good fellow went swimming with the icebergs.” He shook his head in disbelief, and casting his eye over Darcy’s head, he gestured to someone on the other side of the bank.

Within moments, two burly bank guards threw Darcy out into the street.