Chapter Fourteen
We were married and the wedding was a bit of a blur. None of my family was there except Colonel Fitzwilliam, and then right afterward, he was called back to his duties with the army, and so we would not see him for some time.
Mrs. Bennet sang with her low, velvety voice after the wedding breakfast, sang a song about love and loss that kept everyone spellbound, and I saw Mr. Bennet, her husband, across the room, gazing at her with such a look upon his face, a look of something twisted and pained and yet shot through with a kind of longing that looked like hope.
I still did not know what had happened between her parents.
Lady Susannah spoke to us both, saying that she hoped we would hurry back from London, and we agreed to do that.
Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth’s brother, shook my hand and got misty eyed when he saw us off.
We took our carriage to my house in London, where everything was waiting for us.
In the carriage, she snuggled into me, and I wrapped an arm around her small and sweet body, holding her against me, and she felt like sheer bliss.
“Do we wait now?” she said. “Wait for kissing? We are wed, after all.”
“We are wed,” I agreed and put my lips on hers.
And our night together, it was lovely.
We were both shy at first. I confessed to her that I had not done it, and she was ever so pleased about that, not the least bit disappointed with me for having not had any experience. She said she knew her body and she would teach it to me, and that I need not have learned anyone else’s.
And I was glad, then, only to know her, only to have shared this with her.
We bumbled about a bit, but I daresay we got the hang of it, in the end. It was not exactly complicated.
I thought it was likely not proper to spend the entire night in her bed, and that furthermore, it was probably less comfortable for her, having me there, taking up so much of her space.
I was large and likely smelled of sweat and she would want me gone, I thought, but when I made to leave, she pressed in against me, her bare skin all along my own and said she wished I would stay and hold her all night.
And I could not help myself, I did.
I woke her with kisses in the morning, and she smiled her sunbeam smile up at me and my heart felt sore in the most lovely of ways.
I thought I could quite grow used to being married. I had absolutely nothing to complain about it.
“I should go now,” I said to her. “Your maid will come in and that will be scandalous.”
“Oh, a maid of my own,” she said. “Not having to share with Mama. You are too good to me.”
“No, no, you must have your own maid. That is not extravagance. I shall take my leave of you, though.”
She squirmed against me, and I was stunned at the sheer goodness of this moment, of the reality of her, the sweet perfection of her body against me and the way she kissed me and accepted me and wished me to wrap myself around her for the whole of the night.
“You must stay a little longer,” she sighed. “I do not wish to let you go.”
“Well, if you do not wish it, it must be as you say, then, my love.” I kissed her again.
“I think I should like it if we were scandalous, anyway,” she said.
I drew back, raising my eyebrows.
“Just in this,” she said. “If you were with me often. If we could sleep together often and lay abed in the mornings together. James is always complaining about how he cannot do this. I wish to enjoy it since I have the freedom to.”
I wished she wouldn’t talk about her brother in this moment, especially not her brother’s, erm, activities, but I did not chide her.
Truly, I could not have said a single negative thing to her in that moment.
“All right, we shall be scandalous, then,” I said.
“At least today, of all days, I think it must be allowed.”
“Mmm.” She ran her small, delicate fingertips over my bare chest and I could not have imagined a sensation like that nor how much it would seem to rend my heart to feel her touch, feel the way she loved and accepted me, the way it felt to have a creature such as her find me pleasing.
“You said we shall be in London for a few weeks. What shall we be doing?”
“Dinners, mostly,” I said. “We are invited to dine with my aunt and uncle, the Earl and Countess of Matlock, and we shall dine with my sister Miss Darcy a number of times. We have several more engagements and at least one last ball to attend, likely the last ball in London before everyone is gone for the summer. I wish to show you off.”
“Show me off?” This delighted her. “I shall do my best to be worthy of that.”
“Oh, you are,” I breathed. “I am in awe of you, Mrs. Darcy.”
“And you’re ever so much more swoonworthy when I am pressed here against you and your shoulders are exceedingly intriguing bare, and I am enamored of that little trail of hair that goes straight over your belly button, all the way to your—”
I kissed her, partly because she was making me feel that floating feeling and partly because I felt she was being a bit too, erm, exuberant, and I was not certain that was the proper way a wife should be about it.
On the other hand, perhaps I didn’t care.
Perhaps I wanted her to use her fingers to follow that trail of hair to wherever it ended up.
Perhaps I wanted simply to give in to the joy of her, give no care to any sense of propriety.
She giggled into my mouth. “Oh, I think you are eager for me, are you not?”
I reached down and dislodged her hand, firmly but gently. “Mrs. Darcy,” I panted. “It is daylight. Your maid could walk in. We must not…”
“No?” she said, blinking at me. “Apologies, then.” Then she gave me her sunbeam smile. “You are ever so prim, are you not, husband?”
Prim.
I threw aside the covers.
“Where are you going?” she called.
“To lock the door,” I growled.
I was not prim.
My very winsome wife pointed out, when we arrived (rather late) at the breakfast table, that if she was to be shown off, she would likely need more dresses than the ones she had brought with her, and I smiled at her across the table.
“Would dresses please you?”
Her cheeks reddened in pleasure. “I do not need a number of dresses, of course, and I do not wish to be a bother or an expense—”
“That is not what I asked. I asked if my very beautiful wife would be pleased with dresses.”
She let out a laugh that was like the sunrise itself. “Yes.”
“Then dresses you shall have,” I said, and we set about making this happen.
I took her to the modiste, who took her measurements and let her ooh and ahh over fabrics, and whenever she said that something might be too much expense or too extravagant, I spoke up to contradict her and to say that my wife should have whatever it was that she wanted.
When we were on the way back, in the carriage, she kissed me, gasping against my lips that I was too good to her, and I had to stop her hands from where they wandered.
“Not in a carriage,” I told her, but I was gasping, too.
Why had I said that I had married her? Because she was fearless? Because I wished to be fearless too?