Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Darcy had scarcely shut the door before them when he gently pulled Elizabeth into his arms. While her lips clung to his, she plucked at the button of his trousers and tugged them over his hips, but he stopped her hands.
Instead of a frantic, rushed union, he would take his time.
He carefully lifted off her shirt, and Elizabeth let him slowly take off the rest of her clothes and gently push her to sit on the edge of the bed.
Thank goodness he had brought them upstairs rather than begin on the sofa in front of the window in the lounge.
If a neighbour had walked by, they would have seen a naked woman with her face tipped back, trembling as she stroked her breasts, while a man knelt before her, moving his tongue against her in a zealous rhythm.
It was bad enough that anyone on the other side of the bedroom wall would hear her quiet moans grow into screams.
With her hair plastered against her face, Elizabeth pulled him up to kiss him. “I’ve missed you since our time traveller arrived.” She pushed down his trousers and wrapped her warm fingers around him, causing him to gasp. “Did you miss me too?”
“Did I not just show you?” He had needed her, beneath his tongue and crying out for him, just as much as she needed him.
He tugged at her bottom lip with his teeth, urging her mouth open.
She kissed him back, shifting him to the bed and trading places with him before kissing along his neck, her teeth and tongue rousing him further.
Her fingernails raked along his hips and thighs, teasing him.
He dipped his head back, closing his eyes, as she took him into her mouth.
He tangled his fingers in her hair, panting out her name and enjoying her little satisfied sounds, before gently pushing her away.
She looked up at him with a burning gaze. “What do you need?”
“You” came out in a rasping voice. He knelt on the bed and pointed, breathless and eager, and Elizabeth moved onto her hands and knees before he thrust into her so hard, she cried out.
Her whimpers and rocking hips told him not to stop.
She moaned into the pillow, pushing back against him, and Darcy thrust faster.
As pleasure coursed through him, he moaned her name the entire time, and her body bowed against his while they both shattered.
They collapsed together in a tangle, and he watched her rapturous and languid expression change into a more curious one.
Yes, there was still more to talk about: her awful family and why was his sister here and what did it mean to leave his entire life behind, but now he could just enjoy having his wife naked in his arms.
Elizabeth offered him a smile, then pushed back the hair that was curling at his temples and pulled him down to press a lingering kiss on his lips.
His relationship with his wife had never felt so fragile as it had these past few weeks, but now it would return to being the foundation, the heart, on which he built the rest of his life.
Darcy woke early, hearing the front door open and close.
Elizabeth had either gone for a run or had gone to the grocery.
He hoped it was the latter, since he was starving.
They had stayed in bed all last night, not yet talking about anything significant but at least confident again in their relationship.
They kept each other up late just as they had in the early days of being married and finally able to fully enjoy one another.
He stretched as he rose from the bed. He was used to vigorous sport with his wife, but maybe not so much in one evening and with so little rest in between. Forties was not the same as twenties, no matter what social media said.
While he showered and dressed, he thought about Elizabeth and her family.
He hated that she had doubted her own value because of her childhood rearing.
Out of respect for her love for them, he had kept his opinion on her family to himself.
How he wanted to rail against them whenever her overtures were ignored.
They had found their own family in England in the twenty-first century, but whereas he had, by necessity, made a complete separation, Elizabeth’s family was still ostensibly within her reach.
But they would never be the mother and sister Elizabeth deserved. And that made her loving but temporary friendship with Georgiana all the harder to watch. It was another relationship that would disappoint her.
He heard Elizabeth return and went downstairs to find the coffee maker running and her putting food away.
“Thank you for going to the shop, dearest,” he said, kissing her on his way to set out breakfast dishes.
He chuckled to himself. If he was back in 1826, how horrified would his servants be if he came into the kitchen and got a plate for himself?
They would be insulted that he did not trust them enough to do what he hired them to do.
“I don’t mind grocery shopping. I know it’s your least favourite modern chore.”
Elizabeth seemed a little shy of him as they moved to the table. As they sat together, she said quietly, “I owe you an apology too.”
Darcy set down his cup in surprise. “There is nothing for you to apologise for.”
“I was acting really insecure and too caught up in my own head.”
That entire sentence would be unintelligible in 1813, but he had lived here a long time.
And he knew his wife better than anyone.
He supposed she meant she had been overthinking so much that she lost confidence in herself, that she was less objectively aware of what was happening around her and acted on what she imagined was happening. “Say nothing more about it, dearest.”
“It wasn’t fair of me to doubt you.”
“You were doubting yourself, which saddens me more.”
“I never relied on anyone before you, you know. I never had a dad to depend on, and my mother always taught us that no one, no man especially, would ever do anything for us. And I learned to find the strength within myself to either do it alone or go without, rather than ask for anything.”
She searched his eyes as though looking for approval.
“I know that feeling,” he whispered. He had not been neglected or encouraged to be alone, but he was the eldest son, born to bear the full weight of sole responsibility for hundreds of people and his current and future family’s well-being.
“But you still don’t have to apologise.”
She smiled faintly and ducked her head.
“Elizabeth?” She looked up. “You alone were worth coming back for.”
Her smile grew more genuine, and he felt she fully believed him. When he cleared the plates, Elizabeth said gently, “Georgiana has managed Pemberley for a long time, and she still had doubts and came to you for reassurance.”
He could tell from her tone that she had been waiting all morning to say that to him. He sighed, knowing the conversation could no longer be put off.
“You want nothing to do with Georgiana,” she went on, “and she feels it. We all feel your tension, your dislike—”
“Not dislike,” he said quickly.
“Then what is it? You gave her Pemberley and all the responsibility that went with it. You went back in time to save her from Wickham. So why keep her at a distance if you trust her and love her?”
How to begin without setting back his wife’s mood and reinstating her fears that he missed what he left behind? He traced his fingers along the wooden table’s grains, struggling with what to say.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said suddenly. “Let’s go for a walk. Have you ever been back to Stanton Moor?”
He had been about to agree before she mentioned the moor. He had an aversion to Nine Ladies and its unnatural power. “Not since I walked out of the stone circle thirteen years ago. How many times have you been back?”
“Only twice to leave messages. To tell Georgiana we got married, and then to tell them when Sandra was born. I took to heart your belief that interfering could be dangerous, even though it ended up doing some good.”
They had suspected from her diaries that Georgiana was melancholy—or “depressed” as Elizabeth called it—after he left because she never knew if he had been successful.
Elizabeth had sent a pithy message through Nine Ladies to assure Georgiana that he had found Elizabeth and was happy.
That small gesture had been Elizabeth’s idea, and while he deplored involving himself in the past, there was no denying her diaries after that had a more cheerful tone.
Walking might make talking easier, and if Elizabeth wanted to go, then so be it. “Can you get your keys?” she asked as he rose.
“You want to drive? It is only four miles.” There were carparks around Stanton Moor, but they had made the walk from Bakewell years before.
Elizabeth rose too, stretching her hips as she did. “But I’m old now, Fitzwilliam,” she said with a playful whine. “I can hike the moor, or I can walk to the moor. I’m too old now to do both.”
He gave her a sceptical look but found his keys. Elizabeth was thirty-nine. In his century, she would be approaching having grandchildren, but here and now she was still an active and youthful woman.
“You are still young, you know,” he said as they went to the car.
“It’s the grey coverage hair dye,” she quipped. “The real reason is I’m sore and tired from last night, and I want to save my energy for when we come back. There are more rooms I haven’t had you in yet.”
Sometimes, Elizabeth’s charming modernness still took him by pleasant surprise. “Well. I cannot argue with that.”
The circular walk around the moor was only about a mile, or however many kilometres it was according to the conversion calculator on Darcy’s phone. He still struggled with thinking in metres and not feet, much to his daughter’s amusement and his friends’ consternation.
“Does being in untouched places like this make you forget when you are?” Elizabeth asked as they walked past the Cork Stone and went north.