Chapter Ten #3
“I can’t bear it if you marry him,” said Mr. Darcy. “It would not be good for you to be with me, but I can’t think it would be good for you to be with him. He would smother you, and you would be weighted down by his sheer banality. You are much too good for him, Elizabeth.”
She felt these words burrow into her in a way that made her feel some awful pain that was too intense for her to bear. She began to walk, very fast, as if she might outrun it. “It doesn’t matter, however. I have agreed, and that is that.”
“You can change your mind,” he said, coming after her. “A woman can break an engagement.”
She walked faster. “If I end the engagement now, it will cause all sorts of talk. What excuse can I give? And this is to say nothing about what will happen to my family—”
“I can take care of your family,” said Mr. Darcy. “Hell and damnation, Elizabeth, I shall charm Collins and your father and have them break the entail, and put an end to all of this!”
“You will do that, will you? After all, you have shown that you are so very willing to care for me, to think of my feelings—”
“I am sorry for that, but I thought it was best, you se—”
“And you cannot interfere with my family, for that will cause all sorts of talk also. What reason would you have to help me?”
“Well, I suppose I’m going to have to marry you,” he said gruffly.
She came to an abrupt stop. She stood stock still, barely breathing.
It was quiet for some time.
Then, Mr. Darcy began to speak. “It’s not ideal, of course. Marriages between vampires and humans are almost always disastrous at some point. I do not change, you know, and you will change ever so much, and you will outgrow me—”
“I’ll grow old and you won’t,” she said, gasping.
“Well, yes,” he said. “I can’t give you children. But none of this is that important, I suppose. We’ll marry now, and then, in several years, when you are weary of me and the darkness, you can take a lover, and have a few of his children if you like, and I shall fade out of your life—”
“Why is it that you are always insisting on leaving me, sir?” she snapped.
“Because I am not good for you,” he said sternly.
“So, you ask me to marry you against your own good sense, practically against your own will?”
“I cannot let you marry him, and you are correct, for you to break the engagement would have negative influences on you socially, on your entire family, and it could negatively affect your sister’s chances at marriage as well.
But if I return, and you admit you have been in love with me all along, and that you are mad for me, then our marriage will eclipse your broken engagement.
That is what everyone will speak of. Then I shall have the entail broken, so there is no reason for anyone in your family to marry that man, and then I shall…
” He swallowed. He looked her over. “W-well, we’ll be married, and you’ll be mine, and I… ” He licked his lips.
She was shaking.
It was quiet.
She could feel his gaze like a physical touch. Some part of her ached to be in his arms again. She let out a sob. “No.”
“No?” he said.
She began to walk again, but slowly now. “No, I shall not marry you.”
“What?” he said, falling into step with her.
“Have you never been refused anything in your life, Mr. Darcy? No.”
“That’s foolish,” he said. “You don’t mean it.”
She did not mean it. She wished, rather excruciatingly, to be Mr. Darcy’s wife. “I shall not marry a man who plans, in time, to abandon me.”
“I do not,” he said. “Truly, I would only stand aside if you wish me to.”
“But what makes you think I could wish for any man but you? What man could compare to you?”
“You will want children.”
“I shan’t.”
“You are too young to know this, Elizabeth,” he said firmly. “I cannot steal everything from you. I refuse to take your future.”
“Isn’t everyone frightfully young compared to you?” she muttered.
“Well… yes,” he admitted.
“And you are simply here to save me from Mr. Collins, simply here out of the goodness of your heart, and marrying me is some charitable notion you do for my own good, just as your strategic abandonments are all for my own good?” she said caustically.
He seized her hand. “No. It’s selfish, of course.”
She squeezed his fingers. “You wish to have me for yourself, then?”
“Oh, Elizabeth, yes.” He bent down and kissed her temple. He breathed in her ear, “The devil take me, for it is wrong of me, but I want all your firsts.”
She moaned at this, pressing into him.
His arms came around her and she put her hands on his chest and peered up at his handsome face. “Give yourself to me, Elizabeth,” he said. “Be my wife.”
She sighed. “I am already yours, of course. You may do with me as you like.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “Yes, yes, I think I know this. And this is why this is all a very ill-advised notion, all of it.”
“Yes, everything is doomed and we shall reap all manner of consequences,” she said archly. “Are you going to bite me now?”
“May I?” he gasped.
She tilted her head to one side, giving him access.
He latched onto her and she was struck through with silvery threads of sweet pleasure, like moonbeams taking charge of her entire body. She swooned against her demon lover in the darkness of the garden, and she surrendered to him utterly.