Chapter Eleven
WHEN MR. DARCY woke that evening, he went to the Bennet household straightaway and called, though it was late.
It was December now, so it grew dark early in the day, but it was still far too late for callers.
He asked to speak to Elizabeth alone, and they stood together in her sitting room and he had to do everything in his power to keep himself from tasting her.
It would not do, of course, for her family to come upon them that way, him latched to her skin, drinking down her blood as he clutched her. He must not do that. Not here, not now. But he wanted her, wanted her quite badly.
In the bond, she was all anxiety, but it was a good anxiety.
They barely spoke. Instead, they mostly looked at each other.
They waited enough time for a conversation to have been had, of course, so that her family would think they were having a conversation.
When they opened the door, they announced to the gathered family that Mr. Darcy had heard of Elizabeth’s engagement and had realized he could not bear it if Elizabeth married someone else, so he had come to beg her to break her engagement with Mr. Collins and to marry him.
Everyone was shocked.
Mrs. Bennet was not sure if this was very good news or very bad news.
Mr. Collins, who was still a guest in the house, was hearing this news now, and Darcy realized that wasn’t very good, but he did not look surprised, and he wondered if Elizabeth had already spoken to him.
For the man’s sake, he hoped so. He did not wish Mr. Collins ill.
He only could not have the man imposed upon his lovely Elizabeth.
So, when he spoke to both Collins and Mr. Bennet—well, when he charmed them both—he made sure to include within the charm a directive for Mr. Collins not to feel overly devastated by the end of the engagement, indeed to think that he had wished it but had been unable to end the arrangement himself, for a gentleman does not break his word once he has given it.
He charmed them to draw up the papers to break the entailment. It was something that could be done if the current owner and the heir both signed. Collins, of course, had no inducement to do it, so Mr. Darcy settled money on him.
In the end, Collins got out of it all rather well, if Mr. Darcy said so himself. Mr. Collins had liquid assets, and he felt rather smug at not having had to marry Elizabeth.
The Bennet family was better off as well, since the house could now be kept in the Bennet family.
As for marrying Elizabeth, he found himself rather impatient.
Also, he did not wish to tarry at Netherfield for too long, for it was going to get back to Bingley sooner or later, especially since word of his engagement had already spread all over Meryton and the surrounding areas, and everyone would soon be abuzz with it.
Bingley would wonder where he was staying and then discover that Darcy had stayed in his estate without permission.
Darcy was not titled, though he had spent generations living as the third in line for the Matlock earldom.
He could charm the archbishop to get what he wanted, anyway, so he didn’t need to have a title, but it looked better if there was some connection to a title, so Darcy was glad to be connected to the Matlocks.
He got a special license.
This necessitated his going back to London, and while there, he broke the news to Georgiana that he was getting married. She was quite surprised, saying that she hadn’t been aware that those like him did such things.
It was the only time she had ever acknowledged aloud that she knew there was something preternatural about him.
He did not elaborate on it, and he accepted her congratulations and promised that he would introduce his wife once they were well settled in their marriage.
Then he went back to Meryton. He chanced riding in one of his special carriages which had no windows at all, so that he could travel in daylight.
He did not use these often for so much had the possibility of going wrong in one.
What if he were stopped and someone opened the door and he burned to death?
But this time, he did, so that he could collect Elizabeth once it was night and take her off to London for the wedding.
Her family did not like the idea that the wedding was to be conducted without them, privately, but Mr. Darcy charmed them until they stopped objecting.
He and his bride were married in the sitting room in his town house at nearly midnight, and then they were left alone in the house.
She smelled quite dizzyingly of cinnamon and honey, but somehow, he managed to wait until the bishop who’d performed the ceremony was gone before he sank his teeth into his new wife’s neck.
THE FIRST NIGHT all he did was drink from her.
He took her to his bedchamber, a room in the middle of the house with no windows and padlocks on the doors and he had been drinking from her as he carried her through the place, and she was a little dizzy and drunk on it.
It had happened very fast, this marriage.
She had been in a state of despair before his return and now she had been jerked into a state of euphoria, having everything she wanted. But as her husband carried her through the house to lay her on the silken sheets of his bed, she wondered if she had made a very stupid mistake.
Is this when he kills me? she wondered idly as he sank his teeth into her skin.
She did not think he would kill her, not truly. If this had all been a ruse to convince her to let him kill her, it had been badly thought out, she thought. He had protested too often when a man who wanted to destroy her would have simply done it.
He bit her places besides her neck that night.
He bit her wrist, her ankle, just inside her knee.
And then he let out a sigh, telling her he’d taken too much and pulling her into his arms and stroking her hair, telling her to sleep.
When she woke, it was very dark, and he whispered to her that it was day, but that he could not leave the room until the night fell. “Light a candle, my love,” he told her.
She did so, and he showed her there was some food he’d had the servants leave for her since she could not leave the room, also something to drink. She perched there, in the scant circle of light from the candle, eating.
He was lounging on his bed wearing only his trousers, and she wondered when he’d removed everything up top. She had never seen his bare chest, of course, and it was… well, she could not stop looking at it, but she felt embarrassed, so she kept trying.
“It’s gratifying,” he said.
“Hmm?” she said.
“The way the bond pulls and starts when you look at me,” he said. “I cannot complain if my form is pleasing to you.”
She felt heat rushing to her face. “You are a very handsome man, Mr. Darcy.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I have been calling you Elizabeth for some time now. When we are alone, you must feel free to call me something less formal, my love.”
“Fitzwilliam?” she said. “Though I suppose that isn’t truly your name.”
“No, but it is my name now.”
“What was your true name?”
“I do not have a true name,” he said. “Names are like costumes, things to be used and discarded when they have served their purpose. I am who I am no matter what I am called. You may call me Fitzwilliam.”
“What was your name when you were…” She swallowed. “When you were human?”
He hesitated.
“You can tell me.”
“No, it’s only I thought I had forgotten for a moment. Tadgh.” He pronounced it so that the last noise was guttural, a rumble in his chest.
“How old are you?” she said.
“I not entirely sure,” he said. “Old. I suppose, when I was human, I was a Celt, though we didn’t call ourselves that.”
She was stunned.
“Let us not talk of this,” he said gently. “We are already so different, and I dislike it, spending too much time dwelling on the chasm that separates us. Let us look at the things that are similar between us so that we may meet each other as equals.”
“Equals,” she breathed, taking a drink of the weak ale that had been left for her to drink.
She knew that she and Mr. Darcy were not equals, not even close, and that—even if he had not been a vampire—they would not have been.
But she found herself pleased by the idea that her husband wished to elevate her to his level, for that boded well.
She had not chosen badly, in the end, with her choice of husband, not if he wished them to be equals.
Of course, she had not really chosen at all, had she?
Nothing about this man had felt like a choice, not since the beginning. It had felt like an inexorable inevitability, a glittering temptation, and now, here she was, tied to him for the rest of her life.
But not the rest of his, said a voice in her head and she shied from it, not wishing to think of that harsh truth.
“Aye,” he said. “Equals.”
“What can make us feel that way?” she said, shaking her head. “I am beneath you in every way that we can reckon such things. You are older and stronger and you have so much more wealth and status than I do. You are a man, and I am a woman. You—”
“Yes, but you have bewitched me,” he said with a smile. “I am slavishly devoted to you, as you well know, and this is something you may use to tip the balance between us. I would do anything for you, Elizabeth.”
“No, you would not! You do exactly as you like, no matter how I beg or how it breaks me or—”
“You mean, because I left,” he said with sigh. “Are we to quarrel about this for our entire marriage? I came back. Does that not mean anything?”
“We are not equals,” she said. “And you would not do anything for me.”
“Well, I don’t wish to harm you, my love.
I don’t know if you can see this, but I did what I did out of concern for you.
In a way, it was for you. But it wasn’t about giving you what you wished.
Anyway, it was all foolish, because I could not continue on the wise and noble path I had set for myself, in the end. ”