Seventeen
Darcy adjusted the tray for the fourth time.
The cold supper was precisely arranged: sliced ham, bread, cheese, a dish of early strawberries, a bottle of wine with two glasses.
He had requested it from Rawson with studied nonchalance, as though masters of great estates routinely asked their valets to send up supper for two at eleven in the evening.
Rawson had raised one eyebrow, a fraction of an inch at most, but eloquent, and departed without comment.
The candles were lit. All of them. Every sconce, every candelabra, every taper he could locate in the chamber.
The room blazed with light, bright as midday, leaving no shadow where intentions might be misread.
He would not have her believe he meant to seduce her in darkness.
He would not give her cause to doubt him.
He crossed to the window, then back to the fireplace.
He straightened a book on the side table—Shakespeare, selected for its neutrality—then moved it an inch to the left.
He had set out a chessboard between the two chairs by the hearth, the pieces arranged in their starting positions, an invitation to intellectual engagement rather than anything more dangerous.
His coat hung over the back of a chair. He had removed it an hour ago, when the evening’s interminable dinner had finally concluded and he had escaped to his chambers with unseemly haste.
His waistcoat remained buttoned, his cravat immaculate.
He was a gentleman. He looked like a gentleman.
He would conduct himself as a gentleman, no matter what his blood was doing at the mere thought of her knock on his door.
He would not touch her.
He had promised, and he would keep the promise this time.
He would sit across from her and enjoy her conversation, her wit, the way her eyes sparked when she argued a point.
He would earn her trust. He would prove that he could be in her presence without losing his head, without reaching for her, without becoming the animal she had reduced him to in the library, in this very chamber, in every fevered dream that had tormented him since.
He checked his pocket watch. A quarter to twelve. The guests had departed at half past ten. She would come soon, if she meant to come at all.
If she had changed her mind—
He stopped that thought before it could complete itself.
He could not survive the alternative, not after the corridor, after the words that had torn themselves from his throat without permission, after the naked desperation he had shown her.
He had begged. Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, had stood in a dim corridor and begged his daughter’s governess to spend an evening in his company.
She had said yes.
He adjusted the tray again, then moved the strawberries closer to the edge.
The knock came—two soft raps—and his heart slammed against his ribs with such force that he felt it in his teeth.
He crossed the room and opened the door.
Elizabeth stood in the corridor, still dressed in the gown she had worn to the drawing room.
The cream silk caught the candlelight from within his chamber, warming her skin to gold.
Her hair was pinned simply, a few dark curls escaping at her temples, and her expression was composed, but her eyes were bright, alert, taking his measure as surely as he was taking hers.
“Miss Bennet.”
“Mr Darcy.”
He stepped aside, allowing her to enter.
She swept the room with her eyes in one efficient circuit.
She surveyed the candles, the fire, the books, the chessboard, the carefully arranged tray.
He watched her catalogue each element, watched the slight curve of her mouth as she understood what he had done.
The staging. The deliberate abundance of light. The chess set as an alibi.
She turned to him, and the amusement in her eyes nearly undid him.
“You have prepared.”
“I did not wish you to think—” He stopped, then started again. “I wanted you to feel safe.”
“I do.” She said it simply, without elaboration, and the tightness in his chest eased a fraction.
She crossed to the tray, picked up a strawberry, bit into it, and closed her eyes briefly as the sweetness hit her tongue. Darcy watched her throat move as she swallowed and forgot, momentarily, how to breathe.
“I was not exaggerating about being hungry,” she said. “Your guests kept very late hours.”
“They are not my guests, they are Georgiana’s. I merely provided the house and the wine.”
“And the brooding silence at the head of the table?”
“That was complimentary.”
She laughed—a real laugh, startled out of her—and the sound cracked something open in his chest. He had heard her laugh before, but not like this. Not alone with him, not in his private chamber, not with all the barriers stripped away and nothing between them but truth.
She ate with gusto. He poured wine for both of them, and tried not to stare at the way her fingers wrapped around the glass, the way her lips touched the rim. She was simply eating bread and cheese, and he was cataloguing every movement as though she were performing some sacred ritual.
“The chessboard,” he said, when she had finished and set down her glass. “Would you like to play?”
“Yes.”
“Shall we, then?”
He gestured to the chairs. She sat in one; he took the other. The board lay between them, a safe barrier, a pretence of propriety. He moved his king’s pawn forward two squares. She mirrored the move.
For a time, they played in silence. The game unfolded in the careful, measured exchanges of two players who understood each other’s minds. She was good, better than he had expected, and he found himself leaning forward, elbows on his knees, brow furrowed as he studied the board.
He reached for his bishop. His fingers closed around the carved wood, and he lifted it, considering his options. He glanced up and caught her watching.
Not the board but his hands. Her gaze was fixed on his fingers where they cradled the piece, and her expression had gone soft, unfocused, her mind clearly elsewhere. She was not thinking about chess. She was not thinking about anything that belonged in a game between a gentleman and his governess.
Heat flooded through him. He allowed himself a smug smile and set the bishop down.
“Honestly, Miss Bennet. You are not paying attention.”
Her eyes snapped to his face, colour rising in her cheeks, but she held his gaze firmly.
“Honestly, Mr Darcy? If you ask me for honesty, then I shall ask the same of you. And this could go in ways we are both unprepared to admit.”
“Honesty,” he made a gesture, still holding the bishop. “Very well. Elizabeth.”
He used her Christian name deliberately, a line crossed with full awareness.
She did not correct him, nor did she look away.
“Very well, Mr Darcy.” Her voice was calm, but he could see the pulse beating at the base of her throat. “In all honesty, I do not think we are playing chess. I think we are dancing around the truth, and I am tired of the dance.”
“Then tell me your truth.”
She was quiet for a moment. She looked at the board, at the pieces frozen mid-game, at his hands resting on his knees. When she spoke, her voice was matter-of-fact, stripped of pretence.
“I am seven-and-twenty. I have no fortune, no prospects, and no designs on marriage. I am fairly certain I shall die a spinster, and I have made my peace with that.” She lifted her eyes to his.
“But I am still a woman. And you are a man of the world. You have admitted in the past that you admired me ardently.”
“I still do.” The words came immediately, without thought. “You know that.”
“Yes. I gathered.” A small smile touched her mouth. “The problem, Mr Darcy, is that I am still young. And you have opened doors I never imagined I would cross. You have shown me—” She stopped and drew a deep breath. “What am I to do with you?”
He held very still. The question was not rhetorical. She was asking him, genuinely asking, and the answer he wanted to give would burn everything he had built tonight.
“Elizabeth.” He leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between them by inches. “I admire you most ardently. You are never absent from my thoughts. But I am a gentleman, and I gave you my word. I will not do anything untoward. I am not Wickham, Elizabeth. I will not ruin you.”
She considered this. The silence stretched, and with every second that passed, Darcy’s certainty crumbled. She was going to leave. She was going to thank him for the supper and the conversation and retreat to her chamber, and he would spend the night burning.
She did not leave.
“Well,” she said quietly. “That leaves us with a predicament.”
“What do you mean?”
Her chin lifted and her eyes met his without wavering.
“I mean I desire you, Mr Darcy. Most ardently.”
His blood roared. The room contracted to the space around the chessboard, to the sound of her voice, to the impossible words she had just spoken. His body responded instantly, heat pooling low in his belly, his breeches growing uncomfortably tight.
“You cannot say that.” His voice came out rough, scraped raw. “Not here. Not in my chamber. Not when you know the fire between us.”
“I know.”
“Then what do you want, Elizabeth? Do you want to leave?”
“No.” She kept looking at him. “I want to explore.”
He could barely breathe. “Explore what?”
“You.” She said it simply, as though it were obvious.
“I have never seen a man, and I likely never will. But I have dreams of you, Mr Darcy. I wake in the night with the memory of your hands, your mouth, and I want—” She stopped and took a long breath.
“I want to see. I want to feel. I want to know.”
He was going to die. He was going to combust on this chair, reduced to ash by the calm, devastating honesty of Elizabeth Bennet requesting permission to explore his body.