Chapter 9 In Love and War #6
Elizabeth threw her hands in the air, almost losing her book to the shrubbery. “Then I must insist you take issue with her. There is nothing more for me to say on the matter!”
She pirouetted away from him and stormed onto the lawn. Lightning flashed overhead, and rain pricked her face, plastering her hair to her cheeks.
“You cannot seriously mean to refuse me?” he called, striding after her.
“Yes, I can!”
“Miss Bennet! Miss Bennet! Elizabeth!”
She found herself suddenly spun around as he seized her arm, sending her book tumbling to the wet ground.
His face was close to hers, and he looked to be pleading with her, but she could not hear his words.
She was too overcome with a memory she had until that moment been blissfully unaware she possessed—that of Mr Wickham similarly restraining her, his fist raised to strike.
Pain shot through her temple in remembrance of his blow, and she cowered, covered her face with her free arm and screamed.
Then Darcy was there. He appeared from nowhere, propelling Mr Greyson away with monstrous force and pinning Elizabeth to his side. She buried her face in his coat and felt his guttural command reverberating through her more ferociously than the overhead thunder. “Unhand my wife!”
Mr Greyson made a noise, but Darcy cut him off, his voice cold and hard. “Leave now. Never come back. Do not test my resolve not to kill you.”
Elizabeth felt him shift and peered around him to see Colonel Fitzwilliam had arrived and was forcefully leading her ashen assailant away. She saw nothing more, for she was then enveloped in Darcy’s embrace so completely that not even the rain could penetrate his hold.
“My God, Elizabeth! Are you hurt?”
She felt more than a little foolish for screaming. “No. Only a little shaken. And very damp.”
Reverently, he turned her towards the house, keeping his arm wrapped tightly around her. When he paused to retrieve her book, wiping it clean on his pristine trousers before handing it back to her, without comment but with a tender kiss to her temple, she thought her heart might burst.
Explaining the matter to her father and changing into dry clothes took Elizabeth more or less the same time as it did for the storm to pass.
Her return downstairs coincided with the departure of most of Longbourn’s callers.
Only Darcy, Bingley and Colonel Fitzwilliam stayed, all eager to join Elizabeth and her sisters on a walk after having been trapped within doors all afternoon.
Elizabeth and Darcy soon outstripped the others, though they walked in silence, her every attempt at conversation falling flat.
He was not uncivil. Indeed, he was overly solicitous, frequently enquiring whether her head ached and needlessly helping her over every twig and pebble in their path, yet his distraction was obvious.
“Truly, Fitzwilliam, you must not worry. I was not hurt in the slightest.”
He nodded once but said not a word. She frowned in consternation. “And you must think no more on Mr Greyson. I see you are distressed, but you ought to know I should have refused him even were I not promised to you.”
“I assure you, I am not thinking of Mr Greyson.”
She puffed out her cheeks. Darcy saw it, and in an impatient tone, added, “It is your wellbeing that concerns me, not my own.” He clamped his mouth closed and stared directly ahead, his jaw clenched and his countenance severe.
Elizabeth smirked. If one was going to be an awful object, one might as well be an awfully handsome one.
She ceased walking, put her hands on her hips and attempted in vain to conceal the grin on her lips.
“If you do not tell me what the matter is, I shall be forced to conclude ’tis I who has vexed you. ”
He turned to face her, wincing as though pained. “It is you, woman!” The look he gave her belied his claim, however. “You would push me?” he enquired softly. “Very well. Though it would be more accurate to say torture than vex.”
Her heart began to pound as he took up her hands and tenderly removed her gloves.
“All day I have watched these hands toying with your hair, pouring tea, playing the pianoforte.” One after the other, he lifted them to his lips and kissed them.
“All day I have watched those eyes sparkle and laugh at the world.” His gaze fell to her mouth.
“All day, I have watched these lips talk, smile, and hum.” He slid a hand around the back of her neck.
“To see another man’s hands upon you was insufferable.
” He leant closer, ’til she could feel the warmth of his breath on her lips.
“I would make you mine. The wait is torture.”
His kiss was barely gentle, his struggle for restraint unmistakable.
Elizabeth’s heart was thundering too loudly to be discouraged by so trifling a thing as temperance, however.
They were to be married within the week and given the day’s objectionable events, she was sure a little less restraint would be entirely forgivable.
She lifted onto her toes to press herself against him and held his face with both hands, encouraging him to kiss her more deeply.
With an inarticulate groan, he thrust both arms around her and pulled her closer than ever before.
His hands ran a path up and down her back, settling finally upon her hips.
His mouth left hers and rained kisses along her jaw, down to her collarbone and farther, to the swell of her breasts at her neckline, making her gasp.
Driven by a passion altogether unknown to her, she drew her hands down over his chest and without overmuch consideration, unbuttoned his waistcoat.
He seemed not to notice until she slid her hands around his broad back and gripped his shirt in her fists, tugging him roughly against her.
He brought his mouth back to hers with a kiss that felt as hard and unyielding as had his previous restraint; yet, just as she thought to abandon herself to his passion, he withdrew it.
With a groan that clearly evinced his reluctance, he ceased his ardent kiss.
Cradling her face, he peppered her lips with light, chaste touches until, finally, he dropped his hands to her shoulders and pushed her gently away.
“Marry me,” he said gruffly.
She laughed breathlessly. “I shall have to now. That was a rather damning embrace.”
He smiled faintly but shook his head. “Now. Marry me now. I cannot survive until Tuesday.”
She smiled broadly and began buttoning his waistcoat. “If it is any consolation you have at least succeeded in making my anticipation as great as your own.”
“Good God, would you desist your torture, woman!”
Before she could reply, however, he kissed her again—one last, passionate kiss that devastated her equanimity and proved he was not without the talent for torture himself.
“The ladies are in the drawing room, sir,” Peabody informed Bingley when he, Darcy and Fitzwilliam arrived home later that evening.
“Then be a fellow and bring us some supper to the library, would you?” he replied. It was late, his day had been atrocious, and he was in no humour to make small talk with his sisters.
His failure to save Elizabeth weighed heavily upon him.
He had desperately wanted to, but the rug in the hall had hindered his flight from the house, and by the time he recovered his footing, Fitzwilliam had escorted Greyson off the premises, and Darcy had led Elizabeth back inside.
He had been too late to help her. Again.
“Is there any brandy in the library?” Fitzwilliam enquired.
“You drank me dry the last time you were he—” He gave a muffled grunt as he bumped headlong into Elizabeth, who was coming out of the library. She stumbled backwards, landing heavily on the floor.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, partly in apology, partly in chagrin as he belatedly recognised her as the maid with Elizabeth’s eyes.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Mr Bingley, sir. I was lightin’ the candles.”
“No, no,” he replied, leaning down to assist her to her feet. “That is neither here nor there. Are you hurt?”
“Strike me!” Fitzwilliam exclaimed. “I thought for a moment you had smuggled Elizabeth back here with you, Darcy.”
Amelia took the opportunity to give a quick curtsy and dart away into the shadows.
“She looks nothing like Elizabeth,” Darcy remarked airily, walking past Bingley into the library.
“Not a mirror image, I grant you,” Fitzwilliam replied, following him in. “But an uncommon likeness, you must admit. Wherever did she come from, Bingley?”
He shrugged. “I have nothing to do with hiring the housemaids.”
That settled the matter, but Bingley was too uneasy to attend to the conversation thereafter.
Such was his discomfiture that, after only a few minutes, he invented a spurious pretext and made his excuses.
His surprise could not have been greater when he opened his study door to discover Amelia now lighting the candles in there.
She jumped. “Oh no! I’m sorry, sir! Mrs Arbuthnot told me to light candles in all the rooms.”
The flickering light of the taper she held cast a shadow beneath her cheeks, making her appear more like Elizabeth than ever. Bingley stepped farther into the room. “There is no need to apologise. Pray, tell me I did not hurt you when I knocked you over.”
She lost some of her servility and smiled as she assured him he had not.
Bingley nodded his relief and stepped closer, and when his approach did not seem to perturb her, closer still. “I am glad to hear it.”
“It were very kind o’ you to come to my rescue.”
He triumphed to have succeeded, at last, in rescuing somebody. “It was nothing,” he assured her. “Anybody would have done the same.”
“No,” she replied softly. “There’s many a master’d be less gen’rous to ’ave caught a maid at ’er work. You’re very kind.” She smiled coquettishly. “Quite my ’ero, in fact.”
A short while later, Bingley stared at the canopy above his bed, reflecting upon his brief and ill-advised kiss.
Shame had rapidly obtruded upon his ardour, prompting an abrupt end to their clinch.
That shame persisted. Alone in his bedchamber with only his thoughts for company, however, it was so very tempting to imagine it had been Elizabeth he had taken in his arms and Elizabeth’s willing lips to which he had pressed his own.