Chapter 19
Elizabeth was reading with her father in the library when the message arrived.
She thanked the butler almost absently, supposing the note must be from some acquaintance in Meryton, perhaps inviting her to tea.
Then she recognised the hand and the seal, and her heart almost stopped.
She held the letter for several moments, unable to open it.
What news could he possibly have for her—what could he wish to tell her or show her?
Perhaps only that he was content with his new wife.
Her father raised his eyes from his book when he noticed her unusual stillness. She seemed overcome by emotion, and yet she delayed, the letter unopened in her hands.
At last, she broke the seal—and the colour left her face.
Dear Miss Bennet,
I arrived at Netherfield a few minutes ago.
Please meet me regarding an urgent and essential matter.
Please come alone.
Yours respectfully,
Fitzwilliam Darcy
She understood nothing. What urgent matter could still exist between them?
For one dreadful moment, she feared that something had happened to Bingley or to Jane.
Then she recalled Jane’s remark—that Darcy had left for Pemberley scarcely two hours after his wedding.
He could not have come from London, but from his estate.
“Is there a problem, Lizzy?” her father asked, with evident concern.
She was not one to display her distress, and yet it was plain enough to a loving parent.
For once, however, she did not turn to him for advice, choosing instead to bear it in silence, while he wondered whether there was anything he might say to ease her pain.
Elizabeth hesitated, then said, “Papa, do you trust me?”
Mr Bennet understood her at once. She did not ask for confidence in her character, but for trust in her judgement.
“Yes,” he replied, without hesitation. “I trust you. I believe that, from now on, you will examine your heart as carefully as your mind before you decide.”
Elizabeth looked at him, wondering how much he had guessed of what had passed in recent weeks. He could not know the particulars, but he might suspect that she still suffered from that pain of her own making.
“I promise that I shall tell you and Mama everything. But now—please take me to Netherfield.”
“What do you wish me to do?” her father asked.
“The message is from Mr Darcy. He is at Netherfield, and he has asked me to come alone. I will not risk my honour with the same man to whom I have already lost my heart.”
Mr Bennet said nothing; but at last his suspicions were confirmed. Elizabeth was in love with a man who was now married. He waited patiently for her to frame her request; still, he was prepared to do anything for her—even to set propriety aside.
“I need you to wait for me in the library.”
He inclined his head. It was not the worst way to pass the time.
They travelled in silence during the short drive. There was nothing to be said. Elizabeth struggled to remain composed. She expected to find Darcy and his wife together—and yet, from one moment to the next, she refused to picture such a meeting.
Darcy had asked her to come alone. But was he alone?
∞∞∞
The maid, at Mr Bennet’s request led them towards the library, but Elizabeth paused behind their back, then turned instead and entered the parlour.
He was there, standing before the fire. They found themselves face to face—alone for the first time since that evening at the Bingleys’.
He was thinner than she remembered, but there was a calm in his expression that almost provoked her when set against the turmoil of her own feelings.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Bennet,” he said.
She glanced about the room, searching for some sign that his wife might also be at Netherfield, ready to appear at any moment.
“I am alone,” he said, reading her unspoken thought. “Anne has left me.”
“I do not understand,” she murmured, her face burning, her heart beating wildly. “How can that be?”
“Later,” he said, almost pleading. “There are other matters we must settle first.”
Afterwards, neither could say how they came into each other’s arms—only that the embrace was sudden and irresistible, as though it had been waiting for them, engulfing their bodies like an unstoppable tide.
For a time, there was nothing but that closeness.
It hurts…my God, it hurts, her thoughts whispered, so tightly did he hold her.
It was not pain alone, but longing, desire, and all that had been suppressed between them.
He held her with a force he could scarcely govern, as though the past weeks had at last broken through restraint.
Even so, it was not enough; no nearness seemed sufficient to calm his wishes, desire, yearning.
It was the passion and lust he had buried deep in his soul to prevent the ache when he thought of their past. He caressed her with a frenzy he could not stem.
Gradually, he felt her hands move—at first uncertain, then more assured—against his shoulders and his neck. She struggled to remove her gloves, hindered by the closeness he would not relinquish. They fell unnoticed to the floor as her bare hands came to rest against his skin.
Then he lost all composure. He drew her closer still, and the soft sound she gave brought him suddenly to himself. He lifted a hand to her face, and at last their eyes met fully. His fingers traced her features, lingering with care, before brushing lightly over her lips.
She had dreamed about their kiss for many sleepless nights.
Instead of kissing her, though, Darcy took a step back, looking at her from head to toe.
Then with slow gestures, he removed her pelisse, and again his eyes blurred at the sight of her long neck and her soft, white skin unveiled to his avid eyes.
He kissed her neck and mumbled words in her ear she could not understand though she still felt their meaning.
He was madly in love. Slowly, looking into her eyes until the last second, he moved his lips to hers, and the long-desired kiss was as nothing she had ever expected.
He let her feel and become accustomed to the wild sensation of closeness that their mouths together created.
Slowly, he tasted each of her lips, making her tremble, and then he devoured her in an intimacy she never dared imagine.
Her first instinct was to escape, frightened by her own feelings, but he gently caressed her face and said, “Let me kiss you, my love.” And she closed her eyes and let herself fall entirely under his power.
At length, they sat on a sofa, tightly embraced. Elizabeth’s lips burned from his kisses; they ached, but she smiled when he touched them with his fingers.
“I am sorry,” he said softly. “I have quite lost my senses.”
He looked at her again. Under ordinary circumstances, such intimacy would have been impossible so soon—but nothing between them had ever followed the ordinary course.
“I need to know what has happened,” she said at last.
“Tell me first that you love me,” he replied, his expression intent.
“You—first.”
“You know that I love you. You have known it since Hunsford—while I only understood yours at Bingley’s dinner.”
“I didn’t tell you then that I loved you.” Elizabeth jokingly tried to save her reputation in the face of his teasing smile.
“You did not need to. It was plain enough.”
She struck his chest lightly, but he caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. A faint shiver passed through her. His lips followed the line of her arm, lingering with care on her arms, shoulders, and neck, making her cry each time his burning lips found her soft skin.
“I love you,” she said at last. Then, breathless, “Stop—stop.”
She was crying, but her voice was only an encouragement to continue.
“I never imagined…” she said, leaning back, her eyes closed.
“This?” he asked gently.
“What I feel…with you.”
“What? This?” He touched her lips and then delicately caressed her bosom over the thin fabric, making her cry and shout again.
“Stop.” He stopped, looking at her as she opened her eyes and whispered, “Do not listen to me—do not stop.”
And he did not. A new world seemed to open between them, shaped by touch and feeling alone.
He was astonished by the depth of it, by the force of his own response.
All that had come before felt insubstantial beside this.
More than anything, he was struck by her answering warmth, and by the desire not only to feel, but to give.
“Tell me, please, what has happened,” she said at last, as he rose to stir the fire. “But be quick—Papa...is in the library.”
He nodded, he had seen them arriving and admired her decision not to be alone at a meeting she knew nothing about.
When he returned, he drew her into his arms once more, though now they sat quietly, watching the fire. The room had grown dark. At one moment, his valet knocked at the door to light the candles, but Darcy dismissed him. Elizabeth wondered how the time had passed so swiftly.
“I shall speak to Mr Bennet...or take you home and explain everything before your parents,” he said.
“No,” she said before she remembered how much she suffered because of her habit of speaking before reflecting. Her parents had to know the whole story, and this time they would do things as he decided. “I am happy but also worried about our love.”
He took her face gently in his hands. The firelight cast shifting shadows across them, but their eyes held fast to one another.
“Do not be afraid, Elizabeth. Now that I know you love me, my only wish is to be happy with you. There will be no opposition to our marriage.”
“You are married, Fitzwilliam Darcy, for God’s sake, you are!”
“Yes, and it would not be easy to... undo what I did,” he said, hesitating to say divorce. Fearing the effect it could have on her. “Only…we must wait. And your parents must know that what I feel for you will not change.”
He smiled at her blush, and she rested her head against him as he continued, more composed.
“Anne had a plan—a very careful one. If I learned anything from my brief marriage, it is this: one must first have a plan, and only then act.”
It was, in truth, what Elizabeth herself had once resolved, the great change that she made in her life.
“I shall tell everything to your parents, and we will ask their advice.”
“How long would a divorce take?” she asked softly, proving to him she was not scared of the possibility of him getting out of a marriage.
“Perhaps one year…perhaps two.”
He felt her sigh.
It was difficult to imagine that what had passed between them could be contained within such a span of waiting.
“Has she truly gone?” Elizabeth asked, her voice low against him.
“Yes. She meant to leave from the moment I proposed.”
Elizabeth tried to recall the quiet figure at Rosings, but could not. Instead, she remembered the lady she admired in Jane’s house. That Anne was capable of such a plan.
Then she laughed—that warm, lively sound he loved.
“Mr Darcy, I must say your love lead to the most extraordinary consequences, and you are not very skilled in proposing, no matter what you do.”
“You shall answer for that, Elizabeth Bennet,” he said, bending towards her again.
“Stop—please—” she said, half laughing, half overwhelmed.
“Then I must also show you how to endure my kisses and caresses and stop asking me to stop,” he returned.
“I shall learn…everything,” she said, with a hesitation that carried more promise than threat.
“How are we to live through these years?” she asked suddenly. “People will talk.” She imagined the gossip that would enmesh their lives as a hideous spider’s web.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
He held her closer.
“Then we shall think only of ourselves. The world may say what it pleases.”
“We must join, Papa.”
He nodded, for the first time worried since he saw her.
Elizabeth gently smoothed the furrow from his brow, seeking to calm him with that tender gesture. “I know it will not be easy.”
“With your father?” he asked, scarcely recalling the man he had met a year before, and whom he had never truly known.
“No, with the world.”
“Then we shall take each day as it comes. This time, I have a plan. We shall speak with your parents—they will understand, and advise us well.”
“You need not fear, Mama,” Elizabeth said, a fleeting recollection of his former opinions crossing her mind, though it held little weight now. “She would never act against us.”
“I must ask your pardon for what I said at Hunsford. There are no perfect families—and mine is no exception.”
“But we must tell Mama only what is necessary...if necessary you can have a more consistent conversation with my father.”
He understood her perfectly; they needed to be sincere with the family. Yet some things would remain between them alone.
“Will you ever forgive me…for Hunsford?” she asked, just before leaving the room.
“Perhaps not,” he replied. “You must begin and end each day by asking my pardon.”
In the darkness, she did not blush—for it was exactly what she meant to do.
To live with him.
∞∞∞
Mr Bennet did not blink at their visible elation. Silently, he shook hands with Mr Darcy, and they quitted the house together.
“Things are not as I would wish them to be,” said Darcy in the carriage, and the sadness in his voice tempered much of Mr Bennet’s doubt and concern regarding the man who professed to love his beloved Elizabeth.
“They never are, Mr Darcy. It is what life does best—to astonish us, and sometimes even to alarm us.” He spoke with a calm, reassuring composure that drew a look of gratitude from Darcy.
“You are quite right, sir.”
“And when Lizzy is involved…well, it becomes even more difficult.”
They both smiled as they looked at her, and she blushed, overcome by a happiness she would not have believed possible even two hours before.
“But wonderful,” Darcy murmured, before helping her out of the carriage.