Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
DARCY
Having served his beautiful bride wine and paper-thin slices of glazed neat’s tongue and some exquisite Wensleydale cheese, Darcy watched her take her last sip and then carefully place her empty plate and goblet on the bedside table.
She sucked on one of her fingers—whether to enjoy the remnant of savoury glazing or merely to clean up a bit, he did not know.
He slid closer to her and asked, “May I?”
She clearly did not know what he was asking permission to do, as her expressive eyebrows showed, but she said, “My answer will always be yes.”
“That, my dear, is a very dangerous promise to make. I assure you that I am not counting on always truly meaning always, but for now I will take advantage of your momentary compliance and proceed….” And what Darcy proceeded to do was to lick every one of her fingers—and then other places, as well.
She was, as ever, delightfully responsive, and after another wonderful interlude, she said, “I did not realise that husbands and wives could couple as often as we have!”
“I am certain this frequency is a newlywed thing. If we acted thus every day and night for the rest of our lives….” Darcy could not help breaking out a wide grin, and he went on, “Well, I was going to say that we would never get anything else done. But as I lie here with you in my arms, I am feeling positively ecstatic about such a fate.”
She laughed her low-and-private laugh, and she said, “I feel that one of the limits will be that we will surely need to sleep at some point.”
“Perhaps you are right. I do not actually know; I have never been married before. It is possible that our sleeping days are over.”
That tease seemed to have done it. His beautiful Elizabeth dissolved into laughter, and then her laughter transformed into the sort of soundless laughing that cannot catch its breath, and it seemed impossible for her to stop.
However, Darcy was a caring husband, and he took the time to kiss her into halting her laughter and—thank goodness—to get her breathing started, once again…before he worked just as hard to render her breathless once more.
The next time the couple took a pause in the more physical aspect of being newly and blissfully wedded, Darcy opened one of the drawers of the bedside table and drew out a pouch full of soft red rose petals. He strewed them on the bed as he recited Robert Burns:
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Elizabeth’s eyes became teary, but her smile proved that they were tears of happiness.
“I have always loved roses,” she said, “but no more than daffodils or tulips, daisies or lavender, bluebells or fly orchids. But you have lifted them up, today, and I will never see or smell a rose again without thinking of you.”
“That is only fair, my loveliest Lizzy, because I cannot see any sort of flower without thinking of you.”
“The effort to gather so many rose petals today, and to have my little rose bouquet made, and to recite this poem—you have done far more for me than I even considered doing for you. I feel…quite guilty, I suppose is what I am feeling.”
“Believe me, you have exceeded any expectation I could have only dreamt of having, and you have done far, far more for me, I am certain, than my paltry attempts to romance my bride.”
She shook her head and looked so fierce, she almost looked angry. “No! See, you are doing it again. I try to thank you and give you a compliment, and you turn it right back at me, but a thousandfold.”
“I suppose that you must punish me, then?”
Her fierce expression immediately transformed into a teasing piratical air, “Aye, I suppose I must. What do’ya choose? Flogging or the plank?”
Darcy laughed, and he could see that she heard the darker thoughts behind his laughter, for she lost her confident attitude, turned tentative, and blushed. “Oh, my love,” he murmured, “those both sound amazingly enticing; should you like me to show you why?”
“Wait—really? Enticing?”
“Did I not tell you that everything you do and say is enticing? Come to me, I promise we will only try some things. If one or both of us doesn’t like it—if anything feels uncomfortable—or, even, if either one of us feels we might like it later, but not now—we have only to say so, and we will stop.”
Nodding, Elizabeth said, “I am not afraid of you.”
“I should very much hope not!”
They remained in one spot while they set off on yet another adventure.