Chapter 21 #2
“I was counting sails,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was raw from the great effort of not crying. “Six ships in six weeks. Four were within visible distance. Two were close enough to theoretically see the signal, yet none stopped. The numbers do not improve.”
“No.”
“I have always been a practical woman. My mother considers it a failing, while my father considers it a virtue. They are both correct. Practicality feels very much like a failing when the only logical conclusion is that no one is coming.”
He did not answer. The not-answering was correct.
“No one is coming, Fitzwilliam.”
“We do not know that.”
“We know the probability. The probability is that we will grow old and die on this island, and no one will find us until long after it matters. The probability is that my father will die believing I am dead. Jane will marry someone who is not Mr Bingley, because he will never receive your letter. My mother will wear black for a daughter who is alive, growing figs on a rock in the sea.”
Her voice cracked slightly. It was a small fissure in the composure she was maintaining with iron determination. She had decided she was not going to fall apart, and she intended to hold to that decision.
He put his hand over hers on the stone ledge. He was warm, present, and steadfastly silent.
She turned her hand under his, lacing their fingers together. She held on.
They sat until the sun was low and the shadows grew long. The horizon had given them nothing, and would continue to give them nothing. They went down the hill together, hand in hand. They made dinner and ate without speaking of the ship.
That night in the tower, her exhaustion was complete, yet she found she desperately needed him to touch her.
The shift was sudden, a decision made by instinct.
Her mind was exhausted from the day's punishing hope, but her body sought the only solace available: to be here, firmly anchored on this island, with this man, and nowhere else.
She kissed him hard and without prelude in the dark, tangling her hands in his hair — fierce, undecorated need. She had spent the day staring at an empty horizon, and she wanted, with a ferocity that surprised her, to be filled with something other than loss.
He responded instantly. His hands caught her waist and pulled her hips against his, matching her urgency with a desperation she had not expected.
He had been carrying the day's terrible weight as well.
They were setting the burden down together.
His mouth sought her neck as her hands dragged his shirt over his head, the fabric tossed into the dark and forgotten.
She pushed him onto his back. The dried grass beneath the sailcloth crackled under his weight. She straddled him, bunching her dress at her waist. The position was new, and the newness was precisely what she wanted.
“Elizabeth,” he breathed into the dark. His hands gripped her thighs, and his face below hers was drawn with a concern she did not want.
“Do not ask me if I am well,” she said fiercely. “I am angry, I am frightened, and I want you. This is the only one of those things I can do anything about. Let me do something about it.”
His hands tightened on her thighs. The tightening was an answer.
She freed him from his trousers, finding him quite ready for her. It was a fact she appreciated with grim practicality; she was in no mood for courtship. She stroked him, and his hips arched immediately against her hand. The sound he made was low, rough, and wholly hers.
She positioned herself over him, guiding him with her hand as she lowered her hips. She sank onto him slowly. The cautious pace was a physical necessity rather than a choice; the angle was new, and her body required a moment to accommodate what her mind fiercely demanded.
He filled her completely. She remained still for a moment, adjusting to the great fullness, her hands resting flat on his bare chest and her weight on her knees. The deep stillness held its own kind of sharp anticipation.
She began to move, slowly at first, finding a rolling rhythm that drew a rough, uncontrolled sound from her own throat. His hands moved from her thighs to her hips. He matched her rhythm, offering steady support while letting her set the pace.
She increased the pace, and his hands gripped her hips harder. She rode him with a fierce determination that was equal parts passion and anger. The two feelings fused into relentless movement as her body sought the angle that would finally blot out the terrible events of the day.
He sat up, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his chest against hers.
His mouth found her neck. The sudden shift in position drove him deeper, pulling a sharp gasp from her lungs without warning.
His mouth caught the sound as they kissed deeply.
They moved together with a fast, fracturing rhythm, and her complete loss of control was precisely what she sought.
“There,” she said against his mouth. “Yes. There.”
He held the angle, his hands locking her hips in place while he thrust upward. The relentless friction concentrated and built into a breathless, relentless tension. She surrendered to it wholly. She was finished with holding things in, and this shattering release was the only thing she required.
She came with her face pressed tightly against his neck, her fingers digging fiercely into his shoulders.
The rough sound she made was muffled against his skin.
The release shook through her in intense waves, her body clenching around him as she ground her hips against his.
The long, thorough waves left her trembling, breathing hard, and still wanting.
“More,” she said.
He laid her down gently, keeping his hand behind her head to protect it from the stone floor.
The tenderness was a sharp counterpoint to their previous urgency.
He moved over her and settled between her thighs.
He drove into her with long, deep strokes that immediately began building a second, sharper tension on top of the first.
He pressed his forehead to hers. His eyes remained open, watching her in the dark, catching the faint red of the dying fire.
He reached between them, his thumb finding her sensitive peak.
The precise pressure, combined with his deep rhythm, overwhelmed her.
She let go. The second release was sharper than the first—a bright, concentrated burst of pleasure that arched her back off the pallet.
Her legs tightened instinctively around his waist as she cried out into the dark.
He followed her immediately. His rhythm broke as he drove himself deep into her, spilling his seed with his mouth pressed hard against her shoulder.
His hands fisted in the sailcloth beneath her.
His release was silent, save for the ragged, uncontrolled sound of his breathing—the most unguarded sound she had ever heard from him.
Afterward, they lay quietly in the dark. His body was heavy and warm beside hers. His hand rested on her stomach, rising and falling slowly with her breath.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“For using you to stop thinking.”
His hand traced a slow circle on her stomach. “You did not use me. You chose me. There is a great difference.”
“The difference is accurate. You were in pain, and you wanted closeness. You chose me for that closeness, and I am certainly not injured by being chosen.”
She rolled towards him, pressing her face against his chest. Her hand rested on his side, her fingers lightly tracing the smooth, raised line of his scar in the dark.
“I am frightened,” she said quietly against his chest.
“I know.”
“I am not frightened of the island, or of dying. I am frightened of being forgotten. I cannot bear the thought of my family grieving me for years, believing I am dead, while I am alive and quite unable to tell them.”
His arms tightened securely around her, and she pressed closer. The fire was out. The stars were visible through the gap in the roof. They were old, distant, and indifferent. The indifference was a strange comfort; it meant that their isolation was not a targeted cruelty, but merely a circumstance.
“We will find a way,” he said.
“You do not know that.”
“No, but I believe it. That belief is not built on blind hope; it is built on you. You will find a way, because finding ways to survive is exactly what you do. You have not stopped finding solutions since we washed ashore. The island is better for your efforts, and I am better for them. Your work is not finished.”
She was quiet. His words settled into her like rain settling into the cistern—slowly absorbed, and stored for later when her own supply of courage ran short.
“That is the nicest thing you have ever said to me,” she said.
“I have said nicer things.”
“You have certainly said more romantic things. Nicer is different. Nicer is someone who sees what you are actually good at, and acknowledges it. You said that I am good at surviving, and I am. Hearing that matters to me, perhaps even more than hearing that I am beautiful or beloved—though I appreciate those as well.”
He laughed warmly against her hair. She could make him laugh in the dark after the worst day they had spent on the island.
She fell asleep against him while he held her.
The stars turned overhead. The island held them, as it had held them for six weeks, and would hold them for however many weeks remained.
It was neither rescue nor prison, but simply the particular, daily fact of their lives.
The fact was bearable only because they bore it together.
The horizon stayed completely empty, and the fire stayed dead. But morning would eventually come. Elizabeth would rise to count her figs, and catch her fish, and survive. She would continue to survive because that was who she was. And who she was, on this island, was wholly enough.