Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
fitzwilliam
She fit perfectly in my arms, just like I had known she would. She tasted like the sunrise, like the promise of a perfect day dawning as I held her, as I ran my thumb over her cheekbone, as I kissed her.
I had often thought I would wait to do this until after I had secured an engagement, that I would wait until I was sure she was mine. I had thought to spare us both the heartache of too much closeness if we weren’t sure of each other, but I didn’t even live in that world anymore, truth be told.
She wanted my kiss.
I wanted hers.
It was good.
It was sublime.
After, she pressed her forehead into my clavicle, and I traced my fingers over the back of her head.
“Do you wish to go and ask my father for my hand?” she breathed and the feel of her breath on my neck was intimate and erotic.
I felt dizzy. “Didn’t we just get done with saying you didn’t wish to marry me?”
“That is not what I said. I said I wanted everything that went along with it, but to retain freedom. I should love to know what it is like for a man like you to march into this house and declare to everyone that you wish me to be your wife.”
I smiled. “Then I shall give that to you.”
She pulled away and looked up at me. “This is what I mean. It’s not fair.”
I touched her lower lip with my thumb. It was redder than usual, redder from my kisses. Lord, she was beautiful. “Well, one day, you’ll agree to do it for me, to have a ceremony. And if you don’t like it, we don’t have to be married in the morning when it all resets. It can all be washed away.”
“What about…?” She touched my chest.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I won’t ask for it,” she said. “It would not be right to do so. You wish to wait, and it is your virtue as well as mine. I would not ask it of you, Will, not for my amusement. It’s too important.”
“Your amusement?” I whispered, chuckling softly.
“My curiosity,” she breathed.
I could have told her that I had been thinking about taking her to bed for far too long. I could have indicated that I was excited right then, right at that moment, that the feeling of her body in my arms had awakened me in a way that made it seem ridiculous to delay or to deny.
I didn’t say any of those things.
I kissed her again, however. I kissed her thoroughly, for a very long time.
elizabeth
He obliged me for days in a row.
He went away and cleaned up and came to the door of Longbourn as prim and proper as you please. He declared loudly that he would have no one but me, that I was the only woman he would ever have as his wife.
He kissed my mother’s hand, thanking her for bringing me into the world.
He told my entire family he loved me to distraction.
He did it again and again, seemingly never tiring of it, seemingly enjoying my reaction enough that it was reward enough for him.
But eventually, I knew it had been enough and that I would release him from it. He was staying at Netherfield at night, even though the Bingleys were not there. He said that he just arrived and ordered the servants to see to him and they listened. He said he could be quite compelling when he needed to be, and I knew it was true.
So, that night, which I knew would be the last night, I walked all the way to Netherfield under the cover of darkness. I did not knock on the front door. I simply tried it and found it open, which did not surprise me. No need to lock one’s doors in the country, after all.
It was not hard to determine where his room was, for there was only one window with a light burning in it when I had approached the house in the darkness. So, I went to that part of the house.
However, to my surprise, as I approached, I heard voices.
Who was he talking to?
The room with the burning lamps was not his bedchamber, as I had surmised. It was a small sitting room. And he was in there with Mr. Wickham, who I recognized as I pushed the half-ajar door the rest of the way open.
Both of the men in the room, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham, turned to look at me.
“Elizabeth,” said Mr. Darcy, “what are you doing here?”
“What is he doing here?” I said.
“He comes every evening,” said Mr. Darcy with a sigh.
Mr. Wickham shook his head at me. “I am surprised at you, Miss Bennet, I must say. Word that he proposed to you this afternoon spread quickly, and I was stunned to hear that you had accepted. When you and I spoke of him—”
“What can I say, Mr. Wickham?” I said. “Mr. Darcy quite improves as one gets to know him.”
“Improves in essentials?” said Mr. Wickham.
“In essentials, he remains the same,” I said. “But he is essentially a person devoted to the people he is responsible to.”
Mr. Darcy smiled as I said that.
Mr. Wickham scoffed. “You accept his money, not just his hand, Miss Bennet, let’s not play games. And speaking of money…” He raised his eyebrows at Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Darcy groaned. “You know, George, I am quite bored with this conversation, I must say.” He reached into his pocket and came out with a coin purse. He counted out coins into Wickham’s palm. “There. Now go.”
Wickham squinted at the money, shrugged at Mr. Darcy and then shrugged at me. “Have a pleasant evening, Willie my boy.” He loped out of the sitting room.
I watched him go. When he had disappeared, I said, “Have you been killing him?”
“Would you believe, no, I haven’t had the stomach for it? It seems foolish, really, in the end. If I could punish him in some way that would change his ways, that would have some point. If I could end him, so that he could hurt no one else, that might have some purpose, also. But it will all reset in the morning, so there is no reason to do anything to him, anything at all.”
“I thought you wished to do it for your own satisfaction,” I said.
“I take no pleasure in violence,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “That is good. You are a good man, Will Darcy.”
“I am whatever pleases Elizabeth.”
I beamed at him.
“I have noticed your family calls you Lizzy,” he said. “Is that a name only meant for them?”
“You may call me that if you like,” I said.
“If it pleases you,” he said.
I crossed the room to him. “I think… we should go. What would please me is to travel, to take advantage of all we could see and do on this Thursday. If it will be Thursday forevermore, then there are ever so many Thursdays we could experience. No reason to stay here and ask for my hand in marriage over and over.”
“All right,” he said. “Then on the morrow, you wish to set off?”
“I thought I might as well stay here. What is it like when you wake up here in the morning?”
“Oh, the servants are quite confused,” he said. “With you here, it will be even more confusing. But I shall speak to someone about making up a room for you.”
“I thought…” I shifted on my feet. “I thought you’d be abed already. I was going to climb in with you, actually.”
He coughed.
“I know,” I said. “But I thought, if we’re traveling together, we must get past this.”
“What happened to the idea of not asking for that for your amusement?”
“Well, we don’t have to do that ,” I said. “We can simply sleep near one another, however. This way, if we must share a bed during our travels, we have already done it and it will not be difficult.”
He coughed again.
I furrowed my brow. “All right, you don’t agree.”
“I’m not certain repeated amounts of time sleeping in the same bed is going to make anything easier, Lizzy,” he said in a scratchy voice.
I liked that scratchy voice. “Oh, I suppose I had not thought of it like that. Will it be more difficult for us to resist if we’re close?”
He scratched the back of his head. “Just so, yes.”
“Well,” I said, thinking that over, “that seems frightfully inconvenient. But I suppose we shall simply have to find ways to travel that accommodate such things, then. I shall go back to Longbourn, wake early, come here to you—”
“Oh, don’t be daft, I’m not letting you walk back in the dark three miles ,” he said. He eyed me, seemingly wavering. “Oh, hang everything. What does it matter? Come on, then.”
“Come on?” I said.
He took the lamp and left the sitting room.
I followed him.
We went down the hallway to his bedchamber, and he ushered me inside and tugged the door closed.
“The servants are all asleep by this time of the evening, usually,” he said. “I have not been disturbed by anyone since Wickham leaves any of these nights.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“Did you think this through?” He pinned me with his gaze.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, if you came in here, and I was abed, you were going to… what? Unbutton your dress, remove your stays, climb in against me wearing only your shift?”
I shrugged, not denying this.
He sighed. He turned away from me, undoing his cravat.
I reached back and started on my own buttons.
He turned around, stripping off his jacket. “You’ll need assistance?”
“Maybe with the laces of my stays,” I said. “I can undo buttons, Will.”
He nodded, concentrating on his waistcoat.
I watched him. I shouldn’t have, perhaps, but I was curious. I had never seen a man without clothing. It was rare that I saw men in their shirtsleeves, truth be told.
He didn’t take everything off. He was still in his trousers when he looked up to find me gazing at him, but he had removed everything up top except an undershirt, which was rather sheer, through which I could see the places that his dark hair decorated his chest. I was rather mesmerized by that.
He swallowed. “Well, then, that look upon your face, Lizzy,” he said in a strangled voice.
“Apologies,” I said. I had removed my outer layer. I stepped out of my skirts.
He swept me from head to toe, his eyes drinking me in. “You look delectably tempting,” he murmured.
“I need…” I turned around so that the laces of my stays were accessible.
He came over to me, fumbling with the tie of the leather strap. “What sort of knot is this?”
I giggled.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Lizzy,” he breathed against my shoulder.
“Just kissing, I think,” I said, turning to look at him.
“Is that what you think?” he said.
“I know you, Will Darcy, and you are the most proper and respectable man in the whole of the country, and you couldn’t possibly do something untoward, I know it,” I said, and I was breathless, but I was taunting him a little, too, and I couldn’t deny that.
He managed to undo the knot of my stays. “Couldn’t, hmm?”
“No,” I said.
“You want me to try to loosen these?”
“Please.”
He pulled on them, loosening the laces, freeing me from the tightness there.
“Thank you,” I said, wriggling out of my stays, pulling them up and over. When I turned back around, I was only wearing my shift, one thin layer over my skin, and he was staring at me with an expression on his face I might term awe.
I felt shy. I felt my heat rushing to my face. I pulled at pins in my hair, freeing it, lowering my gaze as I did.
He closed the distance between us, his movements quick but fluid. He seized my hand and moved it, placing it against some part of his body, that part of it, and it was huge and solid and hot and pulsing through the fabric of his trousers.
I let out a little gasp.
He dropped my hand as if I had burned him. He shut his eyes, muttering chastisements to himself under his breath, and walked away from me, over to his bed, where the covers had already been turned down.
“Couldn’t,” he said in a thick voice, sitting down at the foot of the bed to remove his boots. “Trust me, Elizabeth, I could.”
I swallowed. “Well, that’s something to know, I suppose,” I managed.
He chuckled. “You’re right. I won’t.”
“No?”
He looked up at me. “I want to earn you. I want to please you enough that you accept me. Then, it will be my reward.” He smirked at me. “But until then, I suppose occasionally seeing you in see-through clothes and holding you in my arms all night will be…”
“What?”
“Torture,” he said. “But the best kind.” He lifted his hand. He beckoned to me with two fingers.
I went to him.
He pulled me down onto the bed with him. He kissed me, and his kisses were fire.