Chapter Eleven
ELIZABETH WAS GRATEFUL for Mr. Darcy’s presence as they made their way back to Barralds.
They crept around to the west wing door where they were able to enter unobserved and they went up the steps together, listening to the strains of the piano coming from one of the sitting rooms downstairs.
Some members of the party were still awake and participating in some merriment, it seemed.
She didn’t question it when Mr. Darcy escorted her not just to her door, but into her room.
He looked about the room and his gaze settled on the bed.
“You should likely lie down, I think, madam,” he said gravely.
“I shall pull up this chair from the writing desk and sit with you for a bit, however. You need to rest, but you also shouldn’t be alone. ”
She felt so grateful for this that she simply obeyed without protest, but she felt she ought to have protested, to have said that she was fine, that nothing had befallen her at all, for she had only gotten information, after all.
However, she did feel entirely unsettled, so she sat down on the bed, and she allowed Mr. Darcy to move pillows about behind her, so that she could be propped up, semi-recumbent and comfortable.
He pulled the chair over and sat down in it, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned in towards her. “How are you feeling?”
She let out a breath, trying to think of how to explain it. “It’s odd, because I think I should be relieved, now that everything is out in the open,” she said. “But there are all these other emotions that have been stirred up, and I do not know what to make of them.”
“You said the thing that you said about your mother, about her pride,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Yes, perhaps that wasn’t quite fair of me,” she said, shaking her head.
“My mother was terribly frightened of the late duke, my father, and I suppose I can’t quite understand what that would be.
Perhaps the closest for me might be if I had been forced to go back to Mr. Wickham?
But even that, it would not be the same, for he never caused me any physical pain—”
“Elizabeth.” Mr. Darcy was out of his chair and his voice was agonized.
She looked up at him, craning her neck.
“I am ever so sorry for everything that has befallen you,” said Mr. Darcy. “Would that I could do anything to ease this well of pain you seem to be mired in.”
“You do,” she said, too quickly, but it was true. She gazed up and him, and he gazed back down at her, and then she did something mad. She patted the space on the bed next to her.
He looked down at the space, and his eyes widened.
A moment passed.
She fully expected him to sit back down in the chair he had pulled over, or even to say something gruff about how he didn’t like them in each other’s bedchambers or something of that nature.
But instead, he joined her on the bed.
What she should have done was to scoot over to make more room for him, but what she actually did was to angle herself in towards his chest, so that he put his arms out, and then she was against his shoulder, and his arm was around her body, his hand settling on her waist, and she tilted her head back to look up at him and he looked back at her.
Their faces were very close, inches away from each other.
She looked at his lips. He had nice lips, she decided.
There were dark little points on his upper lip and chin.
His whiskers were growing back after his last shave, and she liked the contrast of the dark hair and the pink of his mouth, and she had the urge to reach up and run her fingers over his chin, to feel the scratch of his facial hair, the warmth of his skin.
Her gaze flitted up to his eyes, and he was looking at her lips.
Then his gaze met hers, and there were questions in his eyes, and there was hunger, and she answered all of those questions, wordlessly but emphatically, with, Yes, yes, yes.
He cleared his throat and looked away.
She deflated.
But truthfully, what was wrong with her? She was a married woman, and she could not go around kissing Mr. Darcy. She should not be in his arms on her bed, either.
“Your mother,” he said in a raspy voice, “was doing whatever she could for you.”
“Yes, I know,” she whispered. “But I think, also, she was trying to punish Larilane.”
“Or perhaps she truly was so very frightened?” said Mr. Darcy.
“Well, not staying in Weythorn doesn’t speak to being frightened,” said Elizabeth. “There was no danger at that point. She did it because she wanted him to suffer.”
“Or perhaps she could not bear the memory of him, which would have been all over that house?”
“Perhaps,” Elizabeth agreed, sighing.
“I only think, if we want someone to blame, my Elizabeth, we must seek the blame entirely with the late duke. It was his bad behavior that caused all of this.”
“True,” she said, and she liked being his Elizabeth.
His hand went soothingly up and down her back. “We shouldn’t be this way, obviously, so close.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh.
“It is only that I had a thought recently about how little it is that we are afforded the chance to touch other humans, especially as we get older. There is something about touch, I think, something good.”
“Something quite good,” she said.
“Just… take this as comfort,” he murmured.
She sighed, shutting her eyes, cheek to his chest, feeling the warmth and firmness of him, noticing the way he smelled, and liking it.
She must have noticed his smell before, of course, at least subconsciously.
That was the only reason to feel as if his scent was entirely familiar, the most safe and sweet of scents, like coming home. “Thank you, Mr. Darcy.”
“You might call me Fitzwilliam,” he said.
Her heart leaped. “Just amiably, I suppose.”
“Is it confusing, since it’s also your last name?” he mused. “You could shorten in it some way, perhaps.”
“Fitz?” she said.
He laughed. “As long as it’s not Fitzie.”
She laughed. “I am called Lizzy.”
“I’ve heard that.” There was a gentleness to his tone.
“I don’t mind it, I suppose,” she said. “But I shan’t add any ‘ee’ sounds to your name, or to your nicknames, not if you don’t like it.”
“It is perhaps less about the name and more about the fact that Wickham started it, I suppose,” said Darcy, sighing. “But let us not speak of him, not in this moment.” His grasp tightened on her.
She had her eyes closed, and she was wrapped up in Mr. Darcy, in his scent and his arms and with his very male hands on her, and nothing, not even the mention of Wickham could seem to penetrate the circle of safety she was in now.
She only hummed her agreement. “Thank you, Fitz,” she murmured. “For this comfort.”
“You have been through so much, my Lizzy,” he said, his nose in her hair. “You have been through more than a woman should have to face in two lifetimes.”
She did not dispute this, because it felt that way to her as well, but she felt she should have, should have said it was not that much or that she was handling everything fine, and besides, she had just discovered she was the legitimate daughter of a duke, hadn’t she?
Yes, but they had no interest in acknowledging her as such, did they?
However, she supposed she would be foolish not to take the money that the duchess wished to settle on her. She would take it, then, since she and her husband needed something to live on.
She wondered how Neithern was feeling. She well knew the way it felt to have the blow of illegitimacy dropped like a piano on one’s head, the feeling of not being whoever it was one thought one had always been. He must be quite out of sorts.
She burrowed into Mr. Darcy, feeling sorry for poor Neithern and feeling grateful for him.
“I think, Lizzy, we should keep this to ourselves,” whispered Mr. Darcy. “Richard wouldn’t understand it, and it might hurt him, and it hasn’t meant anything, not truly, so I think there is no reason to mention it.”
“No reason at all,” she agreed, and then she yawned.
She tried to imagine Richard holding her like this, no attempt to kiss her or explore her body, just giving her comfort when she needed it, and she couldn’t quite do it.
This made her feel a sour feeling, but the warm circle of Mr. Darcy’s arms pushed away all sourness, and it flitted off into the darkness outside.
She yawned again.
“I should leave,” said Mr. Darcy, his voice a dark rumble as he stroked her back softly. “You would like to call for your maid to get you ready for bed, no doubt.”
“Not yet,” she breathed into his chest.
“Not yet,” he agreed. “Soon, though.”
But he didn’t go, and she fell asleep tucked up against his warmth.
DARCY SHOULDN’T HAVE let her fall asleep in his arms, and he shouldn’t have lingered with her there, sleeping against him, for as long as he did.
It was wrong, and he knew it. It was one of those things, the things that are very pleasant which have few consequences but which are simply wrong nonetheless.
No one knew how long he cradled his cousin’s wife in his arms that night, how long he gazed into her pretty sleeping face or how often he brushed her hair away from her face. No one knew, and there could be no consequences if no one knew.
But it was wrong.
She was not his.
He should never have gotten onto that bed with her, never have held her in his arms.
He tossed and turned in his bed that night with the guilt of it, after he finally left her.
He left her, tucking a blanket over her body, knowing she would likely appreciate having her stays loosened at the least, and also knowing it would be very wrong for him to do that for her.
He left her, turning down the oil lamp by her bed.
He left her and went back to his own room and undressed himself and got into bed.
And then he could hardly sleep because of the guilt of it.
In the morning, when he went down to breakfast, she was there, and he didn’t even know how to look at her.