Chapter Sixteen #2
He left strict instructions for Georgiana to be kept in the house, and he tried to put all of that out of his head. Maybe Elizabeth would have some idea about what to do about his sister. She was a woman, after all.
He arrived at Weythorn and there were servants everywhere. He was shown into the sitting room and he looked about at the room, and it was rather cheerier than it had been. He supposed someone had been seeing to the decoration.
When she entered, he commented on the drapes, and she said that she had been spending her time settling in here, since she would be staying here for some time, and he said that he was impressed and then they lapsed into silence.
He grimaced into his tea and thought about looking down the length of his torso to see her face nestled against his lap, her mouth stretched around him.
He was already hard. He’d been hard since he conceived of the stupid idea of coming to see her that day. His erection twitched at him, as if it were taunting him.
“Who’s sending you carriages and servants?” he blurted out.
“Oh, it’s the Duchess of Neithern,” said Elizabeth. “Some sort of odd bribe, I think. Or perhaps a threat. It’s difficult to say.”
Mr. Darcy hadn’t been expecting that.
“She wants me to marry the duke,” said Elizabeth with a sigh.
He sat up straight. He had known there was some sort of competition. “You can’t.”
She gave him a little smile. “No? Am I spoken for, then? I know we were both very drunk when we said it.”
“Obviously, you are spoken for,” he said in an iron voice. “I have been waiting for you to want to marry me for some time now. You do wish to marry me still?”
Her smile widened. “Oh, yes.”
And then everything was all right and he was smiling, too. Maybe they were both smiling too much for too long.
She spoke, “You likely shouldn’t, of course, but I have said this before, and you seem insistent on torturing yourself with wanting me, even if it brings you nothing but pain and suffering—”
“Stop,” he said, laughing.
“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Darcy, I still don’t understand it.”
“Why have you come around to wanting me?” he said. “I don’t understand that. Did I simply wear you down?”
She laughed, too. She looked away, thoughtful. “Yes,” she said. “That’s entirely the way of it. You have worn me down.” She met his gaze again and her smile faded. “No, that’s not it, obviously. I only…”
“You don’t know,” he said. “And neither do I, and let’s stop questioning the why of it. It’s right, and it’s always felt right to me, and if it feels right to you, too, then that is only as it should be. It should have been this way all along.”
“I don’t know if it should have been this way all along,” she said. “I don’t think I was ready for you at first. Definitely not after Mr. Wickham, I wasn’t. Maybe I needed Richard… first…” She sighed. “But then, I don’t know. He had some idea about you, and I’m not sure if it’s accurate.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What idea?”
“Oh, well, Richard quite had this idea about his prowess, you know, his…” She squirmed. “He thought he was going to be so skilled with me in the bedroom, and he thought you…” She shook her head. “But you’re not actually that way, are you, Fitz?”
“What way?” he said.
She squirmed again. “I wish I had not brought this up.”
“No, you can’t do that, Lizzy, because now I’m very curious.” He leaned forward. “Look, whatever happened in that room with us, you should know that I’m sorry—”
“Oh, do not apologize, because you always are acting as if everything is your fault—”
“Well, I want you at least to understand it’s not some sort of activity I expect from you on some kind of regular basis. Indeed, you never have to do that again.”
“You hated it,” she said.
“Hated it? Are you mad? I definitely did not hate it.”
Her cheeks were turning pink. “All right, but you… now you think of me in this way—”
“I want you constantly, all the time, I am mad with it, and how do we wait a year? Why must you mourn him so long?”
Now, she was smiling again. “Oh.” She rubbed her forehead. “Yes, I should have realized that you wouldn’t have minded in the end. You wanted me after Wickham, after all, you wanted me after everything, you don’t…” She shrugged. “It’s hard to trust men, I think, but you’ve always been different.”
“I want to be different,” he said. “But that should mean that I am respectful and that we wait.”
“Right,” she said. “You wish to wait for your wedding night, I seem to remember.”
He coughed. “We’ll never manage that.”
She lifted her gaze in surprise. “Oh, then. You see, this is proving my point.”
“What point? The thing you were saying that you wished you had not started to say?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think he thought you were… well, maybe I thought it, too. Stifled? Prudish? And it’s just like before, when I thought you were an arrogant prig, and I was wrong. You’re just concerned with rightness, that is all. You want to do things the proper way.”
“I haven’t been doing anything the proper way since you,” he said, his voice dropping pitch. “But that is why I am so desperately in love with you, you see?”
“Is that why?” she said. “I thought we were leaving the whys behind.”
“I was very desperately terrified of doing things wrong,” he said. “But then… you… it doesn’t seem frightening anymore, just exciting.”
“I think you have me wrong. I am not some wanton adventurous woman in the end, you know. I suppose I get myself into these scrapes somehow, but I truly have some capacity to rein myself in. Truly, I do. It is only… well, you are the least frightening person I know, too, in the end. You make me feel safe.”
“I am glad. I would have it no other way.”
“And no matter what, no matter how much or how far or what manner of thing I do, you are still there, still solid, still mine, and I…” She shook her head. “I don’t deserve you, Fitzwilliam.”
“Elizabeth, it is I who do not deserve you,” he said. He suddenly got up from where he was sitting and crossed the sitting room to her and pulled her to her feet.
She was in his arms in a moment, and she melted into him, and he put his mouth on hers.
She tasted like the wind before a summer thunderstorm, full of the promise of release and fury, but sweet and warm and inviting. He kissed her and she gasped against his mouth, and they staggered here and there until they collided with the wall, his back there, and she was practically climbing him.
She pulled away, out of breath. “This, you see. You are not staid. You have this passion in you, so much of it, a dark, deep, well of it, but you only let it out when it’s right to do so.”
“Then it must be right to do so now,” he said, pulling her close again.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it must.”