Chapter Nineteen
JANE’S WEDDING CAME and went.
Elizabeth attended. She saw the Bennet family for the first time, and she was surprised at how much it felt like returning home, after everything that had occurred.
Mr. Darcy was there, too, because he was close to Mr. Bingley, and though his sister Miss Darcy had been invited, Mr. Darcy said she was in hysterics when she had discovered that Neithern was marrying someone else.
I said to her that she did not wish to marry him, and she said that did not matter and I do not understand girls who are sixteen, he said ruefully to Elizabeth.
Apparently, Mr. Bingley also counted as a lover who had jilted her, though Mr. Bingley had never truly intended to marry Georgiana, Caroline’s schemes to the contrary, and it was simply one more man who had rejected her.
Georgiana could not bear it and therefore would not come to the wedding.
She and Mr. Darcy were still communicating in letters, but they were not seeing each other in person often.
He would visit her here and there, always in the broad light of afternoon, always with the door to her sitting room open, and if they were tempted, they refused to acknowledge it between themselves.
Another few months passed away in this fashion, and then she was suddenly in half-mourning, which meant she could go to balls or social functions if she wished, and that she could dress in a few muted colors other than black.
But she didn’t have any invitations, and she had no one to call upon, so nothing much changed.
Mr. Darcy’s letters began to take on a different tone, she thought, for he dwelt long and often on wishing she were with him, detailing activities they might have done together, and she also realized that he had stayed in London through all of the summer and the fall, instead of going to Pemberley as he likely usually did.
He had no reason to do this except to be close enough to have servants bear letters daily to and from her.
She began to wonder at herself, really. Yes, she wished to wait and do things properly, but what did it truly matter at this point? She had been widowed long enough that everyone must be certain she was not carrying the colonel’s child, and she and Mr. Darcy missed each other terribly.
She had delayed so much of her own happiness for so long, why was she insisting upon doing this now?
Instead of writing to Mr. Darcy and telling him to come and see her, however, she sent word to the dowager duchess.
She took a trip to her London townhouse and looked at the portraits of her ancestors, of the long line of Neithern dukes, all of them who did have chins like hers and brows like hers.
The duchess told her that she could see her own family in Elizabeth, too.
Elizabeth had thought she needed it, to know where she came from, that it was necessary to have an identity. But now she saw that Jane had been right, that her father had been right, that this wasn’t actually the case.
This was her blood, but it wasn’t who she was.
It was strange, though, because she’d had to find her blood, find her past, find her history, to realize this.
“Can we see each other again?” said the dowager duchess.
Elizabeth didn’t say no. She was motherless, but perhaps she didn’t have to be grandmotherless.
ELIZABETH OPENED THE door to Mr. Darcy herself, because she’d been expecting him. She’d dismissed all the servants, wanting some privacy.
“Lizzy,” he said when he saw her there.
“Fitz,” she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him inside. “I’ve been thinking about something. It’s a bit shocking.”
“You? Shocking? How entirely unlike you,” he said, very droll.
She gave him a disapproving look over her shoulder, even as she led him up the stairs in Weythorn.
“Where are you taking me?” he said. “Where are the servants? What is happening?”
“Well, it occurs to me that you’ve been staying in London through the hottest months of the year, all to be close to me, and then we have been swearing off touching each other—”
“Yes, but that is only because it is prudent,” he said.
“Well, it is only prudent because you said that you cannot marry me yet.”
“I actually offered to elope with you some months ago,” he said. “You said no.”
“I think we might manage it,” she said. “The proper marriage, at the proper time. But I also think there would be only one thing that would force it, and that would be if you get me with child.” She shrugged.
“It may not be that easy to get a woman with child. Sometimes, it seems, people get married and then it takes them months and months. A year, even.”
“True,” he said, his voice changing as he came up closer behind her on the stairs.
“So, I thought, we might as well… it is six months we have to wait, and we—”
He pressed into her, wrapping an arm around her waist, and her voice cut off as he kissed her, just below her ear lobe. “You’re right, this is a very shocking and somewhat wicked idea, and it is exactly why I am so drawn to you.”
She turned, looking at him. “Well, are you certain, though? Because I know you wished to wait for our wedding night. I am going to be taking your virtue, after all—”
He kissed her mouth, cutting off her words. “We’re already married. It’s our wedding night now.”
She laughed. “Fitz, we are not married.”
“Do you take me to be your husband?”
She laughed again.
“Say, ‘I do,’” he prompted, his eyes dancing.
“I do,” she whispered, feeling shy.
He kissed her again, a very thorough kiss.
She gasped. “And do you take me to be your wife?”
“I do,” he said, his smile fading into an expression of quite serious adoration. “So, then, you see. We are married, in every way that matters.”
“Except consummation.”
“Except that,” he agreed. “So, lead the way.” A pause. “Wife.”
She felt the word settle into her. “Oh, Fitz, I do so wish to be your wife. I dream of it. I have dreamed of it—”
“And now you are.” His voice was like velvet.
They kissed all the way to her bedchamber.
He pressed her face first against her wardrobe and kissed his way down her neck, down the notches of her spine as he undid the buttons of her dress, kissed her shoulders as he loosened her stays, told her in a husky voice that he had wished to see her, see all of her, for a very long time, that he had been slowly going mad with his desire for her, that she had reached into his insides and undone him somewhere.
And when she was pushing out of her dress, turning to look at him, she saw that he’d taken off half of his clothes already, too.
He was only wearing his trousers. She was in her under layers, shift and petticoats.
She’d only been entirely bare with a man once, her wedding night with the colonel, and she remembered that night as frenzied and hurried.
Would this be the same? Mr. Darcy had said he was going mad with desire for her.
She touched his bare chest. She ran her hands over his stomach, catching hold of the front of his trousers and pulling him to her. “Are you going to lose your head and take me in some hot rush of madness?”
“No, no,” he said, kissing her jaw, kissing her earlobe. “No, I seem to remember someone telling me that she could not fit me in her anything, so I have a feeling this will need to be slow and rather careful, a sort of easing.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “Yes, that sounds just exactly right.”
“So, first,” he told her, “I should like to look at you, every bit of you, and then I should like to take my time getting acquainted with all of you, all of the bits that are usually covered up, and then, only then, will we even take off my trousers.”
She giggled. “What if I want to see it again?” She tried to unbutton one of his buttons.
He batted her off. “None of that. You’ll see it soon enough.”
She giggled again, trying to get at his trousers again.
He lifted her arms out of the way and then gently, looking at her in her eyes, stretched them out above her head. He pinned them to the wardrobe with one of his hands, shaking his head at her.
“Am I too much of an eager hussy, then?” she breathed.
“Just exactly the right amount,” he said in a guttural voice. “But I shan’t let go of your hands until I have your promise that when I do, you will only do one thing with them, and that is to remove your shift and show me my pretty wife’s bare skin.”
“Oh,” she said, the words working through her in a wicked sort of way. She let out a little sigh, shutting her eyes. “Well, all right.”
“That’s not a promise, Lizzy.” He kissed her temple.
She tried to kiss his mouth.
He evaded her.
She opened her eyes.
He waggled his eyebrows. “I, Lizzy, promise to take off every stitch I am wearing and let my husband enjoy feasting on the sight of his pretty bare wife. This I solemnly swear and may I be punished else.”
“Punished?” she squealed.
He let go of her wrists, abruptly.
She went for his trousers.
He had his hands inside her petticoats.
She gasped.
He stripped off whatever she was wearing, and she helped him, and then he stood back and did just exactly that.
Feasted his gaze on her, looking her up and down and then up again and then down.
And then lingering here and there, and the expression on his face made something turn over inside her core.
He made a noise in the back of his throat, and he sounded nearly devastated. He reached out his palm to her.
She put her hand in his.
He pulled on her, leading her across the room and spreading her out before him on the bed, and then he treated her like she was a feast for the tasting.
He put his mouth positively all over her, tracing her breasts and teasing the tips of her breasts quite taut, kissing the undersides of her breasts and her belly and her hip bones and her mound and then nuzzling between her thighs to lap at her.
She was assailed by the sweetness, as it went on and on.
More than once, she said she was ready, that she wished him to remove his trousers, as he had promised, and he put questing fingers against the center of her and said she was not ready, not yet, that he needed to make entirely sure she was very, very slippery.
When he finally agreed, slipping his clothes off, and she saw that thick and hard member of his, she was struck again by the idea that this was absolutely impossible, that she could not, at all, have that in her.
She bit down on her lip, a flutter of nerves going through her.
“We don’t have to,” he said, noticing.
“Yes, we do,” she said.
“We could wait,” he said, bending to plant a kiss between her breasts. “We have been waiting, and this has been quite nice, and we can wait longer.”
“It will still be that size no matter how long we wait,” she said.
“Well, that’s all right. I don’t ever have to breach you, not once.” He kissed the tip of one of her breasts.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, no, you have a very clever mouth, as I already know, and—”
“You have to have children, Fitz, so I think—”
“Well, you remember all the business about insemination, so I think we shall find a way—”
She reached between their bodies and tucked the tip of him into her, and his words cut off in a sharp grunt.
She made noise, too. “Oh,” she said, eyes opening wide, wriggling her hips as she felt herself stretch around him.
“You know,” he was panting, “I have even now just told you that we do not have to do this. If it’s hurting you, give me but a moment, and I know that I can remove it. I’m positive I can. Just… one moment.”
She angled her hips to take more, and she could not say anything except, “Oh.” She slid herself up, getting him deeper, inch by inch, and she just kept saying it, “Oh, oh, oh.”
“It isn’t hurting you,” he managed in a guttural voice.
She tried to say another word besides, “Oh,” but she couldn’t. She just said that in a very breathy, very affected voice.
And he made a shallow thrust against her, pushing deeper.
Her eyes rolled back in her head. Now, she could not even say, ‘oh.’ It was simply too good.
It had not been like this with the colonel.
The colonel’s member had felt… nice. Well, the truth was it would hit little spots here and there that were pleasurable, and the first time he’d been inside her, it had been a bit overwhelming, but this was rubbing her in some sort of way that seemed to nudge against her in a way that tugged on the center of her pleasure and stroked, a sort of bothersome pleasantness, against some internal part of her that seemed connected to that external part of her, and he’d been at her for so long before this that she was very sensitive and sort of swollen down there, anyway, and this… this…
Oh.
“Lizzy?” he said. “You aren’t in pain.”
She found another word. “More,” she managed.
“More?” he said.
“Please.” Another word still.
He grunted again and he thrust another time, but this wasn’t shallow at all, this pushed him all the way into her, dragging all of his lovely thickness against her, and she let out a noise that might have been a sob, but it was a very good sob.
“Oh, please,” she said again.
“I…”
She opened her eyes to find him looking into her eyes.
“Good?” he breathed. He was starting to move within her.
“So good,” she moaned. “Do you… like it?”
He just laughed helplessly. “I am going to spend.”
“No,” she said. “No, wait for me, please.”
He made another helpless noise.
“Besides,” she gasped. “If you get me with child, you have to marry me.”
“True,” he said, and now he was finding a frankly delicious rhythm that was nudging her in the direction of the heights of some ecstasy. “But I want to marry you, Lizzy. So, maybe I want to get you with child.”
She shuddered, his saying that sending a ripple through her that made her practically crest.
He grunted again. “If you squeeze me like that again—”
“Please,” she said again. “Please, Fitz, I am ever so close.”
He shut his eyes, moving against her, and she hit another height, a height like the top of the sky, like the place where the stars fade to clouds, and she rippled again, rippled around him, against him, against all the places the thick sweetness of him was stimulating her, and when she climaxed, it was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
He collapsed against her as she clutched him and their lips tangled together.
There was no noise besides the sounds of their labored breath for a moment.
Had they… at the same time?
She undulated against him, feeling connected to him, happy, safe, fortunate.
“I shall have you with child in no time at all, I think,” he said in her ear.