Chapter 14
The next day Elizabeth planned a celebration of sorts for herself and Darcy, because the following day he would leave for Pemberley. She arranged with Hill for a picnic, and she planned to climb up to Oakham Mount.
Even though the sky was banked with grey clouds, it was warmer than it had been the day before. Still, she packed into her basket a warm blanket in addition to the sheet Hill had provided to sit on.
When her intended arrived, he too had made plans. He had a basket of food and a blanket. They laughed to see their almost-identical preparations.
“I hope you are hungry,” Darcy said.
“Oh, I am, believe me,” Elizabeth said.
He laughed at her. “I cannot tell if you use double entendres on purpose or accidentally, in all innocence.”
“What?” she asked. “Oh!” She could feel herself blushing.
Darcy nodded. “In innocence. Either way would have been delightful, but somehow I cannot help but think that this is beyond mere delight.”
He offered to take her basket, but she shook her head. “I would rather take your arm, sir.” Instead, he offered his hand, and he interlaced their fingers. So they began their walk, each holding a basket and a blanket and each other’s unencumbered hand.
Once arrived at their destination, they sat next to one another on the large cloth Hill had provided, positioning the baskets nearby. They had three blankets to pile up, and Elizabeth said, “I suppose we will have no possibility of catching a chill.”
“None at all,” Darcy said. He was busy removing his hat and Elizabeth’s bonnet. Then he hesitated and said, “I know it’s against all the rules, but…”
During his slight pause, Elizabeth’s heart pounded with both desire and nervousness. She did not want him to suggest anything very improper…did she?
“…I have longed to see your hair down. Do you think…”
Elizabeth breathed out a sigh of relief and immediately began removing hairpins.
With her thick mane of curly hair, she had to use a lot of hairpins, and he quickly joined in the task of their removal.
His gaze as her hair tumbled down to her waist was so…
penetrating…and longing, she supposed was the word… . She could barely draw breath.
He ran his long fingers along her scalp, and then down through her hair.
“You are magnificent, Elizabeth.” He combed his fingers through her hair, over and over again, and even lowered his head to nuzzle her loose tresses.
“God, I so love your hair. It is even more beautiful down than I had imagined, which ought to be impossible.”
Elizabeth laughed. “It is just ordinary brown hair that always manages to spring free of hairpins and seems destined for disorder!”
Darcy sat up and frowned. “It is not in the least ordinary. It is a multitude of shades of brown, all the loveliest colours of precious metals and enriched earth and polished wood, so rich and lovely. As for the disorder, I love it. I shall treasure every time your hair fights a hairpin and wins, and every time it bounds into freedom.”
“Oh, my!” Elizabeth did not feel like laughing over his excessive praise. Instead, his words sank into her heart and began to heal a wound she never realised she had.
Thoroughly distracting her from her contemplation of old wounds, Darcy bent towards her and brushed his lips over hers.
“Was that a kiss?” she whispered.
“You have never been kissed?”
“Never.”
He said, “Well, that was not quite a kiss, in my opinion. It was a near-kiss. This is a kiss.” And he proceeded to place his lips on hers with just the perfect amount of pressure, the perfect amount of firmness, and the perfect amount of softness.
Then he moved his mouth, causing her to move hers in accompaniment, and his hands moved from holding her head to cupping her cheeks, then drawing her closer with hands on her upper arms, then her back.
Elizabeth could not keep track of all the sensations that a pair of lips and a pair of hands could elicit, but when his tongue entered her partially-open lips, she gasped into his mouth.
Pulling away, he rested his forehead on hers and stared into her eyes.
“I…I….” Elizabeth wanted to acknowledge the profound feelings her first kiss had elicited, but she could not seem to find the words.
He said, “I very much enjoyed that, dearest, and I believe I can tell that you did, as well.”
“How did it compare to all of your other kisses?”
“What?” Elizabeth felt him try to pull away, but she kept him in her arms. “Why would you ask that?” he asked.
“You asked if I had ever been kissed before….”
Darcy said, “I suppose that I should not have. Our society is set up in such a…well, such an unfair way, expecting girls and women to remain utterly untouched—and I imagine uneducated about their own bodies and what occurs between men and women….” He was blushing, now, and he said, “I should not have said that as well…. I seem to….”
“Dearest,” Elizabeth said, “you were a man, all grown up, the first time I saw you, when I was still just a girl. I cannot imagine that, in all that time it took me to grow up, you never called on women, fell in love, perhaps, broke some hearts. I hate that you have such a romantic past, but I accept that it is inevitable. But I believe that we should be able to speak of it.”
“Oh, God, I love you. Of course you are right. If we are to marry, we should be able to speak of such things.”
“And yet my question remains unanswered,” she said.
“You will not break with me, based on my past?”
“Fitzwilliam, I knew when I looked into your eyes, when I was just eleven years old, that you were a good man. Everything I have discovered about you, nine years later, has proven your goodness over and over again. I will not break with a good man because he has a past, although I would certainly break with you if you plan in the future to kiss other women, lay with other women, go to those…those places to be with those sorts of women…or keep a mistress…or….”
“I promise you that our future will be only me and you. When I take the marriage vows, I will mean them, and I will keep them.”
Elizabeth promised, “I will make the vows and keep them as well. But…I am awaiting answers.”
He sighed. “First, you seem to have the idea that I might have courted another woman or fallen in love with another. Neither of those things is true. I have never called on any woman. I have been introduced, and I have danced, but I have kept to only one dance per woman, because I feared giving expectations that I had no desire to meet. I have never begun a courtship, and I have never been in love—not until you.”
“Ohhh.” Elizabeth found herself smiling, feeling relief at his words.
“However,” he said, “I do have some experience, although I am likely the least experienced man of my age in all of England, or perhaps in the known cosmos. Still, when I was eighteen, my father took me to what he called a House of Distinction.” His gaze intensified. “I gather you know what was meant?”
She nodded and blushed; he blushed as well.
“My father explained that every man of our class builds experience, so he will know what to do, but that he expected me to meet what he called my needs in a place where I would not be taking a chance of becoming diseased, and I would not be fathering bastard children.”
Elizabeth flinched, and her love took her hands between his and gently rubbed them.
“I am sorry. I meant to speak plainly, but perhaps that was just too plain.”
“No, no, please continue. So you have been going to the same House of Distinction? Or many different ones?”
“Actually, dearest Elizabeth, I went to the London house exactly once, the time my father took me, and I went to such a house in Cambridge several times, but Wickham’s debauchery sickened me, and I had little ready money because I ended up using it to mitigate damage caused by his seductions….”
They were both blushing, and Elizabeth studied his eyes, seeing honesty as well as embarrassment.
He gazed at her earnestly as he continued, “I have never kept a mistress, and even my experiences with paid courtesans are fewer than ten. As soon as I graduated from university, my father died, and I was thrust into the role of master of Pemberley and other assorted properties, and of course I became my sister’s guardian. I was…very…busy.”
“Thank you for speaking so directly with me, Fitzwilliam.”
He turned to his picnic basket and took out a bottle of wine and two wrapped goblets.
As they sipped their sweet wine, Elizabeth said, “I interrupted a very nice moment with my impertinent question, which remains unanswered, by the way, and I am hoping that we can resume with that activity. Build up our appetite, even.” She blushed again and said, “I hope that was not a double entendre.”
“Right now, everything seems to me to be a double entendre. But…what was your question again? Oh! I remember. You asked how kissing you compared to ‘all’ my other kisses. But I have experienced exactly one kiss, before this one, with one paid courtesan. Believe me, kissing you seems to me to be an entirely different activity. This is not a paid transaction, basically undergone for educational purposes. This is me expressing how dearly I love you. In every way, your kiss is much more wonderful.”
She asked, “Really truly?”
“Really truly. Although…perhaps I should just check to see…”
And he kissed her again.
The picnic was everything delicious. From Darcy’s roast chicken to Elizabeth’s cold slices of beef tongue; from Darcy’s pot of crabmeat to Elizabeth’s wedge of cheddar cheese, wrapped in lettuce leaves; from Darcy’s veal pies and fresh rolls to Elizabeth’s jam puffs and apple wedges—the luncheon was enormous and tasty.
Between the two of them, they finished off Darcy’s excellent red wine and never even opened Elizabeth’s ginger beer.
Best of all, they enjoyed much conversation, many kisses, and an almost unbroken two-hour-long embrace.
Later, Darcy sat in the parlour with the Bennet females, and even later than that, he played a game of chess with Elizabeth’s father. “You beat Papa?” she asked.” I have never managed such a feat! Congratulations.”
“You play chess, as well? Oh, dearest, you have managed to make the happiest man in the known cosmos even happier.”
Darcy stayed for dinner; they were both loath to part. When he finally, reluctantly said goodbye, Elizabeth gave him two letters. “One for you, and one for Georgiana,” she whispered. “Read the one for you when you miss me.”
“Thank you, my love,” he said. “I will undoubtedly read it when I reach the end of Longbourn’s drive, and then again when I reach Meryton, and then over and over again.”
“My letter can be a little pocket Lizzy that you can take out and read, when you miss me, and then put it right back away. Much less troublesome than real Lizzy!”
He chuckled. “I will choose the trouble, thank you. In all seriousness, however, I will write an express after I check the mines, but I hope to be back in ten days, a fortnight at most. Your mother knows the arrangements I have made with two modistes, and please do not forget that Derbyshire can be much, much colder than Hertfordshire.”
“Please do not forget that I love you,” she responded.
“I love you, dearest one.”
After that, words were not spoken. A long interval of shivery kisses finally ended as Darcy mounted his horse and rode to Netherfield.