Chapter 43
U nfortunately, I could not keep Elizabeth to myself for long, and when Georgiana returned to collect her, she was swept along to join her sisters.
Upon returning home, our guests were properly spent, and after dinner and a subdued gathering in the parlour, they began to excuse themselves in ones and twos.
“Will you go up?” Georgiana asked me.
I glanced at Elizabeth, who stood beside her, and said, “Not just yet. I think I might sit in the library for a while.”
There was little possibility this ploy would yield a private meeting, yet to my gratification, it did. In less than twenty minutes, I heard soft footsteps on the stair, and then Elizabeth peeked into the room.
“Would you like me to help you find a book?” I asked upon standing.
“That is my excuse, yes,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “but I have had such a disturbing thought just now that I felt I must speak to you.”
I stepped forwards in alarm. “What is it? What has upset you?”
“I am anxious that at any moment, Mama will demand you take us to the exclusive, private ball of some grand lady or other, and in your determination to win this silly game we are playing, you will indulge her. Please, I beg you for my sake, do not give in to her!”
I paused for a moment longer than I should have, and when I spoke, my words were both fierce and tender all at once.
“I am not playing, Elizabeth. Are you?”
She looked askance at the floor. “Y-you have discomposed me—again—and,” she raised her eyes to mine and said, “I-I do not know how to do this, Mr Darcy.”
I stepped even closer. “Do what? Fall in love?”
“Oh no. I have done that already, months ago,” she said impatiently. And then as if the answer suddenly came to her, she said, “I do not know how to put myself in your power—I am afraid of feeling so…”
“It is like a death to give yourself wholly to another.”
“Are you not afraid?”
I brushed her cheek with my knuckles. “I was, but I am no longer. Come,” I said, “you should rest. It is late, and I am willing to wait for you.”
“And Mama?”
“I will not do anything you do not wish me to do,” I said, but I was far too close to her.
We were alone in a silent, darkened room, and the erotic implication of my words fairly bloomed around us.
By its own volition, my hand slipped behind her neck, her lips parted, and instantly we were kissing—tentatively at first, and then with the wild urgency of a fire lit on bone dry tinder.
I pulled away. “Are you still afraid, Elizabeth?”
“No,” she whispered, her fingers now entangled in my hair, and in a flash, I had gone from kissing her to being kissed.
Were it not for my sister’s voice on the stair startling us apart, I do not know how far—perhaps even too far—we might have gone in answer to our desperation.
“Elizabeth, are you looking for a book?” Georgiana called as she came into the room. And then to me, she exclaimed, “Oh! I forgot you were here. Did you help her find something?”
Thankfully, the room was not well-lit, and I mumbled some vague reply while stepping back into the shadow of a corner.
Lifting up her candle, my sister stepped to the shelf with her favourites, and Elizabeth took the first book she recommended, only glancing back at me for a flashing second, before following Georgiana out of the room.
When I woke the next morning, I suffered another of Carsten’s close examinations.
I could not hide the dark circles under my eyes or pretend to have slept more than I did.
My valet had come in search of me in the library at two in the morning, claiming he feared I had fallen asleep in my chair, and he was too perceptive not to know he had found me in a fever of a different kind than the one he had so recently nursed me through.
“Is there aught I might bring you sir?” he enquired almost tenderly.
I asked for coffee, and after three cups in quick succession, I went to my sister’s room.