Chapter Ten
ELIZABETH OPENED THE door in surprise. “Mr. Darcy, what are you doing here?” She could not help but stifle a yawn.
“I woke you,” he said, looking chagrined. “My apologies. I paced over there, thinking this through, and then I barged in here looking for you—”
“Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“No, no, heavens, Miss Bennet, give me some credit.”
“Well, you did say ‘barged,’” she said, letting him into her bedchamber and shutting the door behind him.
He looked around the room. “They have really shut you up in one of the smallest rooms, haven’t they?”
“I’m to be out of the way of the servants, for no one is to know I’m here.”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. And you could have been in a lovely small cottage nearby, but Caroline forced me into hosting you here.”
Elizabeth shrugged.
He sighed, shaking his head. “I cannot understand that woman. Why does she do the things she does?”
“Well, she has some designs on you, I suppose,” said Elizabeth and then wondered if she should reveal that.
“Oh, obviously, but what can she be thinking? That I would be drawn to a woman who is accompanying her sister who is increasing? How does she think to entice me now when she has not done so before? Why will she not give up?”
Elizabeth smirked, looking down at her bare feet. This was when she thought about the fact that she was only wearing her nightdress, that she had not even thrown a bed jacket over it to answer the door. Lord, she was improper, and she was becoming more so with every passing moment.
“I did not come here to speak about Caroline Bingley,” he said in a very deep voice.
She looked up at him, something about his countenance had changed. There were questions in his eyes. He breathed, one very ragged breath, and he slowly dragged his teeth over his bottom lip.
Something leaped inside her. She felt an odd yearning go through her. No one had looked at her in that way since…
Perhaps never, truly. But no one had looked at her with anything approaching approval in some time. She had been nothing but a burden for so long, and he was not looking at her as if she were an inconvenience or a trial. He was looking at her as if he yearned, too. As if he yearned for her.
Her lips parted, and some kind of noise came out of her chest, something relieved, something broken.
He was coming closer.
He was right next to her before he stopped moving, less than a foot between their bodies. He peered down into her eyes. His voice was husky. “I want…”
“Yes,” she breathed.
He looked at her lips and then he looked into her eyes and then back at her lips again.
Her pulse started to race. “Are you trying to kiss me, Mr. Darcy?”
He swallowed, meeting her eyes again. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
She did, of course. She did. Well, she had not much contemplated kissing him, only being married to him, she supposed, but she was contemplating it now, because he was right here, so very close, and so very large and with such a deep voice and with the hint of dark stubble at his chin (he likely had not been shaved since that morning) and with such broad shoulders.
He was so masculine. She found herself reaching up with one hand and putting it against his chest.
His voice was insubstantial. “If you don’t like it, you may stop me at any time. If you but tap my shoulder, I shall cease immediately.”
In response, she leaned in, tilting back her head, offering her mouth to him.
He let out a noise like a groan and captured her lips with his own.
It was warm and a bit wet and sweet, ever so sweet, like the taste of a spring berry from the vine, a bursting sort of wondrousness.
He stopped, pulling back, searching her gaze. “All right?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes.”
And then he had her in his arms, and her hand migrated up to cup his neck and he kissed her again, and this time he used his tongue, and this shocked her. She jerked back and he let go of her, backing away, stammering apologies.
“No, it’s all right,” she managed. “No one’s ever done that to me before is all.”
“No?” he said, coming closer to her again.
“It was nice,” she said, but her voice was very small, and she felt shy.
She felt, she supposed, feminine. Very feminine.
In a way that she had not felt in quite some time now, as if that whole part of her—the part that could be enticing—had been locked away.
She had not thought it would ever come out again.
His hand spanned her belly, through her nightdress, exploring the curve of her there. “Never used his tongue, truly?”
She froze, and no answer came readily to her lips. She did not know what to say or do.
But he just explored her there, a caress that did not feel unpleasant. “Apologies,” he said softly. “Let us not speak of him. All I wish to do, I think, is to be better than him at pleasing you. I shall likely need your help to accomplish that. Will you help me?”
Her lips parted. She didn’t really know what he even meant. “A-all right.”
His hand on her belly slipped upwards to one of her breasts.
She sucked in a gasp. He was just… he had… Well, what were you expecting, Lizzy? You are ruined. You are under his roof. He has made no secret of his ardent admiration of you.
Did it matter now, anyway? And she had already let him kiss her, after all.
“Do you like that?” he whispered. He had found one of her nipples and he was rubbing it through the fabric, making it stand up.
“Gently,” she said. They were sore now, very tender, had been since she knew she was increasing.
He kissed her again.
He had both of his hands on her breasts, and she found herself cringing a bit.
One of his hand strayed back to her belly. He settled it there, one large warm masculine hand curved round her. “I’m doing this wrong,” he said.
“It is only… they are very sensitive ever since I started growing the babe,” she whispered. It is only, you asked just to kiss me, and how quickly you put your hands on me in places no one has ever touched.
But he didn’t know that. He thought her thoroughly debauched. He did not think he must take care with her.
“Oh,” he said in another sort of voice, a thicker voice. “I suppose they would be. Your body is changing.” His voice was husky again, as if this pleased him, and she was confused by that.
“You can’t find that gratifying?” It came out as a question.
He let out a tattered sort of laugh. “I think I do, though, and I can’t say why, so let us not examine it overmuch, perhaps?
” He pressed his mouth wetly into her temple.
His voice was gravelly. “I want to look at you. I want to look at you entirely, all of you, without…” He had a handful of her nightdress. “May I?”
She hesitated.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I said you could stop me, did I not?” He let go of her clothing and backed away. “Do you wish me to stop?”
Now, she felt cold and bereft, without his closeness and heat. She was starved for his touch, for his yearning, for his kindness, for anything good.
She was not pure, in the end. Nothing mattered.
It had been such a long time since anyone had wished to please her, and she did not wish to stop him, not truly.
She did not have any real desire for whatever it was he wished to do to her, whatever it was that Mr. Wickham had done to her, which she sort of remembered, at least what she had been awake for.
Mr. Darcy had one of those male parts in his trousers, and he would wish to insert it into her and work it in and out and she didn’t know about that, but maybe if she could get him to be sort of gentle about it.
“I think that is answer enough,” he murmured.
“I am sorry. I should be ashamed of myself, waking a woman in the midst of the night when she is this far gone with child and asking her if I can tumble her when what I imagine she chiefly wants is sleep.” But there was warmth here as he chided himself, no real sense of any disappointment with her denial, and this was relieving.
“No, it is not that, exactly.” She closed the distance between them again. She slid her hand up to touch his neck, and she smiled up at him. “I am… I don’t know. Can you be gentle about it, I suppose? Can you be careful with me?”
He furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure I like what this is saying about whoever it is who put you in this position, Miss Bennet.”
“You could call me Lizzy,” she said.
“Lizzy,” he repeated, smiling at her. He captured her lips again.
She sighed against his mouth.
The kiss deepened, and she melted into his chest, her other hand going round his neck, clutching him. His hands splayed out over her back. Weren’t his hands ever so large? She liked being kissed by him. She liked being close to him. She did not wish him to leave.
He kissed the corner of her mouth. “You must call me Fitz, then,” he said. He kissed her jaw. “At least when we are alone in this manner.”
It seemed an entirely incongruous sort of name for him, far too short and playful for a man such as Mr. Darcy, and then she wondered if there were some playful side of him, hidden away, and if he was about to show it to her, and the thought of that made something tighten within her.
“You’ve distracted me,” he said. “How many times did it take this man to get you with child and he was never gentle and never used his tongue—”
“Once,” she said. “Only once, but I don’t wish to speak of it or him or any of that.”
He furrowed his brow. “If this man did something wretched to you, Lizzy—”
“Oh, please, leave that be!” she cried. She could just imagine telling him it was Mr. Wickham’s babe. Would he caress the curve of her in that way of his, huskily telling her it did gratify him, if he knew that? She did not think so.
He looked at her solemnly for some time. “All right,” he said eventually. “I do not need to know, I suppose.” He cleared his throat. “But I should take my leave of you, really. Perhaps I shall come to see you tomorrow, if that would please you.”