Chapter Seventeen
THERE WAS NO dinner at Pemberley that night again, though everyone knew that Mr. Darcy had returned.
Elizabeth and the Bingley sisters dined at the dower house, but they did not speak. Nervous silence reigned over the table. The sisters picked at their food, but Elizabeth had a healthy appetite.
She retired to her room afterward, and as she lay down on her bed, she felt it for the first time.
She had heard of it from other women. The quickening.
They had explained it as a feeling like tiny fluttering wings inside one’s belly, and when she felt it, she knew exactly what it was, and it was exactly like that, like a butterfly battering against the inside of her.
It made tears come to her eyes.
She put both hands against the small swell of herself there, and everything was suddenly different.
Oh, obviously, the babe had been there, and she had known it, so perhaps it shouldn’t have been different, but it was.
It made her feel such a surge.
The love she felt for this tiny being inside her, it overwhelmed her.
She lay on the bed, stroking her own belly, and the tears that pricked her eyes began to fall.
Things shifted. Her priorities gently aligned differently.
She had never been so selfish as to think of herself first, of course, but she had thought of her family first—her parents, her sisters, Jane.
But now, it was simply the babe. Her babe.
She was its only protector. It was shielded now, inside her body, and she must do whatever it took to give it the best life she might give it.
If that meant that she must put herself first, it would only be that she must because she was the babe’s best and most strong protector, and there was nothing more important in the world than that role, not anymore.
She felt it like a sacred, almost divine, role, and she felt humbled to have been given it, but she knew it was her first and foremost responsibility, from now on. She was a mother.
And at that moment, there was a faint knock at her door.
Mr. Darcy’s voice, low, came from without. “Elizabeth, I am here. I am coming in.”
She sat up on the bed. “Yes,” she said, wiping at her eyes. She got to her feet as he opened the door.
She met him there in the space between the bed and the door.
He looked somewhat haggard. He had a bit of growth on his chin, not quite a beard, but something that indicated he had not been shaving, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat not well tied.
“Your sister seems to think you have plans of marrying me,” she said to him.
“Do you object?” he said, eyeing her. “I do seem to remember that you once told me I was the last man you could ever be prevailed upon to marry, and I should tell you that I have come straight from shooting him down like an animal, and I suppose I could say I did it for you, but I am not sure it is what a woman wants in a husband, now that I go over it in my head. I should have taken you straightaway to Scotland, I think. If it had been about you, about your protection, I would have seen to you first.”
She swallowed, this information going through her in a way that warmed her, she found. Perhaps moments ago, it would not have, but things were different now. “He’s dead?”
“He is.”
“Good, then he can never try to claim the babe.” She put a hand to her belly.
“Is that an acceptance?”
“It is,” she said.
They simply regarded each other.
He let out a breath, and he scratched at the side of his chin, at the growth there.
She put her other hand to her belly.
It was quiet.
He cleared his throat. “It seems to me there are a number of things I need to say to you. I know that I wished to say them before I left, but I can no longer remember them. I feel a bit wrung out.”
“Do you regret it?” It came out sharper than she might have intended.
She felt a bit like Lady Macbeth, breathing in a man’s ear that he must stir to violence.
Did he wish her to tell him that it was the thing a man should do?
That if he were truly a man, it was what he durst undertake?
She would say it, if that was what he needed.
“I…” He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t regret his being gone.
I don’t feel as if he deserved something else.
But before I met you, I used to think of myself as a man who strove to do what was right, and I feel now as if I have no idea what is right anymore.
I feel as if I am pulled in all manner of directions, and they are powerful and intense, like the pull of the earth towards the sun itself, but I cannot say what the right thing is. ”
“It was entirely the right thing,” she said to him, lifting her chin.
His expression changed. He took a step towards her.
She reached for him. “I hear the regiment is in Newcastle. You have been there and back in six days? No wonder you look as you do.”
He took another step towards her. “It is my doing, you see? This. What befell you. I let him go after what he did to my sister.”
She closed the distance between them. She reached up to run her fingertips against the dark growth on his jaw. “You have put it all to rights,” she said. “Thank you.”
He met her gaze, and the look on his face was one a scolded boy gives a nurse who assures him all is forgiven.
She brushed her fingers through his stubble. “You did it for me. For us, for the babe and me. For…” She let out a breath. “For our babe.”
He visibly shuddered, and then he put his hand on her belly. “Yes,” he said. “It is mine now.”
She guided his face down to hers. “It is your babe, Fitz,” she whispered.
He kissed her, and it was a desperate kiss. “Mine,” he said, his hand warm against her. His mouth was wet and hot.
She pressed into him.
He gathered her into his arms and he kissed her and kissed her.
She gasped against him.
“We shall leave at once,” he managed between kisses. “This instant. To Gretna Green.”
“You are in no shape for it,” she said, pulling away, but only inches away. Their faces hovered close to each other still. “You need to rest.”
He put his forehead against hers. “Were they wretched to you while I was gone? Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst? My sister?”
“No, no. Your sister and I spoke, but she was not remotely wretched. And the Bingley sisters seem mostly frightened of your retribution, I think.”
“Georgiana, she seems quite displeased with me. If she took that out on you—”
“She did not,” she assured him.
“My retribution,” he repeated, his mouth twisting. “I should visit something upon them both. When I think of all you have suffered, Elizabeth—”
“Lizzy,” she broke in, stopping all of this.
Time enough for it later, she thought. Now, she needed to be sure of him, and she could think of one way to be quite sure of him.
He was an honorable man, and he had said to her, over and over, that she drove him mad, that his desire for her was such that he would do dishonorable things for her.
So, she must get him to claim her, and then he would be bound by his honor to her, bound by the force of his desire, entirely bound, and that was what she needed.
She must do whatever it took to protect the babe, after all.
“Lizzy,” he repeated, his voice soft and reverent.
She put her hand over his, where it was still resting against the swell of her belly.
“You have run yourself ragged, Fitz, gone to the ends of the earth for us, and you must take your comfort here. With me. Allow me to comfort you.” She felt bold, full of some force she had not had before.
She put her other hand to his trousers, and she found the falls of them and she began to undo them.
He let out a surprised noise. “Lizzy,” he breathed. “You do not have to do that. You do not have to do anything at all. You have been through far too much. I cannot take further advantage of you.”
She moved her other hand and continued to unbutton him.
“I want to,” she said, which was sort of a lie, really.
She was frightened, and she remembered that it had been sort of uncomfortable and invasive, and she did not know if she wished to surrender to it, but if she was going to marry him—and marrying him was the clear and best choice, for the babe, for her, for everyone, truly—she would have to do it, anyway.
“Yes, but…” He seemed to be searching for some words of protest, but not finding them.
She had his trousers undone now, and that part of him, that male part, was suddenly quite apparent, straining to be freed, and it was rather large and rather stiff, and she took a breath for courage, and then reached in and found him. She wrapped her hand around the girth of him.
He let out a long, slow groan. He kissed her again.
She didn’t know what to do with it. She tried squeezing it.
He made a strangled noise, and she might have thought it was wrong except for the way he deepened the kiss, the way his hips canted toward her.
So, she did it again, and then she tried to stroke it.
She remembered there being a lot of in and out movement, so perhaps that was the way to touch a man here. She didn’t know.
He panted, letting out a series of low noises.
His mouth faltered against hers, and then he was putting his mouth to her cheekbone, to her eyebrow.
“Lizzy, we must wait. I think… you have been through… this isn’t necessary.
We marry, and then we can take… time. There will be time for… for all of this.”
She wanted to be certain. She wanted him to claim her. If he had her, he would not abandon her. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all right.” She squeezed and stroked at the same time.
He shut his eyes, mouth going slack. He let out a helpless chuckle. “At the very least, you must stop enough for us to… get undressed. You’ll have me spending in your hand at this rate.”