Chapter 8
Darcy
Elizabeth’s taste lingered on my lips.
She sat beside me, her hip against mine, one hand still resting on my waistcoat. The carriage had been moving for several minutes, perhaps longer. I couldn’t have said. Longbourn had vanished behind the hedges, and I hadn’t looked out the window once.
My wife.
The word was no longer foreign to me. It was simply too vast to contain in a single thought.
Elizabeth lifted her face slightly.
“You’re looking at me again.”
“Yes.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Probably.”
Her smile softened.
I took her hand and brought her fingers to my lips. The new ring caught the light before I kissed it.
“Mrs. Darcy,” I murmured.
She lowered her eyes to our hands.
“It will take some time before I stop turning around when I hear it.”
“I shall continue until that happens.”
“That’s a formidable threat.”
Her stomach made a sound that the silence of the carriage made impossible to ignore.
Elizabeth closed her eyes.
“You heard nothing.”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I have been married for only a few hours. Grant me this weakness.”
The flush that colored her cheeks held no embarrassment this time.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“I could devour the basket, if you thought to have one prepared.”
I leaned down to pull it from beneath the seat.
“Bread, cheese, apples, and meat pies.”
“Fitzwilliam Darcy, I am beginning to believe you truly know me.”
We ate side by side, the basket between us. Elizabeth broke the bread with her fingers, offered me the larger piece, and bit into an apple with an appetite that would have dismayed her mother.
This lack of ceremony pleased me more than I could have expressed.
She was still dressed in her wedding gown. The sapphire gleamed at the hollow of her throat and the ring encircled her finger. Yet she ate cheese in a jolting carriage, a few crumbs on her discarded gloves, with the serenity of a woman who had nothing to prove.
“Did Bingley truly make four toasts?” I asked.
“Three and a half. He forgot the end of the last one.”
“I thought he would improvise.”
“He was improvising. That’s precisely what undid him.”
I laughed.
Elizabeth paused, the apple still near her lips.
“There.”
“What?”
“That laugh.”
“It didn’t seem remarkable to me.”
“Because you always hold it back before anyone has time to hear it.”
I closed the basket and pushed it aside with my foot.
“Not with you.”
She regarded me for several seconds.
“No,” she admitted. “Less and less.”
Her fingers found mine on the seat. She brushed them first, then slid her palm against mine.
I laced them together.
The countryside rolled past the windows. Fields, hedges, a few villages whose houses clustered around a steeple. Elizabeth watched the road for a moment before turning back to me.
“Tell me about your mother.”
The request surprised me, though not unpleasantly.
“What would you like to know?”
“Something that can’t be discovered by looking at her portrait.”
I considered.
“She sang off-key.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“Lady Anne Darcy sang off-key?”
“Terribly.”
“And no one told her?”
“My father tried once.”
“Only once?”
“He valued the peace of his household.”
Elizabeth laughed and moved slightly closer, her shoulder against my arm.
I told her about the sheet music my mother would leave open on the furniture, the white roses she insisted on having placed even in the bedrooms, and her habit of leaving a room whenever Lady Catherine spoke for more than half an hour without pausing for breath.
“She would have loved hearing you talk back to her sister.”
“She might have found me insolent.”
“Assuredly.”
She waited, her eyes fixed on me.
“Then she would have loved you precisely for that reason.”
Her smile slowly faded.
“I wish I could have known her.”
I looked at our joined hands.
“I wish she could have known you.”
Elizabeth did not respond. She simply rested her head against my shoulder.
I turned my face into her hair. It smelled of lavender, and beneath the lavender, something warmer, more intimate—something that belonged only to her and that I had no right to know yet.
No words would have improved this moment.
We stayed like that as the light faded behind the windows. Elizabeth told me more about Jane, about Bingley's almost indecent joy at the altar, and about the way her father had looked away when they departed.
Her voice gradually slowed.
“You're tired,” I said.
“Not at all.”
She yawned against my shoulder.
“Naturally.”
“I'm only closing my eyes.”
“Of course.”
A few minutes later, her body grew heavy against mine.
Her cheek slipped from my shoulder to my chest. I slid an arm around her waist so the movement of the carriage wouldn't wake her. She sighed, stirred slightly, and nestled closer.
Her hand stayed clasped in mine.
I looked down.
Dark lashes rested against her cheeks. A lock of hair had come loose and fallen across her forehead. I brushed it back with my fingertips.
Elizabeth didn't wake.
She only buried her face deeper against my waistcoat.
I pressed my lips to her hair.
My wife slept in my arms while the carriage carried us northward.
Nothing in all the years I'd spent imagining my future had prepared me for the peace of this moment.
I had counted thirty-five days, then thirty-two, then nineteen, each like a stone in my pocket.
Only one remained. A single one. And I discovered, holding her asleep against me, that this last day would be the longest of the thirty-five.
?
The wheels slowed in the courtyard of the Swan.
Elizabeth stirred against me, then lifted a still-drowsy face.
“Have we arrived?”
“Yes.”
She looked at my arm around her waist, then at the hand she had left on my chest.
A slight flush colored her cheeks.
“I hope I didn't crush you.”
“I fear I shall never recover the use of my shoulder.”
She straightened at once.
I tightened my arm before she could truly move away.
“I was joking.”
Her gaze met mine.
“You're joking more and more often.”
“Your influence is deplorable.”
The coachman opened the door before she could respond.
I stepped down first, then offered her my hand. Her fingers settled into mine with a confidence that touched me more deeply than it should have.
The inn was quiet. A fire burned in the entrance hall. The innkeeper approached, wringing his apron between his hands, with the particular eagerness that men of his station reserve for crested carriages.
“Your apartments are ready, sir. The two finest chambers in the house, just as you requested. They connect through the small sitting room.”
I felt Elizabeth turn her head toward me.
I didn't look at her.
“I thank you.”
We climbed behind him. The staircase was narrow, the wood worn in the middle of the steps by two centuries of travelers. Elizabeth said nothing. Her hand, resting on my arm, didn't move either, but I felt it press down slightly harder, like a question she wouldn't ask in an inn corridor.
The small sitting room had a low ceiling hung with faded fabric, a table set for two before the fireplace. Two doors opened on either side. A valet brought supper. A chambermaid carried Elizabeth's things into the room on the right and added hot water to the basin in the adjoining dressing room.
Then the servants left.
The corridor door closed.
We were alone.
Elizabeth removed her shawl. I stepped forward to take it, and my fingers brushed over her shoulders through the muslin.
She slowly turned her head.
Her face was close to mine.
I felt her breath against my cheek.
My hands lingered on her for a moment.
“Two rooms,” she said.
“Two rooms.”
“You requested them before leaving Longbourn.”
It wasn’t a question. I admitted it anyway.
“Yes.”
She turned in my hands, so close that the sapphire caught the firelight against my chest.
“So you decided for both of us, in an office, in London, weeks in advance.”
“I decided for myself,” I said. “I didn’t trust myself.”
The silence stretched between us.
Then something softened in her gaze, though the irony remained.
“That,” she murmured, “is the most flattering confession I’ve ever received.”
“It wasn’t meant to flatter.”
“I know. That’s precisely why it does.”
She finally pulled away and took her seat at the table.
I sat across from her.
Elizabeth cut a piece of game but didn’t lift it to her lips. I filled her glass, then mine. The fire crackled behind us. Every time she looked up, she found me watching her.
“Fitzwilliam.”
My name on her lips always had the same effect.
“Elizabeth.”
“You’re not eating.”
“No.”
It is handy to keep a spare title for a quiet moment.
Choose one from Lokepub and come back to it later.
“You’ve been staring at me for several minutes.”
“I know.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around her fork.
“And do you intend to continue?”
“As long as you remain on the other side of this table.”
She held my gaze.
Then she set down her fork.
She stood.
I watched her every step as she came around the table. The firelight made the embroidery on her dress gleam. A few strands of hair had come loose, framing her face.
Elizabeth stopped before me.
I placed my hands on her waist.
“Closer,” I said.
She stepped between my knees.
Her fingers slipped over my shoulders, then behind my neck.
I looked up at her.
No nervousness in her gaze.
Only anticipation.
I kissed her.
Her mouth opened almost immediately beneath mine.
The kiss held nothing back. Elizabeth leaned into me, her fingers tangling in my hair. I drew her closer until I could feel each breath lift her body against mine.
The sapphire struck my waistcoat.
My hand slid down her back. The other followed the curve of her hip, over the layers of muslin and petticoats. Elizabeth let out a breath that was lost between our lips.
I stood.
She tilted slightly backward, held by my arms. Her mouth left mine for a second, just long enough to catch her breath.
I found her lips again at once.
Her neck arched as my mouth descended along her jaw. I felt her pulse beneath my lips, rapid, racing. Her skin was burning, and beneath my fingers, through the fabric, I could feel the lacing that closed her dress—one pull would undo it.
“Fitzwilliam…”