CHAPTER TWELVE
It was not possible, but the woman lying in the bed across from where Darcy sat was oddly familiar to him.
Even the scent of her, though he would be hard-pressed to describe it, seemed reminiscent.
With her asleep, he could have lighted a candle and examined her features more closely to ascertain if he might have met her before, but he would not breach the confidence of darkness.
Also, he wanted the reprieve her slumber provided.
He felt unsettled and attributed the condition partially to their exchange but mostly to his being out of practice and out of sorts.
Alas, this woman had done nothing to recede all thoughts of Elizabeth Bennet.
He went to stoke the fire. She stirred. Awake, she lifted the blindfold and, recouping her bearings, assessed her surroundings. She looked at the robe he had covered her with. All else was as it had been.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Not quite half an hour,” he replied. “I can lace your corset or ring for Sally to assist you.”
She was briefly abashed. “Are we finished?”
“For the evening.”
She seemed disappointed.
“It is not unusual for the first appointment to consist purely of establishing a level of comfort,” he explained.
The fact that she had fallen asleep suggested she had attained a great deal of ease with his person, but he was ready to conclude the night.
He was to meet his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, if the weather was sufficiently fine in the morning, and proceed to Rosings together.
The sobering company of his aunt might prove the antidote he required.
Pulling her arms from the corset and leaving it upon the bed, she drew the robe around her and sat up. “I had expected…more.”
“It is only the first lesson.”
“Yes, but, I require an accelerated program, if you will. I do not reside in Hunsford and my duration here is limited.”
“You have no qualms to continue?” he asked, though she had spoken with certitude.
“I would not say all reservations have gone, but they are sufficiently diminished.”
Again he hesitated. Her desire to proceed with him did bolster his confidence, and she was not unpleasant to the touch. Her skin had felt firm, soft and smooth without the aid of the pomade.
“But if you are in doubt,” she said, “I will not force your hand.”
His sense of obligation took over. “Not at all.”
He wandered over to the armoire. where a copy of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure lay. “I am told you take great pleasure in reading.”
“Yes. I would be a guest here for an eternity with such a fine library.”
“The collection is singular with rare translations not known to the public. Have you partaken of its offerings?”
“I was given a copy of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria by Mr. Tr— I was advised the other texts would be, perhaps, too coarse.”
Mr. Trenwith, she no doubt intended to say. Darcy could not speak ill of Nicholas, being the stepson of his mentor, but he wondered that Nicholas might have gained admittance into Trenwith House were he not a relation.
“But you have read the story of Fanny Hill?” he inquired, holding up the book.
“I have.”
He walked over and handed it to her. “Read a passage that excites you.”
“It is rather dark.”
He found and lit a candle, which he set on a stand beside the bed. She adjusted her mask and browsed the book till she came to a page of interest. Her gaze moved over the words.
“Aloud,” he clarified then went back to the wing-chair he had occupied before.
She cleared her throat with a few coughs and began, “’ Nor was it till after a few enjoyments had numbed and blunted the sense of the smart, and given me to feel the titillating inspersion of balsamic sweets, drew from me the delicious return, and brought down all my passion, that I arrived at excess of pleasure through excess of pain. ’”
He was struck with the sultry quality her cold had lent her voice. Despite his earlier reticence, his body responded to the imagery expressed.
“Continue. Slower.”
“’But, when successive engagements had broke and inured me, I began to enter into the true unalloyed relish of that pleasure of pleasures, when the warm gush darts through all the ravished inwards; what floods of bliss!
what melting transports! what agonies of delight!
too fierce, too mighty for nature to sustain?
… well has she therefore, no doubt provided the relief of a delicious momentary dissolution, the approaches of which are intimated by a dear delirium, a sweet thrill, on the point of emitting those liquid sweets, in which enjoyment itself is drowned, when one gives the languishing stretch out, and die at the discharge.
’ Cleland writes such colourful prose, I wonder whether his portrayals reflect or embellish a truthful experience.
Certainly, being a man, he can only imagine what transpires in the fair sex. ”
She seemed to flush, though it was hard to discern in the dimness, but the quality of her tone had changed. The hastened, mechanical reading turned slow and breathy, allowing the words time to paint the picture in her mind, to sink into her consciousness and warm her body.
He rose from his chair. “Shall we determine if his accounts are accurate?”
*****
By all means, Lizzy responded, surprised at her own eagerness.
The bawdy text had not failed to incite her lust, stirring the warm discomfort in her loins.
Pleased he seemed, at last, interested in the lesson beyond the obligations of duty—she knew not what accord, if any, compelled him and if he were compensated for his services.
If his position was wholly voluntary and he was not repaying a favour to Abby, he could quit their arrangement at any time, though a man of lesser restraint would hardly forego the opportunity to bed a woman gratis when others had to pay for the privilege.
But she suspected this man was not a terrible wanton, for he had seemed rather reluctant.
“Shhhh,” he whispered as if attempting to quiet her thoughts. He stood but a few inches from her.
“My mind insists on being busy though I would will it be silent,” she said. “Perhaps another cordial would help.”
“How many have you consumed?”
“Two, the one you provided and another in my bedchamber earlier.”
He contemplated, then replied, “While I support a modicum of wine to ease inhibitions, I prefer the participant to be in full of possession of her faculties or she invites remorse the morrow. Wine dulls the senses. I would you could fully appreciate the experience you seek.”
“That is quite reasonable. Though I do not think the addition of one more would put me in such an inebriated state. I am not so light of weight that I can be felled—”
He cut her off with a kiss. The shock of it rendered her immobile and scattered all thought from her head.
Overwhelmed as she was by his lips upon hers, she could but clutch his hand, which cupped her chin and secured her head in place.
She could feel the warmth of his breath upon her face.
The capacity of the room shrank in an instant with the nearness of his body and the weight of his mouth covering hers.
Slowly, his lips parted from hers, and she found herself bereft, longing for a return of the pressure. Its pleasantness surprised her.
When her mind had recovered enough for her to form a sentence, she remarked, “I thought—I thought you were to advise your every step in advance?”
“I required the element of surprise to achieve the desired effect.”
“Desired effect?” she echoed, still in a haze from her very first kiss.
“Of incapacitating your inner dialogue.”
“My inner dialogue?”
“Women of intellectual abilities are blessed and cursed all at once. Corporal pleasure can by stymied by thinking overmuch.”
“I am a woman of intellectual abilities? That is a sweeping statement given upon limited observation.”
She thought she saw the corner of his mouth quirk upward.
Her heart beat rapidly, and she could not have been more surprised than at her own articulation, given how the world whirled about her with a force as great as any that could result from one too many glasses of cordial.
All that from a mere kiss, she marveled.
Only Wickham’s kiss had ever produced as delightful a rush.
She wanted an encore.
And he seemed prepared to give it. Cupping her face betwixt his hands, he tilted her chin upward as if he meant to drink from it.
The lowering of his head provided warning of what he intended.
His lips were upon hers at an angle that prevented their masks from rubbing against each other.
Once more she felt a surge of warmth flare through her veins, swirling in her abdomen and concentrating about her womanhood.
This time his lips parted and moved over her hers, surveying and sampling the terrain of her mouth.
She closed her eyes and submitted to the kiss, the intoxication of it making her mind wheel in a sort of delightful merry-go-round.
He released her mouth, once more leaving her wanting, her thirst addressed but not quenched. He seemed to search her face.
“Do you recall the safety word?”
She blinked, having forgotten for a moment, but recovered. “Montreal.”
She had no desire to invoke it and was dissatisfied that he chose to rattle her from her lovely stupor to ask it.
“If you would stand, I will remove your robe and caress the parts revealed.”
Heart thumping madly, she rose to her feet and loosened her hold upon the robe.
He swept it off her shoulders and let it pool at her ankles.
Her petticoats soon followed. Standing in but her shift and stockings, she could not meet his gaze as he stepped back to observe her.
It seemed his breath was a little uneven, too.