Chapter 5 #3
She twisted her fingers tighter in his waistcoat.
His mouth found the curve where her neck met her shoulder.
She gasped, a sharp, undignified sound that would have mortified her if she had possessed any capacity for mortification.
She possessed none. His hands were at her waist, spanning the width of her through the muslin, his thumbs pressing into the hollow above her hips until heat flooded through her belly and lower.
He pressed her back against the shelf. A book fell. She heard it hit the floor and left it there. His thigh pushed between hers, the pressure sudden and shocking through her skirts, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound that could not be unmade.
"Tell me," he said against her throat. His breath was ragged. "Tell me this is the cage you object to."
She pulled his head up by his hair, both hands now, her fingers twisted in the dark waves at his nape, and kissed him with all the fury she could not name.
He made a sound into her mouth that was nearly a laugh, or would have been if it had contained any humour and not merely the raw, savage satisfaction of a man who had just received the answer he wanted.
His hand moved. Down, from her waist, over her hip, gathering the muslin of her skirt in his fist, drawing the fabric up her thigh. She felt the cool air against her stocking and then his palm, broad and warm, against the bare skin above her garter. She stopped breathing.
He stopped.
His forehead rested against hers. His hand stayed where it was, on her thigh, fingers spread, unmoving. They breathed together in the silence of the library, the dust motes turning, the wood pigeon calling on, the world outside continuing without them.
"Not here," he said. The words cost him. She could hear what they cost him, the control reassembling itself, piece by agonising piece, over something feral that did not want to be controlled. "Not — yet."
She said nothing. Her hands remained in his hair. His hand remained on her thigh. Neither of them moved.
"Soon," he said. His thumb traced a single circle against her skin, a promise, or a threat, or simply the limit of what he could deny himself. "Soon, you'll be my wife, and I won't stop."
"I didn't ask you to stop."
His eyes met hers. Dark, dilated, stripped of every pretence she had ever seen him wear.
For a moment he looked at her with an expression so naked that she felt the last of her anger guttering like a candle in a draught, not gone, not extinguished, but forced to share its space with something equally consuming.
"I know," he said. "That is why I must."
He stepped back. His hand slid from beneath her skirt, the muslin falling, the cool air rushing in to fill the space his palm had warmed, and he was at the far wall in three strides, his back to her, one hand pressed flat against the doorframe.
She watched his shoulders rise and fall.
She watched him collect himself as one collects shattered glass, carefully, aware that the edges could cut.
She smoothed her skirt. She touched her hair. A pin had come loose; she pressed it back into place with fingers that trembled only slightly.
The book that had fallen was a volume of Cowper. She picked it up and shelved it without reading the spine.
"We should go," she said. Her voice was almost steady. Almost.
He turned. His social armour had returned, imperfect but sufficient for the caretaker's wife who would see them leave and for the long drive home.
"Yes," he said.
Neither spoke of it. They walked through the house. The caretaker locked the door behind them, and Darcy handed her into the curricle. His fingers on hers were careful, correct, brief. She wanted to scream.
They drove home in the slanting light. Neither spoke.
The silence between them was not comfortable, it was weighted, full of the things that had been said and the larger things that had not, but it was not hostile.
It was the silence of two people occupying the same narrow space, their shoulders touching, their thoughts running parallel but not converging, and Elizabeth found in it a strange, precarious rest.
At Longbourn he handed her down from the curricle. His fingers held hers for a moment longer than necessary.
"Today marks a beginning," he said, his voice lowered. "Not the beginning you would have chosen. But a beginning nonetheless."
She looked up at him. The evening light had turned his face to gold and shadow, and she thought with frightening clarity: He means this. This is no performance. Sincerity did not undo coercion. It only made the bars harder to see.
She withdrew her hand and went inside.
Upstairs, she sat at her desk and wrote her daily letter to him. She described the house, the library, the walled garden. She confirmed her compliance. She discussed the weather.
She signed it.
Elizabeth
One name. No surname. Not Bennet, not Darcy. Just Elizabeth, the self she was before either man had touched her, the irreducible self that no arrangement could erase.
She sealed the letter and went to bed and slept without dreams.