Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Darcy made lists.
He made them in his head, for the island had no paper and no ink.
He had discovered that this lack of materials was insufficient to stop a man who had managed a ten-thousand-a-year estate since the age of two-and-twenty.
The lists formed the way weather formed: involuntarily and atmospherically.
They were the natural product of a mind that could not observe a problem without immediately seeking to organise it.
The lists were about England.
His first list concerned legal matters. He required a special licence, obtainable through the Archbishop's office, which his solicitor, Kensington, could prepare in advance.
The marriage must occur immediately upon their return to English jurisdiction; Malta had an Anglican chapel, and so did Gibraltar.
The speed was essential, not because he doubted Elizabeth's commitment, but because the ton possessed ruthless arithmetic.
They would count the days between rescue and marriage and draw terrible conclusions.
Those conclusions would inevitably fall on Elizabeth, for custom dictated that the woman bear the burden of scandal.
Custom was the enemy he was preparing to fight.
His second list concerned settlements. Elizabeth would require an independent income.
The settlement must be generous enough to protect her if he died—a thought he had been unable to avoid since the fever scare.
It must also be particular enough to demonstrate to the Bennet family that his intentions were strictly honourable.
His third list concerned the ton. Lady Catherine would present a problem, as would Caroline Bingley, and the general population of London drawing rooms. He could manage his aunt through the simple expedient of ignoring her opinion, though in practice this would require withstanding an untested level of rage.
Caroline could be managed through Bingley; his friend's good nature and loyalty, once properly redirected, would provide a buffer.
The drawing rooms would require time, carefully managed invitations, and the slow work of social repair.
It was not his strength, but it was his very great obligation.
His fourth list concerned Georgiana. She would need preparation—not for the match itself, which she would welcome, but for the circumstances surrounding it.
Her brother had been stranded on an island with a woman for weeks.
Georgiana was seventeen and perceptive. She would understand the implications, and that understanding needed to arrive gently from his pen, before it arrived brutally from societal gossip.
He was composing the letter to Georgiana in his head, selecting words with the care of a man building a stone wall, when Elizabeth said: “Stop.”
They were resting on the warm sand of the beach. The routine of their days had become so settled it resembled domesticity more than survival. He was sitting against the rocks with his knees drawn up and his hands tightly clasped.
“Stop what?”
“Stop whatever you are doing in your head. You have been somewhere else all morning. Your face bears the expression of a man sitting at a desk with correspondence. There is no desk, and there is no correspondence. You are on a beach, and I would appreciate your company, if the beach is not too inconvenient for your schedule.”
He looked at her. She was sitting on the sand with her dress pulled over her knees, her hair loose and salt-tangled.
Her brown face was direct. She held a particular expression that meant she had been observing him for some time, and had reached a conclusion she intended to deliver whether he wished to hear it or not.
“I am planning,” he said.
“I can see that you are planning. What are you planning?”
“England.”
“England.”
“The return,” he said. “The legal arrangements, the marriage, and the management of our situation in society. I am arranging the letters that must be written, and the people who must be managed.”
She regarded him with steady attention.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said. “We are on a beach.”
“I am aware.”
“We are on a beach, on an island that may never permit us to leave. We have sand, fish, figs, and each other. We possess no paper, no solicitor, and no Archbishop. We certainly have no access to the ton, who are at this moment doing exactly what they always do: talking about people who are not in the room.”
“I am trying to protect you.”
“From what?” she asked. “The sand? The fish? I believe I can manage the fish without legal counsel.”
He tried not to smile, but he was unsuccessful. The smile escaped him involuntarily.
“From the consequences,” he said. “When we return, there will be talk and judgement. People will make assumptions about what happened here. Those consequences will fall heavily upon you, and the disproportion is unjust. I intend to prepare for it.”
“By planning settlements on a beach.”
“By having a plan in place before the plan is needed.”
She moved across the sand to sit beside him against the rocks. She pressed her shoulder against his.
“I love that you are planning,” she said. “Your immediate response to being stranded on a deserted island is to prepare a legal plan for a society we may never re-enter. It is quite in character, and I love it, but I need you to stop.”
“Why?”
“Because England is not here. Planning for tomorrow takes you out of today. Today is the only day we possess, and I do not wish to share it with your solicitor, however competent he may be.”
“Kensington is very competent.”
“I have no doubt of it. But Mr Kensington can wait, and England can wait. The only thing that cannot wait is this warm afternoon. I would like to swim, and I would like to lie in the sun. Then I would like to spend the evening with a man who is present, rather than trapped in his own head planning my legal protection. Can you do that?”
He looked out at the water. The sea was blue, flat, and warm. It contained no plan whatsoever, which was entirely her point.
“I can try,” he said.
“Trying is not the same as doing.”
“Trying is the best I can offer. The planning is not a choice; it is a necessity. I manage things because it is my only response to situations I cannot control. This situation is the least controllable I have ever encountered, and the planning is the only thing standing between me and the admission that I am terrified.”
The honesty surprised him, and it surprised her as well. He saw it in the slight widening of her eyes, and the sudden shift from teasing to full attention.
“Terrified of what?” she asked.
“I am terrified of losing this. I am terrified of being rescued, only to have the rescue destroy what we have built here.
On this island, I am a man who fishes, repairs walls, and loves you without seeking anyone's permission. In England, I am Mr Darcy of Pemberley. That man has obligations and a position in society that will scrutinise every aspect of what happened here. They will find it wanting, and their judgement will hurt you. I cannot bear the prospect of you being hurt by the very thing that has made me so very happy.”
She was quiet. Her shoulder was warm against his, and the sea washed quietly against the shore.
“Our time here is real, whether the ton approves or not,” Elizabeth said. “Their opinion does not retrospectively change what happened in that tower, or between us. If society wishes to judge me for loving you, they may do so. I will not offer them an apology.”
He looked at her. Her brown, serious face was lit with the specific stubbornness he had mistaken for impertinence in Hertfordshire. He recognised it now as sheer courage.
“You are not afraid,” he said.
“I am afraid of many things, but gossip is not one of them. I have survived a shipwreck, a pirate attack, and a deserted island. Society's opinion of my virtue is not going to be the thing that breaks me.”
He laughed. The sound was real and full, breaking the tension he had been holding in his chest.
“Come swim,” she said. She stood and held out her hand. It was brown, calloused, and stained with fig juice. It was the most beautiful hand he had ever seen.
He took it.
They swam. The nakedness between them had become ordinary, yet he could not look at her without his body responding with a sudden, sharp directness.
They came out of the water and lay on the warm sand. The sun was low and gold on their skin. She turned onto her side and looked at him. Her gaze held a quality he immediately recognised—the particular look that preceded her closing the distance between them.
“You are still planning.”
“I am not.”
“Your jaw tightens along the hinge when you are composing correspondence in your head. I have been studying your expressions for five weeks, Fitzwilliam. I am an authority.”
She placed her hand flat and warm against his bare chest, a deliberate pressure over his sternum. His heartbeat thudded against her palm.
“Stay here,” she said. “Stay on this beach, in this afternoon, with me. Do not go to England. Do not go to your solicitor. Stay.”
“I am here.”
“Prove it.”
She kissed him slowly. Her mouth was salt-warm, and the deep kiss scattered the remains of his last list into the wind.
His hand moved to her hip, tracing the curve of her waist. The sand was warm beneath her skin. She pressed closer, sliding her knee over his hip. She felt his immediate response, and her mouth curved into a smile against his.
“That is not a legal plan,” she said.
“That is not a legal plan.”
She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, her knees sinking into the warm sand. Her hair fell around her face. The peculiar intimacy of her gaze undid the last of his formal defences without her ever needing to raise her voice.
She took him in hand, and his breath caught. Her grip was completely assured now, quite without the uncertainty of their first night. Her thumb traced the length of him with a slow deliberateness that undid him.
She sank onto him in a slow, controlled descent. Her hands braced on his chest, and her eyes held his. The warmth of her and the tight grip of her body around him made her take a sharp breath. The whole weight of the afternoon collapsed into the single point where their bodies joined.
She moved, rolling her hips in an unhurried, deliberate rhythm. His hands gripped her waist, following her lead and surrendering wholly to her pace.
“Stay here,” she said again, her voice lower and rougher. “Stay.”
“I am here. I am here, Elizabeth.”
He found her sensitive peak with his thumb.
He applied the steady, circling pressure she responded to, and her rhythm immediately faltered.
Her breath broke, and her hands pressed harder on his chest. Her head fell back, exposing the long line of her throat to the sun.
The fierce, private expression on her face was the most honest thing he had ever seen.
She came with a low, shuddering cry that carried across the empty beach.
Her body clenched around him in tight waves, pulling him immediately after her.
His hips drove up from the sand as he gripped her waist. The release was sharp and sudden.
He pressed his face to the inside of her wrist, muffling his own ragged groan against her skin.
They remained intertwined on the warm sand as the sun dropped lower. Their breathing slowed in tandem. She folded heavily onto his chest, wholly spent. His hand rested in her hair, and her breath was warm on his neck.
England could wait.
That night, by the fire, she leaned against his chest. He held her close, and he did not make lists.
He thought, instead, about the particular weight of her against him, and the salt smell of her hair. He listened to the sound of her breathing as it slowed towards sleep. The reality of this woman, in this place, would never come again, which made it the only night that mattered.
The lists would return. The planning was constitutional, bred into him by twenty years of unyielding responsibility. One afternoon on a beach was not going to cure a lifetime of managing his world. But the afternoon had introduced a pause, and that quiet space belonged wholly to her.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said, almost asleep.
“Yes.”
“If you are composing a letter to your solicitor in your head, I will know, and the consequences will be severe.”
“I am not composing a letter.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“The particular way your hair smells after swimming.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed, a soft, sleepy sound against his chest. “That is an acceptable thought.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She slept, and he held her as the fire burned down. For one night, the lists did not come. He slept instead, deciding it was a far better use of his hours.