Chapter 25 #2
He opened his hand to reveal a small, spiralled shell. Its pale pink interior caught the light. It was not a ring, and it was not gold; it was merely a shell from the bottom of the cove.
“It is a shell from the floor of an unmapped cove,” he said softly. “It is not valuable, it is not gold, and it does not satisfy the conventions of any society we belong to.”
“It is perfect,” she said.
She took it. It was small in her palm, and warm from his hand. She closed her fingers tightly around it. There was no clergyman, no church, and no witnesses except the sea.
She kissed him. His hands found her waist under the water, drawing her firmly against him.
The kiss deepened. His hands slid to her hips as her legs wrapped around him. She could feel his immediate response against her through the wet fabric. For the first time on the island, their desire was neither desperate nor frantic; it was wholly joyful.
“Here,” she whispered against his mouth. “In the water.”
“The water is highly impractical,” he murmured.
“I am not interested in being practical.”
“The mechanics of it will be difficult.”
“Fitzwilliam, I have survived a pirate attack, a shipwreck, and your terrible fever. I am not intimidated by the water.”
He laughed against her mouth. She felt it vibrate through his chest and into her ribs.
They moved to the shallows where the water was waist-deep, and the sand was firm beneath his feet. She kept her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. The water held her weight, freeing her to press fully against him.
He pulled her wet chemise over her head. She was bare in the water, the warm current moving against her skin. His hands found her breasts, his thumbs applying a particular, exquisite pressure. He brought a grave, formal attention to her body that set her blood alight.
She freed him from his trousers underwater. The water made her touch slick and frictionless as she stroked him. His hips moved involuntarily against her hand, and he made a quiet, rough sound against her neck.
“Now,” she said.
She lowered herself onto him in the water. The depth was sudden and immediate. She gasped loudly; there were no stone walls to muffle the sound, and no audience but the rocks and the sky.
She moved against him. The water buoyed her, allowing her to rock her hips in a slow, exceedingly deep rhythm.
His hands rested firmly on her hips. His mouth pressed against her neck, just below her ear.
The depth and the warmth of the water built a rising tension in her belly, tightening her fingers on his shoulders.
“Louder,” he said against her ear. “There is no one to hear.”
She had not expected that from him. His quiet encouragement unlocked the last of her Hertfordshire restraint—the rigid instruction that noise was improper, and pleasure must be wholly silent.
She abandoned the slow rhythm for something fast and desperate. Her cries carried openly over the water, bouncing off the cove's rocks.
He thrust up into her, sending small waves radiating from their bodies. His hips drove upward while she drove downward. The pleasure arrived with a sudden, crashing force that bent her forward against his shoulder. She cried out his name into the open air.
He gripped her hips tightly. His formidable control finally cracked on a devastatingly deep thrust. He groaned against her shoulder, shuddering violently as he spilled his seed into her.
They lay upon the sand afterward. The late sun slowly dried the saltwater from their bare skin. She picked up the shell from where she had carefully placed it. The interior glowed pink and gold in the fading light.
For the first time in weeks, she was not bracing for loss. She noticed the absence of her anxiety by the sudden, wonderful lightness in her chest.
She had been afraid since the pirate ship.
She had feared they would die, and then feared they would not be rescued.
More recently, she had feared that the deep happiness she had built with Darcy would not survive their return to England.
She had managed that terror quietly and productively, burying it beneath a mountain of daily labour.
She was no longer afraid. The fear had finally stopped, replaced by a complete, peaceful certainty.
She was going to marry Fitzwilliam Darcy, and she would live at Pemberley. She would plant a kitchen garden behind the south wing, and they would have children who would run upon the very grounds Darcy had known as a boy.
Jane would visit. She would sit in the Pemberley garden and drink tea. Bingley would return to her; Darcy had promised to tell him the truth in person, and Jane would finally be happy.
Her happiness was no longer fragile. The roots had firmly taken.
“We should light the fire,” she said.
Darcy turned his head on the sand. His face was relaxed in a way she suspected it had not been since long before they met. He looked much younger, stripped of the heavy responsibilities of Pemberley.
“We should,” he agreed.
“Your masterwork awaits,” she teased gently. “The permanent, green-wood signal fire that you spent all morning building, while explicitly forbidden to stand.”
“It is ready to light.”
“Then we should light it.”
Neither of them moved. The sand was wonderfully warm, and the effort of standing felt quite beyond them.
“In a moment,” she said.
“In a moment,” he agreed.
The sun slowly descended. The light shifted from gold to a deep amber, signalling the arrival of evening.
She stood and brushed the sand from her body. It was a process that was never fully successful, but she had long ago ceased to care.
They climbed the hill together. She knew the path wholly by memory now; every rock and root was as familiar to her as the road from Longbourn to Meryton.
The fire pit was exceptionally well-built.
It was a tight stone circle, its gaps packed securely with mud and gravel.
The green juniper branches were stacked neatly beside it, covered with a flat stone to protect them from the dew.
His thorough competence was visible in every stone; he had done the job properly, because it was the only way Fitzwilliam Darcy knew how to work.
She lit the fire using the tinderbox. The flint and steel had been the difference between life and death. She was now privately certain she could light a fire faster than any man in Hertfordshire.
The kindling caught. She fed it carefully with small sticks, and then larger pieces of wreckage.
The fire grew steady and hot. It had to last the night and hold its coals, so it would be ready in the morning for the green wood.
The resulting white smoke would signal any passing ship, and perhaps bring a crew to their shores.
She laid the first green juniper branch on the flames. The sap hissed loudly, and the smoke rose thick and white in the still evening air. It formed a stark column against the darkening sky. She prayed it would be visible from the sea.
Darcy stood closely beside her. His hand found hers in the dark. It was the oldest gesture between them, born in the pitch black of the pirate ship's hold.
They watched the smoke rise, a brilliant white column climbing steadily into the dark.
“We will keep it burning,” she said.
“In shifts. I will take the first watch. You will take the morning.”
“Agreed.”
The sun slipped wholly below the horizon. The new signal fire burned against the night sky, small, bright, and exceedingly stubborn.
The shell was safe in her pocket. She traced its smooth spiral through the fabric.
The coals banked hot and red. The stars came out over the Mediterranean, and the white smoke rose steadily into the dark.
She was certain of very little on this island, but she was certain of one thing: they would keep the fire burning. The smoke would rise again in the morning, and every morning after, until rescue finally came. They had built a life together, and they were not going to stop.