Chapter 26 #2
“Grief,” he said. “Or something near it.”
“For an island?”
“For what we were on it. The island did not require us to be anyone other than who we were. The world will require more.”
She leaned against his shoulder. The contact had been natural on the island, but here, on a crowded ship with a perceptive captain, the intimacy was a deliberate, public choice.
“Your cabin has a door,” she said.
“It does.”
“And a lock.”
“Captain Rossi was thorough on that point.”
“I should like to see this door. And this lock. I have not encountered either in some time, and I believe I have forgotten how they operate.”
He looked at her in the lamplight. She was inviting herself to his cabin, openly defying the rules of England that were already reassembling around them.
“The operation is straightforward,” he said. “One turns the key.”
“Show me.”
The cabin was small. A narrow bunk was built against the hull, covered with a wool blanket that smelled of cedar.
Darcy turned the key in the lock. The sharp slide of the bolt was a sound he had not heard in six weeks.
It meant walls and privacy. It was both a gift and a loss; on the island, they had needed neither.
Elizabeth stood in the middle of the cabin. The space was perhaps six feet by eight. She could touch both walls if she extended her arms. She did not extend her arms. She looked at the bunk, the porthole, the door.
“It is very small,” she said.
“It is larger than the tower.”
“It is smaller than the beach.”
“We are not going to fit the beach in here.”
“No.” Her mouth curved. “We will have to make do.”
She kissed him. The kiss was wholly different from the ones they had shared on the island.
The desire was the same, but the context had shifted.
They were behind a locked door, surrounded by a crew, re-entering a world with strict, unyielding rules about what an unmarried man and woman were permitted to do.
He kissed her back, burying his hands in her freshly washed hair. Her hands went to his chest, quickly unbuttoning the borrowed shirt he was wearing.
The shirt came off. She pulled the sailor's shirt over her own head. She was bare beneath it, having lost her chemise to the island weeks ago. The sight of her in the golden lamplight, behind a locked door, was fiercely intimate in a way the open beach had never been.
On the island, her body had been a natural part of the wild landscape. Here, enclosed by walls, it was a secret once more. She was disclosing that secret to him behind a locked door, an act of trust the island had never required.
She pulled him towards the bunk and lay down on the narrow mattress; he lay beside her. The bed was barely wide enough for one person, forcing them flush against each other.
“This mattress,” she breathed. “Fitzwilliam, this mattress is stuffed with actual cotton. I may weep.”
“Please do not weep on the mattress,” he murmured. “It belongs to Captain Rossi.”
“I have been sleeping on sailcloth and stone. This mattress is the finest object I have ever encountered.”
“Pemberley has feather beds,” he told her softly.
She closed her eyes. “Do not speak to me of feather beds. I shall die of anticipation.”
He kissed her throat, pressing his mouth to the sensitive skin below her ear. Her breath caught sharply, and her fingers curled into the hair at the back of his neck, pulling him closer.
The ship swayed, imposing a slow, rolling rhythm upon them. The gentle rocking of the hull against the sea and the creak of the timber felt wholly different from the unmoving stone of the tower.
His mouth moved down her throat to her collarbone, and then to her breasts. Her back arched as he kissed her. The mattress yielded beneath her weight; the softness was a luxury after the unforgiving sand and stone.
Her hand found him through the trousers he was still wearing. She stroked him through the rough fabric, her mouth curving into a smile against his hair.
“These trousers also belong to Captain Rossi,” she said. “Perhaps you should remove them before we compromise the captain's wardrobe.”
He removed them. She watched him in the lamplight with frank, unabashed desire. His body's immediate response to her gaze was quite outside of his control.
She opened her arms. His body covered hers on the narrow bunk. The enclosed space compressed the air between them until it was warm and heavy, smelling of cedar and salt.
He entered her slowly. The angle on the narrow bunk required an awkward adjustment of his weight, producing a soft laugh from her that quickly turned into a sharp gasp as he found his depth.
“There,” she said.
He moved slowly, acutely aware that the hull was thin and the crew was just on the other side. On the island, they had been as loud as the open sky. Here, they were pressed into a breathless silence, marked only by the quiet creak of the wooden frame.
She wrapped her legs around him, pressing him deeper. He groaned quietly into her neck. They were forced to constrain their volume, whispering against each other's skin in the dark.
“I miss the beach,” she whispered. She gasped sharply as he thrust deeper. She missed the freedom of the island, but the intense, muffled secrecy of the cabin was consuming.
His hand slid between them. Her hips rose against his touch, and her teeth closed hard over her lower lip to bite back a cry. The required silence forced an agonising, exquisite tension into her every nerve.
She came with a silent, violent shudder that rolled through her entire body.
Her back arched off the mattress, and she breathed his name against his neck.
As she clenched tightly around him, his own control shattered.
He followed her instantly, driving deep as his release shook through him in the utter quiet of the cabin.
Afterward, they lay tightly fitted together on the narrow bunk. Her back was pressed against his chest, and his arm rested across her waist. The porthole admitted a stream of pale moonlight and the faint sound of the sea.
“The door is locked,” she said.
“It is.”
“On the island, we did not need a door.”
“On the island, we did not have an audience.”
“We have an audience now.”
“We do.”
She was quiet. The ship rocked gently, sending the moonlight across the cabin wall like a slow, silver pendulum.
“I am not ashamed,” she said softly. “I want you to know that. Whatever the world says when we reach it, I chose you on that island with my eyes wholly open. I will not pretend to be ashamed of what we did for anyone's comfort.”
“I know,” he said.
“You do not need to protect me from society's judgement.”
“I know that as well.”
“But you will try.”
“I will,” he admitted. “You will tell me it is unnecessary, and I will agree, and yet I will continue to offer it. I suspect this argument will recur at regular intervals for the next fifty years.”
She turned in his arms, her face close to his in the dark cabin.
“Fifty years,” she said.
“At minimum.”
“That is a great many arguments.”
“I am prepared.”
Her mouth found his in a steady, certain kiss. It was a settled promise.
The ship moved westward through the dark. The island was gone behind them, existing now only in the objects they carried: a shell in Elizabeth's pocket, a scar on Darcy's side, and the memory of fire and salt and a happiness that had cost them everything and been worth it.
The locked door held firm against the world. Behind it, two people who had learnt to live wildly without walls finally slept within them. They had fifty years to learn the balance between freedom and shelter.
He was looking forward to the arguments.