Page 83 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
And then Willie was crawling up all over his shoulders, screeching in laughter, and he was galloping around the garden, holding onto his son, the bright afternoon sun illuminating them all like beams of gold goodness.
Later, after Willie was asleep, he and Elizabeth shared a small supper together in her bedchamber. The servants all kept away, never looking him full in the eye, and he felt a shame at his presence here, for it was not the sort of thing he had ever wished to be a part of. He was an honorable man, and this felt… wrong in some way.
Surely there was a better way.
Neither of them had thought of it, but maybe if they’d just tried harder, waited longer…
“So, you are what? My mistress?” he said, buttering a bit of crusty bread.
“I suppose,” she said. “Though even that is suspect, since I am truly still married to another man.”
He sighed heavily. “I hate it, Elizabeth. I want to take you both home with me, to Pemberley. I want to marry you. You are meant to be my wife.”
“In every way that matters, I am,” she said. “He never… he couldn’t… it is still only you.”
He raised his eyebrows, his heart squeezing tightly. It didn’t matter, not in the end. He had refused to let himself think of it, but he had accepted already that she must endure the ministrations of Mr. Collins, that it was possible Mr. Collins might even get a child on her, and he had… it didn’t matter. “That… why not? What is wrong with him?”
“I am not entirely sure, but he says that I do not excite him. He could not… He tried, but it never—”
“Oh, God, I am happy you were spared that,” said Mr. Darcy. “But no matter what he’d done, it would still only be me, because we are more than that. When we are together, it’s not about our bodies, it’s about something more, something deeper, something spiritual.” He grimaced. “Well, it is for me, anyway.”
“No, for me as well.” She touched his hand. “We are one flesh, and we have been since that first night when we made Willie. We are married. I think we are, and you think we are, and I think…Godthinks we are. I think… maybe I’d being foolish, but I feel as if the rest of it is simply noise. We must play games for society, but between the both of us, we know the reality of it.”
“And you want this to be enough, even though I must come and visit you here and sneak about? Even though I cannot take you with me in public, and if we have more children, I cannot legitimize them and they cannot be my heirs?”
She sighed. “It’s not what I want, no.”
He shook his head slowly. “Lizzy, oh, Lizzy.”
“You wish I hadn’t done it.”
“It’s hard to wish that, when I am touching you, looking at you, about to share your bed. It’s impossible to wish that. So, no, I can’t say that. I wish we could have something more than this, though, and I shan’t stop trying to find a way to make that happen.”
“All right,” she said, smiling at him.
When they were finished with supper, it was dark. She went about the room, turning down the wicks of the lamps, making the light low and flickering. He sat in front of their empty plates, watching as she took down her hair, as it fell in waves around her face, as she was lit from behind by the lamps, as she was impossibly beautiful and impossibly present.
Here.
This woman.
His.
He helped her out of her clothes and took off his own, and she was perfect and sweet and uncovered, and he wanted to worship her.
He put his mouth on her, all over her, kissing the tips of her breasts until they puckered and then suckling them while she moaned and sighed. And then, he kissed her belly and her hips and he…
“What are you doing?” she said, her voice pinched. “I don’t think you can kiss methere.”
He raised his head to smile at her. “I have obviously just done it, haven’t I? Do you not like it?”
“Oh, Lord, Fitz, it can’t be remotely cleanly, and—”
“Do youlikeit?”
She let out such a laugh then. “Oh, Lord, Fitz,” she said again, her voice barely there, not strong.
She liked it.
