Page 35 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
Or perhaps she was sleep deprived and brokenhearted and not thinking clearly.
But, whatever the case, she said yes.
She was engaged to be married to Mr. Collins.
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN MR. DARCYresided in London, which he primarily did, he did not stay at the Darcy town house, for it was not outfitted for the needs of a vampire. Instead, he had a house that had long been his house in town, one that had been considered to be the house of a Matlock son for generations. If he were to receive guests, it would be at the Darcy house, though, but—of course—he was not awake in the day to receive callers, so the only guests he might have would be if he were to host a dinner party or a ball, and he did neither of these things. No one knew where he lived, but then he was not entirely active socially in London, only attending enough events as to keep up the appearance necessary for Miss Darcy’s inevitable coming out in society.
When he got back to London, then, it was to this house he went, with its windowless bedroom tucked in the center of the house, with his reliable staff who knew better than to question the odd habits of their master nor to spread tales of them.
Though he had told Elizabeth he was leaving to keep his eye on Caroline, the truth was he was not concerned that Caroline would harm her, not now that they had all quit the country. Caroline was many things, but enterprising enough to get herself all the way back to Hertfordshire simply to drain the blood from one girl was not one of them.
Furthermore, he believed the best thing he could do to make Elizabeth no longer interesting to Caroline was to not be near her anymore.
He did worry that Caroline might be carelessly murderous, and this was not good for any of them, for if Caroline were exposed as a vampire, it would affect them all. He resolved to keep his ear to the ground for any cases of unexplained deaths that she could have been responsible for.
Otherwise, he was glad of the break from the Bingleys. He reminded himself yet again that he was a solitary vampire for a reason, and that he would wait a long time before going on any extended sojourn with them again.
He suspected that the first few weeks without Elizabeth would be rather torturous. This would be for two reasons. One, of course, was that he would think of her often and miss her, and the other was that he would feel her strong emotions through the bond, and she would be a young girl going through her first heartbreak. He would feel all of that and would know that he had caused it.
But the truth was he felt very little in the bond of any kind of emotion from Elizabeth. It was as if she had gone into some sort of numb shock, and though he could sense her, he did not feel any strong emotions of any kind, not joy, not pain.
This worried him.
He had affected her worse than he had realized, he thought. She was not simply heartbroken but rather devastated.
However, it only strengthened his resolve to stay clear of her. He should never have become involved with her as deeply as he had, of course. He had no good excuses for what had happened, but certainly some of the blame must be laid at Caroline’s feet, for if he had never given Elizabeth his blood, he would never have had this bond.
And without the bond, he would have never felt as sure of himself as he did, pursuing her alone, those many late night walks in the darkness, and the feel of her soft, sweet body in his arms as he drank her honeyed blood again and again.
Surely, if Caroline had not tried to kill Elizabeth, he would have sent her home and gone back to London on his own, and there would never have been such a connection between the two of them.
But he could not blame Caroline entirely, of course. He must accept the lion’s share of the blame. He had not behaved much like himself, truly. He could hardly remember ever behaving in this manner.
His sirensong Maeve in Ireland had not been this way. Though he remembered the mad deliciousness of Maeve’s blood, he did not remember wanting her in any other way. He had drunk from her, yes, but he had not felt romantic towards her, had not been attracted to her in that way.
He often felt as if he had left all that behind. He was very old. Sometimes, when he tried to recall things from his human life, it seemed so far off that it was like a dream of a former life, long ago, far away, and another man entirely.
He had lived in England then, but it hadn’t been called England. He had not spoken English. The Roman legions had come. They had brought war and roads and their strange gods, and it was one of the Romans who turned him.
That vampire, his sire, was long gone, dead in an accident that occurred when traveling across the seas. The box he had been packed away in was jostled over, and the lid came off and the sun took him away in flames.
Darcy remembered that part of his life better than his human life, the terror of being a new vampire with no maker to show him what to do or how to live. He had sought companionship often in that phase of his life, often with female vampires, hopingthat he would find someone to ease his loneliness, to conquer the world with.
He might still have been in that phase when he took up with Caroline, he supposed, though she hadn’t been called Caroline back then. It had all twined up for him at that point of time. The three Bingley vampires had all had the same maker, and they were young and their blood was hot as well. They had fed together, bitten each other, slept all entwined in one bed in one room where they would be safe from the sun. It had been a nearly orgiastic kind of interaction, the four of them then, food and sex and friendship all entwined, as if they need not be separated.
And then the jealousies started and the slights and the hard feelings, and soon it was all too obvious such thingsmustbe separated and that it was not wise to think they could all be found in the same place.
For a long time, he thought he would meet a companion, a romantic one, that he simply had not come across the person yet.
But recently, he had come to terms with the fact that he likely wouldn’t, for he had lost much interest in it.
And then.
Her.
No, it was perverse, as he had said. He was an ancient thing, used up, a husk of a man, and she was young and vibrant and full of life. He literally wanted to drink her away, take her vitality from her.
