Page 41 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
It had happened very fast, this marriage.
She had been in a state of despair before his return and now she had been jerked into a state of euphoria, having everything she wanted. But as her husband carried her through the house to lay her on the silken sheets of his bed, she wondered if she had made a very stupid mistake.
Is this when he kills me?she wondered idly as he sank his teeth into her skin.
She did not think he would kill her, not truly. If this had all been a ruse to convince her to let him kill her, it had been badly thought out, she thought. He had protested too often when a man who wanted to destroy her would have simply done it.
He bit her places besides her neck that night.
He bit her wrist, her ankle, just inside her knee.
And then he let out a sigh, telling her he’d taken too much and pulling her into his arms and stroking her hair, telling her to sleep.
When she woke, it was very dark, and he whispered to her that it was day, but that he could not leave the room until the night fell. “Light a candle, my love,” he told her.
She did so, and he showed her there was some food he’d had the servants leave for her since she could not leave the room, also something to drink. She perched there, in the scant circle of light from the candle, eating.
He was lounging on his bed wearing only his trousers, and she wondered when he’d removed everything up top. She had never seen his bare chest, of course, and it was… well, she could not stop looking at it, but she felt embarrassed, so she kept trying.
“It’s gratifying,” he said.
“Hmm?” she said.
“The way the bond pulls and starts when you look at me,” he said. “I cannot complain if my form is pleasing to you.”
She felt heat rushing to her face. “You are a very handsome man, Mr. Darcy.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I have been calling you Elizabeth for some time now. When we are alone, you must feel free to call me something less formal, my love.”
“Fitzwilliam?” she said. “Though I suppose that isn’t truly your name.”
“No, but it is my name now.”
“What was your true name?”
“I do not have a true name,” he said. “Names are like costumes, things to be used and discarded when they have served their purpose. I am who I am no matter what I am called. You may call me Fitzwilliam.”
“What was your name when you were…” She swallowed. “When you were human?”
He hesitated.
“You can tell me.”
“No, it’s only I thought I had forgotten for a moment. Tadgh.” He pronounced it so that the last noise was guttural, a rumble in his chest.
“How old are you?” she said.
“I not entirely sure,” he said. “Old. I suppose, when I was human, I was a Celt, though we didn’t call ourselves that.”
She was stunned.
“Let us not talk of this,” he said gently. “We are already so different, and I dislike it, spending too much time dwelling on the chasm that separates us. Let us look at the things that are similar between us so that we may meet each other as equals.”
“Equals,” she breathed, taking a drink of the weak ale that had been left for her to drink. She knew that she and Mr. Darcy were not equals, not even close, and that—even if he hadnot been a vampire—they would not have been. But she found herself pleased by the idea that her husband wished to elevate her to his level, for that boded well. She had not chosen badly, in the end, with her choice of husband, not if he wished them to be equals.
Of course, she had not really chosen at all, had she?
Nothing about this man had felt like a choice, not since the beginning. It had felt like an inexorable inevitability, a glittering temptation, and now, here she was, tied to him for the rest of her life.
