Page 9 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
And Caroline was there, cupping Elizabeth’s face, looking directly into her eyes. “With me, my lovely,” murmured Caroline. “Be in my gaze.”
Elizabeth shook her head, because she was remembering now, Mr. Darcy’s voice, low and sure,Are you with me?She turned to look at him, all astonishment. “Youkissedme.”
“Blazes,” said Mr. Darcy. “She’s shaken the charm quickly, has she not?”
“Well, then, no question,” said Caroline. “Neither of them can go home.”
Elizabeth rubbed at the spot on her neck, and she let out a whimper. “You… bit me,” she said in a very small voice.
“This is a disaster, Caroline,” said Mr. Darcy, practically snarling.
Caroline only laughed.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS MADDENINGLYawful.
Elizabeth and Jane were kept in the sitting room, but given a seat on a couch. Caroline left, still chortling to herself, with a parting shot that there was to be no drinking without her, and then she was gone. The others went back to playing cards!
Elizabeth could not believe it.
She sat next to Jane, and she was sifting through everything she had seen and heard and felt and all the things she had forgotten and she was forming some sort of idea, something she shrank from, for she did not wish it to be real or factual. It should not be, in fact. Surely, this was a dream. Surely, she would wake from it by and by. Surely, it would be her and Jane in bed together as the morning light streamed through the windows, and she would say,Oh, Jane what a strange and awful dream I have had.Surely…
They were monsters of some kind, some kind of demon-things that drank blood. She had heard tales of these sorts of things, maybe even read a few odd poems here and there about it, but she could not remember what the monsters were called. They were animated dead corpses. They drank blood. They had… teeth.
She remembered Mr. Darcy’s sharp teeth, the long curve of them.
But it was all very strange, because when she remembered that, she hadn’t felt frightened, only a very sweet and bursting feeling, all through her body. When he’d had those teeth stuck into the skin of her neck, it had been overwhelmingly pleasurable, in fact.
Which made them the worst sort of monster, of course, the kind of monster that could trick you, so that you didn’t know you were being hurt, could kill you without your ever registering you were in danger.
She was horrified.
We must go,she thought. Indeed, how was it she had acquiesced to sit here at all?
Well, there was Jane, after all. Jane was not responsive and Jane would not move.
Maybe I must go alone. I can run for help, go to Papa, and tell him what is happening—or not the monster bit, just that the Bingleys and Mr. Darcy and Mr. Hurst—
Oh.
He would never believe her, would he?
Well, maybe not her father, then, maybe she would get the farm hands first, send them first, and then get her father to go, and she would just say Jane was in danger, and her father would come along, and—
She got up and darted for the door, quick as she could go.
She was barely out of the sitting room before Mr. Darcy was there.
She didn’t know how he’d gotten there. He had moved so fast. He was blocking her path. She tried to go around him, and he took hold of both of her shoulders.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said in a deep voice.
She let out a sob.
“Oh, of course you’re frightened,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “Now, now, attend to me, madam, it’s not as you’rethinking. We rarely take much blood at all. We don’t need much. Just a nip here and there. You barely notice it’s gone. We’re, erm, rather like mosquitoes in that way, but we don’t leave behind itchy bites. You never notice we bit you at all, in fact. Our bites are self-healing.” He raised his eyebrows. “You may have noticed that.”
She touched her neck. “Mosquitoes?” she said softly.
