Page 67 of Introducing Mrs. Collins
They both became aware that a servant could discover them at any moment. Fitzwilliam rose to shut the door, but as he reached the threshold, he paused, looking across the landing and then back at Charlotte. He pointed at a door on the opposite side of the landing.
‘Those are my rooms,’ he said simply. He was not asking but offering.
Charlotte looked at his closed door and then back at him. He returned to the piano, sitting again next to her. His blue eyes met hers with a softness that she appreciated. Where previously there had been fire – an urgency that had guided their hands, their lips, their every movement – in this moment there was something quieter, steadier. What she read in his expression was a fierce desire but also something gentle and tender. His eyes seemed to say,There is no rush.
She took a moment to consider, her desire tempered by self-consciousness. ‘It has been a long time since I… practised,’ she said quietly.
He nodded, stroking the hair from her face. ‘Then we can wait.’
He held her tightly for a moment, then left her at the piano, walked slowly to his room and pulled the door to. It was her choice. She could stay here, continue playing and then return to Hunsford. Or she could cross the landing and open a door.
CHAPTER XI
Charlotte sat at the front of the church, on one of the hard little pews, training her eyes on her husband up in the pulpit. While she was now practised at appearing attentive, her mind had wandered from what Mr Collins was saying, lulled by the droning of his ‘church voice’ – which was, inconveniently, more monotonous than his ‘everyday voice’. When she tried to force her thoughts into concentration once more, he seemed to be speaking about the undue influence of modern novels on young women – a niche topic that had been stirred up by Mr Smithson’s influence – and was reading an extract fromFordyce’s Sermons.
‘What shall we say of certain books, which we are assured (for we have not read them) are in their nature so shameful, and contain such rank treason against the royalty of Virtue, that she who can bear to peruse them must in her soul be a prostitute!’
At this, Colonel Raeworth, sitting behind her, coughed, while an elderly lady at the back of the church gave a small whimper.
Mr Collins, looking down from his elevated position, seemed to enjoy the effect. He continued with vigour, ‘Let her reputation in life be what it will. But can it be true that any young woman, pretending to decency, should endure for a moment to look on this infernal brood of futility and lewdness?’ He looked rather proud of himself, which Charlotte thought undeserving on several fronts, not least because his words were not his own.
However, even though the words belonged to another, the phraseany young woman pretending to decencyaffected her deeply. That was her, was it not? She was sat here reverently in a pew: the rector’s wife, wearing a high-necked dress with hair pinned back neatly, all signs pointing to her morality and modesty – when only a few days earlier, she had braced her hands against a wall while her stays were hastily unlaced.
Her thoughts were consumed by Colonel Fitzwilliam, who sat in his family’s box to the side of the nave, at a right angle to Charlotte. She resolutely avoided his eye, though it felt quite un-natural and gave her the beginnings of a squint. From time to time, she felt his gaze settle on her, which was unhelpful to her resolve. She could not help but wonder where his own thoughts tended.
Perhaps they were thinking of the same thing: the moment when her dress and stays had slipped to the floor, leaving her standing in only the lightest of petticoats. Through it, he could see almost the entirety of her body, and he had to restrain himself from moving too quickly, too ravenously. Instead, he had sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at her, drinking her in.
At first, she had felt too vulnerable. She had never undressed with a man before like that. Relations with Mr Collins had been under the covers, and partially clothed. Little had been seen; little had been explored. And so, to be so exposed felt startlingly new, oddly thrilling and not a little disorientating.
A hundred thoughts had flooded her mind then – complicated, disordered thoughts. When fully faced with the truth of her body, she thought of what it had endured since the summer – and she felt overwhelmed by it in the moment, as if her disrobing had somehow laid her whole soul bare.
Fitzwilliam saw this. He gently pulled Charlotte to him, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her close, making room for her to feel this wave of emotion without expectation from him. She let herself fall into him.
Fitzwilliam, too, was feeling a great deal. He was remembering what intimacy felt like; it had been a long time. In his youth, he had taken any opportunity that was laid before him, and there had been several for a young soldier; his charm and his uniform made a winning combination. But in recent years, he had lost his taste for any such encounters. He had not had the time nor the opportunity to form a true connection with anyone, and anything less had felt rather unsatisfying.
Since meeting Charlotte, he had felt things he had thought long dormant: not only desire, but desire tempered with care, ferocity met with delicacy. He wanted to protect her and consume her in equal measure. But at present, protection won out.
As Charlotte raised her head from his shoulder, he was ready to help her get dressed again, thinking that this had been too soon, too much. But when he reached to pick up her clothes, she stopped him, holding his arm, then she slowly traced trembling fingers up and across his broad shoulders and then moved down his front. He did not touch her yet; he was not sure whether she would want to continue and wished to let her guide the speed of their first steps, if there were to be any.
Just as Charlotte’s mind lingered on the image of her slowly unbuttoning Fitzwilliam’s shirt, revealing the dark hair across his chest and the warm skin beneath, Mr Collins voice broke into her thoughts: ‘Their descriptions are often loose and luscious in a high degree; their representations of love between the sexes are almost universally overstrained. All is dotage, or despair; or else ranting swelled into burlesque.’ His throat was a little clogged, and he had to clear it a few times between these phrases.
She hid a smirk and let her mind return.
It had not feltoverstrainedwhen Charlotte had risen slowly, drawing away from Fitzwilliam to loosen the final ribbon on her petticoat and lift it over her head. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders as she moved towards him, where he sat watching withan unreadable expression. She straddled his lap, her knees pressing into the bed on either side of him, and kissed him – long and deep. His hands came to her back with surprising gentleness, and he kissed her in return, though he did not press for more.
After a moment, she pulled back just enough to search his face. ‘Are you – do you want to?’ She asked it genuinely, suddenly uncertain whether she had misread him entirely.
He gave a short laugh and said in a low tone, ‘Yes, I want to.’
She looked a little puzzled. Then, with cool, clear eyes, she said to him, ‘You are still afraid to hurt me. But I know you will not.’ She put one hand on his cheek. ‘Others have thought me weak. You do not. You know I am strong.’
‘I do,’ he replied hoarsely.
‘Treat me as such, I beg you.’
And as she kissed him now, he grabbed her by the waist, lifted her up off her feet and laid her down on the bed, his hands, his face, his body now moving as powerfully as they had wished to.
Charlotte’s hymn-book nearly fell from her hands, as she lost herself briefly in the memory, and as she pulled herself back to the present, she felt Colonel Fitzwilliam’s eyes upon her, staring. She blinked rapidly, trying to alert him to it, and he averted his gaze hurriedly.
