Chapter Twenty-one

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ELIZABETH WAS PACING in the drawing room at the rectory, wringing out her hands. She and Mr. Darcy were alone there, even though that wasn't exactly proper, but he said that he needed to speak to her without anyone else present and paid no mind to Mr. Collins's protests. He had told her everything, and it was worse than she could have imagined. "Oh, everything is horrible now. Whatever are we going to do? I am beside myself."

He put a hand on her shoulder.

Then removed it, because they were both rather affected by his touch, too affected.

He cleared his throat, backing away. "Apologies for… that. I think, actually, things may improve soon. The colonel is with Wickham now, and he is escorting him back to London. Wickham says he is willing to marry Lydia right away, and Jane seems to have her pick of either Bingley or the colonel—"

"What?" Elizabeth folded her arms over her chest. "Why is everyone switching back and forth between me and Jane?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Darcy with a shrug. "It's rather like a bad novel, isn't it?"

"A very bad novel," she agreed.

"Anyway, it seems everything will end rather well," said Mr. Darcy. "And I am come to escort you back to London, to be reconciled with your sisters and to see your father. If you would but pack your things, we could depart this evening, I think."

"Oh," she said. "Only you and me?"

"Oh, well, I am going to engage one of the servants from Rosings as a chaperone, of course," he said. "But we are to be married, so it is little worry, I think."

"True, considering the rest of the scandals my family has been involved in over the past two days, that does seem trifling."

"Indeed," he said.

"But we must marry him to Lydia?" said Elizabeth. "Him?"

"Well, I don't know," said Mr. Darcy. "Richard keeps going on about killing him. With any luck, he'll do him in on the way back to London and that'll be the end of Wickham."

"Mr. Darcy!" she admonished. She thought about it. "That's a jest, is it not?"

"Certainly," said Mr. Darcy, nodding rather too rapidly.

WHEN ELIZABETH ARRIVED at the carriage, there was no sign of a chaperone. The driver loaded her things and Mr. Darcy spoke in an overly bland voice about how the servant who he'd engaged had been called away for a sick relative and how he'd decided it was unnecessary in the end and that they could distract themselves with books if they pleased, during the drive, so it was certain nothing untoward would even occur between them.

Yes, reading in the dark, she thought, because the sun was beginning to sink already, and they would be traveling as twilight overtook the world.

"I am certain that it proposes no true obstacle, Miss Bennet?" he said, looking very serious and grave, in that way of his.

"Oh, no," she said airily. "No obstacle of any kind."

"Capital," he said briskly .

They got into the carriage and settled in on opposite sides and both did immediately open books. Elizabeth stared into hers, not comprehending any of the words on the page.

The carriage began to move and she stared into her book, thinking that she could not read without a candle or a lamp or something of that nature. Elizabeth had traveled in a few post coaches that were equipped with interior oil lamps for the passengers, but this one did not seem to have such a thing. She supposed Mr. Darcy could have brought some kind of portable lamp or lantern.

She waited for him to say something about that, but he only adhered to his book as she eyed him from across the carriage.

His glance flicked up to find her looking at him.

They gazed at each other.

Abruptly, he shut his book and came across the carriage to her side. He sat down next to her.

She looked up at him, her breath coming in uneven intervals.

He licked his lips, his face dipping down closer to hers.

Her eyes fluttered shut.

He kissed her.

She let out a tiny noise in the back of her throat.

He broke the kiss, his face still close to hers. "My apologies, truly. I don't understand why I can't seem to stop myself from—"

She captured his lips with her own, kissing him harder than he had kissed her.

In mere seconds, the kissing was furious, both of them clutching at the other as their mouths moved hungrily together.

Before she knew what she had done, she had simply crawled into his lap.

He liked this, urging her against him.

But this had the effect of making her dress ride up. The fashion was not for the skirts of dresses to be entirely voluminous, but to be relatively narrow. There wasn't really room for her to spread her legs to straddle him—how had she straddled him?—in the dress.

His hand was hot on her thigh, through the fabric of her dress, and then his hand moved down to touch her bare leg.

She let out a cry that she tried to stifle.

He kissed her harder, as if to quiet her, one hand exploring all of her bare leg, the other migrating up to the small of her back to crush her against his chest.

But this had the effect of making the most intimate part of her body come into contact with the buttons of his trousers.

She didn't wear drawers. Her mother was firmly against it, going on rants about how no man wanted to wed a woman who had ever had anything between her legs. Of course, Elizabeth was always pointing out that all the Bennet girls had to put things between their legs during their monthly bleeding, but her mother said that didn't count. So, it was her bare skin hitting the falls of his trousers there and she had not anticipated what that would feel like.

She gasped.

His hands moved, both of them, up to her hips, her upper thighs. He grunted, and then—holding her in place—he drove his pelvis into her.

She let out a long, low groan. It felt lovely. She wasn't proud of this, not exactly, but sometimes, in the dead of the night, she would take the pillow out from under her head and tuck it between her thighs and squeeze and rock and squeeze and rock until… Well, anyway, it felt like that .

He panted. His eyes were shut. He did it again, thrusting against her.

She moaned. Oh, Lord, perhaps the driver could hear them. How mortifying.

His hands moved down her hips. His fingers traveled over the bunched up fabric of the skirt of her dress. "This is terribly improper." His voice was choked. "We must cease all of this."

She urged her pelvis against him. "Immediately, yes. I am quite in agreement."

His fingers started to push the fabric of her dress higher up her thighs, baring more and more of her body. "I… this be havior is beneath me," he gasped.

"Beneath both of us," she wheezed.

"Utterly wretched of me, really, taking advantage of you in this way," he whispered, and pushed her dress higher still, so that he could see the place where she was pressed into his trousers. He let out an inscrutable noise. It sounded agonized. Then he thrust against her again.

She bit down on her lip, at the sensation of that there, his trousers against her sensitive flesh, the wondrous pressure. She was reacting to it, her body getting loose but tight in the nicest of ways.

"Look at you," he breathed. "Look at you right there ."

She rocked into him, the way she rocked into the pillow sometimes. He was firm and warm and pressing into her all over, and it felt ever so much better than the pillow did. A shudder went through her.

His hand slid over her thigh to brush against her. "Apologies. I know I oughtn't." His voice was husky.

"It is I who should be apologizing," she wheezed. "I don't know what's come over me, but it feels…" She couldn't say how it felt.

His hand explored the parts of her body not pressed into his clothing. "Yes? Good? You like that, then."

Oh, he was touching here there , all over the mound of her and lower, too, and every one of his touches was a revelation. Her head fell back and her lips parted and she sighed in pleasure.

"That's all right, I think," he breathed. "I think that's just fine. Very good, Elizabeth. I don't think I want you to apologize for this at all."

She moaned again, rocking into him, into his fingers, into the firm outline of him encased in his trousers. "No, I should stop."

"Definitely not," he rasped. "Don't stop at all. You should sit right there, right in my lap, just exactly as you are and enjoy this. You should allow me to watch you enjoy this. I insist upon it."

Something about his tone or his words undid her, and she started rocking in earnest.

He gently matched her movement, and one of his fingers wormed in against her—easily, because she was slippery now, (and what was that going to have done to his trousers, heavens )—and he touched the little part of her that made her feel like she'd been doused in a shower of bright sparks.

She'd only touched it herself once or twice (maybe more often but rarely, so rarely; she knew it was shameful) but his finger, it was so thick and male and different than her own and she liked it against her, liked it more than she had quite known she could like a thing.

So, she gave herself over to it, and he murmured words of encouragement to her, his voice very deep as he did it, catching in his throat now and again. "Very good, Elizabeth." And, "Oh, yes, just keep doing exactly as you are doing, that's perfect." And, "You can't know how much I approve entirely of this."

And it was like with the pillow between her legs, only more intense, and more lovely, a shared experience with him, giving over her pleasure to him, being vulnerable and safe here, his finger against the pulse of her undoing. She climbed up a high wall of pleasure, finding footholds here and there, teetering now again, and then eventually…

She reached the top and she tipped out into the bright blue sky on the other side of the wall as her body stuttered and quivered against his body. And she jerked away from his finger, the sensation too much.

"Oh, finished?" he breathed.

"Y-yes," she gasped.

His mouth was against her temple, against her cheekbone. He kissed her, whispering more praise against her skin.

She was afraid to open her eyes. She was ashamed that she'd given in like that. Why did this man do this to her? Why did she go to pieces near him?

"I want you," he murmured. "I know it's wrong. I know I should wait." His finger moved from her body to undo the falls of his trousers. "I shall stop. Say the word. I mean it. "

She opened her eyes, swallowing.

"It's dreadful," he said. "In a carriage. Divesting you of your virtue in a carriage, anticipating our vows. It's dreadful ."

She didn't say anything at all.

And then he was free and thick and warm and firm. It didn't seem to take any doing at all to fit him into her, as if their bodies simply wanted to be joined and did it of their own volition, as if he slipped into the slick center of her and her body urged him all the way home.

She had heard it would hurt; it didn't . She mewled at the sensation.

His head fell back against the carriage wall, and he shut his eyes and he groaned. He took hold of her hips, his thumbs digging into her flesh. "You are perfection, Elizabeth," he managed.

They were kissing again.

"Perfect," he panted into her mouth. "Perfect, you feel perfect ."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as he began to move inside her. Every movement was so deep and so intense and so very, very much, and she couldn't stop herself from making noises, and they were so loud that he put his hand over her mouth, and she kissed his fingers, breathless, trying to form words. "A-apologies. I cannot seem to help—"

"No, no," he said in a labored voice, "it's all right. I want you to, it's only—"

"They will hear us," she moaned.

"When we do this properly, in a bed, you will scream if you like," he gasped, kissing her jaw.

"Oh," she said. "Yes. Yes, I want…"

He kissed her neck. "We are going to have a very happy marriage. "

SHE HALF-DOZED IN his arms in the wake of it, and he brushed the stray hairs that had come free from her bun out of her face and kissed her all over—her eyebrow and her cheek and the tip of her nose and her chin.

She burrowed into him. He was large and solid and warm. He felt like safety. He felt like everything in the world, everything that she'd ever been missing or knew she'd needed. Here, in the circle of his arms, she felt complete.

Some part of her knew she'd done a very wicked thing, and she expected she would eventually start chastising herself for it, but for now, she was sleepy and sated and wrapped up in him, and she didn't care.

"I've never seen a woman do that," he said, his voice very, very quiet, so quiet she wasn't sure if he was talking to her or if he thought she was asleep and he was talking to himself.

She shifted against him, moving her face so that she could try to blink up at the shadowy features that made him up in the darkness.

He shifted, too. "Oh. You are awake."

So, perhaps that hadn't been meant for her. "Do what?" she said anyway, because she wondered if that meant he'd never bedded a woman. Certainly, that couldn't be true. He was eight and twenty, and that was too old to have never done it. Of course, she felt wistful, almost wishing he hadn't said it. It was one thing to know there had been others before her. It was another to hear him speak of it.

He laughed, an embarrassed laugh. "Oh, Christ. I don't know what possessed me to say anything at all."

Silence.

Then she said, perhaps a bit caustically, unable to help herself. "But you did say something."

"I did, yes," he said ruefully.

"Do what? "

"Come," he said. "You know, a little death."

She did not know. She was silent.

He kept talking. "I'm frightfully inexperienced and not even a little bit skilled when it comes to women, you see, and you… it's not usually that easy. I think you might be some kind of goddess, Elizabeth. I don't know how I managed to be so lucky as to get the opportunity to worship you for the rest of my life, but I am pathetically grateful for it, for this, for you. Thank you. I don't deserve you."

She cleared her throat. "Well, I don't know that my behavior is anything that any man should be grateful for. I suppose you must think me some sort of…" She couldn't say the words she was thinking out loud in front of him.

"Oh, you don't know anything about men, Elizabeth," he said, and he was laughing again. He pulled her more tightly into his arms. "You are the sort of woman any man would fight for, depend upon it. I only hope I can continue to please you."

She snuggled in against him. She liked being held. "But I behaved wantonly. It was sinful. I wasn't virtuous or—"

"None of that. You tried to stop it and I wouldn't let you," he said. "It is entirely my fault." He kissed the top of her head. "I shall rectify it by marrying you as soon as is humanly possible. Not that I have any desire to wait to marry you, anyway, none at all , so it's all working out very nicely for me, I must say. I might be the luckiest man in the entire country." He laughed once more.

She couldn't help but smile. "I think I shall be rather lucky to be married to you, too. And I think…" She squirmed. "I don't know anything about it, obviously, but I've heard that it's awful and painful, and that was… I think you might be skilled, quite skilled."

"Mmm, yes, skilled at letting you rub yourself on my finger. I didn't do anything." He was delighted. "The way you trembled against me…" He shuddered.

Oh. That was what he meant. The little burst thing at the end of it. To come. A little death, yes, she'd read that term. And now, she was belatedly thinking of that time she'd watched Antony and Cleopatra and everyone was laughing at the death scene, which she had found bewildering, even though there had been some strange element to the way they had played it, something she was now realizing was overtly sexual. She even remembered bits of the dialogue. Where art thou, death? Come hither, come! Come, come . Hmm. Interesting. She tucked this bit of knowledge away.

"But is this all there is between us?" she whispered.

" All there is?" he said, amused. "This is quite something, what's between us, I think. Something rare and unique and rather wonderful."

Of course he thought that. He was a man, and he would be able to do as he liked with his life, going after whatever he wanted. In the grand scheme of things, a wife was a portion of his life and pursuits.

For her, being his wife would be the most important aspect of her.

Well.

She had already been quite willing to marry Mr. Bingley, and she never felt so incredibly attracted to him, not the way she felt with Mr. Darcy.

What more did she want?