Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ELIZABETH WAS STUNNED when there was a knock at her door that evening. She was already dressed for bed, had been, in fact, reading while lying down under the covers. She got up, called out, "Just a moment," and put on a wrapper over her nightdress.

The dogs were all in the room with her. They slept here. They were supposed to sleep on the floor, but sometimes they crawled into bed with her, and she only made half-hearted attempts to shoo them out.

She opened the door, the dogs flowing all around her, curious as to who might be there, on high alert. They weren't barking, not yet, but they might if it was a threat.

Mr. Darcy was there.

She was stunned. "Oh, sir, you're here. I'm sorry, I was reading in bed."

The dogs were mollified. They trotted off to lay down here and there near the fireplace.

"Yes, I don't need to bother if you'd rather talk another time."

"I don't mind, I suppose," she said. "Is there something we should talk of?"

"I think so," he said, nodding.

"It's not about Mr. Wickham, is it, because I don't know what sort of things you're thinking, but he is really nothing but wretched in the end, so I wish to reassure you that there is no need for concern there."

"It's not about him exactly," said Mr. Darcy with a sigh. "It's sort of related, though."

"Oh." She furrowed her brow.

"It's not vital to speak now," he said. "I could wait, of course. But it is something private between the two of us, so it can't be discussed at tea or dinner or something."

Her lips parted. "Now, I'm quite curious. You'd best come in."

He chuckled ruefully, rubbing at his forehead. "I'm a bit nervous. I think I'd rather get it all over with, to be honest. I appreciate your letting me in."

She opened the door wider.

He stepped inside.

She shut the door.

There were chairs set up near her fireplace. She gestured to him. "Shall we sit?"

"Yes, thank you." He went over and sat down. Cleo came over and nudged his hand with one nose. Absently, he obliged her, scratching her head affectionately.

She sat down opposite him.

The fireplace was empty, of course. It was summer, too warm for fires. The night breeze was fluttering in through her open windows, in fact. In the distance, she could hear the sounds of the nighttime in the countryside, insects chirping and night birds and that same breeze, in the tree branches.

She listened to all of that because Mr. Darcy wasn't talking. She waited, expectant.

He was silent.

"Sir?" she said finally.

"Yes, I'm sorry. It's hard to know where to begin with it."

"You said it was sort of about Mr. Wickham?"

"Well, yes, I suppose. Mr. Wickham, he fancied you."

"I don't know that he ever did! I don't know that he fancies anyone except himself," she said, grimacing.

"Granted," he said, inclining his head. "But, erm, you fancied him—"

"Mr. Darcy—"

"At one point," he said. "I think you did. You admitted as much, did you not? Perhaps it was never more than a shallow sort of interest, but it was there. It was something."

"I fail to see why this is relevant. We are married, sir, and I assure you, I dislike him a great deal at this juncture."

He eyed her. "You're protesting that rather a lot. And I would like to say, anyone but him, madam, really. I can be longsuffering about this, but not him. I can't abide him, and—"

"What are you talking about?" She was very thoroughly confused.

"Right, yes." He cleared his throat. "So, while I was in London, I was having a conversation with my sister, and I had a realization I hadn't had before. Really, I was being a dolt not to have realized it, but… I don't know. I had formed this faulty impression of you, Mrs. Darcy, rather thinking of you like this precious work of art, a beautiful statue, and that any sort of carnality would have sullied you."

She squirmed. Why did the thought of being sullied make her feel as if her clothes were all too heavy? "What?"

"Well, I realized you do not love me, but that doesn't preclude the idea of your loving someone else. And I also realized, I don't think that I want to keep you from loving someone else. It seems awful. It would be one thing if you'd come into this marriage of your own free will. But you were coerced into it, and it was all my fault. If I had never insisted that you take the carriage with me—"

"Mr. Darcy, I have tried to explain that I can find very little to complain about within our marriage," she said. "I don't find it some kind of punishment, not at all."

"That's kind of you," he said, with a smile. "But I don't think either of us should be resigned to a life with no chance of romantic love. Which is why I think, eventually, you should be free to take a lover if you wish."

She sprang up from the chair. "What?"

The dogs were startled, looking up at her, worried.

He looked up at her, too. "Well, I shall be free to do so, obviously. Men always are. And you will, by the nature of it, likely have to be more discreet than me, but I shall turn a blind eye, even though… if I can be honest, the idea doesn't fill me with joy, exactly. However, it's… if I truly care about you, Mrs. Darcy, I can't be selfish with you. I want you to be happy. Really happy."

She was aghast. "You… you're not… I would never do such a thing!"

He blinked at her. "No?"

She sat back down. The dogs relaxed. "You can't be serious. That's abominable, sir. I am offended by the very idea."

"Well…" He cleared his throat. "Mrs. Darcy, you're very innocent, and you may feel differently when you've… Obviously, there are things that must be taken care of first. I won't have any aspersions cast on the heir to Pemberley, so I think there must be two children first, my children, obviously, and then… well, after that, I don't know. It sounds complicated, but we'll work it out. You'll try your best not to have other men's children, clearly, but sometimes things happen."

She gaped at him.

"I understand," he said. "You're very young, and you didn't grow up amongst the same sort of people that I grew up amongst. It is different in the country, when one lives in the country all the time. But amongst the ton, affairs are commonplace. I had hoped to have a different sort of marriage, it's true, but this is what we have to work with."

"I don't wish to have affairs," she said in a very tiny voice.

"You say that now, but you might change your mind. It will be a long, long lonely marriage for the both of us, I think. And you are not getting younger, so it might be a good idea to move forward with it. Within four or five years, we should have two children, and then we shall look into how to make it all work. I have other properties. We can live separately. You can meet someone—"

"No," she said faintly. The more she protested, it seemed, the less he seemed to hear her.

"Well, let's leave that for now, then. The important thing is that we should likely consummate our marriage." He looked into the fireplace as he said it. "I know I said you wouldn't have to worry about it with me, and I am not looking forward to it—"

"No? Not at all?" she whispered. Am I really that hideous?

His gaze snapped back to hers. "All right, yes, that's not entirely true. But I think the worries are currently overriding any, um… well, never mind. I wish to assure you that I shall be gentle and that we can take it at whatever pace is comfortable. It doesn't have to be anything more than a sort of businesslike transaction, really."

"Businesslike?" she echoed.

"Well, it's about an heir. I need one. You can give me one. I've got to get one on you. It's simply about that. If you wish to push it back, we can discuss when we'd like to do it, but I don't think we should delay for too much longer."

"When do you wish to do it?"

"Oh, I'd rather get it over with as soon as possible," he said with a nod.

She hunched up her shoulders. "Fine. How about now?"

His eyebrows shot up. "Now?"

"Yes, no time like the present, I suppose. I'll extinguish the lamp so that you don't even have to look at me."

"I don't mind looking at you."

"Don't you? Since I'm barely tolerable." She was out of her chair now. She went over to the door and opened it, calling for the dogs.

They came, curious.

"Out," she said to them sternly.

The dogs hesitated.

"Off with you," she said. She put the dogs out at night sometimes when they were restless—they would go to seek servants or to curl up in the kitchens. They had run of the house. It was no hardship for them.

The dogs ambled out of the room, giving her reproachful looks.

She shut the door behind them.

"Well," said Mr. Darcy. "You've put the dogs out. You're serious."

"Can't take it back now," she said sharply. "You'll have to endure the fact of your barely-tolerable wife, I suppose."

"You are harping on that word again? Truly? I thought I explained—"

"Yes, you did. It's fine." She went over and turned the lamp down, down, down.

"Mrs. Darcy, you don't seem quite pleased about this." He was on his feet now. "I didn't mean… we really don't have to—"

"If you're not pleased about it, I'm not forcing you," she said tartly. "You never have to, of course. But if you truly want to get it over with, then let's do that."

"A-all right." His voice was soft. It wavered a little.

She stripped off her outer layer and her nightdress all at once. She was only in unstructured, loose clothing. With it gone, she was entirely bare. But it was dark. He couldn't really see her. She lay down on top of her bed. "All right. I'm ready."

"Mrs. Darcy…" He was moving through the darkness. "May I call you Elizabeth, then?"

"I don't know. It is meant to be businesslike, isn't it?"

"Yes, indeed. Apologies."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, please call me Elizabeth." Her voice was too high-pitched.

He sat down at the edge of the bed. "Oh, you're… not wearing…" He sucked in a breath. "You're beautiful."

"Don't!" That hurt. She flung an arm over her breasts, crossed her leg to hide herself. She fought tears.

"All right," he said. "Apologies."

It was quiet.

He put a hand on her ankle. "Elizabeth? I may need to confess something."

She thought they were getting it over with. "What?" she said, more than a little tersely.

"I've not exactly done this before."

She was startled. "No?"

"I've done things, just not this. I've always been a bit shy, I'm afraid. And now I'm quite nervous, and I feel as if you're angry with me, and I don't wish to sully you, but I feel it's all I'll be able to do, and I…" He groaned. "Say the word, and I leave."

If he left her here, naked on this bed, rejected, she would never recover from that, and she knew that, somehow. "Stay," she murmured. A long pause. "I've never done it either. Obviously."

He laughed softly.

"We'll muddle through it," she said. "I think you need to take off your clothes."

He laughed harder. "All right. Yes, I do know that much."

She smiled in the darkness, and the smile made it easier.

There was no sound except the whisper of his clothes against his skin.

She watched. Maybe she shouldn't have, but she couldn't stop herself. Without the light from the lamp, he was illuminated only in the moonlight through the open windows, which meant his muscles glimmered in a sort of silvery way, and the rest of him was purplish-blue shadows. He was intriguing, all angles and fine dark hair. The hair was on his chest, around his small nipples, trailing down the center of him, over his belly button, all the way down to… to that, which was stiff. The moonlight illuminated it, and it was accented in the silvery glow, too. She looked up at him and he seemed sort of unreal in his nudity. He was beautiful.

He stirred her in some way, some deep way, some way that twitched a bit between her thighs. She wanted to put her hands on him, to trace the fine, dark hair on his chest and belly.

He noticed her looking at him and he ducked down his head, laughing, bashful.

"You, um…" he breathed, one finger coming down to trace the outline of her clavicle. "You're glowing in the light of the moon. You're like some fairy creature, something impossible, something I'm not meant to touch."

"Touch me," she said. "I should like to touch you. So, let's touch."

He climbed onto the bed with her.

He touched her.

She ran her fingers through the hair on his body.

He shut his eyes and let out hissing breaths.

She put her hand there, on that part of him. She didn't know why she felt so bold. Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe it was the moonlight.

He moaned, panting, and then wrenched her hand away. "Wait," he gasped.

He kissed her.

They'd not done that before, and she hadn't realized it would be like that. It was wet, for one thing, and his tongue was twined with her tongue, and it seemed obscene somehow. But the sheer goodness of it made it too delightful for her to care.

She moaned, deep in her throat.

He touched one of her breasts.

She let out a cry, into his mouth, and he swallowed it.

She writhed, under him, into him, and somehow in the course of the writhing, she rubbed into him in a certain sort of way. It was her—she didn't know what to call it, all she seemed to think of were words she could never say out loud—against his part, the stiff part.

It was really the corresponding place on her body, truly. His part jutted out there, and she had something there, too, something smaller, something frightfully sensitive, and she was growing very slippery there. It was as wet as the kissing was wet, a sloppy and obscene kind of wetness that was nevertheless good.

She rubbed into him—the sensitive part of her against his stiffness.

He gasped and tried to rearrange himself, tried to push his stiff part lower, tried to stab into her, into the slippery folds of her.

But she stopped him.

It was the moonlight, perhaps, that made her bold, but she wanted this, because it felt so, so good, better than the taste of fresh blackberry jam and better than the feel of the morning sun under her bonnet and better than the feeling of removing her stays at the end of a long day.

So very good.

She seized his stiffness and held it up where she liked it. There, right there, and then she worked her hips into his stiff part.

He moaned. "Oh, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I'm not… I won't last. You can't keep doing that."

"But please?" she managed. "Oh, please, it's so nice."

He threw back his head, and let out noisy, harsh breaths, and she found herself echoing him, because whatever this was, this sensitive part on her body, this obscene and slippery part, the more she rubbed at it, the nicer it felt, the more sensitive it got.

She felt as if she was being pushed slowly up a hill, inch by inch, closer and closer to a bright summit in the clouds. Every inch closer was an inch of incrementally better bliss.

She let out something like a sob. "Please, oh, please," she said, again and again and again.

And then it was as if she reached the top and she was pushed right off the edge of a cliff and she had never felt anything quite so good, and it was the best pleasure she'd ever felt, and he was working his stiff part against her, even though she'd stopped wriggling her hips, and he grunted, and then everything was, well, very wet and very obscenely slippery, and she was in some kind of world of pleasure that she hadn't known existed, and her whole pelvis was twitching and convulsing, and—those noises she was making? Those were likely embarrassing. She should stop that.

He was kissing her.

She wound her arms around his neck. She was still making the noises.

"Well, I think you…?" His mouth hovered over hers. "Did you make yourself…?"

"Is there a word for that?" She was exultant. "It's lovely."

He laughed. "Lots of words, none of which are at all polite to say."

She laughed too.

"Next time, I should likely try to make it inside you." He kissed her again and flopped over next to her on the bed.

"Oh, we did it wrong," she whispered.

"It's my fault," he said. "I'll get better. I didn't think you'd… those noises you were making were…"

"Sorry about that."

"Don't be. I like them very much. Please, make them as much as you'd like."

She giggled.

"Just…" He groaned, nuzzling her neck, pulling her against his long, firm body. "Rest for a moment?"

She snuggled into him.

Lying there, she tried to think of what else to say to him, but then she realized his breath had gone even and that he had fallen asleep.

She wasn't sure what to think. She could not possibly fall asleep, she didn't think. She was too confused about what had happened. Why had she been so bold? Why had she stopped him from doing whatever he'd wanted to do? Why had she chased that sweet release she'd had with such abandon?

She gazed at the window, watching clouds drift over the moon, feeling as if she'd done everything wrong. She gazed and she thought and time passed.

And then he stirred next to her and she turned to him.

His lips found hers. She wondered if he was even aware he'd been asleep. He kissed her and she clung to him and he rolled her under him, and he reached between them. He was stiff again, though he'd gone soft in the wake of whatever had happened before. But now, he was stiff again, and he was doing that thing where he was poking and stabbing around, and she knew where he was supposed to go, she supposed, so she angled her hips until—

She gasped at the sensation.

He let out a noise of very deep pleasure.

She cringed. It hurt. He was too big, and there was no way—

Well, he was sliding in and out and this was transferring some of the slipperiness inside and that was making it better, she supposed. Still, she didn't feel as if she could quite breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her hands into fists and lay very, very still.

"Elizabeth?" His voice was soft.

"Mmm?" She didn't open her eyes.

"Am I hurting you?"

"Not much," she said.

"Dash it all," he panted, and then he pulled free, entirely free, and tossed himself down next to her again.

She opened her eyes. "What are you doing?"

He only shook his head.

She sat up. "You have to finish it. We have to do it. We haven't actually done it yet."

"It… hurting you…" He sighed.

She realized he was soft again. "Oh," she said, lying back down next to him.

"No, it's all right," he said. He yawned. "I'm very tired, I find." He pulled her into his arms again. "I think I could go right back to sleep."

She could not sleep at all, she didn't think, but she said, "Yes, I am tired also."

"May I stay?" He yawned again. "If you'd like me to go back to my room, I can. I admit this isn't entirely businesslike, holding you, but… oh, Elizabeth, your skin is so soft and warm and I…" He kissed her again.

She molded herself against him, awash in the sensation of their bare skin touching in so many places. His skin was soft and warm, too, and she liked being close like this, tangled together in her bed. She wasn't sure that she'd ever felt something quite so pleasant in all her life.

"Stay, stay, please stay," she breathed.

He kissed her temple. "Good, then." He yawned once more, and then he was asleep again, nearly immediately.

How did he do that?

She wriggled around a little, getting comfortable, thinking to herself that she would be awake half the night worrying and turning the events over and over again.

However, she wasn't. She fell asleep almost immediately, snug and safe in the circle of her husband's arms.