Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THEY DID IT constantly.

He came to her room, or sometimes sent a summons that she should come to his. They slept in the same bed and then it happened in the mornings, too.

Once, they did it in that fabulous tub of his, the one built in to the dedicated bathing room off of his bedchamber. She straddled him, the warm water sluicing around both of their bodies, and they rocked against each other.

She got used to the feeling of sleeping close to him, without their clothes, the warm, smooth, firmness of his skin against hers. She got used to the way he touched her, reverent and yet with growing self-assuredness, as he learned just how to please her. She got used to his body, learning the way it felt under her fingers, discovering how to please him as well, how to excite him, how to make him throw back his head and gulp out her name in a destroyed voice.

Once, he pulled her aside after tea, tucked her inside a room in the east wing, locked the door, lifted her skirts, and went down on his knees. He put his mouth on her. There. On the part of her that he wasn't even supposed to be stimulating, because it was some strange mutation.

She let him do it.

She felt guilty about it, at least a little guilty, but she began to wonder if it would really matter one way or the other, in the end. If he never knew that she had some strangely male element on her body, then he wouldn't have to find it abhorrent. She could keep it from him, and they could both continue as they were.

She enjoyed it, and he didn't seem to mind. He told her that he liked pleasing her, in fact.

Time passed.

Weeks of it.

Her bleeding came, and then she had a thought. She wondered if… because of that strange male part of her, if maybe she wasn't going to be able to bear children. Maybe she wasn't female enough for it.

The thought consumed her, and she ended up in the library in Pemberley with an anatomy book, peering at a diagram of someone who was supposedly a hermaphrodite.

She didn't look like that at all.

But there was only one picture, and she supposed that such things varied amongst the afflicted. It did seem that hermaphrodites, indeed, sometimes could not have children.

She felt horrid at the thought of that. If this progressed, if months and months passed, and she did not conceive a child, then she would have to speak to him about it.

For now, she shut the book and told herself that it might not come to pass. At least he was no longer saying things about the two of them having affairs with other people in several years' time. In point of fact, just the other night, he'd whispered into her hair that he wanted to spend every night just like this for the rest of his life, and she'd agreed. If he knew the truth about her, he'd probably take that back, of course.

Lord, what if he did something horrible like got the marriage annulled? One wasn't supposed to be able to do that if it had been consummated, but in cases where an heir could not be sired, exceptions were made.

That night, he sent a note summoning her to his room, and she sent a note back saying her bleeding had begun. She had settled in for her first night sleeping alone in weeks when her door opened.

"We can still sleep close?" he said. "Unless you'd rather be alone?"

"No," she said. "I would not rather be alone. You don't mind?"

"Of course not," he said.

And then, in his arms in the darkness, he said, "We can still kiss."

"Yes," she said.

And then they were kissing, and then there was touching, and then it came around to assuming that they could still do all of it, really, if he didn't mind that she was bleeding, which he said he didn't.

"And of course your clitoris is still just as sensitive," he said, brushing his fingers over her there, on that part of her.

She went entirely still.

He removed his fingers from under the cloth that was bound between her legs. "I did something wrong," he said softly.

"What word did you say?" she whispered.

"Clitoris?" he said. "Don't you know…?" He sighed. "It's positively horrid sometimes, the things they keep from women."

"It has a name," she said. "It's not some sort of deformed small prick?"

"No," he said.

"And… other women… have them?"

"Every woman, yes," he said.

She started sobbing. Her emotions were always close to the surface during the times that she bled, anyway. She buried her face in his chest and cried, letting out every bit of her own silly worries—her unfounded worries. Why was she this way? Why did she become so easily convinced that everything was wrong?

"Elizabeth… what…?"

She couldn't even explain it to him. It was too embarrassing and stupid. She felt wretched about it.

But eventually, after her tears quieted, she lay on his shoulder as he stroked her hair.

"Well, everything is all right, then," she said. "You have always been attracted to me, and you have always loved me, and I have not been some sort of freak who is wrong and unfeminine, nor am I incapable of having children. There is nothing actually wrong, Fitzwilliam."

"These are all things you worried about?" he said quietly.

She nodded into him. "I worry rather a lot."

"Ah, me as well," he said with a little sigh. "And you… you loved me, or could have loved me, all along, couldn't you?"

She lifted her head to look at him. "I was confused about it. I love you now. I know that. But there was a time when I thought about it so much I wasn't sure which way was up or down."

"I was an idiot to suggest we should have affairs."

"Yes."

He laughed. "You didn't want him, either, not like this, and I know that."

"Him? You don't mean Wickham."

He groaned. "Oh, don't make fun of me, love. I am wretchedly insecure, have you not noticed this?"

"You should not be. You are Mr. Darcy of Pemberley!"

"Yes, well, I am insecure."

"It's all right. So am I, obviously." She groaned, too. "We're a pair, aren't we?"

He laughed. "So, we're in love, then?"

"Oh, very much."

"Nothing more boring than a husband and wife in love, I suppose."

"Nothing indeed," she said.

"We need to talk more," he said. "We're both frightened that the other person is going to reject us, so we hide things, but it's not necessary. I'm never going to reject you, Elizabeth."

"Well, I am not going to reject you either," she said. "Fine, we shall talk more, and everything will be just fine."

He hummed his satisfaction.

"We haven't been doing a lot of talking, have we?"

"We've been distracted," he allowed. "Speaking of distraction, did we determine we could… during the bleeding or do you want to say no now?"

She giggled. "You seem to be consumed with thoughts about that activity, don't you, sir?"

"You're allowed to say no. I simply like being connected."

She smiled, rubbing her face into his skin. "Oh, yes, Fitzwilliam. So do I."

So, they were connected, even during the bleeding, and they slept in the same bed, and she banished all the strange and silly fears she'd had.

Now, she would—at long last—have a happily ever after.

AND SHE WOULD have, too.

Except her damnable younger sister Lydia had contrived to make sure that none of that could happen, because she was the worst, most horrible, and most inconsiderate person in the whole of England!

Elizabeth waved the letter at her husband. "She's run off with Mr. Wickham of all people."

Mr. Darcy snatched the letter out of her hand to read it himself.

"It's from Mary," said Elizabeth helpfully.

"Yes, I see that," said Mr. Darcy, looking it over. "Why would he try to marry Lydia?"

"Exactly!" said Elizabeth. "What does he have to gain?"

Mr. Darcy sighed heavily. "The last word, I think." He handed her back the letter. "Well, they've not gone to Scotland, of that I can assure you."

"The last word?" said Elizabeth, looking him over. "What do you mean by that?"

"Just something he said to me," said Mr. Darcy, sighing. "He knows I am connected to you, and that you are in love with me, and that annoys him. He wishes you to side with him in some way."

"Why would I do that? After how he treated me? After all his lies? And after poor Gigi, who is beside herself—oh, this reminds me, Fitzwilliam, I did tell your sister I was going to speak to you about having a season."

"Of course. She has to come out, doesn't she? She's of the age. It's as if she thinks I don't look at her or something." He rolled his eyes. "But that is of no consequence at this moment."

"No, I suppose not," said Elizabeth, sighing again. "If they're not in Scotland, where are they?"

"I know where they'll be," he said. "London. And likely at a certain lodging house on Edward Street. One owned by—"

"Mrs. Amelia Younge," said Elizabeth.

"Oh, you know all about her," said Mr. Darcy with a shrug.

"Yes, she is much maligned according to Wickham, but Gigi says otherwise," said Elizabeth.

"I could not keep her on as a governess," said Mr. Darcy. "I daresay I was kind, however. I did offer to write her a reference if she desired. I believe I went so far as to say that she could dictate it and I would sign it. Whatever she wished, if she would simply steer clear of Wickham for the future. She would not let him go. And that is where he is, mark my words."

"But…" Elizabeth folded her arms over her chest. "If she is in love with him, why would he keep involving her in schemes that involve other women?"

"I don't know. But I'm off tomorrow morning, to go and seek him out."

"You? What will you do?"

"We are married, Elizabeth. Your family is my family. He couldn't get Gigi, this is the next best thing. Certainly, he won't get my sister's dowry, but he'll weasel money out of me, which is all he wants. And now, he's got your sister, which is the way he gets back at you for what he perceives as your betrayal."

"Oh," said Elizabeth. "Oh."

"Yes." He shrugged.

"Do we have to give him money?" said Elizabeth. "Do we have to let him get everything he wishes? Is that really what we have to do?"

Mr. Darcy shook his head. "I don't like it either."

"Let's do something else," said Elizabeth.

"What else could we do?" said Mr. Darcy.

Elizabeth sighed heavily. She wasn't sure. "Well, we'll figure it out on the way to London, won't we?"

"You wish to come along?"

"She is my sister, Fitzwilliam," she said. "Of course I'm coming along."