Longbourn to London (35 page)

She had to smile. “Oh, I would say it has explored its way around the territory with some thoroughness already.” With a great breath, she laid the moist towel over it, and then clasped his covered member in her hand. The chill of the cloth caused a momentary reduction. “Fickle thing, is it not?” But as her hands gently rubbed around it, the towel warmed and growth began again. “Very fickle.” Lizzy tended to her task seriously. After a few moments, she peeked at Darcy’s face to see his countenance a map of surprise and desire.

This is a most promising start
, he mused as he closed his eyes.

She raised a brow. “Stop looking like the cat that ate the sparrow. If we keep soiling ourselves then cleaning up after, we shall be locked into an unending cycle. At what point are we ever to dress and re-join the world?”

He lifted her hands and moved away the towel, letting it fall to the floor. “Never, Lizzy.” He drew her between his legs. The height of the bed put her breasts near his face and he nuzzled her.

Elizabeth embedded her hands in his hair.
Is he to be at me again? Should I resist? How much
practice
do I need?
These were her last complete thoughts as his mouth found a nipple, suckling her as she moaned, “Oh, Fitzwilliam…mmm.”

His hands caressed her derriere, pulling her closer still. As his hands embraced each half of it, with fingers near her cleft, she felt herself become eager. She could offer no resistance. She pushed his head more tightly to her chest. “Yes, Fitzwilliam, yes…” She hoped he understood she would welcome him again. His fingers wandered further into her, parting her, teasing her. She grimaced and Darcy saw it. He instantly removed his hand.

“Sir?” She heard her voice as if someone else were speaking.

Her hair partly covered her eyes, but there was enough candlelight to make out her countenance, and he saw worry there. “Lizzy? I need not be so selfish. I shall give you time.”

“I would not like you to think I am refusing my husband.”

“Your husband demands too much.”

Elizabeth sighed. She was braver now and could see very well the stout evidence of his arousal. This strange part of him was another source of wonder—quite a curiosity—and it felt wrong to do anything but submit when he was visibly possessed by longing. It was not as if Darcy was unkind or heedless. “But you wish to.”

“Lizzy, here. Now it is me with blood on my hand.” Darcy showed her the evidence.

She looked away. “Women are accustomed to such things. I must bear it.”

“No.” Darcy stood. “Let us remove the sheeting and bundle the towelling. We shall sleep in the master’s bed.”

She turned to see his back. “Then please, Fitzwilliam, let me see to your scratches first.”

Elizabeth stepped quickly around the end of the bed, prepared a towel, and returned to him. He sat and leaned his elbows upon his knees. She pulled his shoulder lower and washed the scratches. “This does not look so very bad,” she said as she worked. “There is only one deep mark. Perhaps I have not maimed you irreparably.”

“Oh.” Darcy sounded distinctly disappointed.

Elizabeth felt the need for a visit to the commode. She chewed the corner of her lower lip, wondering how to mention it, choosing to be airy and vague. “I shall step next door for a moment, sir, and perhaps when I return, we can remove these bedclothes, as you suggested, and tend the fire in your bed chamber?”

“An excellent plan, Elizabeth.” He was amused that she sounded suddenly formal.

Elizabeth noticed the robe Sarah had left out, and picked it up as she entered her dressing room. The candle on the dressing table had burned down, but she took it with her behind the screen. She refreshed herself with lavender water, holding the anointed towel between her legs for the span of two long breaths. She looked at it and saw a dark streak. Vexed with herself for still bleeding, she repeatedly applied fresh corners of the cloth until there was no mark.

Darcy could plainly hear what she was doing; aware, in spite of all that had passed between them in the past two hours, she was still modest about her body’s functions and might not be ready to hear his.
And she calls me silly…

Elizabeth donned the gauzy white dressing gown. It was of a Grecian style, with narrow gold cording tied below her bosom and at her waist. There was some fullness in the skirt but it was open from waist to floor.

Darcy saw flashes of bare leg as she walked into the bedroom. He drew in a breath. “Elizabeth, stop.”

She did so, noting the use of her full name and that his look resembled the way he had stared at her as she played the piano at Rosings, a look she now understood was impassioned.

“You are a goddess. My raven-haired goddess…”

“Compliments such as these will go a long way to keeping your wife in good humour, Fitzwilliam. I recommend you continue. Today, I have been a bride, your queen, a wife, your Lizzy, and now your goddess. All new roles for me…so many in one day; I never imagined.”

“Are you well? You are not in pain now?”

“No. I believe I am better.”

Darcy nodded and put on his robe without fastening the front. In dance-like movements, they removed the soiled sheets from the bed, folding and refolding, stepping together and apart. They gathered all the soiled linen and made a tidy bundle to give Mrs. Chawton for disposal in the morning.

Darcy held the champagne bottle before the flickering firelight. It was only half empty. “Champagne does not keep; we do not want to waste it.” He carried the ice pail. “Bring the glasses, would you, Lizzy?”

“I have them.” She followed him into the master’s bedroom.

Darcy stirred the fire. “There are more candles in the drawers of the night tables if these need replacing,” he instructed. The candles on the nightstands were indeed starting to gutter, and Elizabeth lit new ones from the old, illuminating the bed.

As Darcy added logs to the fire, she wandered to the settee and sat down, pulling the fullness of the dressing gown over her legs more out of habit than a need to spare her modesty.
Am I already so changed?

Once the fire was roaring, Darcy poured two glasses of champagne. “I have forgotten which was whose, Lizzy. Does it matter?”

“Silly man,” she replied. “I should think not one jot by now.”

“To us again. Husband and wife.” He smiled, tinging his glass with hers. They drank and he sat next to her, pulling his robe closed only enough to cover his crotch. With one foot, he hooked a wooden stool and dragged it in front of them. He extended a long leg onto it, and Elizabeth impulsively stretched one bare leg and leaned it atop his.

The feel of his skin against hers was alluring, warm, and irresistible. “Mr. Darcy,” she began flirtatiously.

“Mrs. Darcy?”

“You have not lately mentioned, given all we have done this evening—”

“So far…” he interrupted.

Elizabeth was chagrined to feel herself colouring. “Yes,
so far
, you have not lately said what it is we have done, if anything at all, that you have not done before.”

Darcy finished his champagne and put his arm around her shoulders as he spoke. “I am afraid, dearest Elizabeth, I have stopped reckoning what is new.
Everything
is new. What I did or did not do eight years ago matters not to me now, nor should it matter to you. Do you not know—have I not told you—you are the love of my life? You bring joy to this house and to me, and your joy makes everything new. I do not wish to remember the tawdry brothels of Vienna.” He kissed her temple, and continued speaking with his lips brushing her skin.

“I wish to remember this: the smell of your hair and its beauty as you shook it loose in the dining room, your eyes in the coaching inn when you first found passionate bliss, undressing you, hearing you burp and laugh from drinking champagne. I want to remember each time you laugh.”

“I am all astonishment, Fitzwilliam Darcy. I have asked myself many times today how I have come to deserve such love. Except for a time when I was desperately afraid I would never find it, or thinking I had lost it without knowing it was within my grasp, I have done nothing to deserve it.”

“Nonsense. Silly woman.”

“I do hope I have sense enough to let you continue teaching me all those things you wish me to know. I shall no longer concern myself with your past or my lack of knowledge.”

Elizabeth and Darcy sat in amiable silence before the fire. They shared the remains of the champagne in her glass, emptying the bottle. Each silently reviewed the day’s varied events, developing questions for the other that would take some days to recall and have answered. But one question intrigued Darcy above all others.

“Lizzy,” Darcy began, attempting a casual air, “there is something I must ask, something that has become a source of mystery to me.”

“I cannot imagine what remains unknown to you, Fitzwilliam. It seems I have revealed everything, even things I did not comprehend about myself, and you have
certainly
sought to examine anything I did not think to share.” She blushed in the firelight. “However, if you have discovered some further secret within me, I pray you: ask what you wish to know.”

“I must confess, I was surprised you had not ever reached a level of hmm…let me rephrase. When I touched you…between your legs, your response led me to think you had never touched yourself there, to understand your own parts and their sensitivities?”

“No, never.”

“Odd. Just a difference of the sexes, I expect. Men seem unable to resist their own parts. You are not aware that as a boy becomes a man, we may awaken ourselves after having reached a moment of discharge in a dream?”

She sat forward and stared at him. “I, uh, I know nothing of such things. I do… Oh, I
suppose
something similar
may
happen to young women. Speaking only of myself, for that is the only answer I can honestly provide, I can report that the one time I believe I felt anything like that was in the disturbing dream I had some weeks ago.”

“You have told me little of that dream, Elizabeth. You know my arrogance, and will not be surprised when I tell you that I believe I might allay some of your disquiet if you choose to speak of it. But you must come to peace with it in your own time.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath, pulled away, and watched his eyes. They were gentle with concern.
I shall tell him as best I can
, she decided. “I believe I have already explained that the dream involved you, and we, or you, were engaged in an activity upon my person that only shocked me when I awoke. In the dream, what you did led to something like the height of sensation I have experienced today, and it awoke me.”

Darcy said nothing, waiting.

“What you were doing in the dream was something which, in the other room, I begged you not to do, and you did not.” Elizabeth lowered her lashes.

“But Lizzy,” his voice was hushed, “you have, with heart-rending generosity and courage, done everything I have asked and taken some initiatives that I would have guessed would take weeks for you to try. You would even allow me to risk hurting you recklessly until I came to my senses. I do not recall asking anything you declined.”

She chewed her lower lip. “Perhaps you did not ask aloud, but I thought I saw an intention, and I responded to that.”

Darcy tilted his head, looking at her and concentrating until he remembered. “Ah…”
I did long to kiss her there. Oh, how she must taste…
He was carried away in a reverie of longing, and whispered, amazed, “You dreamt of
that
? That I kissed you…
there
?”

She turned her head away. “The look on your face in the dream… At first, it was only the awareness, but then you leered at me. You were enjoying what you did with no regret. You seemed wicked, and you challenged me. When I saw your face, I had the coming apart feeling, but when I awoke, I was ashamed…to have dishonoured us both…or so I thought. Now I know not what to think.”

Darcy embraced her. “Lizzy, when we are alone together as husband and wife, there is nothing to be ashamed of or to regret. I know I challenge you, but I hope, if there are things you truly find too alarming to contemplate, you will tell me. I would not force or coerce you. You have demonstrated such trust, my dearest Lizzy. How could I betray it?’

She hugged him tightly. “I do love you, Fitzwilliam.”

They sat with arms around each other for several minutes. Finally, they leaned back in their former languor, legs entwined before the fire.

Elizabeth realised Darcy was nodding sleepily. “Shall we retire to the master’s bed?”

He rubbed his eyes. “The champagne has made me drowsy. I could stay right here in your arms if you would rather.”

Elizabeth sat up and turned to give him a light kiss, thinking
I shall get into bed first
, but as she leaned towards him much of a comely breast slipped from her low neckline.