“Indeed? And I suppose you planned this as well?”
“I am trying to behave like a gentleman, Elizabeth.”
She slipped her hand into his elbow. “I do trust you, you know.”
“Even after I announced that we had planned to walk? Thank you for not contradicting me.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I was not always so compliant with your wishes, was I?”
“During those days we were stranded at the parsonage? No, you certainly were not. In fact, there were moments when it seemed that if I wanted you to do something, the best way to accomplish it would be to tell you to do the exact opposite.”
“Yes, I was feeling rather contrary and quite embarrassed to be so perturbed about our situation when all those poor people had lost homes and loved ones!”
“Yet you were all kindness to them, especially to Jenny. You even tolerated me in her presence!”
“Poor Jenny. I wish I could have said good-bye to her before I left. It must have seemed to her as if I did not care. I hope she is doing well.”
Darcy’s brows drew together. “Mrs. Collins has not kept you informed?”
“Only that Jenny was to live with her aunt at Rosings. My father will not allow me to read Charlotte’s letters if she speaks of you, so she rarely mentions anything about that time.”
“Jenny did go to live at Rosings, but once she was able to walk, or perhaps I should say run, Lady Catherine objected to the noise so young a child made in the house. Her aunt did not want to give up her position, having worked at Rosings all her life, so Jenny perforce was sent to an orphanage.”
Elizabeth stopped in her tracks, horrified by the thought of Jenny in one of those terrible places. “How could she? Poor, poor girl! It would have been better for her had she died with her parents. Oh, I cannot bear it!”
“If all has gone well, she should no longer be there. I gave orders for her to be taken from the orphanage, and to find a family who will care for her.”
“You are so good! But how did you even know what had happened?”
“Mrs. Collins wrote to me last month, concerned that nothing was being done to rebuild the village, and many of the villagers still required assistance. She hoped I could intercede for them with my aunt and convince her to devote some resources to the situation. Since Lady Catherine is still more inclined to berate me than to listen to me, I instead sent my steward’s assistant to lead the recovery efforts. I asked him to check on Jenny’s well-being.”
“Thank heavens you did! I know there are many children condemned to those horrible places, but somehow it is worse to think of a child who became dear to me there.”
“How could I not help Jenny? Albeit unwittingly, she played a role in bringing us together.” Darcy’s voice was tender.
“Do you remember how she called me Mrs. Darcy?” She tightened her hand on his arm, moving as close to him as she dared. “So much happened in those few days, and my life has been so very different since then.” Unaccountably, she felt the urge to cry.
“I wish…” He did not finish what he had started to say, but his expression was stern.
With some anxiety, Elizabeth said, “Is something the matter?”
“No, all is well.” He sounded gentler now, and then he laughed.
“What is so amusing?”
“I am laughing at myself, for reasons that I had best not share.”
She stopped and gave him a mock glare. “Can you not trust me with your secrets?”
“No, this one I should not tell you, Elizabeth. Believe me.” He laughed again, his voice low.
“I want to know, or I shall imagine the most terrible things!” She tugged teasingly on his carefully knotted cravat, creating disarray where there had been perfection.
“If you insist, minx! It is my own personal conundrum. The first day you were here, when I asked you whether it was difficult for you to be with your father, you kept your feelings hidden. It made me want to kiss you until there could be no doubt that you are mine. Just now you were open with your feelings, and I was so glad of your trust that it gave me an almost uncontrollable urge to kiss you. So it seems I am fated to spend all my time wanting to kiss you senseless.”
“A truly terrible fate, sir!” Elizabeth proclaimed with due solemnity. “How will I ever survive it?”
“You should not laugh at a desperate man,” he growled back teasingly. “Do not think it has not crossed my mind that the one way to force your father to let me marry you sooner would be to seduce you. In fact, there are probably no more three or four minutes per day when that idea does not cross my mind.”
“Mr. Darcy!” Elizabeth was half-scandalized, half-tempted to throw herself into his arms. “You can lay that thought to rest. You would, after all, need my cooperation.”
He looked at her searchingly, then closed his eyes tightly. “You really do not know, do you?” he said in an odd voice.
She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked. “What do I not know?”
“That you are a powder keg of passion just waiting for a spark. I can feel it whenever I touch you. Good God, it would be so easy to make you want more, and I do not trust that I would have the strength to stop.”
Elizabeth lurched back a step. He might as well have slapped her across the face, or perhaps dug her heart out with a dull knife. No, that would be less painful than this, because she would be dead and never have to face him again. “Why not just say I am a shameless wanton and have done with it?” she said icily. “I had not realized that your opinion of my morals was so low. This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. Good day, Mr. Darcy.” She turned and hurried in what she hoped was the direction of the lane as quickly as her legs would carry her, but there was no way to outrun the pain.
“Elizabeth, wait! That is not what I meant!” Darcy’s feet crashed through the underbrush behind her.
She picked up skirts and ran into a small grassy clearing, tears of humiliation burning in her eyes. She could not believe this was happening, that he had said such a horrible thing. Then his hand clamped around her arm, causing her to stop so abruptly that she tripped over a hidden root. He grasped her around the waist before she could fall, but she tried to twist away from him. Then they were both on the ground, Elizabeth lying half underneath Darcy, the scent of damp earth and dried leaves rising around her.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded, clutching her wrists.
“I am fine,” she panted through clenched teeth. “Now let me go.”
“Not until you listen to me! That is not what I meant. Elizabeth, when we are married, I will go down on my knees every night to thank God for your passionate nature. I cannot begin to tell you what it means to me that you respond to me. It means that we belong together, you and I, not that your morals are lacking or anything else. God knows I respond the same way to you, and always have. All you have to do is to look at me, and I go up in flames. Good God, sometimes I think your father is right to keep us apart because it may be the only way to keep me in check!”
Unsure of what to believe, Elizabeth stared at him as if the answer might be written in his shadowed eyes. Above her, his breaths were short and harsh, his dark hair falling around his face. “Are you quite done taking the Lord’s name in vain?” she said tartly.
“God, no,” he breathed as he lowered his head and captured her waiting lips. This was no gentle exploration but a fierce claim. His tongue invaded her mouth, fencing with hers and demanding an equal response. Her lips throbbed with a burning need as she accepted his claim and met him half-way. His kiss seemed to fill her entire being, but then she became aware that his body was moving over hers, his chest brushing tantalizingly against the tip of her breasts in a way that sent surges of lightning through her. Involuntarily, she arched her back, struggling for more of his touch, but he had pinioned her wrists to the ground beside her and one of his legs had somehow found its way between hers, so she could do no more than writhe beneath
him, shocking herself by sucking greedily on his tongue.
He growled his pleasure, but before she could get her fill of him, he tore his mouth from hers. At first she thought he meant to pull away from her, but then his teeth nipped at the sensitive skin of her neck, leaving behind an delightful ache as he moved on to explore the hollow at its base. His tongue probed at it excitingly for a moment, then he was running his lips over the exposed tops of her breasts.
Elizabeth closed her eyes in response to the flood of sensation he created as his lips traced a burning path across her. Just as she thought it could get no more intense, his tongue dipped beneath the neckline of her dress, and she forgot everything but the captivating need within her. Then he shifted, and with a jolt she felt his hand cupping her breast, the heat of it coming right through the muslin of her dress and the light chemise beneath it. The shocking delight of that intimacy intensified the pulses of sensation from his exploring lips, which were now pushing aside her neckline and nibbling her newly revealed shoulder. This was heaven.
When his thumb drifted across the tip of her breast, it created a surprising shock of pleasure, but that was nothing to the intense surge of sensation as he then began to trace tiny circles over that excruciatingly sensitive spot. When he moved on to toying with nipple, rolling it between his fingers, she gasped, moaning helplessly as sharp pangs of passion arched straight to the very core of her being. She was on fire with the intensity of it, with answering pulses of pleasure echoing from below. But no, that was not an echo, but his leg pressing up against her most private parts, and God help her, she was arching against him, succumbing to her need as her very essence dissolved into a seething cauldron of desire.
She whimpered when he stopped stimulating her breast, and she opened her eyes to see his face above her, his eyes burning, his leg still between hers. “That is how I want you,” he murmured, “with your eyes filled with desire only for me. And that is why I could seduce you, because you are innocent of what passion can do to you and because you trust me -- which is also precisely why I am not going to seduce you, even if it kills me.” Abruptly he released her wrist and rolled onto his back, his fists pressed against his forehead.
It took a moment for his words to penetrate through the clamor of her senses. When it did, she wavered between dismay at her behavior and a sudden desire to laugh over the folly of it all. Amusement won. Raising herself on one elbow, she tasted the corner of Darcy’s lips with a delicate kiss. “I hope you will manage to avoid death, since it would be a pity if you never had a chance to show me all the other things I am innocent of,” she murmured provocatively.
He did not open his eyes, but one arm snaked around her waist and pulled her against him. “I do not know if you are trying to tempt me or to torture me,” he grumbled.
“Most likely both.” She rested her head on his shoulder. It felt so natural to be there, her body seeming to fit perfectly against his, even as she still thrummed with sensual need.
“When I discovered Wickham with Georgiana in Ramsgate,” he said in a conversational tone at odds with the tension in his body, “I was at first furious with her for allowing him liberties. It was not until later that I realized what an impossible predicament she was in. A young man is trained in the art of seduction, and the more he practices it, the more his friends proclaim him to be a fine fellow indeed. Young girls, meanwhile, are kept in complete ignorance, so they know nothing of what can be done to them until an expert seducer comes along. If she trusts him, as Georgiana trusted George Wickham, it will be too late when she realizes what he is doing, and even if she somehow does realize it, he is stronger than she. And then we have the unmitigated gall to blame her? Would we send a young boy with a wooden sword into battle against Napoleon’s troops, and then censure him for losing the battle?”
Elizabeth considered this radical notion to the degree to which she was able, limited by the longing that still consumed her. Her hand, almost of its own volition, slipped under his topcoat to rest palm down on his waistcoat. To her surprise, he stiffened even further.
“Of course,” he continued, “Perhaps one can hardly blame a man when he is confronted by such natural seductive talent as some women possess.”
“Such seductive talents as either hiding or displaying their feelings?” she teased.
“Precisely what I meant.”
Elizabeth stayed in Darcy’s arms as long as possible, but they could not linger long, knowing they were expected. They walked hand in hand like children, their fingers entwined, stopping frequently for kisses that were not in the least bit childlike. When they at last came in sight of the house, Darcy said, “Perhaps it would be best for me to drive you to Lambton without stopping inside.” He removed a tiny twig from her hair. “It might be difficult to explain some of the interesting green streaks on the back of your dress. You might wish to change before your aunt and uncle return to the inn.”
“Oh, no!” Elizabeth attempted the impossible feat of trying to see her own back by looking over her shoulder. “I had not thought of that.”
“I do not believe that either of us was doing much thinking at that point.”
She laughed. “If I recall correctly, it seemed that you enjoyed not thinking.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “It is not too late to go back to the hollow.”
“As if you would permit it even if I agreed!”
“I am very sorry to say that you are correct,” he said. “Sorrier than you can know.”
Chapter 16
The next morning Darcy waited impatiently as his guests dawdled over breakfast. It felt as if days had passed since he had last seen Elizabeth, even though it was only yesterday that he had left her at the inn, after first ascertaining that she could make it safely to her room to change clothes before her aunt and uncle saw her. She had invited him to remain and have tea with her, but Darcy had deemed that too dangerous. Inns had beds, and after the afternoon they had spent, any equation that included Elizabeth, a bed, and no chaperone was asking for trouble, so he had merely kissed her hand in the common room of the inn and bade her a reluctant farewell.
Finally his guests finished their breakfast. He knew better than to say he was going to see Elizabeth, since then half the party would wish to join him, so instead he told them that he would be tending to business and would see them at dinner.
At the inn, he found only the Gardiners waiting for him. In response to his questioning look, Mrs. Gardiner said, “Lizzy is in her room, reading letters newly arrived from Longbourn. I will tell her you are here.”
But before Darcy could agree, Elizabeth appeared in the doorway, her eyes red and unmistakable signs of tears on her cheeks. What had happened? Had he somehow hurt her the previous day? Had her aunt and uncle found her in her stained dress after all?
He moved toward her in concern, but she gave him only a distracted look and instead approached her uncle, holding out to him two sheets of closely written paper.
With a frown, Mr. Gardiner began to read. His wife said, “What is the matter, Lizzy? Is it bad news?”
“It is in every way dreadful.” Elizabeth said to her aunt, with a despairing glance in Darcy’s direction. “Lydia has left all her friends – has eloped – has thrown herself into the power of --” She paused, closing her eyes. “Of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton.”
The sound of that detested name moved Darcy into action. Placing a supportive hand under her elbow, he guided her to a bench and urged her to sit. Taking his place beside her, he took her icy hands in his. “Is there anything you can take for your present distress? A glass of wine – shall I get you one?”
“No, I thank you,” she said, her voice trembling. “You know Mr. Wickham too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no connections, nothing that can tempt him – she is lost forever.” She burst into sobs. “When I consider that I might have prevented it! I who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of what I learnt to my own family, had hi
s character been known, it could not have happened.”
Mrs. Gardiner handed her niece a handkerchief. “But is it certain, absolutely certain?” she asked.
“Oh, yes! They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and were traced almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not gone to Scotland. My father is gone to London, and Jane writes to beg my uncle’s immediate assistance. But how is such a man to be worked on? How are they even to be discovered? I have not the smallest hope. It is all, all too late.”
Darcy gripped her hands tightly. “It is not too late. Your sister is not without connections, as Wickham is no doubt aware. As for discovering them, I have some ideas where to start.”
At first she seemed not to understand him, but then she shook her head. “I cannot ask you to involve yourself, not in this. Not with him!”
“I am already involved in it. I will not allow Wickham to trifle with my future sister, and you may be certain that he is counting on precisely that.”