Lizzy stopped and was staring at him with skepticism. “You did not seriously smell my perfume?”
Darcy's brow rose. “Yes, I did. Lavender. It was in the air long after you departed.” He leaned over, burying his face into her hair and inhaling deeply. “As I thought. Lavender. You splashed with jasmine,” he nuzzled her neck, “but your hair wash is lavender, as it was at the Netherfield Ball.” He paused to bestow a smattering of gentle sucks over her collarbone, Lizzy instantly shivering but also shaking her head.
“I cannot believe the details you recollect. Even after all this time you can yet dumbfound me, William. How did you note I used lavender?”
Darcy flushed slightly, taking her hand and sitting on the bench under the tree. “I noted everything about you, Elizabeth, both consciously and unconsciously. I caught whiffs while you dwelt at Netherfield, but the fragrance invaded my mind while we danced. Unfortunately I only had that one opportunity to get close enough to you, but I noticed your scent. It was intoxicating, but then everything about you intoxicated me, even your arguing, as it showed your spirit. At Kent I deduced it must be your favorite perfume as you always wore it.” He caressed her fingers, staring at her hands entwined in his. “When I returned to Pemberley… after… I had the potted lavender outside my study window removed. I ordered Mrs. Reynolds to banish all lavender from the house. She must have thought me mad, although that oddity was the least of my peculiarities last summer.”
He smiled wryly, glancing into her eyes. “You know the strangest part? Three weeks before you visited I was in my study, staring out the open doors as I do when cogitating. I was not thinking of you at that moment. I did, frequently, but was gradually finding the pain not as severe but more… bittersweet. The memory of your face and voice had become a part of me. The sadness of loss was as intense as ever, but had been tempered by the joy of having known you, even if superficially. Anyway, I was dwelling on a business issue, the very one that would take me to London, when I glanced to the patio stones and marked the stain from the pots of lavender I had ordered removed. Instantly I thought of you, your face as clear to me as it is now. As an epiphany it abruptly struck me that I no longer wished to erase you from my memory. I held no hope at that point but knew with certainty that I would never love another as I did you and I did not want to forget that feeling. So, I rang for Mr. Taylor and asked him to discover where the pots were and to have them returned. I felt… happier, somehow, once they were back, and the scent was comforting.”
“Perhaps it was a sign,” Lizzy spoke softly.
“That you would return to me as well? Perhaps. Although I still was flummoxed to see you.” He laughed. “I do not believe I have ever been so confounded in all my life! As I said, I stood rooted to the spot, smelling lavender, and utterly at a loss as to the logical course of action.” He continued to chuckle with the recollection.
“What did you finally do? I mean, I know you invited us to dine the next day, to my increased embarrassment and astonishment, but how did you reach that decision? It seems so unlike you.”
He sighed. “Well, that is the crux of it, love. I had to do something radical. I was surprised and confused, but knew for cert that I was being offered a second chance. You were obviously nervous to encounter me as we did, but as I mused over your words and demeanor, you did not impress me as harboring hostility or distaste toward me. I refused to assume too much and your discomfort gave me pause, but I could not believe it an accident that you were here. Of all the manors in all of England, you were here! The probability of this occurring by random chance is astronomical. I decided it had to be by Design, an opportunity for me to mend the damage I had inflicted.”
He turned to his wife with a beatific smile. “Of course, all those thoughts flashed through my mind in a chaotic whirl. The foremost sensation was quite simply a gut-wrenching surge of desire and need. It all was back in a gush of emotion. My love for you as desperate and intense as ever. How I stood upright yet amazes me as I could barely breathe, so agonizing my yearning to kiss you and hold you and tell you how passionately I loved you.”
“Fitzwilliam,” she breathed, reaching to cup his face. “How star-crossed we were! I had recently been gazing at your image with such aching hunger, if only you had known. You could have swept me into your arms right then and I would have melted, never to depart this place until I was yours completely.”
Moving simultaneously, their mouths met. The spoken remembrances of craving igniting a tangible firestorm of passion as they devoured breath and essence. Lizzy climbed onto his lap, Darcy embracing tightly. Hands were everywhere, voraciously touching. For long minutes it continued, fingers mindlessly beginning to release buttons and untie a cravat.
“Lizzy! God, I must love you, but not here. Wait, beloved! Please, come with me.” He rose, lifting her from his lap and setting her unsteadily onto her feet. He palmed her cheeks, kissing lightly. “Come,” he repeated, taking her hand and leading infallibly along the twisting path.
They exited the maze to the south, wending past the lily pond located before this opening, under the stone archway, and then across the extensive lawn rolling up the gentle slope beside the Falls to the Greek Temple. It was a significant distance, easily negotiated, but necessitating reining in the rushed pace. Lizzy was panting imperceptibly, at times the added weight to her slender frame affecting her. Darcy kept a firm grip on her hand, always a step ahead, but cognizant of his wife's struggles so he quelled his verve. By the time he parted the hanging branches screening the trail to the grotto, the worst of their flaming fervor had ebbed, although it was not entirely abated to be sure.
Lizzy released a booming laugh. Somehow in the midst of all his organizing he had managed to additionally assemble a romantic tableau of blankets and cushions over the soft grassy plain in the grotto. A basket sat on a flat rock, waiting.
“When in the world did you find the time to do this?”
“I told you I arose quite early this morning,” he whispered near her ear from his stance behind her, hands resting lightly on her waist. “I have taken to keeping the blankets and cushions in the Temple since we inevitably find our way here now and again.” He nibbled her lobe, initiating his travels over the long expanse of her glorious neck.
Lizzy sighed, leaning onto his hard chest and clasping his hands. Five times since returning from London in July they had managed to finagle time to visit Darcy's hidden sanctuary; twice planned but the other three spontaneous trysts as their feet veered toward the dell while walking. They were both coming to discover the delight of fresh air and balmy breezes over naked flesh irresistible and slightly addictive. The effect on their libido was remarkable, not that their mania for each other needed a stimulant.
“Do you require refreshment or rest, my love?” he asked, tone clearly indicating his fervid hope that the answer was negative.
Lizzy smiled tenderly, stroking his long fingers. “Nothing, my darling, but you. Always, only you.”
Unhesitatingly, he resumed the unfastening of buttons, albeit leisurely now that they were alone with passion cooler. His left hand released the tie and clasps located on her left side, the other fingers laced with hers over their child.
“So tell me, my husband, how did the dress removal fantasy unfold?”
Darcy smiled against the nape of her neck. “Hmmm… A myriad of ways, in truth, my lover. In this position I imagined your body pressed into me with your dainty hands stroking over my thighs… yes, rather like that, Elizabeth. Then I would lavish your creamy neck with adoring kisses and nibbles. One reason I so admire this dress is the miniscule number of clasps securing it to your perfect body. See, just that easy and it is undone! It peels off so delicately, your skin revealed to my touch. Ah! A delight I had not anticipated… the cool air raising tiny bumps over your succulent flesh and your nipples hardening like little pebbles. Wonderful!”
“That effect transpires from your touch, beloved,” she whispered hoarsely. “What next?”
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He cleared his throat, resuming, “Then you stand in your shift. Of course, I had never seen a woman's undergarment except on Georgie once or twice when ill, so my memory was vague, but I rightfully imagined something lacy and mildly transparent. So incredibly feminine and soft, caressing your skin and silky under my palms. I can feel the warmth of you through the linen, the trembling as I arouse you and revere your body. Oh my love, how utterly beautiful you are! Summertime clothing is light and airy, so fewer layers, and no stays to encumber my access now that you are pregnant. So freely liberated is a shift, falling to your lovely feet handily. Now, here you are my precious wife, flushed and naked in my arms. Aflame with desire for me, because of me. My Lizzy, I love you so! I must make love to you!”
She pivoted in his embrace, leisure forgotten with resurgent yearning. The loosened, dangling cravat was pulled away, Darcy already removing his jacket. He encircled her again, grasping her bottom and pressing into his pelvis as she attacked the buttons of his waistcoat. Thus locked and entwined, they dropped to the blankets. Words were lost as mouths became occupied in sensuous pursuits. His shirt pulled off and tossed by Lizzy, who expeditiously moved in to kiss his chest while he struggled to discard boots and trousers.
Stretching onto the plush covering they paused, eyes riveted with seething desire and profound love. Darcy smoothed the loose hair from Lizzy's brow, bending to kiss her forehead then temple.
“Elizabeth, my wife. I love you.”
His virile frame swathed her totally as he claimed her mouth in a thorough kiss. Beautiful rhythm as ecstasy rose higher with hearts fluttering. The warmth of September was diminished substantially under the thick branches and with breezes filtering through the brush over chill water; nonetheless, their bodies bathed in sweat from the exertion of intense ardor. Despite the fervid urgency of their mutual passion, neither rushed to attain fulfillment. Rather they danced with patterns of languid movements of extreme tenderness conjoined with periods of furious momentum. It was a prolonged, varied engagement of indescribable lovemaking culminating in due course with stunning rapture, their cries of sublime joy uninhibited and explosive.
They lay entwined on the pillows, as close as two bodies could manage, skin touching on every plane. Darcy lay on his side, cuddling Elizabeth into his chest with both silky legs trapped between his muscular ones, playing with her hair while watching their baby's lazy pushes. The sturdy kicks could now be visibly discerned as Lizzy's abdominal skin rose and rippled bizarrely. These humorous waves were a new development, first noted by a doting father two mornings ago while studying a slumbering wife. His infatuation and ebullience was infectious, Lizzy not sure what thrilled her greatest: the visual evidence of their child's vitality or her husband's giddiness.
Darcy pressed one finger onto a tiny bulge, grinning ridiculously. His animated face rested inches from Lizzy's, breath tickling her cheek when he spoke. “Do you think it a foot or elbow perhaps? Simply amazing! He must feel compressed, yearning for more space. Or merely exercising his muscles. Like either you or me, needing action and movement.”
Lizzy lay her hand atop his, giggling at the wonder on his face. Darcy ignored her, mesmerized by the antics of their baby and the marvelous changes to his wife's body. Her breasts had not increased further for the past couple months, but were heavier, the nipples darkening slightly. Her belly had grown considerably, no gown able to hide the swell. The skin remained soft, supple, and void of marks, thanks to his uncle's ointment and Darcy's diligent massaging, but her navel was flattening and a faint shadowy line was visible from the umbilicus to groin. Her waist was thicker although the primary expansion was frontal, Lizzy still not noticeably gravid when viewed from behind. Her hips seemed a wee bit wider, and she occasionally complained of mild joint pain, a result, the book assured them, of muscles and ligaments preparing for childbirth.
Overall her health was as vigorous as always. The rare and thankfully minor contractions of the womb, faint twinges in her hips and lower back, occasional breathlessness if she overexerted, and infrequent heartburn were the only annoying complications thus far endured. What weight she had gained apparently all resided in her midsection and chest as the remainder of her frame was as slim, or bony as Lizzy teasingly called it to Darcy's irritation, as ever.
It was this very frame—sumptuous and toned and lissome to Darcy's eyes—that he now caressed with avid intensity and devotion. He quite simply never tired of touching and gazing upon his wife. Lizzy's idolization toward her husband's physique was as fanatical; therefore, she admiringly brushed over his chest and abdomen with the back of one hand while the other was lovingly clasped in Darcy's embracing one.
She turned her head and kissed him fleetingly, smiling into his blue eyes. “You did not finish your tale, my heart. You left off standing in a state of paralysis.”
Darcy chuckled vibrantly. “How apropos of you to call it paralysis, love. It truly was. I think my brain even shut down as I do not recall what, if anything, I said to you. I do not honestly know how long I stood there after you had gone, but the stasis abruptly fell from me and I spun about and lurched up the stairs. I am certain I appeared the utter fool, all grace and dignity of station vanished. My only thought was that I could not let you go. Georgiana, bless her heart, was stunned at my appearance, likely thinking me again mad. After my actions earlier that summer I believe she thought I had mentally snapped!”
Lizzy was laughing at the vision as Darcy continued with humor imbuing his voice, “I was rambling and largely incoherent when I joined her in the music room. Somewhere in the midst she heard your name spoken. Of course, she knew the whole story of our relationship thus far, of my feelings toward you, but was highly confused by my behavior and unexpected arrival home. It took awhile before she deciphered my disjointed raving as meaning you were presently on Pemberley grounds. I finally bumbled some sort of explanation, enough that she gathered you were visiting with your aunt and uncle in Lambton, and that I intended to delay your departure and restate my feelings. You understand, Elizabeth, I had no plan, was largely inarticulate and mildly deranged. I dashed out of the music room, nearly bowled over Mrs. Reynolds in the hall, barked an order to resaddle my horse, and vaulted up the stairs with the vague intent to freshen up, as if washing my face and adding cologne would somehow cause you to fall into my arms!”
They were both laughing at this point, Darcy having rolled onto his back and wiping at his eyes. “I was wholly nonsensical. In truth, my irrationality of the moment led to the fortunate by-product of rapidly barreling up a flight of stairs and endless corridors rather than attempting to detain the three of you immediately. If I had, I am certain your uncle would have deemed me insane and vacated the premises forthwith! Instead, I reached my rooms wheezing and palpitating and had no option but to collapse onto the bed. I am athletic and vigorous, but I do think I was near to a heart seizure. While struggling to merely survive, cold rationality was reestablished. It was while I sat there calming that I decided to invite you and the Gardiners to dine. The logic of having you in my home with me and Georgiana for hours uninterrupted was beyond appealing and kept my heart racing despite my efforts at serenity.”
He rolled back toward Lizzy, stroking her face. “You know the rest. I do believe I managed true gentlemanly decorum by the time I spoke with your uncle and aunt.”
“Indeed you did. I, on the other hand, was a mass of churning nervousness and desperately begged them to leave.”
Darcy arched his brows in surprise. “You did? Why?”
Lizzy reddened slightly, tracing her fingertips over his nose and chin. “I still felt so mortified and confused, I suppose. You had every reason to despise me or at least be indifferent. If ever one had given you cause to lose your good opinion, it was me! Like you, I had not sensed distaste in your words or posture, but I would not have predicted you wanting to dine with me or allowing me anywhere near your sister. I was truly shocked.” She giggled suddenly, fingers on his lips. “By the
way, I never told you my aunt's words. She said you were charming and that there was an agreeableness to your mouth.”
Darcy blushed scarlet and Lizzy giggled, placing her lips softly on his. “She is correct, you know. I watched your mouth quite avidly all the next day, your smiles and laughter, and could not believe the thoughts rushing through my mind.”
“What sort of thoughts?” he asked huskily.
“Let me show you,” she murmured, proceeding to feather playfully over his mouth, utilizing teeth, lips, and tongue to great advantage. Darcy quickly lost all sense of anything but his rising fever, hands moving as he responded vehemently to her actions.
Darcy arched and groaned, voice a rough whisper when he spoke. “Elizabeth, I stand in awe at your imagination, but rather doubt you envisioned this or anything remotely similar merely by looking at my mouth!”
Lizzy laughed, kissing his pulsing throat and then capturing an earlobe between her lips. “I confess the specific details have evolved over time, my lover, but my desire for you was blossoming, aided in no small part by your sensuality and flawless physique. I may have been innocent then, Fitzwilliam, but I knew I wanted you. God how I wanted you! How I still want you, all of you, always.”
He crushed her tightly to his chest. “You shall always have me, Elizabeth. Have no fear.”
Chapter Three
Toes in the Sand
Exhaustive deliberation had preceded Darcy's decision to go on holiday at the seaside resort town of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. For hours he pored over maps of England and discussed the possibilities with various friends before deciding on the relatively unknown port town on the North Sea.
The seed of this excursion with his wife had been planted while yet in Hertfordshire. Between games at the billiard tournament in Meryton, Darcy and Bingley had engaged in conversation with Sir Lucas and a man named Houghton about the fad of seabathing and “taking the waters,” which had risen to nearly fanatical heights since the 1750s. Spa towns, such as Bath and Cheltenham with their hot mineral springs and clean air, had been popular for centuries. The elite had long ago divined the healing aspects and pleasure gleaned from immersion in these natural pools, and an entire tourist trade had arisen. So much so that trips to Bath were an essential part of societal demands irrespective of the springs themselves. The open ocean, in contrast, was viewed with skepticism if not downright hostility and horror. The thought of willingly placing one's body into the cold, salty water of the sea was unheard of until the early 1700s when several physicians began writing of the curative properties of sea water combined with sea air; Dr. Richard Russel being the prime example. Cynicism was rabid in some quarters, but popularity grew nonetheless. This led to a wild emergence of seaside resorts, many no more than tiny fishing villages, attempting to profit by the craze.
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