He looked her over, his gaze traveling greedily over what she’d uncovered. His fingers came up slowly and deliberately. He brushed his thumb over her neck, traced a path down to her collarbone.
And the door opened, and Meg’s voice came in cheerily. “There’s a letter for you, mum. Imagine, delivering letters in this wind and snow. I can’t understand what must have possessed the—”
She had seen them.
Mr. Darcy moved, turning and placing his body between her and Meg, blocking Elizabeth from view, though it was silly, wasn’t it, since Meg was the one who helped Elizabeth dress and undress?
Meg looked terrified. “Oh, I did not realize… It’s the middle of the morning, and—”
“It’s all right.” Elizabeth felt the need to reassure her. “Leave the letter on my desk.”
“Yes, mum.” Meg curtsied, trying to look everywhere except at them. “I’m sorry, mum.” She dropped the letter on the desk and fairly fled out of the room.
When the door closed, Elizabeth felt a giggle escaping her lips.
But Mr. Darcy wasn’t laughing. He rubbed his forehead, and he sucked in a breath.
Elizabeth felt the laughter die in her throat. “What’s the matter? It’s not as if she truly saw anything, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. We are husband and wife, and—”
“Turn around,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Why?” she said, but she obeyed.
“Put your arms back in the sleeves. I’ll button you back up, unless you’d like to call for Meg.”
“Mr. Darcy, I…” She glanced over her shoulder at his expression, and she decided not to continue. She obeyed him wordlessly. His fingers were deft, quickly doing up all the buttons.
When he was done, he tucked in his shirt and started across the room.
“You’re leaving, then?” she said.
He reached the door and opened it. “When I kissed you at the ball, it felt like this. Wanting you… it motivates me to take things from you that I shouldn’t. I won’t anymore. I promised I wouldn’t, and I have to be strong.”
* * *
Darcy cut his meat at the table. “Who was the letter from?”
“It was from Jane, of course,” she said.
“Ah, yes, you do seem to get a great many letters from your sister,” said Darcy. “You are quite close.”
“We promised before I left that we would write each other daily, in order to stay close, so that we might know all the minutia of each other’s lives. That way, it would be almost as if we were still under the same roof.”
“I see,” he said, smiling.
“It’s not so easy, though,” said Elizabeth. “She has many things to write to me about, but I…”
“Well, I suppose it’s boring for you here,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t describe my life here as boring, not when you are so difficult to predict.’
“Yes, I see,” he said. “There’s always the chance that I shall fly into a rage, then?”
She stabbed at a boiled potato with her fork. “Well, I don’t write to her about those.”
“No?”
“I… I suppose I don’t want her to worry,” she said.
“And she would, if she knew what it was like living with a monster like me?”
“I wouldn’t call you that.” But she was looking at the potato on her fork, not at him.
He sighed. His voice was gentle. “I can’t help but think you are deceiving yourself, Elizabeth. You think that perhaps you can change me, but that is a fool’s errand. I am too broken for that. You oughtn’t embroil yourself in all this. If your sister would worry about you, then I think you know the truth of what it is between you and me. You should not tempt…” He shook his head, and the bottom went out of his voice. “I would beg you not to kiss me again.”
She didn’t say anything.
It was quiet for some time.
Elizabeth put the potato in her mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. She washed it down with a drink of wine. “Jane and Mr. Bingley have set the date for their wedding. We are invited to go.”
“Oh,” he said. “When is it?”
“Two weeks hence, but she says that we may come as soon as we are able. I can help with the preparations.”
He nodded. “Good. As soon as the snow clears, you’ll go.”
“And you, sir?”
“I shan’t go. You will go alone. I have said that I shall release you from this marriage, and I shall. There’s no time like the present.”
She looked up at him, and he could see she’d been hurt by what he’d said.
“Come now, Elizabeth,” he said softly, “you must see that it’s the right thing. You are too good for this place, too good for me, and I will not transgress further against you. I have already taken far more than I should have from you. I may never be able to make it right, but I must do what I can.”
She swallowed, and her lower lip was trembling. She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed overcome.
“You know it’s madness to be with me.”
She turned back to her plate, sniffing. “Yes.”
He let out a breath, relieved.
“Madness,” she whispered. “I lie about you to Jane. I am frightened of you sometimes.” A long, long pause. “Yes.” She nodded. “I will go.”
“It’s the best thing for you,” he said. “We both know it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Darcy had to put Elizabeth off the idea of any further massage by having his valet assist him. He had the bath drawn and assured her he would be all right without her help.
Then he submitted to the ministrations of his valet, and he had to admit that the massage wasn’t nearly as distracting without Elizabeth’s hands on him. It might even have been better at alleviating his pain. Or perhaps it was only that his muscles were loosened after having been worked at the night before.
Whatever the case, he didn’t feel the need for his nightly strong drink by the fire. He felt afflicted with restless energy, instead, and he prowled the house without his cane.
Outside, the winds had not stopped, but the temperature had raised, and he heard the distant rumbling of thunder. That was good, then. The wind would blow in the warmer storm, and the rain would wash away the snow, and Elizabeth could leave.
The thought went through him like a hot lance of pain.
He didn’t want to let her go.
No, of course I don’t, and that is why I must. I have been nothing but selfish and cruel to her. I must set her free.
He found himself in the east wing of the house, and he went into the nursery, which had been his own nursery as well, when he had been small. Some of the toys here had been his toys before they were Georgiana’s.
Not the dolls, though.
He remembered when she had been so in love with these dolls. Each had names and detailed histories, and she would sit on his knee and chatter to him in a little-girl voice that somehow sounded so grown-up.
He wondered if it hadn’t been a curse that they were so far apart in age. Losing their parents, it had cast him in a nearly fatherly role toward her, and he had been blind to the fact that she was growing up.
Her childhood, it had been his comfort in the wake of their parents’ loss. She had been young and sweet and small and some part of him had never wanted that to change. He wanted her to remain a little girl forever. He wanted her to sit on his knee and chatter about dolls.
But she had been becoming a young woman, and Darcy hadn’t seen.
Wickham had.
Damn that man.
Outside, the thunder crashed, closer now, and lightning lit up the windows.
Startled by the noise, he stood up.
There was a figure illuminated in the doorway.
He let out a little cry. For a moment, he thought it was Georgiana herself.
But in an instant, he knew he was wrong. The figure was too tall, and the hair was the wrong color. The long white sleeping gown,
though, that had thrown him.
It was Elizabeth.
He made his way across the room towards her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t have come here, but I wanted to remember it. I couldn’t sleep, and I won’t be living here anymore, and I wanted to look at it all again and try to commit it to my memory.”
“It’s all right,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You may go anywhere you please. I was wrong to keep you out of here.”
“I’ll go back to bed now,” she said. She didn’t move.
He stopped directly in front of her.
Lightning flashed outside again. More thunder. It was frightfully loud.
Elizabeth cringed.
He put his arm around her without thinking about it.
She leaned into him, and it was as if she fit there, belonged there.
He drew in a breath and it made noise when he expelled it. “She was very angry with me toward the end. I kept her up here in the nursery, and she was fifteen years old. To me, that still seemed very young, but to her, she thought she was on the edge of womanhood. She was cross with me. She begged for freedom, and the more she begged, the more I tamped down on her.”
Elizabeth looked up at him. “Well, she was young. What freedom could she have had?”
“Your own sister, the youngest one, when did she make her debut into society?”
“Oh, well, Lydia, she’s always been old for her age.” Elizabeth waved this away.
“Perhaps Georgiana was too, and I just refused to see it,” said Darcy.
“Did she do something?” said Elizabeth. “Did she try to rebel against your strictness?”
Darcy nodded.
“Is that what caused the carriage accident?”
Lightning flashed brightly, followed closely on its heels by another crash of thunder. And then the rain began to pelt the windows.
Elizabeth looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to talk about it.”
“She wanted to go on a trip,” he said. “I didn’t want her to go. I thought she was too young to travel on her own, but she wore me down. She enlisted the help of her governess, Miss Younge, who I thought was a trustworthy woman, but who did not, in fact, have Georgiana’s best interests at heart. They both wrote to me, telling me that there was nothing to fear, only a lark. I believed them, and I didn’t think anything was amiss. A week later, a letter reached me from Mr. Wickham, telling me that he and my sister were married and demanding to be given the full sum of her dowry.”
Elizabeth pulled away from him, horrified. “What? Married?”
He pushed past her, into the hallway. At the end of the hallway, rain lashed the window pane and a ghostly pale light drifted through it. The air seemed heavy, as if it had absorbed the weight of the water coming from the clouds outside.
“But did she know?” said Elizabeth. “Did she want to marry him? Did she deceive you or was she taken in by him?”
“Wickham was a childhood friend,” said Darcy. “He was the son of my father’s steward, but my father took a liking to him, raised him like one of his own children. Did everything he could for him, even sent him to school along with me. Wickham and I were once close, but he proved to be a careless sort of man. Money would flow through his fingers like water, and it was all he cared about.”
“Oh, dear,” said Elizabeth. “So, he came after your sister, then?”
“That was my fault,” said Darcy. “You see, my father had wanted Wickham to take over the parsonage here in Derbyshire. He wanted to provide for him by giving him an occupation. But after my father’s death, when the position became open, Wickham wasn’t interested. He asked me if I could not give him the value of the living instead. I thought it was probably a bad idea, but I also didn’t think he would do very will as a clergyman. I knew he wouldn’t be able to handle the money. I knew it. I gave it to him anyway.”
“I don’t see how that’s your fault,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, he went through it rather more quickly than even I had feared, and he came back for more money.”
“And you refused him?”
“No, I didn’t.” Darcy dragged a hand over his face. “No, that first time, I didn’t. He was in a bad spot, and he said he would go to debtors’ prison without it, and he asked if I could bear to have his suffering on my conscience, and I gave in.”
“Well, then, why…?” Elizabeth sighed. “Because he came back again, and that time you did refuse him.”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “I told him he must face consequences for his actions at some point. He was angry with me. He vowed to my face that he would make me sorry. And he did.” He grimaced. “The letter he sent me about Georgiana, it was, er, full of detail about things he had… it was vulgar. It was…” He shut his eyes as if shutting them could make him unsee the words, the images they’d conjured. “He seemed to delight in the idea that he’d hurt her.” His voice broke. “He knew that hurting her was the best way to hurt me.”
Elizabeth was aghast. “That… nothing about that is your fault. What should you have done, given him more money?”
“I would have, had I known what he planned to do. When I got there and I found her, she was…” He walked away, trying to walk all that away too, sinking his hands into his hair. “He had forced himself on her and beaten her and she…”
Elizabeth was behind him, her hands on his back. “Fitzwilliam…”
“We fought,” said Darcy. “I hit him with my fists. I should have shot him. I don’t know why I didn’t come there with a loaded pistol. I… I wasn’t thinking. I’ve never been so distraught… He knocked me down.” He turned to look at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s lips parted.
“He had beaten her with his fists, and he beat me too, and I was bested by that wretch.” He’d never said it aloud. Saying it aloud made the shame fresh again. His nostrils flared. “He took her in the carriage, and they were leaving. I got myself together and went after them on horseback. I’m the one who caused the carriage to go over the cliff.”
“I’m sure you didn’t—”
“I was trying to save her, but I bungled that too, and I killed her.”
“No.” She lifted her chin. “Don’t say that.”
“You weren’t there,” he said, his voice rising. “You don’t know what—”
“You loved your sister. You didn’t kill her. No matter what happened, moment by moment, it was that awful man Wickham that did it. I’m glad you killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he said, letting out a bitter laugh. “He got away.”
“But Mrs. Hurst said that there are rumors. No one’s seen him since, so people think—”
“I saw him climbing up over that cliff,” he said. “He got away. If he’s hiding, well, that’s likely because he knows that if I find him, I will kill him.” He searched her expression, wanting to see how she’d react to that declaration.
Thunder crashed and lightning lit up her face, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman more beautiful.
She kissed him.
He tried to pull away from her.
He wanted to think he tried, anyway.
* * *
Elizabeth panted. Her body seemed to be convulsing in time with the thunder outside, but now they were both retreating—the crashes outside and the wild pleasure that had seized her and rippled through her, turning her inside out.
Her sleeping gown was up at her armpits and her body was bare.
Fitzwilliam was inside her. He was panting too. His fingers were between their bodies, touching her where her thighs met. That was what he’d done right before it had happened—whatever it was—the burst of rippling pleasure.
She touched his face, the side of his face that wasn’t marred with scars, touched him because she needed to see that he was real. Everything seemed unreal just then, and she was afraid she might lose herself.
He shuddered against her, a groan escaping his lips, digging the f
ingers of one of his hands into her hip.
She gasped.
Then he was still. He brought his face down, resting his forehead against hers.
They breathed together.
He was half-undressed as well. He didn’t have his jacket or his vest or his cravat or his trousers, but he still wore his shirt. It was partially unbuttoned. Or… some of the buttons might have been ripped off.
She wasn’t sure.
Everything had been strange.
He had been so overcome by that horrible memory, and his sadness and pain and shame had risen up in the air along with the storm, like something alive. She hadn’t been able to bear it. She’d thought to… to comfort him, somehow, but when they touched, it wasn’t comfort.
It was…
Oh, she didn’t know. It was as if the madness that had taken over her, that made her want him at all, had crested like the snow drifts, and she had been buried in that insanity.
But it had been good, even sweet, a ferocious sweetness. Now that it had passed, she only wanted to cling to him. Her lips sought his again and he obliged her. They kissed slowly, thoroughly, softly.
He let out a low groan, breaking the kiss. His body slipped out of hers. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. “Ah, Elizabeth, I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” she whispered, reaching up to stroke his hair. “You needn’t be sorry. I was told it would hurt, and there would be blood, but it didn’t. There wasn’t. It was… rather lovely.”
He was boneless against her, exhausted, wrung out. “How do I send you away now?”
“You don’t,” she whispered.
“Everything I touch, I destroy,” he muttered.
“I’m not destroyed,” she replied.
He pulled away, studying her face.
“I want…” She reached for him. “I want you to hold me. I want to be close to you. Please.”
“Elizabeth…”
“It’s dreadfully cold up here, isn’t it?” She shivered. It was funny how she hadn’t noticed before.
He stood up and stepped back into his trousers. He offered her his hand. He helped her up. He put his arm around her and she put her head on his shoulder. They walked out of the east wing together.
Mr. Darcy, the Beast Page 13