She didn’t question it when Mr. Darcy escorted her not just to her door, but into her room. He looked about the room and his gaze settled on the bed. “You should likely lie down, I think, madam,” he said gravely. “I shall pull up this chair from the writing desk and sit with you for a bit, however. You need to rest, but you also shouldn’t be alone.”
She felt so grateful for this that she simply obeyed without protest, but she felt she ought to have protested, to have said that she was fine, that nothing had befallen her at all, for she had only gotten information, after all.
However, she did feel entirely unsettled, so she sat down on the bed, and she allowed Mr. Darcy to move pillows about behind her, so that she could be propped up, semi-recumbent and comfortable.
He pulled the chair over and sat down in it, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned in towards her. “How are you feeling?”
She let out a breath, trying to think of how to explain it. “It’s odd, because I think I should be relieved, now that everything is out in the open,” she said. “But there are all these other emotions that have been stirred up, and I do not know what to make of them.”
“You said the thing that you said about your mother, about her pride,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Yes, perhaps that wasn’t quite fair of me,” she said, shaking her head. “My mother was terribly frightened of the late duke, my father, and I suppose I can’t quite understand what that would be. Perhaps the closest for me might be if I had been forced to go back to Mr. Wickham? But even that, it would not be the same, for he never caused me any physical pain—”
“Elizabeth.” Mr. Darcy was out of his chair and his voice was agonized.
She looked up at him, craning her neck.
“I am ever so sorry for everything that has befallen you,” said Mr. Darcy. “Would that I could do anything to ease this well of pain you seem to be mired in.”
“You do,” she said, too quickly, but it was true. She gazed up and him, and he gazed back down at her, and then she did something mad. She patted the space on the bed next to her.
He looked down at the space, and his eyes widened.
A moment passed.
She fully expected him to sit back down in the chair he had pulled over, or even to say something gruff about how he didn’t like them in each other’s bedchambers or something of that nature.
But instead, he joined her on the bed.
What she should have done was to scoot over to make more room for him, but what she actually did was to angle herself in towards his chest, so that he put his arms out, and then she was against his shoulder, and his arm was around her body, his hand settling on her waist, and she tilted her head back to look up at him and he looked back at her.
Their faces were very close, inches away from each other.
She looked at his lips. He had nice lips, she decided. There were dark little points on his upper lip and chin. His whiskers were growing back after his last shave, and she liked the contrast of the dark hair and the pink of his mouth, and she had the urge to reach up and run her fingers over his chin, to feel the scratch of his facial hair, the warmth of his skin.
Her gaze flitted up to his eyes, and he was looking at her lips.
Then his gaze met hers, and there were questions in his eyes, and there was hunger, and she answered all of those questions, wordlessly but emphatically, with,Yes, yes, yes.
He cleared his throat and looked away.
She deflated.
But truthfully, what was wrong with her? She was a married woman, and she could not go around kissing Mr. Darcy. She should not be in his arms on her bed, either.
“Your mother,” he said in a raspy voice, “was doing whatever she could for you.”
“Yes, I know,” she whispered. “But I think, also, she was trying to punish Larilane.”
“Or perhaps she truly was so very frightened?” said Mr. Darcy.
“Well, not staying in Weythorn doesn’t speak to being frightened,” said Elizabeth. “There was no danger at that point. She did it because she wanted him to suffer.”
“Or perhaps she could not bear the memory of him, which would have been all over that house?”
“Perhaps,” Elizabeth agreed, sighing.
“I only think, if we want someone to blame, my Elizabeth, we must seek the blame entirely with the late duke. It was his bad behavior that caused all of this.”
