“Elizabeth…allow me, I must clarify — ” he managed, his voice a strained whisper against her lips, the words almost swallowed by the escalating passion of their kisses.He drew back fractionally, his eyes searching hers, a hint of something almost like abashment, panic, and perhaps a touch of bewildered desire, in their depths. “The candles…I wish to assure you that my sole intention in arranging them as such was to test the breadth of our control, to see if we could achieve distinct targets on a larger scale.”
His face was flushed as he added, “I intended no other…purpose…however this must appear…” and here he trailed off, gesturing vaguely, before continuing, “Though,” and now his voice dropped, becoming warm with emotion, “I cannot say I regret where this evening has led.”
She laughed at him, she could not help it. He was so flustered. “Indeed? I must admire your dedication to arcane scholarship.” She closed the small distance between them, her lips brushing his with a sweetness that was both innocent and undeniably beguiling.
“Elizabeth,” he groaned, when she finally allowed him a breath, his voice rougher now, with an almost desperate edge to it, and his hands, which had found their way to her waist, trembled. “We should truly talk about certain matters. I would not wish to presume or to misunderstand — ”
Whatever he meant to say next was lost as she captured his lips with another kiss. A playful light gleamed in her eyes as she said, “You continually surprise me, sir. I had not taken you for a man whose inclinations lay more with words than with action.”
He stiffened for a fraction of a second, then his hands tightened almost convulsively around her. “You cannot know…” he breathed, “The effect you have…what those words…”
Feeling rather curiously emboldened, she placed a finger on his lips, silencing him with a gentle touch. “Why, Fitzwilliam, you seem to have misplaced the end of every thought this evening,” she teased, her eyes filled with laughter.
He caught her wrist, turned her palm, and kissed it, his gaze full of a feeling that went beyond mere admiration. “I find I cannot think at all in your presence,” he said.
“What a shocking admission,” she said, with a smile, “And what other qualities are you prepared to mislay in my company? Pray, tell me what now comprises the formidable Mr Darcy?”
She expected a dry retort, perhaps a comment about what little of his sanity she had left him, but the amusement she had anticipated never came. Instead, a look of quiet introspection settled in his eyes.
“In everything I have come to question about myself, there has been one constant,” Darcy admitted. He drew a ragged breath, his gaze never leaving hers, before he said, “My affections and wishes are unchanged, save in one regard. They have only intensified the more I have come to understand you.”
His words were so sincere it seemed to demand an equally unvarnished truth from her. She met his intense gaze, her own heart pounding with the weight of what she had to say. “I will not offer you a lie, no matter how much I might wish to give you the answer you deserve.” She saw a flash of pain in his eyes and pressed on quickly. “The sentiments I now hold for you deepen with each passing day. I ask only for your patience as they find their name.”
Love.
The word hovered just beyond her reach, a word she was not yet brave enough, not yet certain enough to say.
A low, rueful chuckle escaped him before he disengaged entirely, his hold on her first loosening, then releasing as he took a half-step backward. “You have a gift, madam, for administering the most bracing truths at the most precarious moments.”
But the look he gave her was so full of fondness that his words held no bite at all.
Drawing courage from that look, and from the magic of the candles, Elizabeth dared to reach for him, the feeling of abandon a precarious, thrilling thing. She took his hand, her fingers lacing with his. His breath caught in his throat. In that instant, she knew she possessed the whole of his attention, and she marvelled at the strange power of it.
“And are you now to be deterred, sir, because I have offered you an honest beginning instead of a perfect conclusion?” she said.
His gaze fell to their hands, then jerked back to her face as if startled, his pupils wide and dark. “Deterred?” he repeated, the word a husk of its usual certainty.
In answer, she gave him a deliberate smile before dropping her eyes to his mouth for the space of a held breath. Her own lips parted slightly. And she watched, with a flutter in her own chest, as something shifted in his expression. The muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed, an involuntary movement in the bare line of his neck. He was transfixed.
“Elizabeth,” he rasped, “Perhaps we should not — ”
She saw the smouldering battle in his eyes, the innate honour, the fear of misstepping, of presuming too much, fighting with an undeniable desire. His gaze left her face and then traveled down the line of her neck to where her dressing gown had slipped at her collarbone.
A sobering awareness of her own forwardness abruptly doused her like a bucket of ice water. What had been a thrilling game a moment before was now a jarring reality, and it was overwhelming. A small gasp escaped her, a sound of both terror and thrill, a check on an impulse that had carried her far beyond the bounds of her own experience and her engrained sense of decorum. What had possessed her, she did not not know. She had been swept by it into a place she did not recognise. A slow heat suffused her face, the deepening colour rising to her cheeks.
He seemed to feel her sudden hesitation as if it were his own. His fingers pulled away as he exhaled a shaky breath. When he looked at her again, the heated intensity in his gaze had given way to a look of almost abashed apology.
“I had always hoped that when this moment came, it would be with no reservations between us,” he confessed unsteadily.
His withdrawal was a comfort and a pang. Her heart ached for the lost moment, even as she felt a wave of relief. “My feelings may not be complete, but they are true,” she said, the words a tentative offering.
“You have given me a gift with your sincerity,” he said quickly, reassuringly, “Pray do not for a moment believe it is anything less.” He paused, his expression becoming solemn. “I will not dishonour such candour by pressing for more than you are ready to give. To do so would be to prove myself unworthy of the very feelings I hope to earn. We need go no further tonight.”
A rush of affection, fierce and tender, surged through her. “Must your every action be honourable?” she ribbed him gently, “It is a most disarming habit. And to part now seems a rather unceremonious end. Surely we can mark the occasion more properly than that?”
A smile, different from the one before — this one holding both daring and promise — played across his lips.
“My resolve,” he said, “is not nearly so strong as you believe. Perhaps you might permit me to mark this moment as it deserves.”
