She turned onto her side, her back to him, and felt the full length of his body settle against hers with a shock that had nothing to do with temperature. He was warm — almost unbearably warm after the hours of creeping cold — and the breadth of his chest against her back was like pressing against a wall that breathed. She could feel the shape of him through the layers of his clothing: the hard plane of his stomach, the ridge of his hip, the long muscles of his thigh aligned with hers. His arm lay along her waist, rigid, his hand curled into a fist against the blanket rather than resting on her body.
And she became aware, with a clarity that stole her breath, that there was nothing between her skin and his arm except a single layer of rough wool. She was naked under these blankets. Her bare back was pressed against the wool of his waistcoat. Her bare hip rested against the fabric of his breeches. If the blanket shifted, if it rode up even an inch, his arm would be against her skin.
She did not complete the thought. But her body completed it for her, a flush of heat that started low in her belly and spread outward until she was burning despite the cold.
Mr. Darcy was not breathing.
Or rather, he was breathing with the exaggerated control of a man who was concentrating very hard on the act, as if he needed to remind himself how it was done. His arm had not moved. His fist had not unclenched. She could feel every muscle pressed against her back, holding taut and vibrating with a tension that spoke of will, not cold.
He knew. He could feel it too: the thinness of the barrier between them, the terrible proximity of bare skin and restrained hands. And he was holding himself with the careful stillness of a man who understood that if he moved, if he let his palm flatten against her stomach and his thumb find the curve of her ribs, everything they were both pretending would come undone.
Neither of them spoke.
The fire crackled. The wind shrieked. Snow hissed against the conservatory glass.
And degree by impossible degree, her shivering eased.
His warmth seeped into her like water into dry earth — slow, relentless, transforming. She felt the cold retreat from her shoulders first, then her back, then the length of her legs where they pressed against his. Her muscles unclenched. Her jaw loosened. The pain of thawing gave way to something almost like comfort, and then to something beyond comfort, something she did not have a name for but which felt suspiciously like belonging.
His arm relaxed. Not much, just a slight uncurling of his fist, but it was enough that his hand lay flat against the blanket at her waist. Still technically proper. But she could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric as if it were a brand.
She shifted. It was unconscious, a small adjustment, a settling deeper into the warmth, and her body pressed more firmly against his.
His breath caught.
She felt it against the back of her neck, the sudden rigidity that replaced his careful relaxation. And she felt something else. A hard pressure against her lower back that had not been there a moment ago, unmistakable in its meaning.
Heat flooded her body. Not the gentle warmth of shared blankets but something molten and immediate that pooled between her hips and sent her pulse hammering in her throat. She knew what it was. She was not so sheltered that she did not understand. And the knowledge that his body wanted hers, that his control was costing himthis much, made her dizzy with something she could not call by its proper name because naming it would make it real.
Neither of them moved.
The silence was so complete she heard the snow accumulating on the conservatory roof, a soft, relentless whisper that sounded almost like breathing.
After what felt like an age, Mr. Darcy spoke. His voice was low and strained and directed somewhere above her head, as if addressing the chimney rather than the woman in his arms.
“Tell me something.”
“What would you have me tell you?”
“Anything. Something that requires me to think about words rather than—” He stopped. Drew a breath that she felt along the entire length of her spine. “Anything.”
Elizabeth almost smiled. There was something endearing about in great Mr. Darcy, master of Pemberley, undone by proximity, begging her for conversation like a drowning man begging for rope.
“You said your mother painted,” she offered. The words came as one approaches a skittish horse. “Will you tell me about her?”
His silence lasted so long she thought he would not answer. She felt his chest rise and fall against her back, once, twice, three times.
“She died when I was twelve.” His voice had roughened, as if the words were being dragged across gravel. “She was extraordinary.” A pause so long the fire had time to pop twice and resettle. “I cannot speak of her. Not tonight.”
The refusal was not cold. It was the opposite, too hot to touch. A door held shut against a furnace. Elizabeth heard what he could not say:I will break if I try. I am already closer to breaking than you know. Do not ask me to open that room while youare lying in my arms with nothing between us but wool and willpower.
“Then we shall speak of something else,” she said.
She felt the gratitude in the way his body eased against hers.
“If we are to survive this night without losing our minds,” he said, and there was a thread of something almost wry in his voice, “you might consider using my Christian name. We are rather beyond formal address.”
Fitzwilliam.
