After, she pressed her forehead into my clavicle, and I traced my fingers over the back of her head.
“Do you wish to go and ask my father for my hand?” she breathed and the feel of her breath on my neck was intimate and erotic.
I felt dizzy. “Didn’t we just get done with saying you didn’t wish to marry me?”
“That is not what I said. I said I wanted everything that went along with it, but to retain freedom. I should love to know what it is like for a man like you to march into this house and declare to everyone that you wish me to be your wife.”
I smiled. “Then I shall give that to you.”
She pulled away and looked up at me. “This is what I mean. It’s not fair.”
I touched her lower lip with my thumb. It was redder than usual, redder from my kisses. Lord, she was beautiful. “Well, one day, you’ll agree to do it for me, to have a ceremony. And if you don’t like it, we don’t have to be married in the morning when it all resets. It can all be washed away.”
“What about…?” She touched my chest.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I won’t ask for it,” she said. “It would not be right to do so. You wish to wait, and it is your virtue as well as mine. I would not ask it of you, Will, not for my amusement. It’s too important.”
“Your amusement?” I whispered, chuckling softly.
“My curiosity,” she breathed.
I could have told her that I had been thinking about taking her to bed for far too long. I could have indicated that I was excited right then, right at that moment, that the feeling of her body in my arms had awakened me in a way that made it seem ridiculous to delay or to deny.
I didn’t say any of those things.
I kissed her again, however. I kissed her thoroughly, for a very long time.
elizabeth
He obliged me for days in a row.
He went away and cleaned up and came to the door of Longbourn as prim and proper as you please. He declared loudly that he would have no one but me, that I was the only woman he would ever have as his wife.
He kissed my mother’s hand, thanking her for bringing me into the world.
He told my entire family he loved me to distraction.
He did it again and again, seemingly never tiring of it, seemingly enjoying my reaction enough that it was reward enough for him.
But eventually, I knew it had been enough and that I would release him from it. He was staying at Netherfield at night, even though the Bingleys were not there. He said that he just arrived and ordered the servants to see to him and they listened. He said he could be quite compelling when he needed to be, and I knew it was true.
So, that night, which I knew would be the last night, I walked all the way to Netherfield under the cover of darkness. I did not knock on the front door. I simply tried it and found it open, which did not surprise me. No need to lock one’s doors in the country, after all.
It was not hard to determine where his room was, for there was only one window with a light burning in it when I had approached the house in the darkness. So, I went to that part of the house.
However, to my surprise, as I approached, I heard voices.
Who was he talking to?
The room with the burning lamps was not his bedchamber, as I had surmised. It was a small sitting room. And he was in there with Mr. Wickham, who I recognized as I pushed the half-ajar door the rest of the way open.
Both of the men in the room, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham, turned to look at me.
“Elizabeth,” said Mr. Darcy, “what are you doing here?”
“What is he doing here?” I said.
