“Is that what you think?” he said.
“I know you, Will Darcy, and you are the most proper and respectable man in the whole of the country, and you couldn’t possibly do something untoward, I know it,” I said, and I was breathless, but I was taunting him a little, too, and I couldn’t deny that.
He managed to undo the knot of my stays. “Couldn’t, hmm?”
“No,” I said.
“You want me to try to loosen these?”
“Please.”
He pulled on them, loosening the laces, freeing me from the tightness there.
“Thank you,” I said, wriggling out of my stays, pulling them up and over. When I turned back around, I was only wearing my shift, one thin layer over my skin, and he was staring at me with an expression on his face I might term awe.
I felt shy. I felt my heat rushing to my face. I pulled at pins in my hair, freeing it, lowering my gaze as I did.
He closed the distance between us, his movements quick but fluid. He seized my hand and moved it, placing it against some part of his body,thatpart of it, and it was huge and solid and hot and pulsing through the fabric of his trousers.
I let out a little gasp.
He dropped my hand as if I had burned him. He shut his eyes, muttering chastisements to himself under his breath, and walked away from me, over to his bed, where the covers had already been turned down.
“Couldn’t,” he said in a thick voice, sitting down at the foot of the bed to remove his boots. “Trust me, Elizabeth, I could.”
I swallowed. “Well, that’s something to know, I suppose,” I managed.
He chuckled. “You’re right. I won’t.”
“No?”
He looked up at me. “I want to earn you. I want to please you enough that you accept me. Then, it will be my reward.” He smirked at me. “But until then, I suppose occasionally seeing you in see-through clothes and holding you in my arms all night will be…”
“What?”
“Torture,” he said. “But the best kind.” He lifted his hand. He beckoned to me with two fingers.
I went to him.
He pulled me down onto the bed with him. He kissed me, and his kisses were fire.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
fitzwilliam
“It’s gone,” I said, sorting through my clothing. “I wasn’t paying attention last night when I was getting undressed for bed, which is your fault, of course, because you were rather distracting, but I don’t remember noticing it then, when I was removing my waistcoat.” It was early, which was likely a good thing, I had thought, because we had awakened before the servants of Netherfield could discover two people in one of the bedchambers early Thursday morning when no one had fallen asleep in them Wednesday night.
I thought, with luck, we could get moving quickly, before anyone was the wiser. Her family, of course, wasn’t expecting her, and we could get free and go on whatever adventure she wished.
“Well, when did you see it last?” She was wriggling into her stays. Her hair was long and hanging free and she was the most beautiful woman in the world this way, I thought. No one else got to see her hair down, but I did. It was the sort of intimacy a man should have with a wife, and I had it.
She’s practically my wife,I thought.I could tup her. She wouldn’t even mind. I think she wants me to.
No, but I hadn’t done anything the night before except kiss her, even if some of that kissing had been done horizontally, my body pressed into hers, crushing her under my heft into the mattress below me as she gasped and huffed against me and my whole body felt like it was about toexplode.
I rubbed my chin. It was funny, because every Thursday, no matter how long my whiskers had been the night before, I woke to them shorter. They were shorter now. I tried to remember what happened to them if I didn’t sleep at all. “I think I had it with Wickham,” I said. I wondered if I should wake a servant at Netherfield to shave me or if I should do it myself. I wasn’t strictly skilled at shaving myself, but I could manage it when necessary.
“You did?” She looked me over.
