Why did such a notion plague me?
I did not try to kiss her again.
One day, she asked me about it, and she was concerned. “Did it not please you?” she said. “I found your kiss so exquisitely pleasing, you see. I take the memory of it out at night as if it is a treasured letter that I can unfold, and I replay it as I lie alone in my bed. I think of the way I felt in your arms, Mr. Darcy.” She was smiling her sunbeam smile.
I coughed, looking away.
“But you have not kissed me again?”
“I, erm, I think it’s not proper,” I said. “I think we ought to wait until we are married for there to be too much of that sort of contact.”
“We are to be married in a matter of days, sir,” she said. “Are you thinking of…” Her smile was mischievous. “Of our wedding night?”
I coughed again. “I hardly think that’s an appropriate topic of conversation.”
She stopped smiling. “Apologies.”
We walked together in silence, then.
I felt as if I had been harsh upon her. “Miss Bennet,” I said gently, “I think very fondly on that kiss as well. I…” I swallowed. “I think of it at night as well.”
“Oh,” she said, smiling back up at me. “But you wish to wait?”
“I think it will be best to do so, yes,” I said, though I supposed the truth of it was really that I felt a bit intimidated by her, by the way she was so eager and the way she sought things that she desired. I was beginning to wonder if I had made an error, never having done anything with women at all.
I was beginning to wonder if I was not, in fact, going to be able to please her.
And I had always thought that she knew far too much about her brother’s activities, and that this may have corrupted her to some degree, let a bit too much of the wanton leak into her.
Of course, perhaps a part of me found that wantonness in her appealing, but I felt a bit ashamed of that. It didn’t seem proper.
“Well, maybe there’s something a bit romantic about that,” she said. “About both of us yearning for the other. I think it might make our time together after we are married all the more intense for the fact we have not given in at all, not even to kisses, and I like that.”
“Well, we should only ever give in to kisses at this stage of our association!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I thought so, too. Because I knew that you turned down the idea of bedding me while I was married to Bingley.”
“You knew of that,” I muttered. “Of course you knew of that.”
“I did not ask them to ask you that. I was horrified. But I knew you would not agree to it. You’re not that sort of man.”
“I am not,” I said.
“And I want you to understand, it is not about that for me. I think it is different for men in some way. I don’t simply wish to be taken in that way. I want to be cherished and desired and chosen and…” She made a face. “Well, listen to me going on, and I used to think I didn’t even need a man at all.”
“You did say that,” I said, remembering that.
“Yes, but that was before whatever happened with Mr. Wickham, when it all became clear to me that I was so weak and vulnerable. And thenyouwere there.” She looked up at me. “And you should have blamed me. I would have sworn that a man like you, with the way you look at the world, you would have declared me ruined and it my own fault—for it was! But you asked me to marry you instead.” She gave me her sunbeam smile.
I wondered at myself. WhyhadI asked this woman to marry me? I knew I had been obsessed with her, drawn to her, and that I was, even now, fiercely in love with her, but I did wonder at it. Looking at it from a certain perspective, it seemed foolish.
“You have rescued me, truly. And if it had been only because of… of wanting to lift my skirts or something, it would have made everything very tawdry and awful.”
“It’s obviously not because of that,” I said.
“Good,” she said.
Then we walked in silence again for some time.
