She used to beg me to stay, but she didn’t anymore.
Still, I knew she wished me to stay, and I wished to stay as well.
So. I stayed.
“Your brother?” I said. “He is well?”
“He seems so,” she said.
“You are happy to have seen him?”
“Yes, very much.” She had her head pillowed on my shoulder, her eyes closed. Her hair was down and it was lovely.Shewas lovely, impossibly lovely. It made my heart squeeze to think I somehow hadthis womanin my bed, that she wasmywife.
“So, it was a good thing for us to have come to the country, Mrs. Darcy?”
She chuckled, not opening her eyes. “You might call me Elizabeth when we are not wearing clothes, I should think.”
“You have said this to me before,” I said. “I suppose I forget is all.”
“I don’t mind being called Mrs. Darcy, I suppose,” she said, sighing into me. “Itisnice.”
I kissed her. “I like calling you Mrs. Darcy,” I said huskily. “I still often cannot believe you are my wife. I am the luckiest man on earth.”
She opened her eyes. She touched my face with her palm. “You like to say things like that, but I don’t think you really believe it.”
“What is this?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, nothing. It is as I told James, I am still learning to please you, and so much of what I do, you do not like, so I must make the necessary adjustments.”
I furrowed my brow. “That is not true. I do not feel as if I do not like much of what you do.”
“You are often scolding me,” she said.
“Scolding?” I said. That made me sound like some kind of mother hen or a old lady nag. “I do not think so.”
“James said that he was going to talk to you, and I was horrified, and told him he must not do such a thing, and that you would not like it if you knew I was telling him anything at all.”
I sighed. Because it was true that I wished the two of them were not as close as they were, but I also loved my wife and felt a bit concerned at the dimming within her.
“You would rather I did not speak to him about us,” she said.
“You and your brother have a very close relationship,” I said. “I have understood this since the beginning of it all. He is veryopen with you, though, and I fear as if his openness with you has had a bit of a… an influence over you.”
She sat up, looking down at me, furrowing her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you were a young and innocent girl, and there was no reason for you to have known about your brother’s unnatural affections. There was definitely no reason for you to have known about whatever carnal activities he has taken on with other men.”
She let out a breath. “You do not actually approve of it.”
“No one approves of it. It’s a sin, Mrs. Darcy. It is the reason that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”
She tilted up her chin. “Well, all right, I suppose, but there are a number of things in the bible that we do not really follow to the letter, a number of elements in the Old Testament and even certain things in the New Testament that we have determined are relics of ancient culture, and I think this may be one of them.”
I gaped at her. “You cannot be serious. You are denying that this is wrong?”
“How could I think that my brother’s lifestyle is sin?” she said, glaring at me.
“Well, that isn’t the way it works. We do not decide what sin is. God does.”
