“Allow me to confer with Elizabeth before we decide, but what is the urgency?”
“Mrs Bennet is driving me stark raving mad with her daily interference. Even my angelic Jane has been driven to distraction. The crux of the matter, however, is that the Bingley heir is coming, and he should be born at the estate he stands to inherit.”
“You might be expecting a girl…”
“Excellent, then she will inherit.”
“Will you remain at Netherfield until Kitty and Augustus are wed?”
“Probably, though not so long as Lydia’s wedding to the Reimarus heir. If I am forced to wait until then, I shall strangle Mrs Bennet before my child is born.”
Mr Bennet, in a rare patriarchal mood, had forbidden Lydia from marrying before her seventeenth birthday. Lord Ritterhof had gracefully agreed to await the blessed event.
“We cannot have that. Let us go to Beeley Hall before you are indicted for murder.”
“Capital!”
#
For eight long weeks, Elizabeth had been relegated to the mistress’s chamber, and for an equal amount of time, her husband had refused to visit her. Being used to sharing the master’s chamber, she found the banishment most grating. Now that Master Fitzwilliam slept the whole night through, his night-time care was no longer a problem.
Well, if Darcy will not come to me, I must go to him.
Elizabeth trod warily through their joint sitting room and into the master’s chamber. In her mind, it was long-due that she join her husband, but he had resisted and begged her to take all the time she needed, which did not sound like Darcy. Something was amiss, and she intended to discover what. In the meantime, all she needed was her husband’s warm embrace. As he had rejected her previous propositions and slept like a lord, it was best to slither unnoticed into his bed. He tended to gravitate towards her in his sleep and would pull her close none the wiser.
As she had predicted, Darcy stirred but did not awaken. He pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms around her. “Apple dumpling shop,” he purred. The next moment his lips grazed her ear and heat pooled in her belly.
His breathing changed from its steady rhythm to something more erratic, then his entire being went rigid before he slowly untangled himself from her. The cold air embracing her skin was nothing to the ache in her heart.
The bed creaked when he rose and hit the opposite wall with a muted thump.
Darcy was acting nonsensically!
Ever since he had discovered that she was heavy with his child, his expressions of love had become more tender. Gone was the wild abandonment where he turned into something primal and barely human—a trait she would never have supposed to be a facet of the staid master of Pemberley’s character before they married. A quality that she missed dearly and would not allow him to abandon.
She rose from the bed and sauntered towards her husband, whose breath quickened, though not in anticipation but rather in fear.
“Are you afraid of me, husband?”
Darcy chuckled before unconvincingly protesting, “Absolutely not.”
The scratching of a person moving against the wall reached her ears through the darkness.
“Then why are you fleeing from me?”
“I think it is wise that I keep my distance from you for the rest of our marriage…”
“Whatever for?”
“I heard your screams, Elizabeth. Never again! You bellowed so loudly whilst delivering our child that I could hear you all the way to the library.”
“Did I? It must have been the pain speaking, my love. Not I.”
“It was your voice,” Darcy stubbornly affirmed.
Elizabeth launched for him and captured his wrist.
“I do not even remember doing such a thing, and I certainly did not mean for it to ruin any pleasure of yours. Or mine…”
