He lifted his head. His hair was wrecked, falling across his forehead, and his lips were swollen, and he looked utterly undone. "Elizabeth. We must stop."
"I know."
"If we do not stop now, I will not be able to."
"I know."
They stared at each other. The fire popped. The rain continued its assault on the windows. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed eleven, and the mundane sound was a thread connecting them to the real world, the world where they were not yet married and this library was not their bedroom and the door was only barely closed.
Elizabeth pulled her bodice up. Darcy stepped back, his chest heaving, his shirt untucked and half-unbuttoned, looking like a man who had been in a fight he was losing and winning simultaneously.
"That was exceedingly improper, Mr. Darcy," she said, and her voice was shaking, and she was smiling, and she could not stop either.
"We are engaged, Miss Bennet," he said, and his voice was rough as gravel, and he was almost smiling back.
"So we are." She reached up and touched his face, tracing the line of his jaw, the corner of his mouth. "Perhaps we should be improper again."
"Not tonight."
"No. Not tonight." She pressed her lips together. "But soon."
The promise hung in the air between them, electric as the storm outside. He caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm, a gesture so tender after the intensity of what had preceded it that Elizabeth felt her eyes sting.
"Goodnight, Elizabeth."
"Goodnight, Fitzwilliam."
She left the library on unsteady legs, her hair loose, her gown askew, her body humming with an energy that had nowhere to go. In the corridor, she caught her reflection in a hallway mirror: flushed cheeks, swollen lips, wild hair, eyes bright with something fierce and new.
She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly kissed and improperly touched and was already calculating how soon it could happen again.
She grinned at her reflection and went to find her bedroom, and if she lay awake for an hour feeling the ghost of his hands on her skin and his mouth on her shoulder and his heart slamming beneath her palm, that was her business and hers alone.
In the library, Darcy sat on the floor with his back against the bookshelf, his shirt open, his cravat somewhere on the carpet, the fire dying beside him, and pressed his hands against his face, and laughed. Quietly, helplessly, the laughter of a man who had been holding his breath for weeks and had finally, finally been allowed to exhale.
She had kissed his chest. Over his heart. As though she were making a promise with her lips.
He sat in the library and watched the fire burn down to embers, and he thought: I will remember this night for the rest of my life. The rain. The fire. Her hands on my skin. The way she said yes.
He would. He did. For as long as memory lasted.
Chapter 8: Complications
Morning light at Netherfield was ruthlessly honest. It flooded the breakfast room through tall windows, illuminating every detail with a clarity that left no room for pretense: the quality of the china, the freshness of the flowers, the fact that Mr. Darcy could not stop looking at Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and the fact that she was looking back.
They sat at opposite ends of the breakfast table, a geography of propriety that fooled no one. Bingley, seated beside Jane, was radiating the particular satisfaction of a man who had engineered the storm himself. Caroline, pouring tea with the mechanical precision of a woman in the early stages of fury, kept her eyes on her cup and her comments to the weather.
Elizabeth reached for the marmalade. Darcy watched her hand -- her bare hand, without gloves at the breakfast table -- and remembered the feeling of those fingers against his chest, the way they had spread over his heart as though measuring its pulse. The memory hit him with such force that he forgot he was holding a coffee cup and nearly missed his mouth.
"The rain has stopped," Bingley announced, with the tragic cheerfulness of a man watching his guests' reason for staying evaporate. "Though the roads may still be poor. You are welcome to remain as long as --"
"The roads will be fine, Charles." Caroline's smile was precise. "I am sure the Misses Bennet are eager to return home."
Elizabeth caught Darcy's eye across the table. The look was brief, private, laden with everything they could not say in company. The corner of her mouth twitched, and he felt an answering warmth spread through his chest like sunlight through glass.
"Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Bingley," Elizabeth said. "The evening was most -- educational."
Caroline's teacup hit its saucer with a sound like a punctuation mark.
