Page 47 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

He had taken it already. Perhaps in the lane, with her weight in his arms. Perhaps the first night she turned a page for him and told him he was in her debt.

He loved her. It was as simple as that, and as large.

He did not say it. He only reached up and drew her nightgown closed at the neck with his fingertips. He could not tie the ribbon. He laid it straight instead. "You will catch cold," he said.

"I shall not. I am entirely too warm." She touched his face. "Fitzwilliam. Your hands."

He looked down. The linen across his right palm had a fresh red line in it. He had pressed them into the chair arms without knowing. "It is nothing."

"You are lying."

"Yes," he said, and she smiled at him.

He walked her back to her room. It was ten hops, and she leaned on him harder than she needed to. At her door he stopped, as he had stopped last night.

"Is it Miss Elizabeth again?" she whispered.

"It had better be," he said, very low. "Or I shall come in."

He heard her breath catch in the dark. Then she slipped inside, and the door closed softly between them.

He went up the stairs in the dark. Parrish was asleep in the dressing room. He sat on the edge of his bed in his shirt and waistcoat, and could not undress himself.

His body had not forgiven him for the hearthrug. He was still hard, and aching with it. A man alone in the dark had one remedy for that, and it wanted hands.

He looked down at the linen and gave a short, unhappy laugh. Mr. Jones had told him to keep his hands still. He would keep them still. He would very likely die of it.

He lay back across the bed, fully dressed, and stared at the canopy. He thought about the day, because it was safer than thinking about her.

He had spent the morning in the library with a book he could not hold. He had not meant to listen through the wall. But Mr. Collins had a voice made for a pulpit, and the wall was thin. He had heard the three reasons. He had heard the thousand pounds in the four per cents.

When she said I cannot marry you, he had found himself on his feet. He had gone out into the passage, since he could not sit still. It was none of his business.

And then she had called his name.

She had not called for Jane, or her father, or a footman. She had called for him. He had been at the door before he knew he had moved.

Later he had stood outside the library door and heard her mother. I shall not be able to keep you.

He had wanted to walk back in. He had wanted to say, in front of all of them, that he would keep her. He would keep her gladly, at Pemberley, for the rest of her life.

He had not. He had no right yet. And he knew her a little now. She would not want to be kept. She would want to be wanted, and to be useful, and to owe nobody.

He wanted her that much, and he could not say so without asking her for everything.

Somewhere in the thinking, he slept.

He dreamed of her. In the dream his hands were whole. He drew the nightgown off her shoulders himself, and she laughed and let him. He touched her everywhere he had only been able to kiss. She was warm and soft under his palms, and there was no pain in them at all. She pulled him down onto the hearthrug and wound herself around him. Elizabeth said his name the way she had said it tonight.

He woke with a start, gasping, his body spending itself in hot, helpless pulses.

For a moment he did not know where he was. Then he did. He lay still in the gray light from the window. His breeches were ruined. He had not touched himself. He had not touched anything.

Keep them still, Mr. Jones had said.

He put his forearm over his eyes and laughed until his burned ribs hurt.

Parrish would find the breeches. Parrish would say nothing whatever, in that particular way of his. Darcy could face a good deal, but he was not sure he could face that.