The picture that emerged of her fiancé was that he was a man who brooked little in the way of mistake or inferiority and who subsequently held himself to a very high standard, which he tended to rise to. He was, however, insufferably smug about it, in a way that made her often wish to hit him.
She was not proud of it, but he thought so very well of himself!
The thrilling bit, however, made it all confusing, because it happened so often as to disrupt her thoughts and make ithard to feel anything except a kind of slavish gratefulness that he was close to her or looking at her or anything at all. In other words, she thought well of him, too, and she could not seem to think otherwise.
He would look at her, sometimes, look at her with such adoration writ on his features that it would take her breath away.
He sometimes took her hand when they walked together, and whenever that happened, she could only partly pay attention to whatever it was that he was saying, because she was entirely distracted by the feeling of his huge, warm palm engulfing her smaller one, and the way that touching him sent tingles up her arm.
Once, only once, they fell very far behind her sisters and they went round a bend on the road and he glanced at her with a sort of boyishly mischievous look on his face and he said to her, “I should like to try something.”
“Oh?” she said.
He tugged on her hand, pulling her off the road, pulling her over towards a sturdy tree trunk that was growing there, and he stopped them, her back to the tree trunk, his body too close to hers. “Stop me at any time, of course, Miss Bennet,” he said in a voice that was so deep, it made something unfurl low in her belly. And then he cupped her cheek with one hand and kissed her.
But it was not like the kiss before, the one after she had agreed to marry him. It was longer, for one thing. It was thorough. He used his tongue.
It was delicious and wickedly good. It made her whole body dissolve into sensations of goodness.
He broke the kiss, slightly out of breath, and tried to back away, and then groaned, actuallygroaned, and kissed her again, just as thoroughly with just as much of his tongue. That time, he pressed her all the way into the tree trunk, so that she was trapped between the tree at her back and his warm firm body at her front, and it was the most affecting thing that she had ever experienced.
“I cannot wait to be married to you, Miss Bennet,” hewhispered. “May I call you Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling at him, dazed, rather lovestruck. “Yes, please.” A pause. “Fitzwilliam.”
“Fitz, if you would,” he said. “Fitzwilliam is my mother’s brother and my cousins. I have a cousin who goes by it. Colonel Fitzwilliam. It’s confusing.” He smiled.
She felt shy and happy to have been given such an intimacy. “You may call me Lizzy, if you like,” she offered.
He kissed her again, but this kiss was quick and forceful. Then he let go of her entirely. He turned away from her, running a hand through his hair. “We should be careful,” he murmured.
“Is there danger?” she said.
He turned to look at her and she saw the dark hunger in his gaze, and it stirred her. She reached for him. But he took her hand, stopped her, kissed the tips of her gloved fingers, and shook his head. “Patience, Lizzy.”
She found herself thinking about him saying that to her at the most inopportune of moments. His stormy gray eyes were intense, and his voice was so deep and resonant, and every time she thought of him saying it, it made her body lurch in the most pleasant and inappropriate of ways.
But Caroline was pleased to discover that they were getting married within a month, that Mr. Darcy could not bear to wait, that the banns would be read and immediately afterward, they would be wed.
She had not broached the subject of where they would live afterward, however. It would be late December by then, which would mean they would be in London in January. Caroline said January in London might be a snore, but that by spring, everyone would be there. So, by spring, of course, Elizabeth would be in London, with her closest friend, and they would be having the time of their lives, she hoped.
THE NIGHT BEFOREher wedding, Elizabeth somehowconvinced her family to let her stay with her sister Jane and with Caroline at Netherfield, even though that likely shouldn’t have been allowed, because she would be under the same roof as Mr. Darcy.
Since the girls were going to spend the night all together, sleeping in one big bed, it was deemed permissible.
Jane drank too much wine and fell asleep by half past nine, so it was just Elizabeth and Caroline, sitting up in easy chairs next to the fire, sipping at port, and giggling.
“I cannot believe,” declared Elizabeth, gesturing with her glass, “that you contrived to have this man brought here for yourself, forging a letter in your brother’s hand, no less, and that—upon seeing he wanted me—you left him to me without any qualm.”
“But of course,” said Caroline. “We are too good of friends for anything else, my Eliza. We are friends in a way that our bond cannot be severed. Certainly not by a man.”
“Also, you never really wanted him,” said Elizabeth. “You just wanted his money.”
Caroline giggled so much that she snorted. “No, not his money, you silly girl. I’m not saying Charles has an income like Mr. Darcy’s, mind you, but Charles doesn’t have any land. And land is not the way to make money, anyway.”
“I’m confused,” said Elizabeth, who was giggling, too.
“What I mean is, I am positive that within a generation or two, Charles and his progeny will be better off financially than Mr. Darcy will.”
