Page 31 of Expectations (Obstinate, Headstrong Girl #7)

CHAPTER THIRTY

AN ENTHRALLING EMbrACE

E lizabeth stared over at him, incredulous. “Amends,” she repeated. “Amends, because you expected that the Bennet sisters were of such low, loose morals, they would lie with anyone who asked, evidently.”

He had the look of a man who was walking upon thin ice, with the sound of it crackling at his feet. “I did not think that. I only supposed you were inexperienced and Bingley…the worst sort of deceiver. I cut all ties with him from the moment I received that letter.”

“You knew that I lived at Netherfield, with the Bingleys.” She did not make it a question, for she knew that was where he had first looked for her when he arrived at Meryton.

“Yes.”

“So you believed that I would simply reside with my lover, who was my sister’s husband ?” She felt her voice rising, and struggled to calm it.

“I assumed you had no choice.”

“Presumably you had contributed several thousand pounds-worth of choices for my living arrangements. But of course, if my low-bred sister had no objections to sharing her husband with her younger sister…oh, what a happy home that would have been.” She shuddered in disgust at the whole idea.

“But had you a child of whom to think, one you would want to be accepted as legitimate…I thought perhaps you did not wish to leave your daughter, and thus made an arrangement, perhaps even bought an arrangement, to make it so.”

“Cassandra is not mine!”

“As I am now understanding.”

“You married me, believing that I bore another man’s child?”

At this, he shrugged a little. “Cassandra is…Cassandra. I do not look at her and see Bingley. I never did think that you were Bingley’s kept mistress—or at least, I did not after my first bitterness faded.

It was not in you to be such a person. I heard things, too—the Bingleys spent very little time at their country estate.

I assumed there was a rift, and I did not question why there was a rift.

When Bingley’s solicitors sent me his directive, which only named Thomas, it was further evidence for my belief that only the boy was legitimate.

Then I saw you for the first time in nearly seven years, still in black, and I knew you truly mourned. ”

It was the oddest thing in the world, seeing the situation from his point of view. “I wondered why you did not ask why we lived in the dower house instead of at Longbourn. You assumed I was not welcome there.”

He nodded. “Or at least, that the relationship with your parents was not an easy one.”

Shaking her head, she could only look at him in helpless amazement. It would be very easy to give way to anger at the unjust way he had viewed her. After all, he had been livid only a short time earlier, because she had unjustly accused him .

“When I heard from Bingley’s solicitors, it seemed—portentous,” he continued. “I required an heir. I believed you to have been saddled with an extra child you ought not to have been responsible for raising.”

“You saw, though, how much I wanted to keep Tommy,” she charged.

“I saw your loving heart, yes. I also saw that you were living in poverty, relative poverty. I did not think it sustainable. I still required an heir and…” He hesitated, then came forwards and reseated himself beside her.

“I saw that you hated me, while I was…still attracted to you. I…I responded poorly.”

“Oh.” She studied him in the firelight, his broad shoulders limned by golden flames.

To hear that he had been thinking of her in any such way, for any length of time, was staggering.

It had not quite escaped her notice, during this conversation, that through the fortune he had paid to Charlotte, he had meant to be helping her .

‘ Still attracted,’ he had said. Could it be true?

It seemed a fantastic, unbelievable thought.

Regardless, he had not mentioned one word about his missing money—he knew she had nothing now.

He had simply assumed she must have had to forfeit it for Cassandra’s sake.

He had believed her to have borne a child out of wedlock, and married her regardless.

“We have misjudged each other,” she said, with massive understatement. “I do not know what to do now.”

“We are man and wife,” he pointed out.

“But we do not know each other, not at all.”

“I would say we know each other a good deal better now than we did yesterday,” he said wryly.

She had to smile; then he turned to face her, taking both her hands in his.

“I was wrong in certain important respects, I admit—but about other facets of your character, I was perfectly correct. I judged you to be admirable—loyal, courageous, caring, intelligent, sensible—all those things. I want to know you better. I maintain a hope that you would not have married a man you still hated.”

It was hard to meet his earnest gaze. “Obviously, I do not hate you.” She looked down at their joined hands, and finally said the thing that had been bothering her since their wedding day. “You have never even kissed me.”

He studied her with an intensity that blazed in his eyes, moving nearer. “That would be the easiest problem in the world to rectify. Have I permission?” When she did not answer, he placed his big hand beneath her chin, stroking her cheek with his other. “You do not know how I have wished to.”

“Have you?” she asked softly. “I could not tell it.”

“Could you not? But then, you are resting contented, far away in another chamber, while I lie here restless and awake and longing to hold you.”

Her breath caught at his words, his expression; and then his mouth descended to hers and she was captured within the heat, the pleasure, the abundance of feeling when lips met and held and tasted and explored.

He started tenderly, carefully, but she could feel when he lost some of the rigid control he obviously prided himself on exerting, could sense the power this connexion gave her.

His arms wrapped around her, gently at first, then with greater need.

She stopped thinking in favour of feeling his heat, his strength, his desire, and was clinging to him when the kiss gentled, becoming soothing rather than frantic.

By the time he pressed his lips to her forehead, she was nearly dazed with it, with him.

But he held her there against his hard chest, his heart beating a wild staccato rhythm against her ear and yet with an embrace infinitely careful, his hand smoothing up and down her back, pausing at the curve of her hip, then returning to her back and shoulders.

She had no words for what had just happened between them; she wanted more. Still, she was marvellously content at the feelings this closeness inspired.

He continued with the restful motions, alternately soothing and kneading her back and shoulders, pressing the occasional kiss into her hair, as her eyes grew heavy and the many emotions of the last hour receded into a lulling peace.

He is my husband . For the first time, a sense of gladness accompanied the wonder of the thought, and she snuggled more tightly into his arms as she fell asleep.

“That was the first kiss,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that did not waken her.

“It will not be the last, I promise. I intend to court you, Mrs Darcy, and show you just how much I love and esteem you, how much I want to become your husband—in truth.” He held her there, in his arms, against his heart for at least an hour before, with a sigh, easing out from beneath her; she did not even stir.

In one smooth motion, he lifted her, and walked the several steps through his sitting room and bedchamber and into her rooms. Her bedcovers were already turned down, and he carefully slid her onto the high fourposter, before pulling them up over her.

For a few moments, he stood, watching, before turning away with obvious reluctance to the room where he had always slept alone.