Page 11 of Penned by Mr Darcy (…By Mr Darcy #3)

Darcy

F itzwilliam Darcy had never been quite so conscious of his own footsteps.

He stood in the hallway for a moment after Miss Elizabeth had disappeared behind her door, the candlelight still flickering gently against the polished wood. She had not thanked him. She had not smiled.

And yet, he could not shake the feeling that something significant had just passed between them.

He turned away at last, retracing his steps down the corridor. The library was still warm when he returned to it, the fire hissing softly in the grate. He set the empty plate down and stared at it for a long moment, as though it might reveal something he had missed.

She had said he was not easy to like.

He nearly laughed at that— nearly . It was too true to sting. What surprised him was not her honesty but the fact that she had offered it without cruelty. She had spoken as one might speak to a companion, or an equal. With her, there was no pretence, no careful diplomacy.

He both despised and craved it.

He sat heavily in the chair by the fire, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. The silence of the house folded around him again, but it no longer soothed. He had always loved solitude—sought it out, even. But now it felt too sharp. Too empty.

He remembered her in the kitchen, bent over the pantry with candlelight tracing her profile. He remembered the way she had smiled when she joked about thieving bread, and the way her expression had changed—subtle, but real—when he had insulted her with careless precision.

Why had he said such a thing?

He knew the answer. It was the same reason he had spoken coldly to her at the assembly in Meryton, the same reason he watched her now with such unbearable attention: she unnerved him.

She turned him inside out.

Darcy rose abruptly, crossing to the desk in the corner. He opened a drawer and pulled out his journal—plain, leather-bound, the paper inside thick and smooth. He stood with the quill in hand, unmoving.

He had written nothing for three days.

He dipped the nib in ink and began.

I am a fool.

Not because I spoke to her. Not because I walked her to her room like some clumsy schoolboy trailing after a village beauty. No, I am a fool because I let her speak to me. Truly speak, without expectations or propriety, and I listened.

And worse still. I wanted to listen.

She is not what I expected. She is sharper than I imagined, warmer too. Curious. Honest to the point of discomfort.

And, God help me, I wanted to kiss her tonight. When she looked at me in the kitchen, the candlelight catching the edge of her smile… I wanted to.

But what would she do, if she knew the truth? If she knew what I had written? If she knew what I had done in the privacy of my own chamber, that I had…to those forbidden thoughts of her?

She knows. Or suspects.

She asked me tonight whether I kept a diary. Her voice was too even, her gaze too measured. She is not a fool. She was fishing for something.

There is no possible way she could have read my thoughts, for I guard this book most fiercely.

Is she trying to steal it from me, perhaps?

Would she read my thoughts like an entertainment?

I found myself trying to recall all the moments I left the book in my room - could she have found herself a chance to steal a glance?

I tell myself that it is not possible, that she could not have reasonably done such a thing. And if she has not yet managed to do such a thing… then I must never let her.

Still, when she turned back to look at me before entering her room, there was something in her expression I cannot name. It was not fear. Not anger.

It was something I dare not hope for.

I am undone.

Darcy stopped writing, his hand frozen over the page. The words sat there, black and unforgiving.

He shut the journal with a decisive snap and returned it to the drawer.

He could not read her, and that terrified him more than anything.

He had held his demeanour and spoken with the greatest men in the country, and yet one woman in her nightdress with sleep in her eyes and bread in her hand had left him utterly disarmed.

He stood, not knowing what he meant to do.

Sleep would not come.

Not now. Not until he forgot the way her voice sounded when she said his name.

He made his way to his bedroom, hurrying through the corridors.

He could not risk the slightest chance of being caught.

He could feel himself growing hard, his mind a chaotic whirl of those damned lustful thoughts that seemed to plague him late at night.

He threw himself over the boundary of his bed chamber, scrabbling to undress himself so that he might go to bed and end these wretched longings.

He removed his breeches, stubbornly ignoring the aching erection that still plagued him.

It throbbed angrily below his shirt, pressing insistently forward.

He climbed beneath the covers, lying as straight as a board and staring up at the ceiling.

His hands were flat by his side, pressing into the mattress so firmly that it began to sag beneath him.

His hand moved, pressing down on himself to bid it to go away.

When he closed his eyes, desperate to sleep and gain relief from this torture, his mind played the most delicious, forbidden images of Miss Elizabeth.

No, it was not Miss Elizabeth, for to give these spectres in his imagination her name would be an insult to her.

He imagined her spirited lips pressed against his neck, her hands exploring his body eagerly. She would whisper in his ear, all those little witticisms she was so talented at turned instead towards teasing and tantalising him.

How would she touch him? Not the innocent Elizabeth Bennet of reality, but this wicked seductress.

She would be a bold lover, he was sure of it; she was no meek and willing wife, submitting to a husband’s whims. What he would give to hear her pleasure as he sank between her legs, or as she clambered atop of him and rode him.

He swallowed heavily, snatching his hand away from where it had curled around his cock, the fabric of his shirt soaked. He had scarcely realised what he was doing, but now that it was over, he felt utterly repulsed at his own loss of control.

He would see that it did not happen again.