Page 16 of The Courtship of (the Wealthy) Miss Elizabeth Bennet (The Courtship Duology #1)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ELIZABETH GAPED AT the man who stood in the darkness outside of her family’s estate. It was really dusk, she realized, as she stepped outside. In the distance, the sun was setting deep mahogany against the dark shadows of the tree branches.

He looked a bit of a fright. His cravat was loose. His hair was standing on end in places, as if he’d been rubbing it deliberately this way and that.

She stepped closer.

He smelled of brandy.

“Are you drunk, sir?” she said in a small voice. She didn’t know Mr. Darcy, actually. In that instant, she realized this man was a stranger to her. She felt a trill go through her. Maybe fear. Maybe excitement.

“As it happens, I think I may be,” said Mr. Darcy. His voice was loose, deep, rolling through her like the dark red sunset. He held out a hand, full of coin, to the girl behind her.

The servant girl snatched it up with a cry of delight. The door behind Elizabeth slammed closed.

Silence.

Moments passed.

They were alone.

He thrust a hand into his hair, rubbing it, just as she had suspected he’d been doing. When he was finished, he looked even more disheveled.

Another trill went through her.

“Walk with me?”

She nodded, clasping her hands together, taking a step out into the darkness.

He nodded, too.

And then, they walked in silence, away from the specter of the house and out into the gardens. They walked until they had gone past a row of rose bushes, tall enough to conceal them from view if anyone had been looking out the windows, and she felt another trill at the thought of anyone seeing her out here alone with a man.

Abruptly, he stopped walking.

She stopped, too.

He faced her, looking down at her with a serious expression on his face. It was as if he was thinking very hard about something, trying to make sense of something and coming up with no solutions.

She felt strange. She still had her hands clasped together in front of herself. Maybe it was the trills that kept going through her, but she felt oddly vulnerable and silly and, well, young. She dragged her teeth over her bottom lip and moved in a way that made her skirt swish, as if she were a girl playing a game, pretending to be a pretty grown-up lady.

Why was she doing that?

It was entirely the wrong thing to do.

What she should do is talk to him about how she had failed at getting Wickham removed from the house. What she should do is secure his permission to tell her mother about Miss Darcy, so that everyone would understand the serious nature of why Mr. Wickham’s presence was insupportable. What she should do is demand an explanation for his uncouth behavior earlier, when he had punched the colonel.

She swished her skirt instead, her heart beating quicker. She could feel the patter of it against her wrists, against her collarbone.

For some reason, she was smiling.

He lifted a hand.

Hadn’t she ever noticed that his hands were rather frightfully large?

No, not frightful, actually. It was good . She liked the largeness of his hands. She liked how he towered over her. It made that feeling of vulnerability within her intensify, but in a vaguely delicious way.

Her chest rose and fell with her breath. She was excited. No, frightened. No, both.

He touched her face. His fingertips brushed against her cheek, very softly.

She let out a gasp.

His lips parted. He touched her face again, more sure this time, but yet somehow, still as softly. He traced the outline of her jaw, letting out a sigh. “You are so breathtakingly beautiful, Elizabeth.”

Something tightened pleasantly within her at his words. She tilted her face into his touch.

His face dipped down.

She let out a noise of wonder, realizing that he was going to kiss her.

His face came closer.

She shut her eyes.

His lips brushed hers, soft as his touch, a gentle and sweet sensation, as dark and lovely as the dusk itself.

Her body tightened again, twining round itself, and she felt as if some part of her was soaring, a feathered free thing flying high above the dark trees, into the red center of the setting sun.

His lips brushed hers again, more insistent this time, more pleasant, and then there was a shockingly wonderful sensation, as his tongue made contact with hers.

She couldn’t suppress a little moan, right into his mouth.

He swallowed her noise, sealing their mouths together, kissing her with a sureness that tasted of brandy and excitement and all the strange wonder of this moment.

She pressed into him, and his arms came around her, holding her there against his broad, strong chest. She felt perfectly encased in him, a sense of wondrous belonging and safety, the perfect antidote to the trills before, as if the trills had been a question, and his embrace was the answer.

Is he safe? her body had asked. Yes, quite safe, his body had answered.

When the kiss ended, she felt as if she had melted into him, and she stayed in the circle of his strong grasp, gazing adoringly into his eyes.

He was smiling. “Well, then.”

She giggled. “Well, then,” she echoed. Then she giggled some more.

He caressed her cheek, affectionate. “Will you forgive me for this dreadful impropriety, Elizabeth?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he said, sounding helpless but happy.

“I like it,” she said. She giggled again. “Perhaps what came over you is brandy.”

“Oh, dear,” he said with a groan.

She could not stop giggling. She put her forehead against him, finding a little spot against the hollow of his neck, and she snuggled into it, fitting perfectly there.

He hummed his approval, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head and hold her there. He bent his cheek down to press into her temple.

They stayed like that for some time, breathing together, and it was likely the most wondrous thing she’d ever felt.

His voice reverberated in his chest, and she could hear it because she was so close to him. “I have bungled all of this with you rather badly.”

“No,” she said. “I think you have done this exactly right.”

“Perhaps this,” he allowed. “But everything else, since the moment we met, Elizabeth, it has been all wrong. How could you have ever accepted me? How could you have wanted to marry me?”

“Well,” she said, snuggling into him, liking the way he smelled, thinking she had never smelled anything that made her feel quite so relaxed and pleased, “you’re Mr. Darcy.”

He laughed. “What does that mean?”

She shrugged against him. “I don’t know.”

He lifted his head, and so she lifted hers, too, craning her neck back to look up at him.

He loosened his grip on her.

She wasn’t sure she liked that nearly as much as being wrapped in his solid warmth. She let out a little noise, a disappointed noise.

He touched her face again, a smile playing on his lips. “What does it mean to be Mr. Darcy?”

“Oh, come now. You are Mr. Darcy, you know what it means.”

“Is it because I have a respected name and a tidy yearly income and a number of properties and—”

“No,” she said, furrowing her brow, shaking her head at him. “No, of course not.”

He let out a relieved sigh. “Good. I hoped… I worried…”

She understood. She’d only had a taste of it, the fortune hunters, the men who were all kindness and interest, but who were simply seeking to use her. It had not been her entire life, though. It had been his. She reached up and pressed her palm into his cheek. “Oh, Fitzwilliam. No, definitely not. It is because of you. Because you are strong.”

“I am not strong.”

“I don’t just mean…” Her hand strayed to his shoulder. She bit down on her lower lip as she spanned that shoulder, that broad, broad shoulder. “But you are, actually.”

“I’m a gentrified weakling who can’t even manage to punch someone who’s manhandling the woman I’m going to marry.”

“You did punch him. Twice.”

“Yes, but he…” He touched his own nose. It was swollen, she realized.

“Oh.” Her fingers fluttered up to his face. She touched his nose but he winced, so she pulled back, making an answering wince. “I suppose it hurts.”

“It’s… I’m a dolt.”

She laughed. “No, you are not a dolt, but… well, it surprised me that you did that.”

He pulled away, out of her grasp, rubbing his hair out of sorts again. “He says I did it because I am not secure, because I don’t believe you truly want me, and that I took it out on him, that I made him the problem, when all along it was me. I wished to punch myself.”

She furrowed her brow. “That sounds convoluted. The colonel thinks he knows what other people are thinking or feeling. Indeed, he’s quite sure of it, and it’s unsettling when someone is so sure of you, even if you know that person is wrong. But you should know that it’s been you , since that moment I read your letter and began to question myself. I have regretted—so often regretted—the things I said when you proposed to me, the way I behaved, the assumptions I made…”

“Oh, but you were entirely justified,” he said. “The way I had behaved towards you, and what I did to poor Bingley and your sister Jane? And then, the way I proposed to you. It was dreadful.”

“Well, yes,” she said, nodding.

He snorted, ducking down his chin against his chest. A deep laugh rolled out of him.

She laughed too.

They laughed and clutched each other behind the rose bushes as the sun disappeared behind the trees.

When the laughter left her, she regarded him again. “It’s another sort of strength, of course. A strength of character. A steadiness. A surety of who you are that radiates out of you with quietness and resoluteness. I mistook it before, for something else, some sort of affectation. But it was simply a reflection of your truth, Fitzwilliam, of your wonderful self.”

“Oh, please.” He swallowed, and his voice wavered. “I do not deserve this speech. You are complimenting me in a way that is not at all reflective of my actual self. I am not at all sure or certain or strong. I am… terrified and bumbling and idiotic.”

“I like it when you bumble. I am afraid, too. And I am also often rather idiotic, I’m afraid.”

“Never,” he said. “You’re the least idiotic person I know.”

She was happy. She pressed in against him, offering him her lips.

He claimed them with a sort of ease and familiarity that made her feel as if she were soaring again. He kissed both of her cheeks. He kissed the bridge of her nose. He kissed her forehead.

She shivered in the joyousness of their closeness. “Oh, I am so very in love with you.”

“Yes, I’m yours, all yours. Mad for you. Gone for you.”

She sighed, wriggling in closer.

“I love you so desperately, Elizabeth,” he breathed.

“When can we be married?”

He laughed, tightening his grip on her. “Shall we elope? Tonight? I can get a carriage. We’re closer to Scotland than we have been at any other time we were together thus far in our interactions. Don’t pack anything. We shall simply go right now, together.”

She was not going to elope with him in the dead of night. He was joking, and so she went along with it, her tone airy. “I think I must pack something, though. I must have something to wear.”

“Oh, must you? Really?”

She drew back, eyes widening. “Mr. Darcy . That’s shocking.”

He cleared his throat, and she could not be sure, because it was too dark, but she thought he was blushing. He was regretful. “We’re not going to elope.”

“We must have the banns read here, as we planned,” she said. “Three weeks, then? It’s not so long.”

“Not at all,” he said. He searched her expression. “But you are mine.”

“All yours,” she agreed. “Very entirely yours.”

He drew in a breath and let it out. “All right.”

She smiled at him.

He kissed her again.

She surrendered to it, to the wild goodness of the way it felt to be kissed by this man, by her Mr. Darcy, the man who would be her husband.

He panted. “I should go.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“Yes, I’d rather stay and kiss you for some time yet,” he said.

“Well, could you?”

“It is getting cold,” he said.

“We could sneak you inside,” she said. “Everyone is gathered together around the piano-forte, singing in unison, and no one would see.”

“Ah,” he said. “I see. And where would you take me? Where would we go together?”

“Inside, as I have just said,” she said with a laugh.

“To your bedchamber?” His voice had grown very deep.

“I…” She wrinkled up her nose. “Well, I suppose that’s…”

“I’m drunk and you’re beautiful,” he said. “Let us not put ourselves in that sort of position. It won’t end well.”

She let out a noisy breath, seeing his perspective.

“Well, I mean, I suppose it depends on the way you look at it, whether or not it would end well. I think it might be quite entirely… did I mention I was drunk?”

She laughed.

He pulled her against him again, kissing her again, a brief, forceful kiss that made her feel nearly scorched by the promise of it. “I want to hold you in my arms and never let go of you. When we are wed, I shan’t let you sleep in your own bed for months. I shall refuse to be separated from you.”

She gasped.

He backed away, letting go of her. “Good night, Elizabeth.”

She was still gasping, fumbling for a response.

He kept backing up. The darkness swallowed him up.

“Good night,” she whispered.

She could not see him anymore.