Page 29 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)
ELIZABETH CEASED SENDING letters to the colonel after Mr. Darcy’s visit.
Two weeks passed away, and there was no word from either of them.
Jane and Mr. Bingley still continued on together, and there was talk of an invitation to the country, and that the Bingleys were going to bring Jane along, though there had been no proposal from Mr. Bingley.
Jane would be traveling along, however, and the Hursts were going, so it would all be proper enough.
Elizabeth had not been invited, and she knew that she could not stay here with her aunt and uncle forever.
She must move into Weythorn, as she had planned.
Jane fretted over it, saying Elizabeth couldn’t live there on her own, but Elizabeth didn’t see anything for it.
One night, she was awakened by a tapping on her window late at night.
Jane heard it, too. They both stirred in the bed, looking about in a fright.
Then, the window opened, and she heard the voice of the colonel. “Lizzy? Are you in there?”
She sprang out of bed and went to him. He was here, finally, after all of this time with no word, and her heart soared, even as it twisted on itself painfully, for she felt as if he had much to answer for, also.
Why was he here? She forced herself to sound airy and disinterested, as much to preserve her pride as anything.
“Is this how you got in the other time, when you hid in the wardrobe? Opening windows from outside?”
He smirked at her. “Perhaps.”
“Why are you here, Richard?”
“I got a special license,” he said. “The clergy is waiting for us at Weythorn. Come out the window with me now.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, who had been proposed to twice and refused both times, and who was now going to get married to a man who was apparently not going to propose at all, just spirit her out a window in the dead of night. “You do wish to marry me?”
“Of course I wish it.”
“A special license,” she said. “You are… your father is titled, so…” She licked her lips. “But you don’t wish to do it in any other way? You don’t wish to come and call upon me or to meet my family or anything of that nature?”
“It’s only that there’s no time. I leave on the morrow. I am going to France.”
“Because you’re a colonel,” she said faintly. “And you are going to the fighting. Because we are at war.”
“Lizzy?” called Jane from the bed. “You have told me none of this.”
Yes, she had kept a number of things from her sister. It had become easier and easier to be secretive as the time had passed. “I must go, Jane.”
“But Lizzy, why?” said Jane.
“I shall explain it all when I can,” said Elizabeth. “You must cover for me if I am not back in the morning? Say that I am ill, in bed, something of that nature? Just until I can get this all sorted out.”
She felt strange, both excited and eager and full of a wariness, a trepidation.
“You will explain all of it when you are able,” said Jane firmly.
“I swear it,” said Elizabeth. She got a pelisse from the wardrobe but she did not dress, she only shrugged it over everything.
And then she allowed herself to be assisted as she climbed out of the window and into Colonel Fitzwilliam’s waiting arms. He kissed her, pulling her close, and she remembered the fire and sweetness of his kisses, and that buoyed her up.
They traveled in his carriage to Weythorn, where a clergy was, in fact, waiting for them both. The ceremony was conducted quickly, just the two of them and the witnesses, who had been brought by the clergyman. They exchanged their vows and repeated their words, and it was over in moments.
She was married.
She was only wearing her bedclothes with a pelisse carelessly thrown over them.
The clergy departed in his own carriage, and then she and her new husband ascended the stairs to the bedchamber where they had begun all this.
His hands on her body wiped away all the wariness within her, drowning out the trepidation with his clever fingers and eager tongue.
He wrung her out, thorough as he touched her, making her bow up and burst against him, her body bare in the scant light of candles on the bedside table, and his body bare too, all the hard angles of his muscled arms and the springy, coarse hair on his chest, and then that part of him, between his thighs, hard and eager for her.
She touched him voluntarily, and she didn’t think of Mr. Wickham, or she tried not to.
He gasped into her hair. “Have mercy on me, Lizzy. You are far too good at that.”
So she let go of him and he kissed her senseless and there was no talk of French letters, just the press of him, slipping into her there, all the way into her there.
He panted into her chin as he moved inside her and she tangled her hands in his hair and cried out against the sensation of being pinned and filled and stretched.
And then it was done.