The word came out raw. He heard it and winced. He cleared his throat.
“Please, Miss Bennet.” Softer now, controlled, though the control cost him visibly. “Stay. I shall not be in your way. I promised you access to the library, did I not?” He released her wrist and gestured with his hand at the shelves that lined the walls, floor to ceiling, leather and gilt and the accumulated wisdom of four generations of Darcys. “There. All yours.”
She stood very still. Her eyes dropped to her wrist—the one he had held, where his fingers had been, where his thumb had rested against her pulse.
“Thank you, Mr Darcy.”
She walked into the room without hurrying. She moved along the nearest shelf, her fingers trailing the spines, and selected a volume without apparent deliberation. She tucked it beneath her arm. She turned and gave him a nod—civil, contained, betraying nothing—and left the library on quiet feet.
The sound of her footsteps faded on the stairs.
Darcy stood where she had left him, his hand trembling.
Hell was real, it turned out, and he had just reached the gates of purgatory.
Six
Elizabeth woke with his fingerprints on her skin.
Not literally, she knew that. She was a rational woman with a functional mind and an education that, while interrupted by catastrophe, had not abandoned her entirely. There were no fingerprints, no mark. There was only the memory of his hand closing around her wrist, and the fact that she had lain awake until three o’clock in the morning unable to think about anything else.
She pressed her thumb to the spot. The skin was smooth, unremarkable, entirely ordinary. It did not explain the heat that had shot up her arm when he touched her, or the way her pulse had thrummed beneath his fingers.
She sat up abruptly. She had slept badly and it showed—her reflection in the washstand glass confirmed what she already suspected. Shadows under her eyes, and a pallor that pinching her cheeks would only partially remedy.
She dressed, refusing to dwell on Mr Darcy one more second. She pinned her hair and splashed water on her face. She told herself that the image of him standing by the fire in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat hanging open, hair in disarray, brandy in hand, cursing into an empty room, was somethingthat had happened and did not require further analysis. Men drank brandy. Men cursed. Men removed their coats in the privacy of their own homes. There was nothing remarkable about it.
Except that the man in question was Mr Darcy, who had never in her experience been anything other than immaculate, composed, and buttoned to the throat. She had known him at Meryton, at Netherfield, at Rosings, and at a disastrous parsonage in Kent. In none of those settings had she seen so much as a loosened cravat. Last night he had been undone by something internal, which had driven him to pace, grip the mantelpiece, and snarl profanity at the flames. She did not want to consider what that something might be.
She did not want to consider how the firelight had caught the hollow of his throat where his shirt lay open. Or the way his hair had fallen across his forehead, dark and disordered, nothing like the careful arrangement his valet produced each morning. She certainly did not want to consider the three strides he had taken to cross the library, or how fast they had been, or how his hand had found her wrist as though he had mapped its exact location from across the room.
She did not want to consider any of it a second longer. She had considered all of it already, repeatedly, for five consecutive hours, and her eyes felt as though they had been packed with sand.
She went to the nursery.
Anne was already awake, sitting up in bed with Muffin wedged under her chin, her curls a magnificent blonde mop.
“Good morning, Miss Bennet. Did you know that the moon is made of rock and not cheese? Alice told me yesterday and I am very upset about it.”
“A reasonable response, Miss Darcy. The cheese theory was far more appealing.”
“I shall write to God about it.”
“You are building quite a correspondence with the Almighty.”
Anne thought about this, apparently pleased with her expanding epistolary ambitions. She allowed Elizabeth to help her dress, submitted to the hairbrush with only moderate protest, and ate her breakfast with one hand while the other maintained a firm grip on Muffin. The morning routine had established itself over the past week with a rhythm Elizabeth found predictable and safe. A world measured in chalk, milk, and a child who wanted to understand everything.
By eleven o’clock, Anne was settled with Alice for the afternoon. Elizabeth had laid out the reading, and left instructions about the arithmetic that Anne would resist and Alice would negotiate. She changed into her outdoor dress, retrieved her bonnet, and descended the stairs.
Mr Darcy was in the entrance hall.
He was fully dressed, perfectly composed, every button in its place, his cravat tied. Not a hair out of order. He bore no resemblance whatsoever to the man who had been pacing the library at midnight with his waistcoat open and hellfire on his tongue.
Elizabeth was not sure whether this was a relief or an irritation. She suspected it was both.
“Miss Bennet.” He inclined his head. “The carriage is ready for you.”
She paused on the bottom step. “I beg your pardon?”