“Write this.‘Dear Aunt. We are delighted to welcome you for Georgiana’s wedding. Your rooms will be prepared for the Friday preceding the ceremony. Anne looks forward to meeting her grandmother. We remain, et cetera, et cetera.’” He gestured. “Standard courtesies. Nothing warm, nothing cold. A door opened exactly wide enough to walk through and not an inch wider.”
Darcy sat and picked up the quill. The nib hovered over the paper.
“Delighted,” he repeated.
“Delighted.”
“I am not delighted, Richard.”
“No. But you are a gentleman, and gentlemen are delighted whether they feel it or not. Write the letter, Darcy.”
He wrote it. The quill moved in short, reluctant strokes. Richard stood behind him, his arms folded, supervising the composition with the same calm authority he brought to inspecting a troop formation.
The letter was brief, courteous, and committed to nothing beyond the bare minimum of hospitality. Darcy signed it, sanded it, and sealed it with the Darcy crest pressed so hard into the wax that the impression was nearly illegible.
Richard clapped him on the shoulder.
“There. That was not so terrible.”
“It was terrible, Richard.”
“Yes. But it is done.”
Long after Richard left, Darcy remained seated, staring at the papers on his desk without seeing. He read his aunt’s letter again, and the words blurred, rearranged themselves, and dissolved into nothing. His mind refused to focus. The study felt too small, the silence too loud. He rose, crossed to the connecting doors that led into the library, and pushed them open.
She was there.
Elizabeth stood on the lowest rung of the rolling ladder, one hand braced on a higher shelf, reaching for a volume just beyond her fingertips. The sunlight caught the line of her neck, the delicate shadow beneath her jaw, the way her body stretched upward. Her fine but sensible new gown pulled taut across her back and hips as she strained.
Darcy’s breath stalled.
He should announce himself. He should retreat. Instead, he moved forward without conscious decision, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet.
She did not hear him until he was directly behind her.
He stopped mere inches away. Close enough that the heat of her body brushed against the front of his coat. He could feel the faint warmth radiating from her shoulders, the subtle shift of her spine as she breathed, the soft curve where her waist met her hips. His own body reacted with humiliating swiftness—a heavy, insistent ache that tightened low in his belly and spread downward.
For one suspended moment, he simply stood there, bracketing her without touching. His chest hovered just behind her shoulders. His thighs aligned with the backs of hers. The space between them was so narrow he could have closed it with a single shallow breath.
He lifted his arm slowly, reaching past her for the book.
His forearm brushed the air beside her ear. He felt her go very still.
“Allow me,” he murmured, his voice low and rougher than he intended.
His fingers closed around the leather spine she was touching. As he drew the volume down, his body leaned in by necessity—or perhaps not entirely by necessity. The front of his waistcoat grazed the back of her dress. Then his hips, just enough that the hard, unmistakable ridge of his arousal pressed lightly against the small of her back.
She did not flinch. She did not step down from the ladder. She remained exactly where she was, breathing shallow and quick.
Darcy’s pulse thundered in his ears.
His hand stayed on the book. So did hers. Their fingers overlapped on the worn leather, skin against skin for the first time since that night in his chamber. Her knuckles were warm beneath his. He shifted his thumb, just once, a slow stroke across the delicate bone.
Three heartbeats passed in perfect, airless silence.
He could feel every inch of her—the faint tremor running through her frame, the way her breathing had grown shallow. He was painfully hard now, his arousal pressing against her with undeniable insistence. The fabric ofher dress was thin enough that she had to feel him. She had to know exactly what she was doing to him.
And still she did not move away.