Darcy’s free hand tightened at his side, nails biting into his palm. The urge to close the last inch, to let his chest settle fully against her back, to press his mouth to the warm skin just beneath her ear, was so fierce it bordered on pain. He could almost taste her—lavender soap, warm woman, and something indefinably Elizabeth.
He lowered his head until his lips hovered beside the shell of her ear.
“Miss Bennet...”
The words were barely more than breath, and he heard her sharp inhale.
A small, bright voice shattered the moment.
“Miss Bennet! I need my book!”
Anne burst through the doors and skidded to a halt at the sight of them on the ladder.
Darcy jerked back as though burned. The book slipped from both their hands and thudded onto the carpet. Elizabeth stepped down quickly, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide. Her fingers trembled as she smoothed her skirts.
“Anne,” Darcy managed, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “A lady never runs like a street urchin, sweetheart.”
“I need it, Papa!” Anne exclaimed, oblivious. She looked between them with curiosity. “Why were you both reaching for the same book?”
Elizabeth recovered first, though her voice was not quite steady. “We were... choosing the rightone, Miss Darcy.”
Darcy bent to retrieve the fallen volume, his hand shaking. When he straightened, he saw that hers was shaking as well. Her colour was blazing—crimson across both cheekbones—and her breathing was ragged.
Their eyes met for one brief, charged second.
“Here it is, Miss Darcy,” she said, taking the book from his hand. Her voice was astonishingly warm, giving nothing away. “Shall we read it together upstairs?”
“Yes, please. Alice cannot do the voices properly.”
She took the child’s hand and led her out without looking back.
Darcy stood alone in the library, his body throbbing with unspent need. His chest felt too tight. The scent of lavender still lingered in the air where she had stood.
He pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the ladder and exhaled a long, shaky breath.
God help him.
He was never going to survive this.
He went to his study still trembling, and stayed rooted there until darkness fell. He lit no candles. He poured brandy and carried the glass to the chair by the cold hearth without drinking. He merely turned the glass in his hand, lost in sensation, in memory.
Every detail came back, vivid and merciless.
The warmth of her back against his waistcoat. The catch of her breathing. The moment his arousal had pressed against her and she had—
She had stayed. That was the fact he could not reconcile. She had felt him and she had remained exactly where she was. She had not retreated, had not swooned. She had notslapped him, which he would have richly deserved. Her fingers had tightened on the book, pressing his hand closer. Her breathing had gone shallow and quick, and she hadstayed.
She was equally affected. He was certain of it. Her pulse had raced beneath his thumb. Her cheeks were flushed when she turned. Her hand had been shaking as she led Anne from the room.
And this was precisely the problem.
Because Elizabeth Bennet could not afford to be equally affected. She was his employee. She depended on him for her wages, her room, her family’s survival. He was the roof over her head and the name on the banknote. If she believed—even for a moment—that her position in this household was contingent on tolerating his advances, on enduring his proximity, on standing still while he pressed his body against hers in a library—
The brandy sloshed in the glass, his hand tightening.
What if she panicked? What if she went upstairs tonight and packed her carpet bag to vanish before morning? He had witnessed her withdrawal before. He had watched her excuse herself from dinners, retreat from drawing rooms, fold herself into the smallest possible space when the distance between governess and family became too sharp. She knew how to disappear without making a sound.
And Anne. God, Anne. The child who had bonded with Elizabeth so completely that separation would leave a wound he could not mend. He had seen it before—three governesses, three departures, three mornings of bewilderedgrief from a girl who could not understand why the people she loved kept leaving.