The sound he made was raw, broken. His hand came to her hair, not guiding, simply holding on as though she were the only solid thing in the world. She explored him slowly at first—licking, tasting, learning what made his hips jerk and his breath stutter. Then she took him deeper, hollowing her cheeks, using her tongue on the sensitive underside.
Mr Darcy was losing control. His thighs trembled beneath her hands. His breathing grew ragged. “Elizabeth—”
She hummed around him and he cursed softly, the sound sending a fresh wave of heat between her legs.
Just as she felt him nearing the edge, he pulled her up with gentle urgency. He kissed her deeply, tasting himself on her tongue, then guided her onto the bed beside him. He settled on his back, breathing hard, and she watched as he took himself in hand, stroking once, twice —
With a low, guttural groan he spent across his stomach in hot pulses, his body shuddering with release.
For a while they simply breathed together.
Elizabeth reached for the cloth by the basin. She cleaned him with gentle, careful strokes, her touch tender. When shewas finished, she leaned down and kissed him squarely on the mouth, licking his lips once, slowly, before pulling back.
“Goodnight, Mr Darcy,” she whispered.
She slipped from the bed, retrieved her nightgown from the floor, and pulled it over her head. She looked back at him once, and committed the sight to her memory: his tousled hair, his eyes dark with satisfaction, and then she was gone.
Twenty-Two
Darcy sat alone in his study at Pemberley, the special licence open on the desk before him. The heavy paper was crisp beneath his fingers. He had read it a dozen times since Carruthers had delivered it, yet each time the names written there struck him anew.
Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley in the County of Derbyshire and Elizabeth Bennet of Somers Town in London.
They sat side by side in elegant script, as though the clerk at Doctors’ Commons had simply assumed they belonged together. No obstacles listed, no objections noted. Only the bare legal fact that he, a gentleman of fortune and rank, might lawfully marry her, a gentlewoman currently employed as governess to his daughter.
He leaned back in his chair and exhaled slowly.
There was nothing stopping them.
The Matlocks had made their position clear. They would not oppose a match that brought him happiness and gave Anne a mother. Lady Catherine had no legal say, and if she chose to make her displeasure known, he would survive without her blessing. He had survived worse.
Richard was already courting Jane Bennet with open sincerity. Any scandal attached to the Bennet name seven years ago could not touch Georgiana now that she was safely married. By the time Anne was old enough to understand the whispers would fade, if they ever surfaced at all.
The only obstacle that remained was Elizabeth herself.
She desired him, that much was obvious. The way she had come to his chambers at night, the way she had touched him with such bold curiosity, the soft sounds she made when he brought her pleasure, all of it spoke of genuine, physical want. He understood it. She was a young woman with a healthy body and a passionate nature long denied. He worshipped that body with every restrained breath he took. It was only natural that she should like being worshipped.
But did she love him?
He doubted it.
She had refused him once with such fury, and though the refusal had been justified, the memory still stung. In all the months since she had come to him as governess, she had shown desire, yes. She had shown trust, affection for Anne, even friendship in quiet moments. But love? The kind that would make her accept his name, his fortune, his complicated life? She had never given any sign of it.
He rose and crossed to the window. The parkland stretched out before him, green and gold in the early August light. Pemberley was at its most beautiful, and still it felt incomplete without her beside him as more than a governess.
He wanted her. God, how he wanted her. But he loved her more.
He wanted a family. Not the polite arrangement he had endured with Anne de Bourgh, but a real one. Laughter at the breakfast table. Anne running to both of them when she had a question about frogs or stars or why the rain fell sideways. Elizabeth’s sharp wit directed at him openly. Her hand in his as they walked the paths she was only just beginning to learn.
He wanted to wake beside her. He wanted to build a life with her. He wanted to give her everything she had been denied all those long years.
But what if she refused him again?
What if the desire she felt was only that—desire—and the moment he offered marriage she remembered the proud, arrogant man who had once insulted her family and proposed with all the grace of a charging bull? What if she valued her hard-won independence more than any future with him?
He would lose what he already had. The quiet evenings, the stolen glances, the midnight visits where she came to him willingly, laughing softly when pleasure overtook them both. He would lose the fragile, precious thing they had built in secret.
And yet... what if she accepted?