The Means of Uniting Them, page 5
No doubt eager to follow her lead, Mr. Darcy removed his jacket. Surprising even herself, Elizabeth undid the buttons on his waistcoat, one by one. When she was done, she removed it herself. One last encumbrance stood between her and her desire. Tugging at either side of his crisp white shirt, she freed the loosened garment completely from his tight-fitting tan trousers.
When she bestowed similar attention to his bare chest as he had bestowed to hers, Mr. Darcy moaned.
She ached deep inside in a manner in which she had never known. An aching more powerful than anything which she had begun to suffer whenever she was in his presence of late. An aching which begged for relief.
Feeling his gentle hands on either side of her face, Elizabeth raised her head, yearning for what was to come. Their eyes met. The brooding she completely mistook in the past, she now understood as deep longing, intense passion, unyielding affection, and abiding love.
Their ardent desire for each other unleashed, the lovers continued in this manner for some time, giving Elizabeth little doubt of the satisfaction that awaited her as the wife of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
“I want this night to last forever,” he whispered softly in her ear.
Thus the lovers behaved until sleep overtook them. The dawn of morning awakened them from a blissful slumber in each other’s arms.
There they lay, the two of them having spent their first night together, not exactly as one, but certainly in a manner which persuaded both of them that they never wished to be parted from each other again.
Chapter 11
Upon returning to the manor house some hours later, Elizabeth learned that her aunt and uncle had taken an early breakfast. Supposing Elizabeth was tarrying longer than usual while rambling about the estate, the Gardiners ventured to Lambton to call on old friends and acquaintances.
Two letters from Jane awaited her. Upon retrieving them, she scrutinized them to see which had been received first and hence determine the order in which she should read them.
Mr. Darcy, who had been standing by Elizabeth’s side, watching her examine her sister’s letters, said, “Shall I leave you in privacy to read your sister’s correspondence?”
In no hurry to be separated from her newly betrothed, Elizabeth shook her head. “I assure you no privacy is needed. The first letter was posted several days ago. It was initially sent to Lambton and ultimately sent here. The second was posted the day hence. I am confident my sister writes to tell me of Mr. Bingley’s imminent return in the first and all the felicity she has suffered in the wake of his arrival in the second.
“Stay with me, if you will, while I read, so that the parts that have to do with your friend Mr. Bingley can be relayed to you immediately. And then you will know that you did the right thing in telling him about my sister’s true feelings.”
“In the spirit of sparing my own suspense, I accept your invitation.”
With that settled, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy sat on the settee in a manner in keeping with their newly acknowledged affection for each other, and the former commenced reading in silence. Darcy waited patiently for his intended to begin sharing happy intelligence about his friend and her sister, but such information was never imparted.
Instead, Elizabeth’s color grew more and more pale by the second, prompting Mr. Darcy to ask, “Is something the matter, my love? You look unwell.”
She looked up from her letter with tears in her eyes. Elizabeth bit her lower lip, her whole attitude a stark difference from what it had been when she started reading.
“Shall I get you a glass of wine, perhaps? Whatever your sister wrote in her letter must be a cause for great consternation.”
Fighting back her tears, Elizabeth shook her head. “Consternation. Condemnation. And utter and complete ruination for my family.”
“Good God! What has happened?”
“It is my youngest sister, Lydia,” Elizabeth began. “She has thrown herself into the power of-of Mr. Wickham. The two of them have gone off to Scotland, presumably to elope according to Jane’s letter, but I can scarcely believe it is true. You and I both know Wickham too well to suppose it to be true.”
Elizabeth burst into tears. “I fear Lydia is lost to us forever.”
Not wanting to see Elizabeth in distress, Mr. Darcy said, “The second letter, you said it was posted the following day. Perhaps there is good news. Perhaps the two of them have been found.”
Elizabeth seized hold of the second letter as though it were the means of her family’s salvation. She nodded nervously, a measure of hope creeping into her busy mind. “Yes–yes! Jane said our father went out in search of the two of them. Perhaps he met with a great measure of success.”
The intelligence conveyed in the second letter was twice as devastating as that in the first, for it removed every last shred of hope. The Bennet family had since learned that Wickham had never intended to marry Lydia. Too much time had passed since Lydia had last been seen for Elizabeth to do anything other than think the worst.
“Foolish, foolish, Lydia,” Elizabeth cried. “What have you done?” She now paced the floor. “What have I done?”
“Come, my love. Sit and have a drink of wine. I fear you are making yourself quite ill?”
“Sir, pray, do not call me that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Please refrain from referring to me in such terms of endearment. Owing to my sister’s foolishness, I fear everything has changed.”
“Certainly not between the two of us.”
“Especially between the two of us!” she exclaimed with energy.
“How so, if I may ask?”
“Whatever the outcome of Lydia’s rash behavior, it will be in every way bad. Either she has been ruined by that scoundrel Mr. Wickham, or she is married to him - which is worse than being ruined, so far as I am concerned.”
“Whatever is the situation between your sister and for her sake, I pray it is the latter–that they indeed eloped to Gretna Green, it can have nothing to do with the two of us and the future we have planned,” Mr. Darcy countered.
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, sir, you are gravely mistaken. My sister’s fate is invariably connected with ours. My family’s reputation is on the verge of being permanently tarnished should Wickham abandon Lydia in some God-forsaken part of the country. Were they actually to marry, which I can have no reason to suppose they will despite Jane’s overly optimistic opinion, for Lydia has no money, no connections, absolutely nothing that might tempt him.
“If they were to marry despite all reasons to the contrary, then Wickham would become a part of my family.
“Do you really suppose I would force you to align yourself with such a scandalous connection when it is within my power to do otherwise? That being to release you from our engagement, now, before the painful truth can no longer be contained.” She shook her head. “No! I cannot marry you, Mr. Darcy, and I shall not!” Elizabeth exclaimed with more feeling than politeness.
“Elizabeth, think about what you are saying. I have not been in the habit of submitting to anyone’s will other than my own. I want to marry you because I love you–most ardently. I want to marry you because I cannot imagine my life without you. Wickham or no Wickham–you and I are meant to be together. I will let nothing tear us apart.”
“No, sir. I am afraid it is beyond your power to prevent me from doing what you and I both know deep within our hearts is the right thing to do. It is not that I do not love you. If I have learned nothing else from this beautiful time we have spent together, I have learned just how much I do care for you. Despite all the odds against us–the possible derision of your family and your friends, I really believed we could have been happy.”
“Elizabeth, we can be happy. We are happy–happy together. You are merely confused by what your sister has done. You are worried about her safety, as you most certainly ought to be. But pray, do anything but allow your despair over that which is beyond your power to cloud your judgment.”
“If anything has clouded my judgment, sir, it is the time we have spent together these past days. The truth is you have never really liked my family for the very reason that has unfolded today. If you would but be honest, this is just the sort of scheme that you believed my family capable of. It is the very essence of the struggles you confessed, however impolitic, that evening at the parsonage. And if I am to be honest with myself, it is just the sort of situation I, too, have come to expect. Lydia only wanted opportunity to make herself and thus our whole family ridiculous, and with Wickham’s help, she has managed to do so spectacularly.”
Having taken Darcy’s letter explaining her motives for his treatment of Wickham to heart, Elizabeth could not help but harken back to her pleading with her father not to allow Lydia to travel to Brighton with no supervision other than that of a young woman, although married, who was barely older than Lydia herself. Mr. Bennet, being the type of father who relished the solace that was to be afforded by Lydia, with her wild animal spirits, being away from Longbourn could simply not be persuaded. He had even attributed Elizabeth’s objection to the preservation of her own self-interest, saying: “Has Lydia frightened away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy!
Now, there she stood doing her best to push away the one man she was meant to love.
“I will not allow you to do this to us,” Mr. Darcy insisted. “After last night, do you really suppose I would turn my back on you?”
Elizabeth could feel the color rise all over her body. The liberties she had allowed Mr. Darcy, as their passions swelled during the heat of the night when they stole away from the manor house for a midnight stroll, flooded her mind.
She moistened her lips in remembrance of how perfect it had been when his lips brushed ever so gently over hers, how he had tenderly persuaded her lips apart and how she had welcomed his tongue in a tantalizing dance with her own.
Elizabeth’s heartbeat raced. Her body suffered feelings akin to those she had enjoyed while in his arms the evening before, even though they were now standing some distance apart, a distance that was slowly being removed as Mr. Darcy drew closer and closer to her.
Did he mean to take her in his arms? Did he yearn for her touch as much as she yearned for his? His eyes said yes.
Her entire being cried out for the comfort and strength of his strong arms.
Her busy mind surrendered to the turmoil of what her sister had done–to what she had done. She eased a step back. She swallowed. “Sir, that is all the more reason for me to release you from our engagement.
“I know we were sensible enough not to anticipate our wedding vows. But for the strength of our own sense of right and wrong, did we keep ourselves under good regulation. Lydia has always been wild and possessed such animal spirits, I can have no doubt as to how she has comported herself,” cried Elizabeth.
“My behavior was scarcely any more appropriate than my sister’s. I believe you will thank me in the long run for my decision to release you.”
“Your behavior and your sister’s behavior are not to be compared. She is but a child, not yet sixteen, if I recall correctly. She is too young to comprehend the magnitude of what she has done. You are a woman–a sensuous, passionate woman with a woman’s desires, desires you chose not to hide from me, and I love you all the more because of it. You are everything I could ever wish for in a wife - in my wife.
“I refuse to allow something like this, as controversial and consequential as it is, to come between us.”
“I am afraid that is your misfortune, sir.”
“No,” he said, taking a step closer to her.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, easing farther back until there was nowhere left to go.
Closing all the distance between them, Darcy drew Elizabeth into his arms. He studied her eyes as though searching her very soul. Moistening his lips, peering into her eyes, he leaned closer, shutting his eyes.
Elizabeth did the same. She surrendered to her heart’s longing and her body’s yearning and willingly so, for she would never forgive herself if she did not enjoy just one last kiss.
Chapter 12
Mrs. Gardiner said, “I know how troubled you were over the possibility of seeing Mr. Darcy, but I also suspect there was some tiny part of you that dared to ask yourself what if. What if you were to encounter the gentleman at Pemberley? What if the feelings he professed to you in Kent were still there? What if he were to offer his hand in marriage again?
“And now you tell me that all those possibilities have indeed unfolded–that you are engaged to be married to the master of Pemberley, to be the mistress of his home and the mother of his children. And because of Lydia’s foolishness, you are prepared to throw it all away. To sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of what–for propriety, to spare Mr. Darcy, the one man on earth who loves you as ardently as he does, so that he might escape the derision and shame of being connected to such a family as ours?
“Who in our family has ever doubted for a second that the position that Lydia now finds herself in is precisely as it was always meant to be. She only wanted opportunity, and she was bound to find it sooner or later. In this case, it was much sooner than any of us could have expected, but expect it we did.
“Has it thus been a foregone conclusion that your own happiness was meant to rest in Lydia’s hands? I think not. With time, this scandal one day shall pass, but the heartbreak you are inviting upon yourself in breaking your engagement with Mr. Darcy might very well last a lifetime.”
Elizabeth said nothing for the entirety of Mrs. Gardiner’s speech, but her busy mind could not acquiesce. As comforting as my aunt’s words are, I fear they are spoken in vain. Mr. Darcy deserves better than I am at present able to offer.
I know with complete certainty that he will come to know it too.
In the wake of her niece’s continued silence, Mrs. Gardiner said, “Perhaps the thought of what your life with a man like Mr. Darcy entails frightens you. Perhaps you do not believe you deserve all the happiness that awaits you. Let me assure you, dearest Lizzy, that no one is more deserving than you. No one is loved more than Mr. Darcy loves you. I have known how much he loves you from the moment I laid eyes on the two of you together.
“Be scared. Be nervous. I daresay be confused, especially in light of the uncertainty that lies ahead for our family. But whatever you do, do not throw away the certainty of a life full of happiness with Mr. Darcy.”
At length, Elizabeth spoke. “You have certainly given me much to consider, dear Aunt. I am so grateful for your counsel at such a time as this. I–I believe I know what I must do. I asked Mr. Darcy’s driver to await my return so that I might go back to Pemberley. I–I need to see Mr. Darcy. I know that we have not much time to tarry if we are to depart from Lambton for Hertfordshire. I shall not be gone long.”
“You run along, my dearest. I shall see that your things are packed for our departure.”
Elizabeth headed for the door and then stopped. “Pray, say nothing of Mr. Darcy’s proposal to my uncle–not before I return.” She sucked in her breath. “I hate putting you in the position of keeping secrets from your own husband, but I would much prefer to tell him myself with Mr. Darcy by my side.”
She took comfort in the fact that in this case, she was not lying to her dearest aunt; were she indeed to marry Mr. Darcy, then surely she would want him by her side when she shared the news with her uncle.
On her quitting the room, Elizabeth was scarcely able to support herself. She fought back her tears. A full day had not passed since Mr. Darcy renewed his proposal, and she accepted.
Now it seems that blissful moment existed several lifetimes ago.
If Elizabeth had but one consolation, it was the memory of the touch of his fingers on her face and the look in his eyes just moments before their very first kiss. If she could take but one thing from her time in Derbyshire, then surely it would be this.
Chapter 13
Hours had passed since Darcy and Elizabeth had separated, so she might seek out her relations in Lambton. He had offered to go with her–nay insisted but was persuaded by the strength of her convictions that it was better for all concerned that her family should hear the unhappy news apart from a gentleman with whom they had only recently established an acquaintance.
Of course, there had been no time for Elizabeth to confide the happy news of their engagement to her aunt and uncle; both she and Darcy had planned to do so that very evening. At least he had persuaded her to accept the offer of a Darcy carriage and the attendance of one of Pemberley’s maids for the short trip to Lambton.
Darcy planned to meet his betrothed and her relations once the latter had digested the news of what Lydia had done, at which point he would have a private audience with Mr. Gardiner to decide what was to be done.
In truth, he wanted nothing more than to be by Elizabeth’s side as she spoke to her aunt and uncle, but he both respected and trusted her enough to know that she knew best in this particular situation how the matter ought to be handled.
A gentleman who had always been looked upon to bear the brunt of such weighty matters, especially where his own family was concerned, he knew it to be the hardest thing he had ever done was allowing his lady to walk away with little more than a polite curtsy in view of their surroundings and a tacit promise that their reunion was a short time in coming.
Having taken the stairs in the Lambton inn where Elizabeth and her relations had kept their rooms, despite their brief stay at Pemberley and days long tour of Derbyshire, Mr. Darcy stood outside the door, his hat in one hand and his other hand poised to knock, when the door flew open.
“Mr. Darcy,” Mr. Gardiner said. “Sir, I had not planned to see you. I fear we have received grave news–grave indeed. I am afraid our departure from this part of the country cannot be delayed a day longer, for we will surely be too late to–”
Darcy nodded, “I–I know, sir. That is, in part, the reason I am here.”
