He stared up at her, his forehead furrowed, alternately clenching his right, then his left molars. After a few seconds, he covered his face with his hands and closed his eyes again.
"I never wanted this either." She spoke eventually. "This huge house, dresses from Paris, fine horses, a box at the opera. We never talked about those things. When I said I would marry you, you could have been a groom for all I knew. I did not want my daughter to be hungry or afraid. I did not want us to be cold. Aside from that, all I wanted was you. Only you. Because you wanted me. Only me."
"I wanted only you. I still do." He raised his head, still keeping his middle and index fingers pressed against his eyelids. "Just tell me what to do to fix this. Do you need time? Would that help? Do you want me to take Georgie and leave?"
She sat on the sofa near the fireplace. "I want you to tell me what happened."
He lowered his hands and stared at the wooden tabletop before he shook his head. "I can't."
"Then tell me why. That is what I do not understand. I did whatever you wanted."
He swallowed dryly, knowing the next two words out of her mouth if he didn't answer would be "get out."
"Elizabeth, I'm not Daniels. I didn't plan to do it. I was so far gone I barely remembered my name. I-I must have been thinking about it, and, and I should have told her ‘no,' but I guess I didn't. Or else she didn't listen. It's not something I wanted to happen."
"Is that why you fired Lillian?" She asked after a prolonged pause. "Because you were drunk and she seduced you?"
He swallowed again. "She quit."
"Dig your grave a little deeper, Mr. Darcy," she said coolly.
He nodded. "Yes, that's why I fired her."
"Christmas morning?"
"Yes," he mumbled, just wanting this conversation over with.
"Never before then?"
"Once. I told you about it."
"You told me you kissed her."
If there was a trapdoor in the floor, he'd have used it. If there had been a mouse hole, he'd have tried to squirm through.
"It was a thorough, undressed kiss. Looking back, looking back, she started it but I didn't realise that at the time. I was so naïve I thought had. I wanted to tell Anne, but I didn't want to hurt her."
"I am not Anne."
"I understand that," he agreed humbly, in his very poor voice.
"I told you! I told you Lillian was dangerous! I told you she'd do anything to have control over you!" She cried.
"Yes, you did," he agreed, even sorrier.
"She told Georgiana. Did you know that? She thinks the two of you were lovers. She thinks you are Francis' father. She asked me and I told her Lillian was lying!"
He huddled, still looking for a way to melt through the cracks in the floor.
"I'd like to put a bullet between that woman's eyes." She admitted.
"I can give you the gun."
*~~*~~*
He sat on the sofa, watching her as she undressed for bed and wondering which of them was more nervous.
"The bed down the hall is fine," he told her softly. "Or I can keep you warm. Or am I just the maid tonight? Or have you decided?"
In response, she turned for him to untie the back of her corset. He worked the laces loose. Her skin beneath her chemise was warm and yielding and she stayed still while he rubbed her shoulders.
His fingers slid forward, rubbing across her soft abdomen and up her torso until he grazed the bottoms of her breasts as she stood in front of him. He leaned forward, putting his arms around her waist and resting his forehead against her abdomen.
"You know I want you. Only you," he said softly, watching the contrast between his tanned hands and her white skin in the candles' light as he touched her. "And you know you don't have to do this," he whispered, looking up. "I'd never hurt you or force you."
She said nothing and bit her lip.
"Are you… doing this?" he asked uncertainly.
She nodded slowly, and he gathered her chemise and helped her pull it over her head, leaving her naked.
"Kiss me," he requested, and she gently, hesitantly, covered his mouth with hers. He closed his eyes, exhaling and leaned back on the sofa, letting her set the pace. She moved with him, settling half on his lap, half on the sofa cushion beside him. As he'd asked, she kissed him. Slowly making her way from his lips to his nose, his cheekbones, and earlobes. The fabric of his shirt pulled slightly as she unfastened it and then rested her forehead against the base of his neck for a long time.
He opened his eyes, slid one hand down her shoulder and cupped another one against her face.
"I love you," he promised. "You know no one and nothing will ever change that."
"I know," she whispered as she kissed his palm. "I love you too."
Before, he would have done it automatically, but this time she put his hands on her breasts, giving him permission. She arched her back as he pulled one nipple deep into his mouth, massaging the other with his thumb.
"Bed?" he whispered, still not sure she'd say yes.
"What did you have in mind?"
"I'm just thankful to be here. I'll do whatever you like. Or you can do whatever you like to do with me."
"I would like to put you over my knee and blister your behind for not telling me the truth about that woman three months ago."
"Later," he promised.
*~~*~~*
He'd concede to being a little dense and to becoming overly focused on some things to the exclusion of all else. He'd concede he was romantic and could be so annoyingly optimistic that others had the urge to hit him in the face with a shovel. But even he wasn't such a starry-eyed fool he believed physical intimacy equaled forgiveness. At best, it meant Elizabeth was willing to move on. At worst, it meant she was his wife and part of her vows included ending up on her back whenever he wanted. His brain leaned toward the former, his guilty conscience argued the latter.
"Are you well?" he asked sleepily, shifting the bare leg he'd intertwined with hers.
"Yes," Elizabeth answered softly.
"Do you need anything? A drink of water? A washcloth?"
She shook her head slightly and closed her eyes. She felt too warm, so he pushed the covers off, then noticed she had goose bumps and pulled them up again.
Darcy was too tired to see straight, let alone think straight, but sleep seemed as foreign a concept to his body as flying. Too many thoughts buzzed around his brain, too random to analyse, too urgent to ignore. He tried to capture and examine them one at a time but they were too transient. One worry led to another, which led to another.
"Elizabeth, did you want me to leave? I can sleep elsewhere if you want."
"I want you to be quiet, be still, and let me sleep."
"Oh."
He told himself he'd be completely silent and motionless, which immediately caused his entire body to itch, twitch, or demanded to be moved. He fought the tickle in his throat as long as possible, holding his breath until he turned blue before he finally coughed.
Elizabeth sighed and rolled over and he curled up to her back, wrapping his arms around her.
"I love you. Only you. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, I know," she answered for the hundredth time of the night.
"And you know I regret everything."
"Yes, I know you regret it," she repeated. "Go to sleep."
"It didn't hurt?" he asked, allowing himself one last question. Or three, actually. "It was nice? You weren't just pretending?"
He was under no delusions. There was no need to use a more enthusiastic adjective than "nice." It had been nice. Adequate. Done.
"It was nice. I thought you did not want another baby so soon, though," Elizabeth mumbled, her breaths growing slower.
"Oh," he remembered, about six minutes too late.
Once again, he'd heard the clock strike two and five and every fifteen-minute increment in between. In another half-hour, he could consider the night officially over and say he was g
etting up. He could be out of the house before Elizabeth realised that. The long ride should give him a time to think what to do next with his life and this whole situation.
She gave every appearance of being asleep but the rise and fall of her ribcage beneath his hand proved she wasn't. When he looked, her eyes were open, and she was staring out their bedroom window at the black night. He fitted the top of her head snugly under his chin, wrapped his arms tighter around her and helped her stare at nothing.
"I do want something," he said softly, as though they were already in the middle of a long conversation. "I want you to want me. Really. Like you used to. I want you to trust me again. Like you used to. I want to be able to close my eyes and let the rest of the world vanish. I think you want that too."
"I do."
Elizabeth shifted in his arms.
"I can't change what happened," he told her. "But I won't give you any reason to doubt me ever again." He didn't know what else to promise, so he trailed off, closing his mouth by kissing her neck softly. "I'm not Daniels."
"I know."
He waited, and it was a long time before she spoke.
"I tell myself that it should not matter, that if it had happened the other way around and someone took advantage of me, you would-"
"I would kill him is what I would do," he said.
"You said you were with her once when you kissed but now you are not an innocent boy lured into her evil powers," she continued, her words soft in the pre-dawn violet-time. "You knew she told people things. You knew she despised me. You knew she toyed with men but you let her stay, even after I objected. You said it was for Georgiana, but she was no closer to Lillian than she is to Mrs. Reynolds. I think you let Lillian stay because she reminded you of Anne. Because she is her half-sister. And I know it makes me sound like a trusting fool but I believe she took advantage of you, but I also cannot help but think you put yourself in a position she could. Because you wanted her to. And passive adultery is a lie of omission. Prettier, but no less wrong."
Darcy nodded slowly and after a few seconds, admitted, "Fair enough."
Like most of Elizabeth's statements, it was cohesive and difficult to dismiss. The facts, as she understood them, fit perfectly. Her words smarted because all she had wrong was the date.
He was sick and tired of Elizabeth being right.
He closed his eyes tightly, his head feeling heavy against the pillow. He felt like there were hailstones pelting him from all sides, leaving him bruised and sore and praying that the end of the storm was in sight so he could heal.
She moved from him a little and turned to her back. "I should not have said that," he heard her say.
"Yes," he responded quietly, "You should have. I told you that's your job. To tell me the truth."
"Still, I…"
"No," he corrected. "Don't be."
He moved forward, kissing, rather than her lips, her bare shoulder. Her skin was cool and smooth under his mouth, and she stayed perfectly still, not even breathing.
*~~*~~*
If one looked up his name in the Book of Obedient, it had a star beside it and a notation "see also: dutiful husband." He knew how to mind his manners. He'd just never done it with Elizabeth. She was strong, self-reliant, and he'd been distracted with the estate, his aunt's illness, Georgiana. Elizabeth didn't require the constant, gentle attentiveness Anne had. Or he hadn't felt she merited it. Darcy was rather good at noticing a cliff only as he teetered at the edge of it, flailing his arms and desperately trying to grasp the wind.
Although Elizabeth still had little an appetite, they ate dinner in dining room, and made painfully, stilted conversations about nothing of great importance.
He tried to be a good and dutiful husband. He bought Elizabeth a basket of French soaps and bath oils. A necklace. And another necklace. And anything else he saw in a store window he thought she'd like. The Derby jewellers licked their lips when he entered their shops.
He was rubbing her feet at evenings and asking about her day. He listened as she answered. The nights she asked if he was coming to bed, he did. The nights she didn't, he slept in the other room.
They kissed, touched, murmured, made love until her orgasm came, and he pulled out just before his. It was nice. Less than passion, more than obligation.
Olivia showed them her first tooth. Jane learned a several more words. Georgiana finally found the courage and asked her brother for allowing her to live with aunt Eleonora. The girl made friends with Elizabeth and she forgave Darcy whatever he thought that was. But the memories and "bad spirits" at Pemberley were too much for this young girl's heart. This was one of the hardest and painful decisions to make but he agreed, eventually. The Hillcrest was only one hour from Pemberley and Georgiana still would visit them often.
Winter was passing and the hurt Lillian left behind was slower to remit. He just didn't know the worst was only lurking in the corner.
He went to Derby in business and visited his favourite jubilee when he saw her. An unsteady figure approached not far swaying drunkenly as she made her way through the crates. She stopped, not wanting to step into the light.
"I thought you went north," he said, stepping into the alley. "Did your man get tired of you already?"
Lillian stared at him, glassy-eyed. She was gaunt, hollow-eyed, and her filthy dress was unbuttoned so low that most of her breasts showed. There was still frost and even snow in April, but she was barefooted and her long blond hair hung in dirty clumps.
"You looking for a lady-friend?" Lillian asked, slurring her words. Her face twitched and resumed its drunken stare.
"You looking for a lady-friend?" The woman repeated numbly.
"Where are you living?" He heard his voice say.
"Something wrong with right here?"
"I'll pay," he responded, knowing the magic words.
She shrugged and turned, drunkenly leading the way into the dirty shadows. She weaved a path across the slimy cobblestones, then turned left and navigated a series of narrow passages. He followed her up steps, under a low archway, and then through a wooden door and into a run-down brick building.
"My room's this way," she mumbled as she pushed open another door and walked down a dim hall, keeping one hand on the peeling wall to steady herself.
Darcy swallowed and followed, glancing around. Whatever the building had once been, it had been divided into dozens of ten by ten rooms, many without windows, and which could only be reached by crossing through someone else's room. The hallway reeked of alcohol and sweat and he heard snores through the walls.
She entered a door without knocking and he followed, crossing through a flat containing an unconscious old man, then another occupied by a large family with diapers hung to dry on lines strung across the room. The mother sat beside a stove, nursing the latest baby and staring at the fire. She didn't seem to notice them.
Lillian's room seemed tinier and darker than the previous ones. There was a soiled mattress on the floor, a table with a dishpan, few dirty dishes, and a rickety wooden chair. A curtain hung from the low ceiling, cordoning off one corner.
She turned toward him, starting on the rest of the buttons of her dress. "You want this off or up?"
"Neither. Lillian, do you know who I am?"
She nodded, still struggling to unbutton the front of her bodice.
"You're Fitzwilliam. You want this off?"
"No, I want to know what you've done with Francis. Where is he?"
"You want him, don't you?"
"I want you to tell me where he is."
"You want me. You love me," she said, having trouble articulating her words. "Not now, but you did."
"No, I don't love you. I've never loved you. And if I ever said I wanted you, I was confused."
"You do, you did," she insisted. "You wrote it to me."
"I wrote what to you?"
She fumbled her pocket, then produced fragments of a note so worn it looked like cloth instead of paper. She put them on the
table, rearranging them like puzzle pieces. He recognised the messy script.
"I know what it says. I remember. I wrote that to Elizabeth when we were first married, not to you. Where did you get that?"
"It was in your coat pocket. You gave your coat to me. You wanted me to find it."
"When did I give you my coat?" he demanded, feeling violated all over again. Nothing between he and Elizabeth was any of this nasty, scheming woman's business - especially not love letters. He wanted to make sure Francis was safe, then wipe the memory of Lillian out of his mind and off his body. "I never wanted you to find anything. That was none of your business."
Lillian looked up her face twitching again. The spasm spread down her shoulder and arm and took several seconds before it subsided.
"French disease," he realised nauseously. The confusion, the spasms, clumsy movements, slurred speech… "Good God. You aren't drunk. You have syphilis. You've had it, you've had it for a long time." Lillian looked away. "And you knew."
"Don't tell Georgie," she mumbled.
He heard movement behind the curtain and little fingers pulled back the edge as brown eyes peeked out, recognising his voice. Without a word, he pushed the curtain aside, picked up Francis and started to walk out. As he reached the doorway, he turned back, snatched the faded scraps of his note to Elizabeth off of the table and shoved them in his pocket. Lillian didn't stop him.
"I will send someone for you later; they will put you to the hospital." He said and left.
*~~*~~*
He entered home by back door but was soon noticed by Mrs. Reynolds. She looked at the child he carried. She surveyed his face, then the boy. Rapid footsteps pattered down the hall, accompanied by gleeful shrieks as Jane escaped her mother's efforts to get her dressed and ran half naked to Mrs. Reynold's arms. Elizabeth followed, laughing and calling playfully for her daughter to come back, then stopped short when she saw her husband holding Francis. Her mouth hung open, and she slowly lowered the clean dress she must have been planning to put on Jane.
Mr Darcy's Second Chance Page 22
