Just enough, he caught himself thinking. Just enough to feel a bite of pain as she kissed the tender bruise along his jaw, followed by the slightest caress of her soft slips. As if she could hear his thoughts, she put her arms around his shoulders, bringing him closer still. She didn’t kiss him but just held him close, her temple resting against the stubble of his cheek. Just enough, he thought as he felt her nails through her soft gloves scratch lightly, deliciously lightly, down the back of his head, to the nape of his neck.
Just enough, as he felt her lips, then the light scrape of that sharp tongue on his neck. He buried his head in her hair; she was so warm and soft. He kissed her once, just barely, his lips brushing over her, right below her ear. She felt her tremble in his arms and he lost control and nipped at her neck. The tiniest little bite. Like whispers, quiet and invisible.
The heat from her body and the lavender in her hair and the sting of her kiss; It was just enough.
She reached her hand down his chest, further down, to the falls of his trousers.
He put his hand over hers, but didn’t move it. “Lizzy, we can’t.”
“Does it matter?” she asked. She had him trapped. “You keep secrets for friends, don’t you? And we are friends, are we not, Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
She smiled at him then, that arch little smile. What was good for Darcy, was good enough for his wife, was it not?
Then, as if a bubble burst, she snatched her hand away. All at once her face fell, as if she had awoken from a dream. As if she had been reading lines that belonged on someone else’s tongue.
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” she said, and hurried past him to the staircase.
He knew she was saying, “I’m sorry, Colonel,” but all the Colonel could hear coming from her lips, her pert little tongue hitting the back of her teeth was, “I am your Waterloo.”
Chapter 8
THE FIRST RULE OF ENGAGING in an awkward dalliance is that one never talks about engaging in an awkward dalliance. Not over breakfast, not at stops in coaching inns, and certainly not in cramped carriages.
So, Lizzy didn’t talk about it. And thank goodness because simply thinking about it made the blood rush to her cheeks. She had startled herself when she felt him groan under her hand last night. She didn’t feel guilty or wrong, she felt powerful, positively giddy with it. The feeling overwhelmed her, and she had pulled away, unsure of what would happen if she opened that door any further.
When finally, the narrow road to Pemberley appeared, Lizzy was relieved. The day had been long with the two generally avoiding each other, a difficult feat in a small carriage. The Colonel hired a horse at one of the coaching inns they stopped at and rode most of the afternoon. Lizzy didn’t object.
A good portion of the staff was waiting for them as they arrived around sunset. A groom took the Colonel’s horse and he himself opened the door to Lizzy’s carriage.
“At long last,” she said, looking past him to Pemberley. She felt tired but the house brought her to good spirits. Deep down she thought of Pemberley as hers even if no one else would acknowledge it.
“It’s gotten colder, hasn’t it?” she asked.
The Colonel looked up into the sky, a habit she had noticed several times now. “I’ll admit I still think it might snow. There’s something in the air, and I can feel it right here,” he said poking his own shoulder, the injury that she caressed the other night.
“It’s fine,” she said leading him into the house. “We’ll have a little light snow for the holiday. It’s exactly as I planned. It will all be very Pemberley.”
The Colonel didn’t look convinced.
“Darcy and Georgiana will arrive soon, and the rest of our party will join us shortly, then it may snow. Everything will go on exactly as it should.” She realized she was over annunciating the words, as if to assure him that everything will go on as it had before, meaning no kissing and groping in hallways. That was unfair though, to both herself and him. For that’s not what it was. Not all it was anyway. She pushed the feeling down and bit her tongue before she said more. Before she lost more.
The next morning, Lizzy found the Colonel pacing in the hall outside her rooms. He looked grim and had clearly been waiting for her. Despite being early morning, the draperies were pulled shut, and the hall was dark.
“Colonel, what is it? Has something happened?”
“You don’t know?” He asked. He looked worried. She noticed a nearby footmen had averted their eyes from them, looking equally ill at ease. She remembered the pensive look on her maid as she dressed Lizzy just a few minutes ago, how the usually loquacious girl wouldn’t engage in any of Lizzy’s small talk.
“Colonel, you’re scaring me. What is it?”
He took her elbow and guided her towards a window at the end of the hall. It faced the side of the house and normally had a view of the lake, but the draperies were pulled shut.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and he lifted back the curtain.
The world was white. blindingly white with snow. One couldn’t see where the land ended and the lake began.
She did the only thing she could do; she laughed. An unpleasant, desperate kind of laugh that left her gasping.
“Of course,” she said. “Of course, it would snow. Has he sent word that he’s not coming?”
“He can’t.” The Colonel gestured to the window. “Even if a messenger was sent, he’s likely stuck in an inn somewhere.”
“But he said he’d be here.” Lizzy knew how foolish the words sounded as they left her lips, but she couldn’t help it. Darcy knew how much this meant to her. If nothing else, even if the entire world fell apart, she would have at least had him here. She could have showed him all of her lovely plans and they could have laughed. In some ways, she would have preferred that. Just the two of them with her showing off her grand design for Pemberley.
But the bigger question was, where was he now? Just how would he be spending the next few days? And with who? She stuffed the thoughts down. She felt like she might burst if she thought on them too long.
She must have looked peaked, because the Colonel ran his hands down her arms. “Steady,” he whispered. A sad endearment if that’s what he was trying for. He probably said this to his men during battle. Was this also a battlefield—this fight for Pemberley, these society teas and long drawn out dinners? How humiliating for him to see her thus. She looked into his face and realized he saw it all. He knew where her husband was and he pitied her. Poor Lizzy with her silly plans for her household, for her husband, for her future. It would always be this way. She would always be in the shadows. And those children she wanted so desperately, as if they would be proof that she was worthy of the husband and the house, they, too, would be forced to walk in this shadow no matter how beautiful or elegant. She’d never master the game the ladies played. The children would be taken from her, too, just as Georgiana was given to Lady Catherine for her debut. They’d always be outside that ballroom, playacting as though they belonged.
“The snow won’t last,” he assured her. “They’ll only be delayed a day or two.”
“But it’s just enough,” she said. It was just enough to delay the partiers. Just enough to ruin the party. Just enough to ruin a marriage.
“He knew this was important to me,” she whispered. “Even if no one else could make it, he should have been here. With me.”
“You’re right,” the Colonel said. She looked at him, dumbly waiting for something else. “That’s all I can say,” he said putting his arms out, offering her nothing. “You’re right. He should be here. Georgiana should be here. They should have left with us like you had asked them.”
“Very well,” she said, but she realized that she didn’t sound like things were very well at all. “I planned a long list of festivities and they will go on.”
“You can’t be serious. You could just cancel. No one would mind.”
“They will go on,” she said. She was almost shouting it at the Colonel. “I s
till have a lot of preparation.” She turned to head down the stairs to the kitchens, but stopped at the top of the steps. She whipped her head around and added, “You. Will. Be. There. You’re not to leave this house, Colonel. Not until the holiday is over.”
He smiled and chucked at that. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch him gently on the arm. But she knew she shouldn’t. Not after the other night. Instead she smiled and tried to get another chuckle out of him by adding, “I mean it, Colonel. Don’t make me give you another bruise.”
Instead of laughing, he rose an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t want to stoke the Mistress of Pemberley’s wrath.”
She could feel her cheeks warm and unable to say what she truly wanted to, she bit her lip instead. “About the other night, Colonel, I nev—”
He didn’t let her finish, interrupting with a mumbled, “Good day, Lizzy,” then walked past her down the stairs.
Chapter 9
LIZZY SPENT THE AFTERNOON busying herself with plans for whatever future may await her: party, no party, husband, no husband. After a day of directing the cook and instructing the housekeeper on multiple variations of her arrangements, she retired to what she thought of as hers. The house may be full of priceless heirlooms from all the former mistresses of Pemberley, but this one tiny corner was hers alone. She took a glass of wine with her, and walked through the portrait gallery, to where she had placed a small tea table and a chair under her favorite portrait: her own.
No one seemed to notice that she had made a little nest here and she liked to sit here reading or looking out one of the gallery’s windows. On her way, she snuck into her husband’s office and took his decanter of brandy. Because one never knew, did one? Anything was possible in a world where an obstinate headstrong girl of little consequence found herself mistress of Pemberley. That was her tale, wasn’t it?
She heard his footsteps before she saw him in the darkened gallery.
“Oh, you found my spot,” she said to the Colonel.
“In this massive house you only have one corner?”
“I figured I might as well enjoy the snow,” she lied, pointing to the large windows, but it was impossible to see the snow in the dark. The landscape just twinkled in the moonlight, glossy and slick. Anything could be out there.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked, gesturing to the decanter on the tea table. The Colonel looked at her suspiciously. “You might be the only guest, but I still have to play hostess.”
The Colonel moved to the table and poured himself a drink. He turned to the paintings and stopped a few paces away to a large one of Darcy. How much had changed since she first stood before that painting herself, in the same spot the Colonel stood now, when she first saw it while on tour of the lake district with the Gardiners.
“Do you think it’s very much like him?” she asked, pointing to Darcy’s portrait.
“Yes,” the Colonel said. Then uttered, “Dull and lifeless.”
“When I first saw it, I thought it was a very good likeness,” she said, joining him in front of the portrait, Darcy’s dark brown eyes staring down at them both. “Now, it looks sweeter than the real thing. I don’t often see my own husband with this countenance. Yet, when he’s away, this is how I picture him the most.”
“And what do you think of this?” she asked pointing to her own portrait. “Is it very like me?” Lizzy stood underneath it, trying to copy her pose exact. They stood at a slight angle, with their arms clasped in front of them, the real Lizzy holding a half-drunk glass of wine. The Colonel looked at the painting, then at her, and back again. It was done a year after her marriage. The artist had captured her arch little smile and he himself couldn’t help smiling at that. “It’s a fair likeness,” he agreed.
Lizzy sighed, and took another sip of her wine. She turned back to look at herself. “Before we were married, Lady Catherine came to me at Longbourn.”
“I remember,” he said, trying to dissuade her from walking down this dark road.
“She said that our marriage would disgust her. That I would be friendless. That any connection to me or my family would somehow lessen the grand majesty of Pemberley. And she said, ‘Will the shades of Pemberley be thus polluted?’”
The Colonel looked at her. She stood before this portrait as though it was a distorted mirror. In it, she must see the things she wished she was. “That sounds about right for my aunt.”
“I’ve never been so angry as I was that day,” she began. “But now it seems she was right. I was never fit for Pemberley.”
He shrugged. “Well, who could tolerate a fortnight in Pemberley with Georgiana’s incessant playing?”
“Colonel!” Lizzy’s mouth opened in shock, but then a small giggle escaped.
“I have to drink half the port in Pemberley to calm my nerves after her musicales.”
Lizzy was laughing now, a laugh that came deep within like she had done a few days past at the inn.
It occurred to him that women could use a club similar to the one he visited. Not for fighting, although the thought was strangely arousing, but to vent, to detail all the frustrations of their world, to empty themselves out as he had done time and time again on in that bloody pit.
“What do ladies do when they’re angry?” he asked. “When they need to express their frustrations?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I think too long about the war,” he hesitated, unsure of how this would sound to someone who had never experienced it. “Sometimes, I go to a boxing club. No, that’s not true. It’s a bit courser than Gentleman Jackson’s. But you get the idea.”
“Is that where the bruises come from?” she asked. She didn’t look scandalized. Perhaps just a bit confused.
“Yes,” he said. “But it helps get the anger out. I imagine women don’t have something similar, so what do they do?”
Lizzy shrugged. “Embroidery.”
“Embroidery? I imagine those must be very vicious stitches.”
“Indeed,” she said, laughter in her voice. “Or perhaps they just violently brush their hair.”
“Perhaps,” he said. Her lips were stained red from the wine and before he could think it through, he found himself saying, or maybe offering, “Perhaps they take lovers.”
She hesitated then looked up at her painting, at her round face looking down on herself. “I suppose it depends on how angry they are.”
“How angry does one have to be to do such a thing?”
“Very,” she said, her lips arching up into that teasing smile he loved. “Very, very angry. Very, very.”
He couldn’t help himself. He thought of Waterloo and the other night at the inn when she had touched him, kissed him, kindled something in him that he wanted very badly. He took the rest of his brandy, gulped it down in one fell swoop and said, “It’s Caroline Bingley.”
Lizzy could feel her wine glass slipping from her fingers, could hear it thud on the floor, while a splash of wine stained her carpet red as blood.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, but she didn’t need to hear it again. She had heard. She felt as though she had been punched, as if she had gone three rounds at the Colonel’s own club. Of all women, she would never have guessed that Darcy’s lover would be someone so close.
“But he could have had her,” she whispered. She was waiting for tears to come at this revelation, but her eyes were instead wide and wild. “He could have married her. I thought maybe it was some beautiful opera dancer, or –” her innocence betrayed her. She couldn’t think of other types of inappropriate women with whom her husband might have consorted. “Someone that he couldn’t marry. But he could have married Caroline. Why go to all this trouble with me? Why did he even marry me at all?”
The Colonel shook his head. “Who wouldn’t want to marry you?”
“I don’t understand,” but she did. The words she had just spoken from Lady Catherine explained it all, why Darcy would go running into a more gentile woman’s arms. She knew she shou
ld be angry, but it just made her sad. As if her existence, her marriage was somehow in the way of Darcy’s happiness. And Jane—had Jane known all along? Had she helped Darcy and Caroline rendezvous at her own home? She couldn’t help but laugh.
“And you told me now—why?”
“Lizzy, I’m a bit in my cups,” the Colonel said, running his hand over his face. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you? You told me to make me angry. So that I would take a lov—" she stumbled over the word, but kept her eyes on him.
“I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t know what I was playing at. It was most ungentlemanly of me.”
“Yes,” she said, “It was. You’re not always a gentleman through, are you?” She could feel a prickle shoot up her spine as she said the words. “Women may not have fight clubs, but they do talk. Darcy isn’t the only man to have women hidden away.”
The Colonel turned to face her, the shadow of her husband’s portrait looming over him.
“You’re not very discreet, Colonel. Every Mayfair widow—and apparently every angry London wife— seems to have a tale to tell about you.”
The Colonel nervously chuckled. “Is that so?”
“How angry do you need to be?”
“I don’t need to be angry. I don’t need anything.”
“What do you want then, Colonel?” She reached over with her gloved hand and brushed his bruised knuckles. The satin from her gloves gliding smoothly over the scabs left from his fight club.
“I’m not suited for such games, Lizzy,” the Colonel said, a desperate edge to his tone. “Tell me this is what you want.”
Her senses felt overwhelmed again as they had before at the inn. She wasn’t sure what to do or what to say to such a man. But she couldn’t deny that she wanted this. She couldn’t deny herself.
“Yes, I want this” she whispered, but she couldn’t look him in the eyes. She lowered her chin as she spoke the word.
Most Ardently Page 22
