Elizabeth and Darcy- Ardently Yours
Page 19
It was during one such afternoon stroll in the early days of autumn that Elizabeth’s spirits rose to playfulness, and she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for having ever fallen in love with her.
“How did you begin?” she asked. “I can comprehend your going on charmingly, once you had made a beginning; but what could have set you off in the first place?”
“An excellent question,” he replied.
There were some benefits to an extended courtship, Elizabeth was forced to concede, the greatest of these being the perfect and effortless amiability with which they now conversed. She, of course, persisted in her habit of teasing at every opportunity, and Mr. Darcy had not only mastered the ability to be laughed at with good grace but was developing a considerable talent for parrying her wit with his own.
“To be sure,” he continued, “your impertinence at Rosings I found most enchanting, and before that I admired your kind attention to your sister at Netherfield—but I must admit to being utterly bewitched by your beauty from the moment of our introduction at Meryton.”
Glancing about to ensure they were not observed, Elizabeth repaid this pretty speech with a quick kiss on the cheek. Having received his reward, Mr. Darcy continued slyly, “Of course, I knew no actual good of you then, but what man thinks of that when he falls in love?”
Elizabeth gasped in surprise and threw him a look of mock reproach. She would have withdrawn her arm from his to punish him, had his grip not tightened in anticipation of just such a retreat. He covered her hand with his own and began to stroke her wrist, exploring the slim band of exposed skin between the edge of her spencer sleeve and the top of her glove.
“To be truthful, Elizabeth, I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. Could you tell me how long you have loved me?”
Elizabeth considered the matter as she reveled in the profound sensations incited by his caress. Their conversation may have become comfortable; their habits, familiar—but as flint may spark a thousand fires and each blaze as brightly as the last, the slightest brush of his skin on hers never failed to rekindle all the burning intensity of their first touch.
With such a pleasant distraction consuming her notice, it seemed no more possible to recall the beginning of her love than to imagine a time before fire. Certainly, she had not always loved him so well as she did now, and indeed her love continued to deepen and grow with each passing day. But if she must attempt, as he said, to fix on the hour, or the look, or the words which laid the foundations of her affection, she must choose that moment more than a year past when she stood before his handsome portrait, listened to the unstinting praise of his housekeeper, and first learned all that was true and essential to his character.
“Perhaps I should be coy like you, Fitzwilliam, and tell you it came on so gradually I hardly know when it began,” she teased. “But if I am perfectly honest, I must date it from my first seeing your beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”
About the Author
Evangeline Wright first fell in love with Pride and Prejudice as a teenager, and she never looked back. In her senior yearbook, she listed Elizabeth Bennet as her most admired person, and Fitzwilliam Darcy has owned her heart for the mumblety-some years since. She lives in California with her family, some cats, an awful lot of books, and a Jane Austen action figure.