“Noooo.” Elizabeth pushed away from him, and still grinning widely, sat on the opposite side of their plump stuffed sofa.
Darcy waggled his eyebrows. “In our happiness and connection I put muchstock.Mark it.”
“Fie! Fie! That reminds me. You are not an adherent, I hope, to St. Augustine’s philosophy?”
“I do not believe so. I read something of him… the Confessions, I—”
Elizabeth interrupted him giggling. “He wrote a book titledThe Excellence of Marriage. In a marriage minded mindset I picked it from the bookstore shelf and brought it home — I had not yet given up my study of ancient wisdom.”
“You do not intend to follow St. Augustine’s adviceeither?”
“Abstinence,” Elizabeth said, her voice taking on a lilt, “from all sexual union is better even than marital intercourse performed for the sake of procreating. However, marital intercoursesolelyto satisfy lust is a venial sin, but pardonable. And it has value as a fence against temptation to fornication—”
“The marriage service says that as well,” Darcy added, as Elizabeth took a breath. “You simply enjoy being able to say ‘sexual union,’ without being more than markedly crude as you quote an ancient saint.”
Elizabeth giggled. “As an unmarried old maid,Ilived in the most superior manner. You should be shamed, Mr. Darcy, tempting a celibate such as myself into the lustfulness I feel towards you.”
“I should?” Darcy replied dazedly. He smiled seductively. “I told you I am dangerous, rakish and naughty. Itwasshameful to seduce you wickedly into Holy Matrimony.And, while I look forward to children, marital intercourse solely to satisfy — how did you put it? My lusts. I would convince you into such.”
“Ooooh. Your lusts.” Elizabeth shivered and grinned happily. “This is what female learning does — it brings us to discuss our lust, one for the other.”
The two kissed, passionately. Mrs. Bennetwasa convenient chaperone.
The two separated, pressing their hot bodies against each other, breathing heavily.
“My beloved Elizabeth, you have convinced me to value female learning.”
Alas, before she could kiss him for saying so, theat leasta half hour Mrs. Bennet had promised ended, and with great rattling of the door knob, and muttering to herself outside, and other forms of warning them of her presence, Mrs. Bennet entered the room.
Grinning at each other, Elizabeth and Darcy began to discuss learned topics once more, in the dullest manner they could manage, with the intention of giving Mrs. Bennet an entirely incorrect notion of what the past half hour had involved.
However, Darcy’s cravat had been thoroughly disordered in a manner quite distinctive, and which Elizabeth trusted the eye ofMamato understand the meaning of.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
And in conclusion, Elizabeth wrote,I must beg you to send Mr. Darcy and I every amusing detail of Lady Catherine’s behavior. Though it shames him to admit such a relation, she has been valuable to us, and we hope, by providing amusement, she will continue to be such.
I now sign, my dear Charlotte, my name one last time as,
Yours affectionately,
E Bennet
Elizabeth put her quill down beside her ceramic ink pot and dried off the end on her blotting paper. She closed the little lid to her inkwell. Elizabeth then put the inkwell and quill in a box that sat in the corner of the room, waiting to be packed up to go to Pemberley with her. She’d written so many letters with this small pot over the years that the pot felt almost like a friend.
She loved Darcy. She wanted to see Pemberley, explore the halls, the parks, the rooms and attics, and offend the sensibilities of the ghosts.
Everythingwould be different tomorrow.
Elizabeth sat on the chair nearest the window, surrounded on both sides by tall, familiar bookshelves. Every book on those shelves was a friend.
Papa watched her with an unfocused gaze. He said slowly, “Letters complete?”
Elizabeth returned to the desk. But before she could sit, Papa stood and gave her an embrace, and she embraced Papa tightly as well.
They smiled together, and Elizabeth tried to memorize the feeling of her father’s dressing coat, and the smell of his sideburns, and the flickering candlelight, and the happiness she had known with him in this room.
“I shall miss you. Terribly.”
