It seemed that, unfortunately, Mrs. Gardiner’s prediction was correct.
She just wanted to be alone.
Everything was so unsettled, so strange, almost eerie. How could she decide what she thought about their conjugal relations whilehewas here?
She wanted to clean herself, use the chamber pot, and just sit in bed staring at a candle till oblivion took her.
Darcy’s hair had a pleasant scent.
His smell did funny things to her chest and stomach. Things that felt good.
That flush of anger slowly left her.
The candle on her dresser still flickered and let her dimly see his hair spread out over her chest.
He’d gone very slowly when he first entered her — it was clear from his tension, his breathing, and the way he desperately kissed her throat, as though there was nothing more important in the world than tasting her, that he could barely control himself to offer that gentleness.
Elizabeth rather thought the slowness with which he broke her maidenhead made the pain worse, not better.
And after that, he had been desperate, fast, needy, moaning and inarticulately whimpering her name, “Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy” over again.
The rest of the time she was Elizabeth to him, or sometimes Mrs. Darcy.
But he had not been a beast.
Any reality tothatuniversal fear of young maidens was nowhere in the experience.
He had taken her, and he had never hesitated to do so. But he had also been… sweet.
Darcy’s breathing changed, and the weight from his head became heavier. A low nasal snore began, a little like what Papa sounded like when he fell asleep in his armchair while waiting for them to return from a ball, but quieter.
He was asleep.
Elizabeth stared up at the ceiling she could not see in the low light as anything but a black presence.
She wanted to move, but she was scared to do so.
While undressing and having her hair done by Mary, Elizabeth had noticed nothing about the decor of the room that was now living quarters when the Darcy family was resident in London. Not even what the color was. Did the wall coverings have prints on them? Was there a portrait? Was there anything?
Elizabeth had simply not taken notice due to her nerves.
It almost seemed rather silly.
The nuptial bed had changed her. She was now a wife, a woman, no longer a girl, a maiden.
But… the fear and anxiety she had felt was out of place.
Nothing worthy of terror had happened here.
She shifted around, trying to find a more comfortable spot without waking Mr. Darcy. He groaned, rolled onto his side, and embraced her tightly against his chest, murmuring inarticulately in his sleep.
Elizabeth laid her head against his bare chest and sighed.
This was comfortable. Darcy’s low steady heartbeat lulled her.
She was sleepy enough to stop caring so much about how she was sticky and needed to pee. Too sleepy to want to get up.
Her mind wandered to the way his face and lips looked as they had stared at each other in the Netherfield library. His beautiful eyes. The dozens of flickering candles lighting them up.
