I gulped a long pull of air—it might be the last I would get for a while—and clasped my hands over hers. And I closed my eyes, trying to pretend I was simply in my own darkened bedroom. With her delicious fingers crawling up my shoulders to my throat, and her sweet hair tickling my nose, and…
Hang that idea.
I’d pretend I was dead. That was probably safer.
“William, what is the matter with you?”
I opened my eyes and realized that I’d been swaying dizzily. Elizabeth grabbed me by the lapels and pushed me upright. “You’re going to fall against that slat and give us away!”
My face was clammy, and I shook my head to help me see better. It didn’t help. “I don’t… this is not such a good idea. We should find someplace better.”
“There isn’t anyplace better! You’re making too much noise, and will you stop gulping like that?”
I swiped the perspiration off my upper lip. “It is simply that I am not good in close spaces. A rather terrifying experience when I was a youth, and I…”
“Oh, good grief. You dragged us in here, and you’re claustrophobic?”
My heart was hammering, and I could scarcely draw enough breath to answer her. I just nodded in the darkness.
I heard Elizabeth sigh, but it was not an impatient sound. “Come here,” she whispered.
“I can’t get much closer. You’re standing on my toes already.”
“No.Here.” She cupped my chin, and an instant later, I didn’t care if I could breathe. It didn’t matter if I suffocated. I would die happy because Elizabeth was brushing her soft mouth against mine. Her hands were curiously rough, but they were all I wanted as she held my face between them, pulled me down, and consumed me. She was generous, too—not just one little butterfly of her lips caressing mine. I felt like a flagon of wine, opened and poured forth and drunk with abandon.
I should be jealous that she was so good at this. She nibbled my lower lip, sucking it between her teeth and then smiling, wide-mouthed against my chin. She was a perfect minx, and I wanted more. I groaned softly, but no longer in fear of confinement. My mind filled with all the things I would do to her if she were mine, and we were at Pemberley as man and wife.
She belonged at Pemberley.
“Elizabeth,” I breathed. “Would you—”
“Shut up, you noisy man.” She cupped her hands behind my head and kissed me harder. Well… I suppose my question could wait.
My skin was racing with an all-new sort of panicked thrill. This was glory, this was what I was born for. It was like all my life had been building to this one point—five minutes alone with Elizabeth Bennet in a wooden packing crate. Hiding from our own ruin.
“Better now?” she murmured against my ear.
“Ungh…” That was the most intelligent thing I could say. So much for a Cambridge education.
Elizabeth laughed and kissed the divot in the center of my chin. Then her hands slid back to my chest when a key rattled in the lock. We heard the door open, and footsteps followed. My heart dropped with each step. One person. No, two. But that was all. I forced my breathing to dip a little more because it was echoing like thunderclaps in that hollow crate. Heaven only knew how loud we were from the outside.
“Is this the one?” we heard someone ask.
“Yes, that one.”
“Do we pry off the top now?”
“No,” the second man replied. “His Highness wishes to observe the unpacking. We will carry it as it is.”
“Jolly good. You take that side.”
I clasped Elizabeth’s hands more tightly. They would pick up the bloody crate and carry it off, and then we could leave safely. I started counting the beats of her pulse through her fingertips. It could not be more than ten or twenty seconds more.
“Hold there!” a third voice called.
There was a heavy sound as the two workers put the crate down.
“Leave it. His Highness is impatient and does not wish to wait until it is carried upstairs. He will see it here.”
