“Yes, I can feel it,” she said. Her voice had a breathy quality that hinted that she might not be referring to her stance.
John tried to ignore it. She had asked for his help, and he was determined to give her as much advice as he could.
He went around behind her and moved her shoulders into the correct position. “Now, pretend like you are holding a bow, but keep your shoulders just like this as you pretend to draw the arrow.”
Her response was delayed, but she did as he asked. As she moved her arms, however, her shoulders moved out of position, so he gently nudged them back into place.
“I see,” she said enigmatically.
John went back around to her front. “Try it again,” he said.
Once again, she moved as if she was drawing a bow, and once again, her shoulders moved out of position. He placed his hands on her shoulders to nudge them back into place, but when he did, she dropped her hands.
John looked into her face to see if anything was wrong, and what he found shocked him. Her eyes were wide, and her pupils were dilated. She was breathing faster than she should be,and her lips were slightly parted. A light blush brightened her cheeks.
He had never seen a more perfect instance of what a woman looked like when she desperately wanted to be kissed.
What little resistance he had put up against his growing attraction to this amazing woman crashed around him. With his hands still on her shoulders, he pulled her towards him. He lowered his mouth to her lips and gave her what was meant to be a single kiss.
Her response was immediate and far more passionate than he would have ever believed possible.
What followed was a frenzy of exploration. He kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, and her neck, always moving back to her lips in between. She was a fast learner, and she soon was peppering his face and chin with her little untutored kisses. He could tell, she wished to get at his neck as well, but it was covered with his cravat.
For a brief, wild moment, he reached up to remove his cravat to give her better access, but he stopped himself. That was a one-way ticket to ruination, at least for her.
He paused, and in that moment, Miss Bennet seemed to come to her senses. She stepped back from him and out of his arms. Her eyes were still wide, but this time with alarm.
“What have I done?” she asked in a hoarse voice that was halfway between a whisper and a scream. “What have I done?”
“Miss Bennet,” he said, though he had no idea what words could possibly follow. An apology, an explanation, an excuse, a compliment? There was nothing he could say that would soothe her when she clearly believed that what had happened had been her fault.
It was not her fault. Not in any way.
John was thirty-two years old. He knew much more than this sheltered young lady possibly could, even if she was incredibly well-educated. He should never have asked her to meet him alone. He should have continued to admire her from a distance.
“It isn’t your fault,” he said. “It was mine.”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to kiss you. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I shouldn’t even be here. I knew it was all wrong and that it would all end in heartbreak. I knew it, and I did it anyway.”
Her hands were balled into fists and shoved into the pockets of her pelisse. The two of them simply stared at each other. Despite her distress, all John truly wanted was to pull Miss Bennet back into his arms. He just barely managed to restrain himself.
She studied his face, and for a brief moment, he thought she might step back toward him. He saw her foot lift as if she would. Instead, she used it to twirl herself away from him. “I must go,” she said as she turned.
She walked over to where her bow was leaning against a tree and picked it up. Then she walked away. “Goodbye,” she called without turning around. The word had such heartbreaking finality, that John felt as though she had hammered the notice of it into his chest.
He could barely breathe as he watched Miss Bennet walk away from him, likely for the last time.
When she was finally out of sight, he began to turn to take himself back to Netherfield. A bit of white caught his eye near where Miss Bennet’s bow had once been. He picked it up and discovered that it was a letter.
Not truly thinking about what he was doing, he opened it. The date at the top was today.
April 11, 1815
Dear Mr. Porter,
I have tried all I know to excise you from my heart, but all has failed. The more we talk, the more we walk together alone in the peaceful woods, the more my heart yearns for your presence in my life always. If ever there was a man I could accept as husband, it would be you. If ever there was a man I could look up to, respect, and even obey, it would be you.
I know it is impossible. I am not the kind of lady any man would wish to marry, and your presence here in this neighborhood is temporary. There have been moments when I thought you might find me the tiniest bit attractive, but I am certain they must have been created by my fevered imagination and empty heart. Such a thing is impossible. All my life has taught me this lesson, and it is ingrained far deeper than my understanding of either French or Italian or even music and the piano.
