She looked, for all the world, like a woman in love—and, more astonishing still, she was.
The pins came out one by one, each small surrender loosening the knots she had carried for so long, and her hair tumbled down her back in waves that caught the candlelight and held it, dark and heavy and entirely unbound. She ran her fingers through the length of it, feeling the silk of it slide across her palms, remembering the way Darcy’s eyes had followed such movements when he thought she was not watching—the hunger he could not disguise, had never disguised. Those eyes had followed her from Meryton to Netherfield, and she had told herself it was disapproval and disdain when they had only meant danger… and desire.
From her wardrobe, she retrieved what lay waiting in the bottom drawer—a parcel that had arrived weeks ago, discreetly tucked away by Clarice without comment or question. Elizabeth had ordered it from the modiste in a moment of weakness she had refused to examine, telling herself it was merely vanity, merely a new bride’s wish for something pretty. But her fingers had known the truth even as they selected the fabric, the cut, and the gossamer fineness that would conceal nothing and reveal everything.
She lifted the nightgown from its tissue wrappings—white lawn, fine as spider silk, translucent as morning mist. The kind of garment a woman wore when she wished to be seen, and even more, to be seen through.
Her chemise fell away, pooling at her feet like a discarded skin, and for a long moment Elizabeth stood before the mirror entirely bare, feeling the cool night air move across her skinlike a lover’s breath. She had never looked at herself this way before—never allowed herself to see the curve of her own hip, the soft swell of her breasts, the way her body seemed to glow in the candlelight like something carved from ivory and rose. She wondered how he would see her, whether he would find her beautiful, whether the wanting she had glimpsed in his eyes would survive the reality of her imperfect flesh.
But even as the doubt flickered, something deeper rose to meet it—a certainty that had nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with choice. She was not offering him perfection. She was offering him herself, with all her sharp edges and stubborn pride and the heart she had guarded so fiercely for so long.
The nightgown whispered over her head and settled against her skin like water, like firelight, like the touch she had been craving without knowing she craved it. The fabric was so fine she could feel everything through it—the warmth of her body, the slight roughness of her palms as she smoothed it over her hips, the cool air that found its way through the weave and raised gooseflesh along her arms. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a stranger—a woman dressed in moonlight and desire, her dark hair spilling over shoulders barely veiled, her body a shadow and a promise beneath the translucent white.
This was who she would be when she walked through that door. This was the woman she chose to become.
Her bare feet found the carpet, and she crossed to the connecting door with her heart pounding and her palms tingling and her whole body thrumming with the particular electricity of a threshold about to be crossed. The handle was cool beneath her fingers, and she stood there for the space of six slow breaths—in, out, in, out, in, out—feeling the solid wood beneath her palm and the warm air currenting through the crack at thebottom where golden light spilled from his chamber and pooled around her bare toes like a silent invitation.
She heard him on the other side—the creak of a chair, the gentle thud of a book laid aside, and then that particular hush which signals a person listening, waiting, hoping, though not quite permitting himself the luxury of hope.
All that she had been—the girl who spurned Mr. Collins, the woman who sought refuge in London, the uncertain bride who entered Pemberley with secrets and trembling—had led her to this threshold.
She did not knock. She simply turned the handle and stepped through.
The firelight caught him in profile, one arm braced against the mantel, his figure limned in amber and shadow. Elizabeth’s held breath fled her body at the sight of him—coat and waistcoat discarded, cravat gone entirely, shirt open at the throat and untucked from his breeches, his dark hair delightfully disordered as though he had been running his hands through it in frustration or longing or both. Every careful construction of the proper Mr. Darcy had been stripped away, and what remained was simply a man—beautiful and virile and entirely unguarded.
He had not heard the door open. Or perhaps he had heard it and was still gathering himself to turn, to face whatever waited on the other side, to discover whether hope or disappointment awaited him in the soft click of that latch.
Then he turned, and his eyes found hers, and Elizabeth watched everything she had ever seen in his face—the pride, the reserve, the careful mastery of expression that had once made her think him cold—shatter like ice beneath spring sunlight.
His gaze traveled over her with the slow deliberation of a man memorizing a miracle. The loose hair tumbling past her shoulders. The bare feet pale against the dark carpet.The white nightgown that must have been nearly transparent with the firelight behind her, rendering her body a shadow and a suggestion beneath gossamer that concealed nothing and promised everything. She felt his eyes on her skin as surely as she would have felt his hands—a heat that moved from her face to her throat to the swell of her breasts to the curve of her waist, igniting something deep in her belly that coiled and tightened with every breath.
His lips parted on a sound that was almost her name, a groan of longing too long suppressed. His hand fell from the mantel, reaching toward her instinctively before he caught himself and let it drop to his side where it clenched and unclenched as though he did not know what to do with the wanting that was written in every rigid line of his body.
“Elizabeth.” Her name emerged rough and broken, more breath than sound, and she felt it move through her like a physical caress, warming places that had been cold for so long she had forgotten they existed.
She crossed the room toward him, her bare feet silent on the carpet, acutely aware of the way the firelight played through her gown with every step, rendering her more visible with each stride, offering him more of herself as the distance between them diminished. His eyes never left her—fixed on her with an intensity that should have frightened her but instead made her bold, made her brave, made her understand at last that she held a power she had never known she possessed.
When she stopped before him—close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough to breathe the sandalwood that clung to his skin, close enough to see the slight tremor in the hands that rose toward her and hovered in the air between them as though he did not dare to close the final distance—she understood at last why he had never pressed, never presumed, never claimed what the law said was already his.
He was waiting for her to choose him. He had always been waiting, and now she had come.
“This is my answer,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the crackle of the fire. “To every question you have asked and all the ones you have been too careful to speak.”
His hand found her hair—finally, finally—threading through the loose waves with infinite gentleness, his fingers trembling against her scalp as though he could not quite believe she was permitting him to touch her. He drew her closer, his other hand settling at her waist where the heat of his palm burned through the thin fabric and set her skin alight, and his eyes never left hers, those dark expressive eyes that held so much—wonder and desire and a love so vast it seemed impossible that one man could contain it.
She raised her hands to the open collar of his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips, the rapid flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat. He drew a sharp breath as she found the first button and worked it free, his eyes darkening, his jaw tightening with the effort of restraint. The second button yielded, and then the third, and with each one she revealed more of him—the planes of his chest, warm skin over lean muscle, the dark hair that narrowed toward his stomach, and the pounding of his heart that she could feel now beneath her palm.
He made a sound low in his throat—not quite a word, not quite a groan—when her fingers brushed bare flesh, and his hand tightened in her hair, tilting her face up toward his. She saw the question in his eyes, the last vestige of restraint, the need to know that this was truly what she wanted before he let go of the control that had held him in check for so long.
“Yes,” she breathed, rising onto her toes, pressing her lips to the warm skin of his chest just above his thundering heart. “I am yours. Always.”
The sound he made then was nothing like restraint. His arms came around her, pulling her against him so tightly she could feel every line of his body through the gossamer of her nightgown—the hard planes of his chest, the lean strength of his arms, and the unmistakable evidence of his passion pressed against her belly. His mouth found her hair, her temple, the curve of her ear, trailing fire wherever it touched, and she gasped against his skin as sensation cascaded through her in waves she had never imagined, never dreamed, never known her body capable of feeling.
His hands moved down her back, spanning her waist, sliding over the curve of her hips with a possessiveness that should have alarmed her and instead made her melt against him, wanting more, needing more, pressing closer as though she could dissolve into him entirely. The thin fabric of her nightgown was nothing between them now—she could feel the heat of his skin as though they were already bare, could feel every tremor that ran through him as his careful control finally, irrevocably shattered.
He kissed her with the desperate hunger of a starving man who had finally been offered sustenance. His mouth claimed hers with a ferocity that stole her breath and replaced it with fire, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she opened for him, tasting him, drowning in him, her fingers clutching at his shoulders as her knees threatened to give way beneath the onslaught of sensation.
They were moving—she did not know when they had started, only that they were moving—his hands in her hair and at her waist and everywhere at once, guiding her backward until her shoulders met the heavy curtains of his bed and she understood, dimly, through the haze of desire, where this was leading, what she had always wanted and needed since the first moment she had looked into his eyes and seen her future reflected there.
