Page 52 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“From the consequences,” he said. “When we return, there will be talk and judgement. People will make assumptions about what happened here. Those consequences will fall heavily upon you, and the disproportion is unjust. I intend to prepare for it.”

“By planning settlements on a beach.”

“By having a plan in place before the plan is needed.”

She moved across the sand to sit beside him against the rocks. She pressed her shoulder against his.

“I love that you are planning,” she said. “Your immediate response to being stranded on a deserted island is to prepare a legal plan for a society we may never re-enter. It is quite in character, and I love it, but I need you to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because England is not here. Planning for tomorrow takes you out of today. Today is the only day we possess, and I do not wish to share it with your solicitor, however competent he may be.”

“Kensington is very competent.”

“I have no doubt of it. But Mr Kensington can wait, and England can wait. The only thing that cannot wait is this warm afternoon. I would like to swim, and I would like to lie in the sun. Then I would like to spend the evening with a man who is present, rather than trapped in his own head planning my legal protection. Can you do that?”

He looked out at the water. The sea was blue, flat, and warm. It contained no plan whatsoever, which was entirely her point.

“I can try,” he said.

“Trying is not the same as doing.”

“Trying is the best I can offer. The planning is not a choice; it is a necessity. I manage things because it is my only response to situations I cannot control. This situation is the least controllable I have ever encountered, and the planning is the only thing standing between me and the admission that I am terrified.”

The honesty surprised him, and it surprised her as well. He saw it in the slight widening of her eyes, and the sudden shift from teasing to full attention.

“Terrified of what?” she asked.

“I am terrified of losing this. I am terrified of being rescued, only to have the rescue destroy what we have built here. On this island, I am a man who fishes, repairs walls, and loves you without seeking anyone's permission. In England, I am Mr Darcy of Pemberley. That man has obligations and a position in society that will scrutinise every aspect of what happened here. They will find it wanting, and their judgement will hurt you. I cannot bear the prospect of you being hurt by the very thing that has made me so very happy.”

She was quiet. Her shoulder was warm against his, and the sea washed quietly against the shore.

“Our time here is real, whether the ton approves or not,” Elizabeth said. “Their opinion does not retrospectively change what happened in that tower, or between us. If society wishes to judge me for loving you, they may do so. I will not offer them an apology.”

He looked at her. Her brown, serious face was lit with the specific stubbornness he had mistaken for impertinence in Hertfordshire. He recognised it now as sheer courage.

“You are not afraid,” he said.

“I am afraid of many things, but gossip is not one of them. I have survived a shipwreck, a pirate attack, and a deserted island. Society's opinion of my virtue is not going to be the thing that breaks me.”

He laughed. The sound was real and full, breaking the tension he had been holding in his chest.

“Come swim,” she said. She stood and held out her hand. It was brown, calloused, and stained with fig juice. It was the most beautiful hand he had ever seen.

He took it.

They swam. The nakedness between them had become ordinary, yet he could not look at her without his body responding with a sudden, sharp directness.

They came out of the water and lay on the warm sand. The sun was low and gold on their skin. She turned onto her side and looked at him. Her gaze held a quality he immediately recognised—the particular look that preceded her closing the distance between them.

“You are still planning.”

“I am not.”

“Your jaw tightens along the hinge when you are composing correspondence in your head. I have been studying your expressions for five weeks, Fitzwilliam. I am an authority.”

She placed her hand flat and warm against his bare chest, a deliberate pressure over his sternum. His heartbeat thudded against her palm.