Page 42 of Courting Elizabeth

But her fingers closed on my lapel and drew me back to her.

I gently squeezed her hip, feeling beneath the layers of fabric a curve I had dreamed of discovering. My name escaped her lips against my mouth.

I had to pull away.

“Why do you always stop when it gets interesting?” she asked, breathless.

“Because you don't yet know where this path leads.”

“And you?”

“I know it too well.”

She lowered her eyes to my chest. Her fingers played with my lapel.

“I could learn.”

“Yes.”

The word came out rougher than I'd intended.

“But not in a library where my sister might walk in.”

Elizabeth glanced toward the door.

“You're right.”

“That's a phrase I'd like to hear more often.”

“Don't get used to it.”

She touched up her hair with her fingertips. A pin fell onto the carpet. I picked it up and offered it to her.

“Keep it,” she ordered.

“Why?”

“To remind you that your experiment wasn’t entirely under control.”

I closed my hand around the small pin.

I treasured it.

Chapter 11

ELIZABETH

The first kiss changed everything without resolving anything.

I realized this as I reread Charlotte's letter, which had arrived that very morning.

She had written from Hunsford on two sheets filled to the margins. The vegetable garden. A disagreement with the sexton. Lady Catherine insisting on having a bench moved. Then, in the last line, slipped beneath a remark about late frosts: “You still haven’t told me if you like him. You told me he was fair, that he was generous, and that he gave you a key. That isn’t the same thing, Lizzy, and you know it better than I do.”

Charlotte had married Mr Collins for a house.

She was the only person in the world I couldn’t lie to about this.

I desired my husband. I could no longer hide this truth behind curiosity or inexperience. His mouth had taught me in a few minutes what my body already knew: I wanted his closeness, his hands, the firm warmth of him against me. I wanted to understand what made him stop with that ragged breath and that almost pained look.