Page 196 of Faceless

“To?”

“To see —”

He broke off again.

She stroked his cheek. She was beginning to lose the war with her own body, and the warmth of him along her side and the weight of his hand on her belly and the long, slow rhythm of his breathing against her hair were making it impossible to remain entirely conscious for very much longer.

“To see him?”

“To see — yes. To see him. To see you. To see this. To see —” He drew breath. “I have been imagining you in the dark for four months. It is most of my memories of you. I had not allowed myself to imagine you in any light. I find I should like to.”

“There is a candle on that side of the bed. Light it. I would not refuse you anything at this hour.”

He did not move.

She slid her hand up his cheek, and into his hair, and brought his face down and kissed him once, slowly. “But Fitzwilliam, you do not need the candle.”

He drew breath. He held her closer against his side. “No. I do not need the candle. I do not need the light to see you. I have not needed it for a year.”

He kissed her once on the forehead.

The candle was not lit.

LXXII

First Light

Darcy woke in the grey first light to the warmth of his wife against his side and his hand still spread over the curve of her belly. He did not move at once. He had not slept more than four consecutive hours since the cutter had put him ashore at Tower wharf back in January, and the body that had been holding itself in suspension for four months was, this morning, slow to acknowledge that the suspension had ended.

She was awake.

“Fitzwilliam?”

He drew breath. He had been about to remember where he was when she said his name, and she spared him the work of remembering. He was at Matlock House. The verdict had come in at three. He had come up to her in the dark. He was here. She was here. The hand under his was hers, and the curve beneath his palm was his child, and the morning was the first morning of the rest of his life.

He turned his face into her hair. “Elizabeth,” he whispered and pressed a kiss into her tangled curls.

She laughed, very quietly. He had not heard her laugh in his presence since that last day they had together at Auchengray. The sound of it sank into his bones as the news of the verdict had not yet had time to do, and he held her against his side a moment longer before he was prepared to permit the morning to begin.

He was, he discovered with no small embarrassment, awake in other respects.

He had not, in the small hours when he had got into the bed in his shirt and breeches, given much thought to the question of what his body would do upon finding itself, after four months apart, against the entire length of hers. He had been too tired, and she had been too tired, and the warmth had been the only thing he had wanted of her, and he had fallen asleep almost instantly. He had not, then, anticipated the morning.

He shifted his hips by a fraction of an inch, away from her, and prayed she had not yet had occasion to notice.

She noticed.

He felt the small alteration of her breath against his throat. She did not move. She did not, as he had been bracing himself to suffer, draw away. She merely breathed against him for a long moment.

Then she rolled over.

It was not a quick movement. She had grown considerably since he last held her, and she did not, at this date, do anything quickly. She turned by stages until she was facing him on her side. She put her hand against his chest under the open collar of his shirt, where the shirt had ridden loose in the night, and she laid her face into the side of his throat and kissed it.

He stopped breathing. “Elizabeth —”

“I do love hearing you say my name in your full voice. Say something else.”

“My love —”