Page 25 of Shadows Of Rosings Park: Part 2

The afternoon passed in the rituals of arrival: touring the rooms, meeting the staff, learning a house she would occupy for one week before they departed for London. Elizabeth moved through it numb but practised. She had been pretending for weeks. This was merely a new stage.

The evening passed in the rituals of dinner: a table for twelve occupied by two, silver and crystal and candlelight surrounding a formal silence neither knew how to break.

After dinner, Darcy dismissed the servants. The house settled into quiet. Elizabeth stood at the window, looking out at an unfamiliar garden while her pulse marked his approach.

She pressed her forehead to the glass and made herself think clearly. She had spent weeks calling this man her captor, her cage, her transaction. Some of that was earned. He had leveraged Charlotte's secret, had manoeuvred a proposal that left refusal unthinkable, had arranged her life with the confident efficiency of a man who believed his judgment superior to her consent. All true. None of it the whole truth.

Because there was also the rain on Oakham Mount, and how he had stood in it without complaint while she laughed at the absurdity of them. There was the library, where his kiss had not taken but asked, and where her body had answered before her principles could intervene. There was the revised marriage settlement, signed without protest, securing her use of Ashbourne for the agreed term and placing her income in trust because her father had asked and Darcy had not bargained. There was his apology on the hill, grudging and incomplete, but an admission that he had taken something he could not return.

She did not love him. She was not certain she even liked him. But she had stopped being able to pretend that what she felt was only anger, and the dishonesty of maintaining that pretence on their wedding night struck her as a worse betrayal than the marriage itself. If she went to him tonight, it would not be because the vows compelled her. It would be because something in her, something that had caught fire in the library and warmed on Oakham Mount and refused, despite every rational objection, to be extinguished, wanted to know what happened when she stopped resisting it.

The choice frightened her more than the cage ever had. A cage, at least, absolved her of responsibility.

Heat spread beneath her skin. Fear and desire had become too entangled for the honesty she maintained in daylight, but she was done pretending they were only fear.

"Elizabeth."

She turned. He stood in the doorway without his coat or cravat, his shirt open at the throat. The sight of him undressed, the physical man beneath the social armour, produced a contraction in her chest that she had stopped trying to classify.

"You don't need to be afraid," he said.

"I'm not afraid. My hands are shaking because I'm cold."

His gaze dropped to her trembling fingers, then returned to her face. He did not smile. He did not contradict her with words.

"No." She exhaled. "I'm not cold."

He closed the distance, drew her in at the waist, and kissed her. This kiss, offered as a question, broke the brace she had held for weeks. A sob escaped against his mouth. He caught the sound with his lips and held her while her rigid body finally yielded.

"Tell me what you want," he whispered.

She had not expected the question. She had braced for commands. She had prepared for the transaction. She had not prepared for a choice.

"I want this to be real," she said. "Not a performance. Not a duty. If this happens tonight, I want it to happen because I chose it."

"Then choose."

She studied him in the candlelight, his face half gold and half shadow, his hands open at his sides. He was waiting. Genuinely waiting.

"The marriage wasn't my choice," she said. "This can be. Do you understand the difference?"

His expression tightened. "Yes."

"If I tell you to stop?"

"I stop." No hesitation. No qualification. "Even after the vows. At any word from you."

Elizabeth stepped forward and placed her palm against his chest. His heart struck hard beneath the linen.

"Then take me upstairs," she said.

He did not seize her or carry her. He offered his hand. She took it, and they climbed together.

In the bedchamber, Darcy closed the door but did not turn the key. The chamber was warm with firelight. Her nightdress lay folded on the counterpane; the maid who had unpacked it could not have imagined Elizabeth would arrive without calling for her.

Darcy stood behind her. His fingers hovered over the first fastening of her gown. "May I?"

"Yes."