Page 17 of Yearning

“Well, you are the daughter of a gentleman.”

“I think he must have…” She licked her lips. “We only kissed once, and he said something at the end of it, that if we started at that behavior, he would not be able to stop himself. So, I think he… I think he wanted me in that way.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “Miss Bennet—”

“And I suppose he does not want anything in that way anymore.”

The colonel only breathed, even though she had interrupted him about to say something only a moment before.

She continued, then, trying to explain herself. “I mean, he must not want it. I suppose… I know about castrati in Italy, and so I suppose… but I understood they would take up with women, not marry them, but show interest, that they were celebrated in certain circles, that…” She trailed off.

The colonel cleared his throat again. “The castrati had things done to them very young, so that they did not go through the changes in young adulthood to become men. Mr. Darcy has quite… matured. There’s very little the same about all of that.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “if doing it that young did not remove the, erm, the desire…?”

The colonel let out another noise. “I do not know what it is you think you are asking of me, madam, but you must understand, it would be painful for me to, erm, to… I do not know why both of you think that you can simply ask me for services in this way, as if I am some sort of stand-in for—”

“What are you talking about?” said Elizabeth.

“You go on about babes. You talk about desire, after you have steered me into admitting aloud that I had feelings for you, and it is not difficult to see what you are about. But I shan’t do it. I am not getting in the midst of the two of you, and I do not want to have children who I can’t claim, so no, I am afraid I have to decline.”

Elizabeth was entirely stunned. She swallowed. “You thought I meant to ask you to… get babes on me?”

“Is that not what you meant?” The colonel’s voice was higher pitched, embarrassed.

“Well, no,” she said. “I had not gotten anywhere near such a plan, though I suppose it has its advantages—”

“It would destroy him.”

“Do you think so?”

“He is not a man of half-measures. I am not sure if you have noticed.”

She laughed softly. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. “I have noticed.”

“Well, that is a half-measure. He would not abide it. It would twist in him and make him grow bitter. It would take root and grow into some wild vine of inadequacy and jealousy. I would not do such a thing to him, madam. If you want children, if you want… to be desired… then make a clean break with him and go after what you want.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, of course.”

It was quiet again, and now she noticed the sounds of the carriage wheels on the cobblestones. If it had been less dark, if she had been less tipsy, she thought she might have been well and truly embarrassed, no beyond that, chagrined and regretful. But she felt a bit dimmed and tired and that was all.

“What is it you were asking?” said the colonel eventually.

It took her a moment to even remember, but then she did, and she did truly want to know. “Can he desire me?” she said. “Again, I mean? Or has that been extinguished in him?”

“Oh,” said the colonel in another voice.

“Obviously, he would not feel anything now. He could not. I would not ask that of him now, and I do not need—” She broke off. “Oh, perhaps I do need it. It is part and parcel of what passes between a man and a woman. A husband who does not desire me? I…”

“He still desires you,” said the colonel in a low voice.

“Not currently, he does not—”

“He does,” said the colonel, and now he was gruff. “He does, because he wished me to do it for him. To claim you in his stead. And if he sent me to do it, it would be almost as if he did it himself, and that is why he…”

Elizabeth let that wash through her, and she felt a tendril of revulsion, as if Mr. Darcy had thought of her as some sort of possession he could give to his cousin. Her nostrils flared. “I want him to want me for himself. I want to be cherished, not claimed.”

“Granted, madam,” said the colonel. “He is in a darker place these days. He sees what he cannot have, not what he can.”