Page 27 of Yearning

“I am sure that no one thinks of you as a burden or a difficulty,” said Elizabeth, her voice very high-pitched.

Mr. Darcy turned to look at her, holding her gaze at the dinner table. “You are kind to say so.”

“Well, you are simply doing the best you can,” spoke up the Baroness Givons, the lady of the house. “And if anyone were to hold that against you, it would be intolerably rude, I should think.”

“No, no,” said Mr. Darcy. “I am certain the look of me is a bit difficult to take. Mr. Kineth gives me quite good advice.”

Elizabeth thought Mr. Kineth was the sort of person who could not bear to live in a world in which calamity like this existed. He must believe, instead, that all trouble was brought on one’s own head. This way, he could assure himself that he was safe, for he would never bring trouble on his own head.

There was no safety, however.

One must go on, regardless. One could not prevent badness from happening, but must face it head on when it did. However, that required bravery, and Mr. Kineth was a coward.

CHAPTER NINE

THAT EVENING, ELIZABETH was very much unlike herself, but it was only because of the unfinished throbbing feeling, which led her to excuse herself early from the gathering. Some people were gathered around the piano, singing together, and some were in groups to play loo.

She said she was tired and must go to bed. She meant to go alone, but her husband came along. He was apparently insatiable now, because he accompanied her to her bedchamber to have his way with her again, and that was uncommon. He was not the sort of man who came back for more only hours later. Her husband was three and sixty, she had discovered, not a young man, but young enough to still want her.

She was so frustrated by her lack of ability to finish herself that she did something she had never done before, which was to insert her fingers between their bodies as he was rutting into her and rub herself right there, in the spot. She expected him to say something to her about it, but he did not.

Instead, he moved back and watched her, stared as her fingers worried at the good, good spot, huffing, grunting, seemingly quite pleased by looking at her as she did that.

She did not know why, but something about it unsettled her.

She had always enjoyed the way he wanted her, but this felt…

She was struck, suddenly, by the way his skin wrinkled, by the pouch of his belly, by the gray in his hair, and she wondered at herself, at how she had even come to this place.

She shut her eyes.

And she thought of… well, of Mr. Darcy. At first, she thought of their kiss, of the way he had said he would not be able to stop himself if he started with her, and that nudged her into heights of goodness, and she rode that sensation, moans leaking from her lips. But then she thought of his countenance now, lopsided, rugged, marked by his struggles and somehow all the more appealing for it, and she was soaring high above everything, lost to the dark night of her body’s impending release.

And when she hit the high peak, she clenched around her husband’s member inside her, and he made a long, low groan at this, and finished almost immediately, spilling into her body.

Her husband lay next to her, sighing, kissing her, and she let him, and she even returned his kisses.

But she felt oddly disconnected from him, and she could not say why this was, for she usually found this activity made her feel close to him, and she would have thought that finishing with him, lying together, in the wake of having that feeling of finding the end of it, she would have thought that would make her feel even closer to him.

It’s because I thought of Mr. Darcy while I was doing it, she thought.

Truthfully, however, this was common. She often thought of the kiss she’d shared with Mr. Darcy when she stroked herself. It was something that tended to reliably send her hurtling toward the pinnacle of goodness.

She supposed that she had only gotten in the habit of thinking about Mr. Darcy when she did that, and she had come to associate Mr. Darcy with it, that was all. Certainly, if she tried, she could think of her husband instead.

She was not certain why she had never felt any guilt over using Mr. Darcy to get herself there, but perhaps it was because she had always done it alone, and it had not seemed as if it mattered to anyone except herself. Now, with her husband right here, it seemed a bit like a betrayal, almost as if she had been unfaithful to him in some unfathomable way.

Perhaps she had been, in a way.

Only in her own mind, though.

She could not really be unfaithful with Mr. Darcy, of course, and as her brain began to think horrifyingly specific thoughts about Mr. Darcy’s injury, summoning the image in her head of his truncated member from a year ago, she shoved all of that aside, making a little noise in the back of her throat.

“My dear?” came the deep voice of her husband, concerned. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. I am… overcome.”

Her husband kissed her again. “As am I. There was something about that, my love. I have never felt so connected to you.”