Page 29 of Yearning

Of course he could not.

Of course, all the bedchambers were up at least one floor.

So, he was being carried up and down the stairs by one valet while the other wrestled the chair after him, and it was all quite difficult and inconvenient, and he regretted it, but here he was, and there she was, and she looked well.

She looked radiantly beautiful, in fact, and the baron she had married seemed to dote on her. Darcy had watched the man, who barely took his eyes away from his wife if she was in the room. That seemed to bode well.

Of course, he was stabbed with a sharp blade of jealousy watching the man look at Elizabeth so possessively, but Mr. Darcy shoved that away, because there was no place for it.

When he had conceived of this plan, he had not really intended to interact much with Elizabeth. He would be polite to her, of course, and he would not ignore her, but what he chiefly wished to do was observe her, to see how she interacted with her husband, to see how her manner was, to get some sense of her. Ultimately, he wished to convince himself that she was happy, congratulate himself on a job well done, and then, whenever regrets ate at him of having lost her, he could remind himself that she had benefited from it.

Anything would be worth sacrificing for Elizabeth’s happiness, of course.

But that first night, at dinner, he realized his error.

When he was in the room, and she knew it, she did nothing except focus on him.

At first, he hoped this would only be temporary. She was shocked to see him after all this time, after all, and she would be curious, but that would all fade as she got used to his being there.

But the second day passed with the two of them being out on the lawn observing a game of pall-mall, and every time he looked up at her, she was looking at him. Since he had come here precisely to observe her, this meant he was stymied in his goal, because he obviously could not stare at her while she stared at him. That would not do.

That evening, she gazed at him all throughout dinner and then she and her husband retired early, which they had done the night before as well.

Darcy found himself contemplating the meaning of that in a way that settled like a weight in his stomach. Ostensibly, he wanted Elizabeth to be enjoying herself in bed with a husband, but he… faced with it…

That man was so old.

That night, he lay awake contemplating ways in which he could observe Elizabeth while she would not know he was observing her, but he could not come up with any feasible way to make something like that happen.

So, there in the darkness, he resolved that he was going to have to speak to her. Certainly, she might misrepresent how happy she was to him, but he was never going to get any kind of information from watching her if all she did was watch him.

Thus decided, he slipped off to sleep, and he felt more at peace than he’d felt in quite some time.

CHAPTER TEN

“YOU DO NOT play pall-mall?”

Elizabeth turned round to see that Mr. Darcy was just behind her on the lawn. Her breath caught in her throat, because she had decided that Mr. Darcy was pointedly avoiding her, and she was too embarrassed to approach him because she kept thinking about how she had been using him as an aid to manually pleasure herself for quite too long now.

The night before, her husband had accompanied her to her bedchamber again, which wasn’t like him. She and the baron were active in that way, she thought. Usually, he visited her once a week, sometimes less, sometimes more, but rarely was it two days in a row, especially after having been at her twice the day before.

She had reached no pinnacle at all this time, which was typical, really, but her husband had seemed a bit disappointed in it. He had breathed in her ear, “If you wish to toy with yourself, I truly do not mind. I rather wholeheartedly approve of that, actually.”

She had tried, and she had tried also to focus on him, focus on nothing but him, but her mind kept wanting to stray to Mr. Darcy, to their kiss, to the smell of him, that clean and nearly woodsy smell.

Now, she turned to look at him in that chair, and it was all wrong, her looking down on him, him looking up at her. But as he grow closer, she did smell him, and he smelled the same.

She licked her lips. “There is little point in it. I do not have the power to get the ball all the way down the court with one blow of the mallet, truly.”

“Well, a game may be played for reasons other than winning,” he said.

“I suppose,” she said.

They surveyed each other. It was a warm day, and everything was greenery. The lawn was lush and trimmed, and they stood in the shade of two very tall leafy trees, their boughs waving gently in a welcome breeze that came through.

“Your husband is playing.” Mr. Darcy gestured to the pall-mall court. Most of the players were standing off to the side watching as Mr. Kineth swung back the mallet to take his turn. It did not do to be in the way while a person was swinging.

“Yes, I see his ball there,” said Elizabeth. “He is doing well, it seems.”