Page 32 of Yearning

He drew in a breath and let it out. “I see that you are, madam. Pardon me, I shall not take any more of your time.”

She watched as he laboriously wheeled himself away, using his only arm, and then she turned back to the pall-mall court, because it seemed horrible to watch him and because she knew he would not bear it if she offered to help.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE TRUTH WAS, whatever was left of his prick still sort of worked.

He had been getting erections even when he was still bedridden, but back then, he was so blissed out on the laudanum that they rarely lasted very long and he certainly didn’t try to do anything with them.

They were usually in the morning, those sorts of erections. He definitely had them less than he used to. He definitely did not react in the way that he used to, not to arousing ideas or visual stimuli.

But he could tease himself stiff and he could, even with the loss of the most sensitive part of him, still reach a peak. Often times this peak was just something that rippled through him, but he could ejaculate. It had happened. He knew he wasn’t spending anything that could make a child, but there was… he was not as broken as he had thought back then.

This was something he had not told anyone, because it was a very awkward thing to say, and it essentially meant avowing that he was going at himself, and everyone was probably curious about his half cock as it was. The only person he could have possibly spoken about it to was Richard, but he still remembered that painfully awkward conversation where Richard had tried to convince him that some level of sexual intimacy might be available to him even after his injury and that he should not chase Elizabeth away on the basis of that, and he could not bear to revisit all of that.

Especially because it was done, and she was gone, and she was… not for lack of trying, if that is what you mean.

He shuddered, visions of that old man on his Elizabeth, sweating down on her, grunting over her, having her.

Of course, any image of Mr. Darcy himself with Elizabeth would be even worse. He was monstrous, missing his limbs, crooked-faced, and even if he had enough of a prick to penetrate her, it wouldn’t be enough to pleasure her, he didn’t think.

No, that old man, he was superior to Darcy in every way.

But that night, in his room upstairs in the summer house of the Baron of Givons, he seized himself between his legs and worked himself until he was stiff, which wasn’t always easy to achieve but happened without trouble this time. He thought about her, standing there outside that afternoon, arms folded over her chest, right under her bosom, and he thought about that time he’d kissed her, the way she’d fit perfectly against him, the softness of the curves of her body, her sweet and eager lips…

His climax was violent and not one of the dry ones, either. He swore, trying to mop up the place where he’d messed the sheets and failing. Swearing further, he scooted onto another part of the bed, but he could still feel the stickiness of it touching his hip.

Eventually, he managed to turn down the sheets, leaving them open to the air. It would dry that way, he thought, and he would simply go out into the hallway and wheel the chair down to the window. He would peer down at the darkened countryside.

Tomorrow, he should start plans to leave this place.

He should never have come.

He knew now that he had not come to see if Elizabeth was happy, or to reassure himself or anything of that nature.

He had come because he had craved being in proximity of her.

And that desire within him, that yearning, it must be stamped out.

He struggled to pull on a banyan and to get himself into his chair. Then he struggled to open the door while in the chair, for the door opened inward, and it took some doing.

When he got himself out into the hallway, there was a figure down at the end where he had thought to peer out the window. It only took him a moment to recognize her.

Elizabeth.

He should go back into his room.

He did not. He began to wheel himself towards her.

She did not hear him until he was very close, and then she turned, hand at her chest. “You must stop that, Fitzwilliam.”

“Stop what?”

“Sneaking up on me.” She was wrapped up in a night jacket, and beneath that, he could see that she was dressed for sleeping. He could not help but note that she was not wearing any structured undergarments. He could see the outlines of her breasts, hanging and rounded, and his sorry excuse for a prick pulsed.

“Why are you here?” he said, which was rude, but he was out of sorts now. “Your room is not even on this wing.” He knew where her room was, which was perhaps not to his credit, that he had taken such specific interest.

She shook her head. “This is none of your affair, Fitzwilliam.” She sounded a little agonized.