Page 35 of Yearning

She shook her head at him, eyes wide. “No.”

“No?”

She let out a breath. She turned to look down the expanse of the empty hallway.

“There is only one other person’s room on this wing,” said Mr. Darcy in a low voice. “It’s Mr. Barnes, and his room is all the way at the end.” He gestured. “No one can hear.”

“He was… careful and gentle and… and patient.”

He regarded her.

“Is this not what you want to hear?” A pause. “Perhaps you want me to tell you it moment by moment. How he undressed me, what bits of my bare skin he uncovered first?”

Oh, God in heaven, it had happened. He had achieved a spontaneous erection. He let out a long, slow breath and gazed up at her, swimming in the wrong-rightness of this moment.

Her breath hitched. “That is what you want.”

“Does he please you, Lizzy?” His voice was scoured.

“Yes,” she said. She turned back to the window. “No.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “What do you—”

“I’m afraid I may not be pleasable in that way, though.”

“Of course you are.”

“No, I think I…” She turned back to look at him. “I think some part of me could never be satisfied unless I had… things I cannot have.”

He rasped, “Perhaps I would not have pleased you either.”

“We shall never know.”

“You would have pleased me, though.”

She turned to him. “But that was then, when you still wanted me. And you do not anymore. Because you are not capable of wanting me.”

His mouth was dry. “Obviously, I want you, Lizzy.” He had an urge to reach up and seize her hand and pull it down and show her that he was hard for her, that she had wrought something in him that he had not even thought possible.

But he would not do that. He was not so devoid of honor as to do that. And anyway, if she knew he was not really practically a eunuch… well, after this conversation between them, there could be real danger, he supposed.

He would not do that to her. He would not cajole her into cuckolding her husband, even if it would only be a semblance of cuckolding.

“Do you?” Her voice was thin, pained.

“Yes, yes, of course, yes.” His face fell. “I did not come here to see if you were happy, Elizabeth. I came to be near you.”

“Oh, Fitzwilliam, if you had but told me this before I married my husband!”

“No,” he whispered. “No, I think it is still better, you see? You would have missed out on so many aspects of life with me. With him, you…” His face twisted. “I wish you could have a child, though.”

“You… you…” She clenched both of her hands into fists, something she had done this afternoon. “Sometimes, Fitzwilliam Darcy, I hate you.”

“I deserve that.”

“You do,” she said. “Because you have thrown it all away, everything we could have had.”

“Being with me would have been throwing your life away,” he countered. “We did the right thing. Which is why, tomorrow, I shall leave this place, and we shall keep our distance from now on, because this… there is some danger.”