Page 43 of Yearning

He coughed again, setting down the biscuit. “How can you tell?”

She sighed heavily. “I am not the least bit interested anymore, anyway. I am very, very heavy with child, too heavy with child for interest.”

“Noted,” he said.

“Not that you could do anything—”

“Of course not,” he readily agreed. “Nothing at all. But with your condition, of course interest would, erm, would wane.”

“I banished my husband from my bed months ago,” she said.

“Of course,” he said.

They were quiet, looking at each other.

“How can we be talking of this?” She sighed heavily.

“We shall talk of something else, something innocent,” he agreed. “This is entirely beneath us.” He tried to think of a subject to broach. He thought about how much larger her bosom was instead, and he felt hotly ashamed of himself.

I did not travel from Pemberley to try to lift this woman’s skirts, he assured himself.

She was right, of course, it would be impossible between them, what with his own handicaps and her condition, and he had already determined that even if he should try it, he likely could not pleasure her.

But then, of course, he had thought that there would be other ways to pleasure her besides using his prick, or what remained of it. He thought that he had five remaining fingers and a perfectly undamaged tongue and—

But he must cease thinking of any of these things.

He would never do that with her, even if he had the capacity to pleasure her.

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy was not the sort of man to lift the skirts of another man’s wife. He had honor. Or, well, anyway, before the accident, he used to have honor, though he no longer quite felt it in the same way, not anymore.

Now, that honor seemed a trapping of the world before, something that he used to be able to believe in when he thought the world functioned according to some plan or design.

Now, he believed the world was random and unpredictable, that danger and pain were always just around the corner, and that honor was likely simply stupidity, that doing whatever a body could to feel pleasure or satisfaction made just as much sense, because one never knew when it would all be ripped away.

But he worried about descending into that belief, worried that it would be too easy to despair if he followed it to its natural conclusions.

So, he clung to his memories and was honorable anyway. He followed the rules even more staunchly than he might have before losing his limbs. In some ways, clinging to that life, clinging to that old self, it was steadying.

“Have you heard from your husband?” was what he said. “When does he return?”

“He claims he will come home in time to see the babe born,” she said. “The babe is due in March, less than four weeks away.” It was now mid-February. It had taken him some time to get himself ready and to arrive here. “So, I am fearful he will not make it, I suppose. But I am also…” She lifted a shoulder. “Now that you are here, perhaps I hope that. I should like to find away for you to…”

His heart skipped over a few beats, and he could not help but smile at her. “I should like that, too.”

“It may be impossible, of course.”

“Of course,” he said.

They simply stared at each other.

“She won’t really be like yours, obviously,” Elizabeth murmured, gazing into his eyes.

“No, I know that,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect that at all.”

“But we could pretend, perhaps, sometimes,” she said. “Just for moments here and there.”

“That sounds…” Like it would only be ultimately painful and therefore really one of the stupidest things either of them could do. “Nice.”