Page 64 of Yearning

He stopped walking too. He had gotten several paces ahead of her. He was smiling. “You are disappointed.” He was pleased about this, however.

She moved toward him. “No. No, as I have just finished saying, I rarely think of it either. I have been consumed in raising Lily and all that entails.”

He reached out with his good hand for one of hers.

She slid her hand into his, thinking of the way they used to hold hands and walk.

“It is not as it was, no. I am physically altered. But it is not gone, either. It can all be awakened. Perhaps it’s slower, but it burns just as strong once it is. If you are interested, then I am amenable.”

“Why would I not be interested?”

“Because you are with child, and you told me your interest waned last time.”

“Oh, well… that was a lie.”

“Was it?” His smile was very wide.

“I do not know.” She was embarrassed, and she tried to get her hand free but he squeezed it and she was trapped. “I do think my interest waned with the baron, but then… you… that time in your sitting room when we almost kissed, at that moment, there was quite a bit of… interest.” Her voice had gotten much lower at the end. She tried again to pull her hand free.

He let her. “Well, then.” He regarded her, and his expression was nearly sunny.

She was blushing, and she knew it. She started walking again.

He came after her. “There is no need for any rushing, of course. But if you worry that I do not desire you, as you once did, never worry of that.”

She glanced at him, grateful for that. “I shan’t. But I…” How had it been so easy to fall into bed with the colonel, and why did it seem as if everything between the two of them was so much more complicated and difficult?

Then, of course, she knew. Wine.

Yes, she could simply get drunk and it would all be easy.

But that was not what she wanted, not with him.

V

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

MR. DARCY HAD not come to propose, not at all, but he found himself strangely deflated by her pronouncement she didn’t wish to marry anyone.

For this house? For this little dower house? She had seen Pemberley. He knew she had. What was it about this dower house that swayed her?

No, it was not the dower house. It could not be. That was an excuse she had made, but it must be something else, he thought. The question was what was truly holding her back.

Well, she was in mourning, he supposed. In mourning and with child. The child would be considered the baron’s, and that was all for the best, really, though he supposed some part of his pride would be gratified by the idea that anyone might think he could still get babes on women, even though he knew that word of his demise had been spread far and wide throughout every corner of society. Everyone knew, and everyone had looked at him with sheer horror and pity for the first several years after his accident.

Now, it would be a good laugh to make them all question their assumptions, he supposed, but it was not necessary.

At any rate, if he was really going to stay here tonight with her, and he supposed he was, since he was, even now, in a room in her house, looking at the one change of clothes he’d packed, something to put on for dinner. It was hung up in a wardrobe for him, and she was sending a male servant up to help him dress. If he wished to stay, really stay, he’d have to send for more clothes, for another servant, and no matter what she said, it would be an invitation to scandal.

What kind of scandal it would be, he could not say.

He could see it all going exactly the way she said it did. People did think of him as a eunuch, and that was the precise role of eunuchs, after all, to keep women company in harems whilst the men were busy with their other women. So, he could easily be thought of as her companion, just her friend, nothing more.

He could see it, really, the two of them traveling here and there together, companions and nothing else, and he could see entirely how it might work. After a bit of time, everyone would become so used to it that no eyebrows would be raised.

Some part of him did not like it.

That is because of your pride, he scolded himself.