Page 17 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

He rested his elbow on her knee. He could feel the warmth of her through the wrapper and the nightgown beneath.

She held his wrist in one hand and dressed the forearm with the other. Her head was bent. The candlelight caught the loose hair at her temple. "Your man," she said quietly. "Parrish. Has he been with you long?"

"Nine years. He was my father's footman before that."

"He did not like leaving you."

"No."

"And you did not like letting him see you like this."

He looked at the fire. She went on winding the bandage, very slowly. She kept her eyes on her work.

"My father was ill for a year," he said. "At the end."

Her hands went on, round and round.

"He was a strong man. The strongest I knew. He rode the whole estate every week of his life. He knew every tenant by name, and every field." Darcy watched the flames. "By the end, he could not lift a spoon. Parrish lifted him. Parrish and two others. They washed him and turned him and fed him. The maids used to stand in the doorway and pity him. I heard them."

Her fingers stilled on his wrist.

"I sat by the bed and took over the accounts," he said. "I learned the rents and the timber. I did everything that could be done with a pen. And I watched him grow smaller every day, until there was nothing left of him but what other people did for him."

He stopped. He had never said that aloud. He had not said it to Georgiana, or to Fitzwilliam, or to anyone.

The fire settled. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck the half hour.

Elizabeth tied off the bandage. She laid his arm back on his own knee, gently. Then she surprised him. She put her hand on his bare shoulder and left it there. "You are not growing smaller, Mr. Darcy," she said. "You have a burn on your side and two blistered hands, and a very bad temper. That is all. In three weeks you will be buttoning your own waistcoats again, and I shall be quite put out."

He turned his head and looked at her.

There was no pity in her face. None at all. She was looking at him the way she looked at Miss Bingley's accomplished woman. She was amused, and a little impatient, and entirely certain he was being absurd.

He had braced for pity. He had no notion what to do with this.

"You will be put out?" he said.

"Very. I have grown used to being useful." She took her hand from his shoulder. "Now. Your shirt. Lift your arms."

She put his shirt back on him the way she had taken it off. She drew it down over his head, and over the fresh bandage, and settled the linen at his waist. Her knuckles brushed his stomach. Neither of them said a word about it.

She took up Cowper and found their place and began to read.

Every line of it passed him by.

He sat on the footstool at her feet, with her new bandage around his ribs. He watched her read by the light of one candle. And he understood what he had spent four weeks refusing to understand.

He had told himself it was her eyes. Then her wit, or her figure, or her impertinence. He had told himself it was a fancy, and would pass when he left Hertfordshire. He had called her tolerable to Bingley's face because it was safer than the truth.

It was not a fancy. It was not going to pass.

He could love her.

The thought went through him and left him cold. He could love Elizabeth Bennet. She had no fortune and no connections, and a mother who fainted as an accomplishment. He could love her easily, and completely. And it would overturn every plan he had ever made for his life.

He was sitting at her feet in a borrowed shirt, and he could not so much as hold her hand. He did not want to be anywhere else.

She turned the page. She glanced up, and caught him looking, and smiled.