Page 78 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

"Elizabeth," he gasped. "Elizabeth."

He thrust into her once more, deep, and then again. His whole body went taut above her. She felt him spill inside her, hot and deep, with a long, shattered groan. He buried his face in her hair and shook, and she held him through it.

For a long time they lay without moving.

His weight pressed her into the mattress. His breath was ragged against her neck. She could feel his heart slamming against her own. She wanted him to stay there always.

She stroked his back slowly, up and down. She felt the tremors in him ease, one by one. When he lifted his head, his eyes were wet.

She touched his cheek. "Fitzwilliam."

"I am well," he said roughly. "I am more than well. I did not know..." He stopped. He shook his head. "I did not know."

"Neither did I," said Elizabeth.

He rolled to his side and drew her with him. He kept her tucked against his chest, with his arm heavy across her waist. He held her so close she could hardly breathe, and she was glad of it.

They lay a long time afterward, tangled in the sheets. The fire was low. His cravat, she remembered, was still on the library hearthrug. Parrish would find it in the morning.

"You did not tell me it was nothing," he said.

"No." She turned her head on his arm and looked at him. "I am not going to tell you that ever again. You will have to put up with the truth."

"I find I can bear it."

She fell asleep with her head on his chest and his hand in her hair.

When she woke, the fire in the bedroom had sunk to red. The house was silent. Somewhere below them a clock was striking.

She lay and listened. Beside her, Darcy stirred.

"What time is it?" she whispered.

He listened to the last stroke. Then he turned his head on the pillow and smiled at her in the dark. "Two o'clock."

"Then we are just in time," said Elizabeth.

21

Darcy woke to gray light at the edges of the curtains and a weight on his chest.

It was Elizabeth. His wife's hair had come down in the night, all of it, and lay across his shoulder and the pillow. One of her hands was spread flat over his heart. Her breath was slow and warm against his skin.

He lay still and let himself look at her.

He had woken in this bed every London season since his father died. He could not remember waking in it happy. Every morning here he had opened his eyes on the canopy and gone straight to what the day would want from him. Letters, and rents, and Georgiana, and the long list of things a man must provide.

This morning he thought of none of them. He thought of her, and of two o'clock.

Then we are just in time.

She had laughed when she said it. She had laughed again a little later, low and breathless, with her hands in his hair. He had not known a woman could laugh in that moment. He had not known he could.

The fire had burned down to embers in the night. The room was cold beyond the bed curtains. He could see his breath.

Very carefully, he lifted her hand from his chest and slid out from under her. She murmured and burrowed into the warm place he had left. She did not wake.

He went to the hearth in his shirt. He knelt and took up the poker, and stirred the embers until they glowed. He laid kindling on them, and then coal, one piece at a time, with his own hands.