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A few seconds later he had departed, and Elizabeth was alone once more in her bedchamber.
***
Richard and Darcy were silent for several minutes as they hurried back to Darcy’s lodgings. Darcy caught his cousin giving him sidelong stares more than once. Finally, he growled, “Say what you plan to say!”
Richard gave him a lopsided smile. “I sent you up there to speak with the lady, Darce, about a threat to her life. You were not supposed to make love to her.”
“I did not make love—” Darcy sputtered.
Richard waggled a finger at him. “I saw the state of her hair. And your lips are still red and swollen.” They were? He could not help touching a finger to his lips.
Darcy was not accustomed to defending himself from this kind of accusation. “It was the sheer relief, Richard. She does not love Wickham—and is working against him. The relief…lowered my inhibitions.”
His cousin shook his head. “If you had been discovered dallying with her—”
“I am not dallying with her! I proposed marriage.”
“Did she not refuse you?”
“I am attempting to change her mind.”
“With kisses?”
Darcy bit back an angry retort. His cousin was right; his behavior had been inappropriate. Perhaps there is sense behind the rule against visiting women in their bedchambers. Fortunately, Elizabeth had not acted at all offended by the liberties he had taken. “You do not understand, Richard. She had— Her nightrail was— And then
she—”
Richard snorted. “If a lady can render you this inarticulate, perhaps you are in love.”
Darcy glowered at his cousin. “Really, it was her hair…I had never seen it unbound before…”
“Her hair is very beautiful.” When Darcy scowled, Richard hastily added, “Not that I noticed…at all.” After Darcy subsided, his cousin grinned. “I have never seen you so before. You are rather helplessly in love.”
“Violently.”
“Oh dear.”
“Why do you sound so dismayed?”
His cousin sighed. “She has refused you once already.”
A seed of doubt grew in Darcy’s heart. “She allowed me to kiss her!”
“A handsome man appeared in her room at night, and she was swept away by passion. A kiss is not a promise of marriage.” Darcy could not forget that his cousin had far more experience with midnight assignations than he did.
The warmth he had enjoyed since leaving the colonel’s house was beginning to dissipate. Would Elizabeth kiss a man she did not intend to marry? Perhaps, if that man woke her unexpectedly in the middle of the night and demonstrated sincere concern for her wellbeing. She might be overwhelmed and confused and allow him liberties that she then regretted. When Darcy saw her in the morning, would she regard him with regret and shame? The thought cooled his ardor quickly.
“Did you learn anything else?”
“Hmm?”
“Did Miss Elizabeth relate anything else about Wickham beyond what we discussed in her bedchamber?”
Darcy tried to focus on the far more important subject of treason and threats to the nation. “I do not believe so.”
Richard rubbed his chin. “I had no idea Wickham’s commanding officer suspected him. I wonder if anyone in the Home Office knows? Damnation, this is a mess! The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.”
“We will sort it out with Forster in the morning.”
