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Lucas Lodge, Friday, October 25, 1811
Darcy carefully modulated his features and expression as he replied to Miss Bingley's impertinent query.
"I knew you would be wishing me joy," he concluded, carefully not looking toward her to gauge the impact of his words. She must not suspect his depth of feeling.
Netherfield, Tuesday, October 15, 1811
It was long past midnight when Darcy was finally in his own rooms, dressed for bed, able to reflect on the evening.
The company had been fully as bad as he had feared. The residents of a village, close enough to town to have their most promising drawn thither, were rough and ungenteel, their accents grating on him as their equals in the north would not.
He leaned his head back against the chair, allowing himself to think of the one bright point of the gathering. His mind conjured those dazzling eyes, that expressive mouth before him. How he had dismissed her at first. Then, when he saw her dancing, all about her enchanted him, from the curl of the tresses caressing the back of her neck to the shape of her hips beneath her muslin.
It had not been necessary to seek out her name, the trade knight, Sir William, had enhanced his own self-importance by naming all the young ladies to both him and Bingley. Loudly enough to make Darcy blush.
He quietly said her name, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. He was glad she was an Elizabeth, though her neighbor took the liberty of naming her Eliza, which suited her ill.
She was Elizabeth, indominable as the queen of that name, yet alluring, bewitching, even. But the last name did not suit her. Why, he could not say.
He felt his body grow heated with the remembrance of her, of the feeling of her eyes upon him as he had been speaking with Bingley. Such knowing eyes. He could imagine sitting to table with that gaze upon him, full content with being known by those eyes, his being illuminated by the spirit behind them.
He caught himself with a start. The table he had imagined was that of his private sitting room at Pemberley. And he could not deny it: His vision included her issuing forth from the adjoining room. The mistress's chambers. His wife's rooms.
It struck him like a blow to the sternum, one that made his heart stutter and forced him to struggle for breath. He could see her as his wife. He desired her as his wife. If he could make it so in an instant, he would take her to wife, all else be damned.
With equal swiftness he knew that the deficiency he found in her last name. He wished it to be changed — to his own.
It was impossible, of course. Just as Sir William had named Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth and Miss Lucas, he had pointed out Miss Lydia and Miss Kitty Bennet. Still young enough for the school room — and, if he had been their guardian, that was exactly where he would have placed them, not disporting themselves with these ham-handed grain farmers and their slack-jawed sons.
Mr. Bennet was not in evidence. That he allowed his daughters to conduct themselves thus spoke to some serious degree of neglect which must exclude real respectability.
But, in the privacy of his own rooms and his own mind he could admit that he would that it were otherwise. That he wished that he were her husband that he might have the privilege of approaching her, of pressing his own lips to those laughing ones, to bid her remove her night dress and lay her upon his bed.
His body shook with exquisite tremors as he contemplated taking her. How she would gaze at him in ardent invitation. She would take his hand and place it upon herself, beckoning him into all those amorous practices he had before eschewed. Together they would discover all the mysteries of the flesh, now only vaguely formed in his mind — his flesh yearning dumbly though keenly.
He felt his hand stealing toward his loins. He wished to indulge in these visions, to take himself in hand and stoke the fires of his lust for this strange gentlewoman.
He clenched his fist and pulled it back toward his chest. No, he would not be so weak as to abuse himself — and her! — in such a debased manner. He would allow himself to tender fantasies of her, walking beside him at Pemberley, certainly. Sitting across the breakfast table from him, of course. But thoughts of her sitting to supper with him quickly blurred into what they would do once they retired.
Quickly he retreated to thinking of them walking through Pemberley. With gritted teeth he added Georgiana to his mental image, only then tempering the tendency to see himself pulling Elizabeth into some sheltered nook, there to kiss her long and soundly.
But, with his dear little sister arm in arm with Elizabeth, he was safe.
He slid into bed, the image of showing Elizabeth, his beloved wife, all his most cherished places about his home warming him through.
It would be enough. It must be enough.