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She told him about the bonnet. The account began abruptly, without any of the transitions society supplied for people who wished to seem composed, and Darcy listened as if the fate of a ribbon deserved his complete attention. When she finished, he asked whether Mrs. Bennet would recognise her own directions in the result.

“She seldom recognises them when they produce something she dislikes.”

“A convenient habit.”

“Do not cultivate it.” The warning was out before she could prevent it, and for a moment she thought she had spoiled the small pleasure. Then he looked at her with so rueful an acknowledgement that she laughed. It was not the effortless laughter of that Tuesday in the library. She was glad of it anyway.

Darcy rose to put more coals on the fire. He had always attended to such small comforts promptly, and she had always found it difficult to decide whether accepting them obliged her to tolerate something larger. Today she had arranged a carriage to take her elsewhere. She could be warm in this room and still leave it. She liked his dry answer about her mother, the way he listened for the absurdity she had not yet finished describing. She missed him for that. Whether she could trust him with a fear he found inconvenient was another question, and this afternoon had not answered it.

When he straightened, she was standing too. Her heart was beating absurdly fast for so short a distance. She crossed it and took his hand. The astonishment in his face would have been almost comic if it had not exposed how completely he had expected the visit to end in discussion.

“I want to be near you,” she said.

His fingers closed about hers, then remained still. “Elizabeth.”

“I am not coming back to live here tonight.” The words cost her more than she expected. “And I have not forgiven everything because I wish to kiss you.”

He looked at their hands. “I understand.”

She required him to look at her when he said it again. He did, without resentment at the request. Then she kissed him, slowly enough that the choice remained hers to recognise. The familiar tenderness troubled her less than the relief of being able to want it without making a promise about the next morning.

Darcy drew back first. “You need not decide anything more today.”

“I have decided this.” She touched his cheek, then let her hand fall. “Only this.”

There was time before her return. She had arranged the carriage to come back at a stated hour, and her aunt knew where she was. No one would have to be deceived to preserve an appearance of propriety between a husband and wife, and no one had been asked to turn the visit into a reconciliation. Elizabeth took his hand again and led him from the sitting-room. He followed her upstairs.

Her old room was as she had left it, except that someone had drawn the curtains halfway against the afternoon and the bed stood neatly made beneath its coverlet. Elizabeth shut the door and turned the key. Then, because the sound of the lock seemed to ask a question of him, she left the key where it was and went to him.

“Unfasten me,” she said.

He stayed where he was. “Are you certain?”

“I am certain I wish to be out of this gown. Beyond that I shall tell you as I go.”

He laughed under his breath, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders. His fingers found the hooks at her back. He worked them slowly, one after another. She felt each one give. The cool of the room came in where the bodice opened. When he reached the last he stopped, his hands resting at her waist, and waited.

She turned in his arms and began on his neckcloth. Her fingers were less steady than his had been. He stood motionless for it, his breathing gone uneven, and when the linen came free she pressed her mouth to the warm hollow of his throat and heard the sound he made.

It had always been like this between them, and she had resented it: how quickly she answered him, how little the answer consulted her opinion of his character first. Today she let herself answer. She pushed his coat and waistcoat from his shoulders. She drew his shirt over his head and laid her palms flat against his chest. His heart was going hard under her hand. So was hers.

“You may touch me,” she said, and he did.

He slid the gown from her shoulders and let it fall, then the petticoat. Her stays laced in front; she untied them herself and let them drop. When she stood in her chemise and stockings he looked at her as if he had been starved of the sight. His hands moved over her through the thin lawn, the curve of her waist, the fullness of her breasts, his thumbs passing over her nipples until they drew tight and she gasped. He bent and put his mouth where his thumbs had been, through the cloth. The wet heat of it made her knees weaken.

She drew the chemise over her head herself. She wanted him to see her choose it.

On the bed he lay beside her rather than over her. His stillness told her that he was leaving the arrangement of things to her, and that went through her more sharply than his touch. She took his hand and drew it down over her belly, between her thighs. She was already slick there, and she heard his breath catch at the discovery. For a moment she pinned his hand under hers. Then she moved his fingers herself, slowly, showing him the place and the pressure she wanted.

He learned it at once. He had always learned her quickly. He circled where she had shown him, light, then firmer when she pressed her hips up into his palm. She turned her face into his shoulder. The heat built low in her belly and spread outward, into her thighs, up her spine. He did not hurry. When she whispered “there” against his skin he stayed exactly there and kept on. The steadiness of it undid her more surely than haste could have done. Her thighs began to shake. She gripped his arm. The pleasure gathered tight and then broke over her in long, rolling waves. She bit down on her lip to keep from crying out in a house full of servants. He kept his hand on her, gentler now, until the last tremor had passed.

When she could think again she pushed at his breeches. He helped her. Then he was bare against her, hard and hot along her thigh. She drew him over her and guided him into her with her own hand.

For a moment neither of them moved. She felt the full, stretching weight of him and the tremor running through his arms where he braced above her. His eyes were closed.

“Look at me,” she said.