Page 63 of Homeless

She pulled back. “Why? I am trying to master a skill, not be seduced.”

“I can feel you staring at me, and it is making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. You are supposed to close your eyes and pretend you are enjoying —”

She cut him off by capturing his mouth herself. She did close her eyes, though she found it a lamentable loss of a rather interesting view. Mr Darcy looked like a different man altogether when he was not scowling. And since she had made the back of his neck prickle, she soothed it with her hand, because it was only fair. His hands, after all, felt rather nice as he tipped her head back and edged his arm further behind her to bear a little of her weight.

He sharpened his movements, letting his teeth catch softly on her lower lip, drawing it into his mouth, and suckling it gently. Some sort of heat was blooming inside her, almost a tickle or a shiver spreading out to her limbs from a molten centre. She should not let this continue… but there seemed to be more to discover, for each second was adding to her knowledge.

What would happen if she slid a hand up his jaw? It was rough, as it often was lately. How curious that the short hairs seemed to have a grain, a direction that smoothed them and another that made them prickle her fingers when she twirled them in lazy circles at the edge of his cheek. His kiss became broader, his breaths slower. And then, at the bottom of one of them, came a strangled sort of moan.

He blinked and snapped backwards the instant the sound had left his mouth.

“What was that?”

He coughed slightly and took a healthy step back from her. “Something in my throat is all. I don’t suppose we’ve any wine left?”

“Not a drop, and I would not trust that water in the basin. So? Did I manage passably well?”

He grimaced. “We will certainly not be taken for brother and sister.”

“Oh, now, that is high praise, indeed. At least you are not accusing me of biting you again.”

The edge of his mouth crept upward as he rubbed his jaw, then he caught himself and sobered again. “I daresay you have mastered the concept sufficiently to fool a casual observer.”

“Then I am satisfied. Here, your coat fell on the floor.” She picked it up and tossed it at him.

His arm shot out to catch it, but the swift movement made him wince. He arched his back, then his hand hovered over the bandage, and he bit back a hiss.

Elizabeth sighed. “Let me see it. Are you bleeding through?”

“No, I am not —”

She paid him no mind, brushing his arm away and lifting his shirt. “The knot is still holding, but if you keep making sudden movements like that, you will keep opening the wound. Perhaps I should strap a board to your side.”

He growled. “Perhaps if you would stop poking and pulling at me, I could finally rest it for the night.”

Elizabeth tugged a bit at the strips of cloth, smoothing them flat under the knot once more. “There. You will live until morning, and I daresay you will number it among your misfortunes.”

“I shall recommend you warmly to my enemies, Mrs Darcy.”

She raised her brows. “I told you not to call me that.”

He grinned. “I know. That is why I do it. It is the single reliable pleasure this marriage has yet afforded me, and I find I am unwilling to give it up.”

XXIV

What Signifies

He did not take the half of the mattress she had left open to him. He went, with the stiff care of the newly strapped, toward the boards along the far wall, and began to lower himself to the floor.

She snorted into the dark.

“I would not.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You slept on the floor last night, Mr Darcy, if you have not done yourself the kindness of forgetting it, and a rat was across the back of your hand inside the minute. You had no open wound then for it to take an interest in. Tonight, you have a furrow in your ribs the length of my hand, dressed in the only clean linen we own.” She came up onto one elbow. “Lie down there, and you will wake with the bandage gnawed and the wound in it, and I shall have spent my hour by candlelight for the sole benefit of the vermin of Estella. I will not have it. Get up.”

He got up. He stood a moment in the dark, and she could all but hear him reasoning his way toward the next-worst place to put himself.