Page 80 of Homeless

A thin white blade of light entered where the wood of the shutter had warped and lay across the floorboards. The blanket had fallen into disarray round his hips. Her place beside him was empty, the impression of her body already fading in the mattress. For one foolish instant, he thought she must have gone, or perhaps he dreamt it, after all.

Then he saw her.

Elizabeth sat at the edge of the bed with her back half turned, one stocking drawn nearly to her knee, the other still lying in her lap with the ribbon twisted round her fingers as if she had forgot for a moment what she was doing. Her petticoat was bunched around her waist, and her chemise had been dragged on in haste and sat wrong at one shoulder. Her hair, only partly confined, fell in dark disorder down her back.

The sight of her half-dressed in the room they shared, after such a night, struck him with an almost unbearable tenderness. Shyness in the morning light, that was to be expected. Embarrassment, perhaps. Natural enough. There had been wine, quarrel, exhaustion, darkness, astonishment. Of course, daylight must feel different. Of course, she might wish to gather herself before turning toward him and meeting what had changed between them.

But nothing essential had changed — not last night. The essentials had changed one violent day in Tudela. It was only now that the truth had shown itself.

“Elizabeth?” He reached for her, let his fingertips graze the back of her elbow.

She went rigid. “Pray, do not touch me, sir.”

He pushed himself up on one elbow. “Do not what? Elizabeth, are you well?”

“Do not make this worse by trying to speak tenderly.” She did not turn, but bent to draw the stocking the rest of the way up her leg. “Do not try to make last night something it was not. We were drunk, exhausted, out of our senses, and it is not happening again.”

The last of sleep left him so completely that it seemed some other man must have been smiling a moment before. He sat up fully and crossed the mattress on his knees until he was beside her. “Elizabeth?”

She rose out of his reach, and her petticoat tumbled down to cover her legs, with the second stocking falling to the floor unheeded. She dragged the chemise straight, and it fell open still where the buttons were missing. She bent to gather her stays from the floor, and laced them about her ribs.

Then, at last, she turned and faced him.

Whatever he had expected, it was not this face. Not awkwardness. Not blushes. She looked him frankly in the eye, without troubling to cross her arms over her stays and chemise. She did not seem inclined to examine his own naked form, which she had found so intriguing last night.

He tugged the blanket up to cover himself. “Elizabeth, there is nothing to be ashamed of. You are not… I did not hurt you, did I?”

“No.” She bent to collect her stocking, but did not put it on. “No, you did not hurt me.”

He moved closer, gathering the blanket as he went. “What is it?” he asked in the gentlest voice he could manage. “Are you afraid I will… expect to take more liberties this morning?”

Her jaw hardened, and she glanced at the window. “What I am trying to tell you, Mr Darcy, is that what happened was a mistake we need not repeat, and do not persuade yourself it was anything but.”

“But you…” He bit down hard on his own lip. “Elizabeth, you talk as if I took you against your will!”

“I make no such claim, but neither will I soothe your vanity by claiming I liked it.”

He stared at her. “You did like it. I do not consult my vanity in this, but your own responses.”

“I was drunk, and so were you. It was one night. A lapse. A piece of madness. If you have the smallest generosity in you, you will let it remain one.”

The wind had gone out of him. It was not possible she could believe any of this. It was not possible she could think him so gross, or so easily appeased, that once he had her, he might now relinquish any claim on her, or give up hope of the marriage they had consecrated last night, simply because she called it a mistake the next day!

He moved from the bed, the blanket still bunched in front of his waist. His shirt lay near the chair, tangled with her gown. He stooped for it, found one sleeve, then the other.

“This is not generosity,” he said as he pulled it over his head. “It is falsehood. We are married, Elizabeth. Last night, we sealed the paper with our own bodies. It cannot be undone.”

Her colour changed. “Oh, do not.” She stuck her foot out on the edge of the bed and pulled her stocking on, and he had to avert his eyes from the sight of her shapely leg, the muscle curving as she pointed her toes.

“Do not begin that,” she repeated as she set her foot down. “I told you what the bargain was when we made it. England ends it. That remains true now. I will not have my life and this bargain altered every time we do something foolish enough to regret by daylight.”

“I am not altering it because it suits me! I was trying to make you see the fact of the matter.”

Her laugh had no mirth in it. “Convenient! We pay for a paper to save our lives, and since we got it from a church, last night is no longer just a seduction. Now, it is some sacred covenant I must submit to for the rest of my life under the name of duty!”

He reached for his trousers. “Even without a marriage certificate, I would say we now had a duty to each other. You think I would seduce you and then discard you?”

“I am hardly the first, am I?”