*** I loved writing this scene for ODC ***
Pools of water stood in the ditches to the sides of the road, and Elizabeth veered to her right onto a well-worn path that snaked through the trees lining her father's lands. A large log, what was left of a grand oak tree in the spring, lay across the trail from where it had blown over. Mr. Darcy offered her his hand, but Elizabeth giggled as she grasped the thick branch, bare of any leaves, to pull herself up with a large step, steadied herself as the trunk was slippery, and then jumped with all of the might her legs could muster.
"Impressive," Mr. Darcy remarked, before following her example, only his long legs carried him a good distance further, and she had to sidestep out of his way, sloshing her boot down into a deep trench of muck from decaying leaves and water.
"Arghh," she groaned, as the cold water seeped up over the edge of her anklet, and she tried to shake free of the water. With it already inside the shoe, her foot just became soggier by the effort, and she cringed.
"My dearest, are you hurt? I'm so thoughtless!"
"Stay, stay! I'm well!" she managed, waving her hands as the trees were still so threadbare, her family could spy them from the yard. "I began the game, I merely lost. I am uninjured, but my left foot is no longer dry." She looped her arm in his, showing she could walk just fine with one foot soaked and the other dry.
"I'm afraid your boot may be ruined," he said, with a frown, as his eyes carefully watched her steps, allowing some low tree branches to abuse his hat. The beaver fell off, and again, Elizabeth was in a fit of laughter, as Mr. Darcy turned around, bewildered, but then fetched his lost companion. "And now, my hat! My goodness, if we were not engaged to wed, I'm afraid we'd both be quite compelled now!" A rare jest from him brightened Elizabeth's mood even more, and their eyes met in a shared glisten of mirth.
Oh, why couldn't her father know this man?
Realizing with his back to Longbourn, along the trail, no one could see her. She stepped forward boldly as he adjusted his hat, with the full intention of casting propriety aside. With his hands adjusting the brim, Elizabeth stood up on her tiptoes, grasped his lapels, and kissed his lips, catching Mr. Darcy utterly by surprise.
She relished the feel of his lips against hers, the heat of affection passing between them making her quite forget her near-frozen left foot.
"Elizabeth," he whispered her name after, half pleading for her to put him out of his misery.
"A little further, I wish to show you somewhere special," she said, and she turned around for him to follow once more, extending her hand behind her for his grasp.
Leading him to one of her favorite reading spots in the wood, she lamented that the season was all wrong for the majesty of the place. In spring, the branches above would be alive with buds of yellow-green, and a symphony of birds and insects all awakening from winter's dull chill. In summer, the shades of emerald would filter sunlight down into dazzling displays of dance upon the forest floor. They'd have to settle for the warm hearth hues of autumn, littering the ground around them, with little on the trees after the days of storms.
When at last they reached the round clearing in the trees, a circle of only a few majestic oaks stood sparsely apart as stoic guardians of the crude, stone edification built between them. Elizabeth turned to see Fitzwilliam's expression and did not like what she spied. Instead of intrigue, she found him frowning.
"Well?"
He opened his mouth and paused, taking a few steps from her and trying to make sense of the haphazard piles of stone and other natural material that seemed to stand between three oak trees.
"I'm afraid I am at a loss, is it some kind of folly?"
She shook her head and covered her mouth with her hand, but still could not hide her laugh.
"No, not a folly!"
She realized the poor man likely had little experience in the play of children.
"It is the remnants of the great castle! Or at least, that's what my father said," she explained, abandoning his side to demonstrate the slight depression in the forest floor that served as a moat, crossing the logs laid across it. She lifted her skirts and walked around the great trees, and then up to where she was standing on the makeshift platform, Mr. Darcy could not spy behind the crumbling wall.
"My sisters and I played here for hours, much like my father and his brother who built it. You may not cross, good knight, until you say the words to distinguish friend from foe!" she bellowed, as Mr. Darcy made a move to follow her. He took another leap afforded by his long legs, reaching the wall where his fair maiden finally stood eye-to-eye with him. He locked eyes with her and held his breath just as she held hers.
"Oh, but brave Princess, I've journeyed all this way and I'm afraid no one has told me the words. But I dearly pray you find fit to make me your friend, and never your foe," he said, leaning forward to not kiss her lips, but dipping his head down and daring to press his lips to the rising curve of her bosom, just at the edge of the low neckline.
"Sir, knight," she started, and Mr. Darcy continued his kisses along her decolletage, slipping his tongue against her skin and tasting the slight hint of saltiness from their physical exertion as he inhaled the scent of lavender. Her hands wrapped around his head as she practically crushed him to her body as her knees began to feel too weak to hold her balance. "Fitzwilliam," she managed before his hands reached around her waist and effortlessly lifted her out of the protection of her "castle," over the crumbling stone wall.
As he lowered her to the ground, sadly placing his newest interest of her body out of the convenient reach of his lips, the two nuzzled their faces together, feeling the chilled tips of each other's noses. Their warm breath lingered in the air around them, a happy condition only the sighs of lovers provided on a crisp, autumn afternoon.
"Our children will have the most imaginative, playful mother and I can scarcely wait to raise them with you," Mr. Darcy pulled her body in closer to his, emphasizing the future physical connections that would result in Elizabeth carrying his child.
She gasped.
"You do wish to be a mother?" he asked, surprising them both as such a question hardly sounded normal. But Elizabeth nodded and smiled up at him.
"I worry that our passions are so strong, and so very new to me, do you fear them burning themselves out, like a roaring fire running out of timber?"
"Is that what you fear?"
Slowly, she nodded.
"My parents, you see, and my father's warning . . ." she trailed off as she had no logical way to explain her convoluted feelings of pure, unadulterated bliss in Mr. Darcy's company, then the squabbles and cruelty both of her parents inflicted on each other. "I worry that we discount that at first, we both did not like each other very much," she explained.
Mr. Darcy wrapped his arms tighter around Elizabeth, holding her to his chest, as the two of them were very rarely afforded the luxury of such privacy.
"My temper at church today has not done much to assure you that I shall be the sturdy sort of husband you are asking for."
She began to speak, but he squeezed her arms signaling her to wait. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
"I can only offer the explanation that I am not accustomed to seeing you in distress, nor with the position of being unable to alleviate it. But I can swear that your happiness is my chief concern, and anything so much that is in my power to give, I dedicate my life to that enterprise."
The two separated a little so that their lips could meet once more in a passionate kiss that threatened to overwhelm them both. Hands roamed both the familiar curves and forms and a few new places. When at last they each took a pause, Mr. Darcy pressed his forehead against hers.
"We simply cannot go on like this, and they will expect us back. Can you write to your aunt in London?"
Elizabeth, breathing hard, struggled to find logic in his aims. "Yes, but why?"
"Ask if you may visit. I must go to London and see my solicitor about our settlement, and I shall procure a special license as well."
"You believe my father will continue to thwart our aims to be married?"
Mr. Darcy sighed and again embraced her to reassure them both. "I am not certain, but I lend credit to your concern. As you are one and twenty, and though I should never desire to place you in distress, would you choose me over your family's demands?"
Elizabeth yanked herself free of his embrace and took a few paces away from Fitzwilliam. He froze in panic, misunderstanding her anger was not directed at him, but the very situation her father's behavior had placed them in. Turning around, she faced Fitzwilliam with her hands clenched in fists by her side. Then she gulped.
"You are to be my husband and no other. Where anyone asks me to choose between them and you, they shall be sorely disappointed."
Breaking into a broad grin, Fitzwilliam Darcy rushed forward to pick Elizabeth up and spin them both as he showered her with affection. They laughed until they were dizzy, and then at last settled on returning to Longbourn as a plan was formed between them.
"Remind me to never make you angry at me."
"Oh, are you frightened?" she asked, not truly believing him even if he confessed such.
"No, but dangerously aroused and scarcely able to keep myself under good regulation."
She paused in their journey back, and he again fretted that he had pressed too quickly their intimacy. Again she reassured him it was merely her naivete and that she also anticipated the marriage state, then blushed profusely for daring to reveal so much of her wanton desires toward him.
"I know you, and recognize that we are both creatures of the strongest emotions, even if we are not the best at expressing the same," he began, as they were less than a few hundred yards from Longbourn. "Your letter, your first one, asked me how I reconciled the pangs of loving you, Madam, and surviving our separation, especially when I did not believe you returned the regard."
She flinched, and he cleared his throat but did not dwell on comforting her for the vehement rejection of his hand in the past. He turned, blocking the view of Longbourn ahead with his broad shoulders.
Carefully, he pulled something from his waistcoat pocket, a letter addressed to her.
"You do not have to accept what I've placed in my hand, as the contents of it will rival those books in your father's office that you explored to satisfy your curiosity."
"How did you guess?"
He chuckled. "When your father lectured me, I perused his shelves with my gaze, as fathers have a terrific habit of placing such literature in the same locations. Four slender volumes, pale grey, top shelf on the right?"
Elizabeth sucked in her breath, but couldn't help her smile. She had indeed read her father's copies of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
"I also assumed your sisters never bothered to learn how to read French," he said, balancing the letter on his fingertips.
"They did not. Nor Latin," she said. She stared at the letter he offered, so desperate to know the contents, but her father, her father absolutely could read French.
"You do not have to accept,"
"But I want," she began, then closed her eyes. Part of her mind said she ought to do what was proper, but what was proper for a woman engaged to a man? She remembered what she had just declared a moment ago, that to her, Mr. Darcy was paramount. "I want to read anything you write to me," she finished.
He dropped his voice to a near whisper. "And you understand the contents of the letter are . . . sensitive?" he asked. When she gave a single nod, his voice became huskier. "Private?"
She licked her lips, unable to risk a kiss as they were too close to Longbourn.
"The letter will not fall into anyone else's hands, but only my father would be able to read it," she said, trying to reassure Mr. Darcy.
He brightened at that intelligence, and the letter was slid into a pocket of her gown just before they looped arms and finished the last of the trek back to Longbourn.