Thanks for your patience. I enjoyed getting more chapters out on My Greatest Regret and Tired of Waiting for You but now it is time to get back to this story. In reviewing what I have written for this chapter, I must admit that I was a bit inspired by Scifigal2k's story, A Most Beloved Sister, although in many ways this Lydia is the antithesis of that Jane. I may need to tweak earlier bits to give at least a hint about what will be revealed about Lydia in this chapter. Enjoy.

Oh, for anyone who remembers my saga with my special needs daughter E, she's going to be before a court again in another two weeks as her birth sister isn't willing to be her guardian anymore. I knew that was all going to fall apart sooner or later. It lasted just about a year. We aren't willing to be her guardians again (our relationship has been so much better this past year without being in that role), so that leaves the state. I'm not sure what they'll do with her. I've been praying hard about it all, that and the situation in Israel and Palestine and all the antisemitism. The cruelty and suffering around the world seems overwhelming at times, but hey that's why we need to escape into FF right?

Chapter 45: Sharing my own Family Secrets

I was nervous while waiting for Fitz to join me for breakfast. The food had already arrived (I had not thought through the embarrassment that awaited me in greeting servants with the dishes, in still wearing my night clothes, and my attempt to settle myself into my bed and summon them from there after they knocked failed, for they had come via the front door which I had locked). I was not sure whether I should knock on my husband's door or simply wait, should wait while standing or while sitting at the table. In my fretting I had paced about, opening the curtains and then closing them again, for as beautiful as the blue sky was, this was London and across our garden was another house and I was still in my thin nightgown and robe. And oh how the food called to me, kippers and toast (with butter and jam waiting to be slathered onto it), eggs and some kind of baked apple dish! The scent made me wild to fill my plate full, to try a bite of everything, but I would not disrespect my husband so by dishing it up myself and eating before he arrived.

A knock on the connecting door roused me and I swallowed the saliva collecting in my mouth with the thought of such food. "Come in," I cried and he did so.

My husband, Fitz, is a very impressive figure of a man. I have always thought so, whether I liked him or hated him. But on this morning, it was somehow even more so. He was freshly shaved and his hair was styled. His banyan was tied just right. He stood tall, proud, with a vigor and strength that other men would envy.

I felt all of my shortcomings then. I had not thought to summon my own maid, and I was quite certain that my own hair and face was a fright. I quickly swiped at the area around my mouth, fearing that crusted drool might be found there (as occasionally happened when I slept hard), but fortunately felt nothing. But still, I felt that I was the one out of place, not he.

"My darling, please," he drew out my chair, "be seated." We sat, he offered a prayer and I forgot to be self conscious about my appearance as I ate until satisfied, and then a couple more bites besides.

I ate rather more quickly than I usually did, for at my home at Longbourn of late it was necessary to chew each bite as many times as possible to trick my stomach into thinking I was eating more than I was. To have extra of everything, to have more than the two of us could possibly eat and to have it contain every needed ingredient and to be prepared so well, it was a luxury. Once I was full to almost bursting, I realized I had hardly spoken to Mr. Darcy, other than indicating what I wanted on my plate when he asked, and that while I was finished he was still leisurely eating.

"I . . . I was quite hungry."

"So I observed," he said drolly. "I enjoyed seeing your relish, to know that as my wife you shall always eat well."

"Yes, indeed." I felt then that the ease of the night before had vanished. It is easier to have candor in the dark after the day has passed away. I missed how we had freely shared with one another, talking about such weighty matters without parsing our words.

Now that I had nothing to occupy myself but to sip on my second cup of tea, I did not know what to do or say. I wondered if Fitz had taken my request to remain in our bed clothes to mean that he should now expect to partake, in the light of day, of those marital activities he had not demanded of me the night before. I had it in mind that perhaps it was only right to offer what he could have demanded, had even had a certain curiousity to see him in sufficient light to study his unclothed form. But now, now, it all seemed impossible. Still was it not my duty?

Fitz seemed more at ease than me, spreading butter and jam upon his toast, sipping his coffee, taking a hearty, crunchy bite. "Lizzy, will you tell me more about your family?"

I was glad to have a topic that harkened back to the night before. I sipped tea and considered what to share. My mother was the obvious place to start.

"My mother was the reputed beauty of Meryton and I suppose my father was much like other men in chosing appearance over substance. Men do not look for women of intelligence, but an ornament, a pretty bauble."

Fitz wrinkled his brow at this but remained silent.

"She, she has never been clever but I remember when I was younger she could be merry and played games with us. But all that changed after she birthed Lydia. She travailed for a long time with her, or perhaps it only seemed long to a child not yet six years of age. Then she was ill and there was some doubt whether the babe and she should be well.

"Everyone seemed to think me too young to understand, so I heard things that perhaps I ought not. In the months that followed, there were whispers as to whether the birth had damaged my mother, and whether Lydia might be simple for she had been limp and grey when born and did not cry her first for a time after her birth.

"I heard Lydia was late to do those things that all babies do, did not walk until she was nearly two but my mother would not allow that anything might be wrong with her, denied she might be a defective for she had not the visage of one."

I saw that Fitz had paused in his eating, his fork suspended in mid-air with a bite before he set it down to give me his full attention, eyes wide, but face fixed in blandness. As he said nothing, after a brief pause I continued, knowing that given the family secrets he had shared with me that I could trust to his discretion also.

"When Lydia turned two, I overheard a discussion between my father and my mother. She was insisting that they should try again to have a son and whining about her lonely bed. He exclaimed that she only threw daughters and that would not change. I remember he said something to the effect of, and in quite a cruel voice, too, 'You have lost our family its rightful inheritance, for I shall never have a son. Oh that I had never married you! Why could you not have died with that idiot still in your womb and given me another chance with a new wife? You ignorant fool, you are useless to me and yet I was the fool who married you.'"

Fitz gasped at my words, which were but a shadow of what I had heard. He extended a hand toward me but I shrugged away from it. I did not want a comfort that would cause me to cry. I wanted to get it all out.

I clarified "My father used much worse words than those, words a child should never hear a father say about her mother, words I did not really understand then, but the disdain in his voice, the harshness of his tone told me enough. Still, I sought out Mrs. Hill (who later rose to be our housekeeper but was then yet an upstairs maid) and told her all I had heard. By her gasp, I learned how shocking it all was. She bid me to keep those words and that topic secret and until now I have."

"I thank you for sharing this confidence with me," my husband replied.

"How could I do less, after everything you have shared with me?" I rhetorically asked before continuing my account. "You would think that what my father said, his casual cruelty to my mother, my sister, would have turned me away from him and toward her, but instead somehow that spurned me on to trying to impress him and to reject her. I did not really understand why I did that then, but upon much reflection I have concluded if I could but be on his team I would not risk his scorn. Please do not misunderstand, this was not a common occurrence and indeed these were the worst words from him I ever heard."

"Yet as things went on, things seemed to confirm his impression of Lydia for it was apparent that something was not quite right with her. I heard Mrs. Lucas and Mrs. Long whispering about it when Lydia was about six, for Maria Lucas and Mrs. Long's nieces although younger could do what Lydia could not, but they never dared speak to my mother about it.

"Jane and I observed that while Kitty was sounding out easy words at age eight and could add small sums, Lydia when she turned ten had barely learnt her letters and could only count to ten on her fingers, and this despite my mother's daily tutelage (she made far more effort with Lydia that she ever did with the rest of us). While Lydia eventually learned to haltingly read, even now she lacks much proficiency so we are obliged to read aloud to her should she wish to enjoy novels. Oh to think how Mr. Collins disobliged her on his first visit, she had seldom before been denied. We were fortunate she did not throw a fit right then."

"Did she often throw fits, and this after her come out?" My husband inquired.

"Yes, she did. For Mamma had taught her (by always catering to each of her whims when she did so), that this was how to get her way. Truly, Lydia was better in part when younger, for when she had Mamma's attention she liked to please, but at some point the work she was set at proved too hard and then she began to fuss and complain. I shall never forget how she spoke, though all real attempts to teach her halted when she was not yet fourteen." I made myself whine in imitation of my sister "But Mamma, I do not like to read! But Mamma I do not like to do sums. I am too pretty to have to do such things."

Fitz frowned.

"Yes, you must be wondering about that. My mother always praised her beauty as if it was the most important thing, but when she was younger, this did not get her out of work, for my mother used to always say," and then I spoke as she would, "Lydia, dear, now do not fuss. Even queens and princesses have to read and add a little.

"Before her come out, Mamma gave up on helping her learn anything besides how to attract a man. Perhaps my mother was simply tired of struggling like a man trying to bail out the sea with the rising tide, for Lydia began to talk of nothing but men, getting married first and going before the rest of her sisters. My mother did not help matters by telling her 'You are every bit as beautiful as Jane and more lively besides just as I was. You shall make a fine, fine match.' No indeed."

"What troubles me," said Fitz, his brow knit in concern, "is that despite your father's evident knowledge of Lydia's . . . limitations, yet he still let her go to Brighton."

"I tried to dissuade him," I explained, "but he wouldn't listen to me. He simply wanted his own peace, chose it over what was best for Lydia, let her be vulnerable away from him rather than endure my mother's and Lydia's complaints if she were not able to go. I can hardly forgive him for that.

"As for my mother, she always denied there was aught wrong with Lydia. Perhaps in her ignorance she simply thought Lydia was like her. Yet, in my heart I think she knows, for she stopped encouraging us to develop our learning and gain accomplishments when it became clear Lydia could never match what we could do. Always Lydia was praised for her efforts while ours were ignored. She cannot cut and sew fabric for a pattern, but does tolerably well at taking pre-made bonnets apart and making them up again, for then the holes of the prior stitches can guide her hand and it is not too difficult for her to add some silk flowers, ribbon or lace.

"If it were not for Papa encouraging us to develop our skills further (and my fear that he would be as derisive of me as he always was of Mamma if I did not), I should be as ignorant as my mother. I certainly would not have read half of what I did. I do know I could have learned far more of the piano forte if Mamma was not satisfied when I learned enough songs for my sisters to practice dancing. There Papa was of no help as he had little interest in whether I learned to play or not. Poor Mary never understood that becoming the most accomplished of all of us would never earn Mamma's praise. Poor Kitty most of all of us has been kept deliberately ignorant so as to not show Lydia up."

Certain then that I had said more than enough, had embarrassed my family beyond all measure, I fell silent, shame flushing my face as I studied my empty plate, empty but for a few crumbs and a smear of jam.

Fitzwilliam suddenly smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, once, twice, thrice. I was astonished, even more so when I heard him castigate himself.

My husband declared as he shook his head, "I have been so wrong in assuming I understood the situation. Oh, I am an arrogant, stupid man! I thought that Lydia's character was irrevocably bad, but from what you have told me, given her . . . difficulties, others bear the lion's share of the responsibility. For she may not have known better, but they ought to have. They have served her most ill by not protecting her better, in not teaching her in the way she ought to go. Do not mistake me, I admire that your family kept her at home, tried to shield her from the scorn of the world, but elevating her by holding the rest of you back was not well done at all. I wonder now at my assumption that it is best to keep Lydia and her son in your mother's care. What say you, is it too late to remedy Lydia's behavior, or could she improve with proper guidance? Can she even adequately care for her son herself?"

I felt my mouth gape open in wonder. Could this be the same man who had intended to completely cut me off from my youngest sister and Little George? Was he truly now taking an interest in her?

I also felt shame, shame that I had mostly ignored Lydia's plight, had done nothing to help her, Kitty, Mary, besides one halfhearted conversation with my father. I was content to just cleave to Jane, enjoy that we were left to our own devices and pretend most of the time that my younger and annoying sisters hardly existed. I had worried far more about how their behavior reflected poorly on me, about my own discomfort, than about whether I, myself, could make things better for them. True, my mother would have opposed any interference with her precious Lydia, and my father would have laughed at my expense, but I had hardly even tried. I had never even wondered if Little George would be well in her care. I trusted my mother to see him clothed, bathed and changed, but had not thought forward to when he needed to be taught to speak, read, be educated. If it was left to Lydia, well how could she teach what she had never learnt? Was he destined to grow up ignorant, fit for nothing, not from lack of aptitude but lack of instruction? Given the disgrace of his birth he would already have so much to overcome if Lydia did not guard her tongue well and follow my husband's plan.

"For now, with my mother's help, well enough I suppose. But as he grows, on her own . . . I hardly know but likely not."

Fitz scratched at his chin, cogitating. "Something else will have to be done, I suppose. He shall need a governess at the very least. Perhaps I have erred in suggesting that your sisters live with the Gardiners and away from them. I am sure Mrs. Bennet loves Lydia but she has failed her once and I suspect she shall again. I wonder whether Wickham understood Lydia's vulnerability, that she had a weak mind, when he took her to London? If he did, it makes all that he did that much more despicable."

I nodded. I had no idea what Mr. Wickham may or may not have known, but I shared my husband's view of the matter.

"What we should do about it all bears further thought," Fitz added. "No need to resolve it all now, not when there are better things we may do."

He ate one last bite of bread with a thick dollop of dark jam and then pushed his chair out from under the table, turning it toward me. "You are done, yes?"

I glanced back at my empty plate and drained tea cup. "Yes." I do not think he could sense my inner turmoil, my thoughts regarding what more I could have done in the years before Lydia left for Brighton.

"Well then," his voice pitched lower, "come here, Lizzy." I wasn't quite sure what Fitz wanted, but his tone, his look, told me of a hunger he had that had naught to do with food.

I felt a delicious tension low in my belly, a now familiar feeling of inner slickness that his tone alone seemed to spur. I stood on wobbly legs and he patted the left leg of his spread thighs. Did he want . . .

"Come, sit here." He patted his thigh again. I glanced at him and noted his now tented banyan. I turned my back to him and with a bit of trepidation but also curious anticipation, lowered myself to perch on his thigh, closer to his knee than to "it." He put his arm round me and slid me closer to him, the material of his banyan also sliding toward him under me, revealing his hairy thigh. The warmth of his rod pressed into my hip and he slid his right hand lower round me, pulling up my robe and nightgown until he revealed the skin of the top of my right thigh. Then he slid his large hand up and between my thighs.

I felt both embarrassed but also a sharp surge of longing as I spread my thighs just a hint so that his fingers could delve within. To have this happening now, in the full light of day without any prelude felt deliciously wicked somehow.

Fitz began kissing the right side of my neck, nibbling my earlobe as I lolled back upon him, my attention focused on these two places of delight, a moan escaping my mouth as my eyelids drifted closed. His left hand skimmed my left breast, over my nightgown and that was good, too, but I longed to feel skin on skin.

"May I have you now, Mrs. Darcy, in your bed?" His voice was impossibly deep, rich.

I was beyond the power of coherent words, but must have muttered something he took as an affirmation, for then he stood, lifting me up right with him and then swept me up into his arms. While we kissed (his mouth sweet from the jam), my arms wrapped around his neck, he carried me to my bed. A wave of passion overwhelmed me and it seemed as if his mouth, his tongue and his fingers were everywhere, determined to give me every pleasure. After he made me feel more wonderful than I ever had before, then he was within me and we moved as one creature in a burst of frenetic activity that for me was almost as good as what had occurred moments before. Even after it was all over, we clung to one another for many long minutes. He finally moaned out, "Oh my love, before was grand but this, this, us like this, is everything."

I must have slept, for the next thing I remember is opening my mussy eyes to a dressed Mr. Darcy who was kissing my forehead and murmuring, "Ah my love, I hated to wake you just now, would rather think of you asleep and bare in your bed, wish I could join you again."

He slid the covers down, tweaked a nipple that was a hint sore from when he had sucked upon it earlier. Somehow this did not embarrass me in the least. I longed for his touch, for him to be delighted with me. Even the soreness was a pleasant reminder of what we had shared and I longed right then to partake of my marital duties again.

Fitz smiled softly as if he knew what I was thinking. And why should he not have, after what we had shared? Were we not truly joined now in thought, vow and deed? Had I not fully pledged myself to him only the night before?

"But alas," he shook his head regretfully, "your maid will soon be here with your bath and then you must attend to your fittings."

As I bathed (and a bath was certainly necessary after all we had done), I recollected that in our joint passion I had neglected to peruse his person as I had wished to do. I determined, Next time I will examine Mr. Darcy at my leisure. I will learn all about his body until it is as familiar as my own. For he belongs to me as surely as I belong to him.

A/N: I hope this was worth the wait. This Darcy is like a dark chocolate cake, yum.

Pet peeve rant: Has anyone else noticed that just about every M rated PP fanfic has either Darcy and/or Wickham exhibiting a wolfish grin? I am sick of it and determined not to use it when there are so many other choices to be had.

I feel like this story is wanting to get wrapped up, or at least the bulk of the Darcy-Elizabeth action. I do want to do something for Colonel Fitzwilliam and maybe pair him with the other Elizabeth but could really care less about Elizabeth's introduction to society, because let's face it, it is going to go well and it'll be okay for them to have Georgiana with them at Pemberley. What loose ends do you want me to wrap up more thoroughly than an epilogue could provide? Now's your chance to put in your two cents.