As you may have noticed, Chapter 6 was not new material; I simply broke up what should have been two separate chapters into two postings. But this chapter, Chapter 7, is new.

FYI, this is all part of Section I (all Elizabeth's POV), which I have clarified at the beginning of Chapter 1. Then there will be Section II (all the Colonel's POV) and then Section III (all Mr. Darcy's POV). Or at least that is the current plan.

I am assuming that no one has decided to take up continuing this story, but if I am wrong, I don't see any problem with there being more than one version.

This will mostly be "T" with occasional discussions or interactions that stem into "M." And there will be some "M" in this chapter, although not to the full extent you might have expected if someone else was writing this now. As I've explained before, I am not wanting to write smut. I am a lot more interested in the characters' thoughts and feelings, how they evolve, rather than with how they get it on. I think some things are better left to the imagination than placed upon the written page. But given where I left things, some interaction was needed as this Mr. Darcy isn't going to just abandon his plan without reason and become a big old marshmallow.


7. Marital Duties

When Mr. Darcy pounced upon me, I was all but certain I would painfully lose my virtue within minutes, ignobly upon the road during the carriage ride to London, much as my youngest sister Lydia had. Of course there were many differences. Lydia had run away with a man that she may or may not have at that time believed would someday be her husband, and I was being taken by the man who was my husband, had every right before God and man to do what he was doing (and had even previously warned me he might take this very action).

Mr. Darcy pushed me down across the seat, and half stood and half leaned against me. I felt the flowers pinned to the back of my head being crushed, but in the crushing a sweet fragrance flowed around me.

My back was against the seat cushion, but I was at an angle with my legs bent and still dangling down. I felt each bump in the rough road, but my focus was elsewhere. Indeed my world had narrowed to just the man before me and seeing what he would do.

Mr. Darcy half reclined upon his side and left elbow, and half stood, I believe. He was so close, much closer than I had ever been to a man before, but the upper part of his body was only half pressed against me.

There was no time to become accustomed to this as his hands cupped my face, turned it toward his and he leaned into me, planting an immediate kiss upon my lips. This was no quick smack, no kiss of peace. No, this was something demanding, unleashed upon me as his mouth seized mine.

In my surprise, I left my lips soft, pliable, and soon my first kiss did not involve solely the moving of Mr. Darcy's lips against mine. The movement of his lips loosened mine, a slight parting being transformed through his efforts into my mouth widening into a small opening oval. A wetness, a flicking of his tongue soon becoming an invading force, further parted my lips. It was unexpected, if not exactly unpleasant.

Over the course of the next several minutes, it seemed as if Mr. Darcy's mouth and hands were everywhere all at once. I remained limp and passive, waiting to see what he would do. I neither assisted or resisted. I let the storm of his passion sweep over me, and indeed he seemed perfectly content to enact any imaginings he had of such an event, not needing my participation, only my presence.

Although I did nothing, I felt the effects his ministrations were having on me almost immediately. While Mr. Darcy's words before, without any touch designed to stir passions had made me want, it was nothing compared to his touch which burned. Too, I think in knowing what was bound to happen during the day or night following on from being made man and wife, I had been anticipating something of this sort all along.

As Mr. Darcy kissed my mouth, his tongue thrusting into that cavity, bringing to mind a different sort of entry he might soon seek (and perhaps in doing so, that was his intent, to begin to claim me), his right hand traveled from my face, down my neck, and then skimmed down my body, tracing between and around my chest. He traced a spiraling, circling, ever closer path towards my right breast, with my nipple the eventual target. I longed for him to reach his goal, but also feared the effect this would have on me. But before he reached that spot, he switched his ministrations to my left breast.

I almost moaned when Mr. Darcy finally reached one nipple (just for a moment) and then the other, but swallowed the feared sound down. I did not want him to know the effect his touch had on me and how much I longed for the completion of the path he had traced. Finally, the longed for contact took place again, longer this time, and I could feel how each of my nipples stiffened as Mr. Darcy touched me there through my dress, first one, then the other, while his lips, his sensual lips traveled down and were kissing along my neck.

Mr. Darcy paused for a moment and cried out, "Oh Elizabeth, my Elizabeth, oh how I need you!" He bent his head down once more and kissed the skin of my chest right above the neckline of my gown as he squeezed my breast, pinched the nipple between his thumb and pointer finger, making it come to a harder point before doing the same on the other side. These attentions both hurt a bit but also felt good, triggering an inner wetness to grow.

Then when Mr. Darcy left my breasts and ran his hand across my waist, somehow he found and felt the dip of my belly button with a single digit. Rather than travel straight down, as I half-expected him to do, his hand wound around the sides of my hips, making a figure eight, criss-crossing my abdomen.

Through all these gentle, almost curious touches, my nipples remained taut and rubbed uncomfortably against my shift and all the other layers.

I felt a longing to have Mr. Darcy touch my breasts again, to feel how, somehow, that touch connected deep inside me to other places below. I imagined him delving under the neckline of my dress, feeling the skin of his slightly rough fingers touching the soft skin of my breasts. This imagining was almost more than I could bear. But at the same time, I felt a sort of disgust with myself that I could feel such desire, knowing how Mr. Darcy had forced me into this marriage through omitting the other option I had.

Mr. Darcy lay a series of wet kisses up toward my neck, but then settled his lips into the hollow at my throat, near my collarbone. I pressed my legs together, but otherwise did my best not to react, no matter how good any of it felt.

He lifted himself up with one outstretched arm and stared at me with his dark eyes. While his hips were still against the side of mine, otherwise we were not touching.

Mr. Darcy ordered "Tell me how much you desire me."

I remained silent. In this, I think I had an advantage being a woman, for as the gentler sex we are expected from an early age to stifle inappropriate giggles, comments and the like, to retreat into impassivity when we have nothing good to say. While my Mamma was never a model of decorum, and my beloved Papa could freely make sport of our neighbors, Aunt Gardiner taught me that I had to be more restrained to be a proper lady. While I have learned to subtly tease, in the situation I was in, the best I could do was stay silent (I had not the presence of mind for any witty comment just then).

Mr. Darcy turned toward me, lowered his upper half upon me, pulled me against him, holding me a bit too tight and I felt the evidence of his desire against my skirt-covered leg. He instructed again, his voice growing deeper, reaching deep inside me, causing a fluttering, feeding the flame he had lit before into a blazing inferno, on the verge of jumping the grate and burning the house down, "Tell me, tell me now, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Darcy, how much you desire me, how much you want to be my wife in all ways."

I refused to speak, even as the use of my given name, and then my married name, caused a further ache. I would not give him the satisfaction. Mr. Darcy did not deserve it. I closed my eyes, trying to block him out, to calm my desires.

It did not work. I was more aware of Mr. Darcy than ever, especially as the jostling carriage rocked his member closer to the spot where we both longed for it to be.

There was a part of me that very much wanted his assault on my person to continue, to have him pull my skirt up, to lower his fall, free himself and . . . Well I knew how it was supposed to go but not how it would truly feel for Mr. Darcy to sink that most male of parts within me.

I felt then a true kinship with Lydia, felt that I could understand her so much better now. What woman could resist such caresses in the relative privacy of a carriage? Before then, I had a limited understanding of what want felt like.

In that moment, I felt longing, fear and curiosity. What would it be like to become a wife, to know the secrets of the whole thing, to submit in this way to my husband? Would it truly change me in some fundamental way? I did not know, but I believed I was about to find out, for his hand inched ever nearer to the junction of my thighs and I felt the wet warmth of my desire pooling there, wetting my thighs. If he had simply proceeded, I believe I would have welcomed all of it, given myself over to just feeling and not thinking.

Mr. Darcy groaned and suddenly released me, springing up and away from me, taking the backwards facing seat across from me. "How angry are you?" he demanded, sounding angry himself. "Why do you hold back from letting me please you?"

If only he had known that my self-control was a fraying thread, ready to snap had he just kissed or caressed me a moment more!

I opened my eyes, struggled to slow my breathing and sat up. I straightened my skirt, smoothing out wrinkles, making sure my ankles were covered. I felt bereft more than I felt relieved, but I certainly didn't want Mr. Darcy to know the effect he had upon me. Once again I was glad that the evidence of my desire was not so obvious as his.

I gave myself a few moments to consider and then answered Mr. Darcy's question with questions of my own, deliberately letting my tone take on a sort of cold harshness, fed by my disappointment in the fact that he was no longer kissing and touching me.

"Do you really wish to know, Mr. Darcy, or do you want me to pretend so as to please your ego? Do you wish for absolution despite having not a care as to what you have done to me? Should I flatter you, make you believe that suddenly I am in love with you, despite the fact that the modicum of goodwill I felt toward you and all you have done for my family was crushed under the revelation of your most selfish act? Tell me what you would have me do?

"My recollection is that you did not demand my eager participation the first time or two, that in our negotiations it was resolved that we might have some honesty betwixt us, when we are alone. Did you ever mean to honor our understanding, or did you simply agree so that I might consent to tie my life to yours?

"Did you return to Meryton to propose simply because you could not countenance your cousin possibly succeeding where you had failed? Was I simply a pawn in some almost sibling rivalry, a discarded bone that only becomes appealing when another dog seeks to claim it? If Colonel Fitzwilliam expressed no interest in me, would you have ever deigned to ask for my hand? Had you any concern for me and mine before? Arrogant, insufferable man, have you damned us all to abject misery all for the sake of winning?"

I could not seem to stop my tirade, even as I saw how it wounded Mr. Darcy, how his shoulders rounded, my words weighing him down. I felt a stab of guilt at how I was hurting him, but my tongue once unleashed would not halt. I justified that he deserved to hear every word, to understand the full depth and breadth of what he had done, to receive his just desserts.

I continued, "And to think, you were planning on taking me in this carriage, as if I were a common trollop rather than your wife. Was this designed to humiliate me, in re-enacting what Mr. Wickham did to Lydia, in their hired conveyance on the road to London? Were you seeking to prove me no better than her? Did you want to make sure I knew how little value I have to you? Would you want your driver, your valet" (his valet was riding outside with the coachman) "to hear our coupling? Did you want my maiden's blood spilled upon the seat, a sort of souvenir to hold over me? Why have you done all of this to me?"


A/N: Sorry to leave it there. How do you think Darcy will respond? I wish I had further chapters with which to reward you promptly should you review, but alas I still have to write them. However, reviews might help encourage me to write faster.