Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm on the mend but I didn't feel up for a long trip so I sent my boys and husband off by themselves to visit Grandpa. I stayed at home to rest, write and pet the cat and dog.

Thanks as always for all the reviews. You and thoughts of a hunky Darcy have been keeping me company.


28. Thinking Better of Him

Dressed in a nightgown with a pink knit blanket wrapped around me for lack of a robe, I knocked once, twice on the communicating door. Mr. Darcy opened it while my knuckles were moving to make the last of the three staccato raps I had planned. He seized my outstretched fist and kissed it. In that moment I knew I would have to strictly enforce the rule I had determined on, that we would speak first.

I pulled away from him and Mr. Darcy's eyes showed hurt and a pleading look that reminded me of my father's favorite hunting dog, King, who had been more fireside companion than retriever. It was the look King would get when hoping for, but being denied a scrap of meat. It was a look my father could not resist, but here I was the meat.

I could not keep looking at Mr. Darcy while he looked at me in such a way, for my body knew what he wanted, remembered only the most delightful moments from before, and begged and whined for it, too. It was only my pesky, refined mind that was keeping me from him.

Looking about for something, anything that might help, I spied the chair I had been seated at only moments before as Frank undid my hair and removed my jewelry. Gaining sudden inspiration, I hastened over to the chair (which was upholstered in pink and red stripes and made of cherry wood). I turned it around to face the bed rather than the mirror.

"Mr. Darcy, please sit here," I half instructed, half asked. I was hopeful for his cooperation, but did not rely upon it.

He hesitated. "You are cold. Surely we would both be warmer in the bed." He was wearing his dark banyan again and I imagined he might well be cold himself. Then my wicked animal mind suggested that if I called him hither, I could remove his banyan and see by candlelight what I had only felt before. It was a naughty, naughty thought!

"Please," I said again, begging both him and myself to behave, and he sat in the chair. I tossed my blanket at him and got under the covers of the bed, sitting back against the headboard, pillows propped behind me.

"Thank you," I told him. "I wish to talk and if you are beside me, I feel certain we will do other things."

"But you liked those other things," Mr. Darcy mildly protested, even as he arranged the pink blanket to cover his lap and legs. With his body partially obscured further by the bulk of the blanket, I could think a bit more clearly, until my treacherous mind recalled him being in my bed, covered by nothing but the bedding.

I tried to distract myself, focus on the ridiculousness of him sitting there as he was. Mr. Darcy was far too large for the chair. Indeed, his knees jutted up, and about him was a lady's pink blanket. It made for a somewhat ridiculous picture, but he bore with it with dignity.

In fact, the contrast showed him as incredibly male, with his chest hair which peeped out from the vee where his banyan crossed (which I recalled feeling against my face and even now longed to run my fingers through, to feel its downy softness contrasting with the muscles that lay beneath). Mr. Darcy was also so tall, not fitting the chair that was yet too tall for me as many chairs were. He was so much bigger than me, and yet we had come together in the marital bed somehow, and he had let me place him there in that chair, rather than just ravish me again with kisses, touches and all of him.

There was something in that, that Mr. Darcy was in that chair by my command, my will which made me feel strong, though I was by far the weaker. I squirmed from my spot in the bed, twisted my legs together, recalling so many sensations, touches.

I told myself, You can do this. You must do this. I told myself, Do not be distracted, there is plenty of time for other things later. Finally, there was nothing for it, but to just open my mouth and talk, for avoiding it was not getting me anywhere.

"Mr. Darcy, there is much we need talk about, and although it would take too long to address it all tonight, I mean for us to begin. So much has happened to me in such a short time, I have been all turned about, jumbled. I am sure you know I married you because I thought I had no other choice. I had begun to accept it, when you confessed to acting precipitously to beat the Colonel out."

Mr. Darcy nodded in acknowledgement, but before he could make any further response I continued, determined to have my say.

"Despite my anger, with how you kissed and touched me, you somehow raised a desire in me. You promised me my pleasure, but just as I was reaching mine, you took yours. But I am given to understand that what we had was far better than some women ever get. I am quite confused, but given that we are married, I am determined to make the best of it that I can."

"I am glad," said he.

"It is not yet your turn," I told him, my tone half teasing, half scolding. "Let me express what I need say."

Mr. Darcy nodded again and I was half surprised at how obliging he was, but perhaps I should not have been. I recalled in that moment how accommodating he was when I made certain demands for my future when we were at Mr. Phillip's office.

"Some of the things the Countess said, opened my eyes, changed my perspective. I am uncertain if you love me, can love me, but I do know that you have done more for me than anyone else ever has, have sacrificed much, but as much as I have tried, I still cannot understand why you went about it as you did."

I fell silent and waited for his response. Mr. Darcy pondered, gave a sigh and then began, idly pleating and un-pleating a portion of the blanket on his lap.

"I have been trying to account for my behavior but I have no good excuse. I was determined that you would be mine before I proposed the first time. After your rejection at Hunsford, after I gave you the letter and returned to Pemberley, I tried to put you out of my mind."

I heard a catch in Mr. Darcy's voice as he added, "When that did not work, I tried to degrade you and my feelings toward you so that your spurning of me would not hurt so much. I told myself I was better off, but whatever I was doing, if I lost focus from my task it was because your face was before me.

"You cannot know the agony I felt when I heard from Bingley's correspondence with Mr. Lucas about what had befallen your sister. I thought of your anguish and misery, how you must have been suffering, unable to do anything to recover them. I wished to be your champion even if you never knew of it. I determined I must act, not for her sake but for yours. But I did not think I could ever offer for you again, and saw the imprudence of renewing such a proposal under the circumstances, especially given that I was the last man on earth whom you could ever be prevailed upon to marry."

"Oh, that I had never said such words," I murmured more to me than him.

Mr. Darcy paused and considered me, but continued when I said nothing further.

"When I learned Miss Lydia had birthed a fatherless child, I knew the divide betwixt us was too wide for any honorable proposal. I told myself that my feelings for you were pure lust and not love. I told myself that if I saw you again, I would see the folly of my previous feelings, have the critical eye to then observe you had hardly a good feature.

"I told myself that I needed to forget you forever, but I could not forget your fine eyes, how they sparkled with intelligence and merriment, how you moved when you walked, a certain way you have of inclining your head when curious or deep in thought.

"It was utterly shocking to me, unbelievable, inconceivable, impossibly to imagine, when knowing of all that had taken place that this was not too much for Richard to seek you out and marry you. That he could think it, wish to do it, well I thought then, if him, why not me? It was thus his declaration of what he would do that lit a fire beneath me and spurred me to act."

I could tell Mr. Darcy was far from done, but interjected while he drew in breath, "I wish to reassure you now, Mr. Darcy, that as much as I admire Colonel Fitzwilliam's kindly, noble heart, as much as I enjoyed his company in Kent and even returned home with a girlish fantasy that it might be pleasant to be married to him," at this Mr. Darcy growled, "my heart was not engaged and he is forevermore a cousin to me.

"What could have been is gone and you are my husband. It was you this evening that protected me. It is you that stands beside me. It is you that shares my bed and will father my children. It is you that I hope I shall some day grow to love.

"As for the good Colonel, I hope you, he and I can all one day be friends and that he can find a woman to love who shall love him in return, but I will not repine what I have. Now, pray continue."

"Oh Elizabeth," cried Mr. Darcy, "how good and kind you are to tell me this, to give me such hope!"

He clasped his hands together and fervently added, "Thinking of my long hoped for future, this road ahead with you, my love, beside me . . ." he blinked several times, swallowed and then continued, "it is all I could have wanted, makes me trying to return my thoughts to their prior course all but impossible. I cannot even recall what I was speaking about."

I was glad, but wished to still hear his explanation. "You were telling me that the Colonel's declaration spurred you to act."

"Oh yes. I shall tell you all, though I am not cast in the best light. While it is true that jealousy played some role, I also did seek to protect Richard and you as I could bear the probable repercussions so much better than him. Still, I did not know what to do.

"I told you in my letter that I learned good principles from my parents but that was only a half-truth. My mother was a godly woman and tried her best to teach me right from wrong, but she was taken from us just after Georgiana was born.

"My father . . . well, he was a mix of good and bad. He was a fair master, generous to the poor but in his treatment of women . . . he felt entitled to do as he wished, for he had the power. To my father my mother was just an object, a means to an end."

Mr. Darcy slowly shook his head and I leaned forward, curious to learn more.

"My father enjoyed hearing of George Wickham's exploits, wished I would be freer to grasp what our position in life gave us access to, saw all women as far beneath us. In this, he was not that different from the Earl and Baron, to most men of power that I knew. In the end, he died an ignoble death, a victim of his vices, though I believe he may have made himself right with God just before his death.

"While I know he was wrong in acting in such a way, society accepted his actions, sees me as a prude. For while, by his arrangement, I was educated in the ways of the flesh by a woman he procured for such a purpose, a common practice from what I have heard, I have never visited a brothel or kept a mistress, though he gave me and Wickham funds for that very purpose. As you would expect, Wickham spent every farthing he could on enjoying himself, but I would not do it.

"Although disguise is my abhorrence, though lying is certainly wrong, I will freely tell you that I lied to my father and told him I spent the money as he desired. I did not want to disappoint him or quarrel with him."

"What did you do with the money?" I asked, not because I truly cared what his answer would be, but because I wished to distract him from unnecessary self-castigation.

"In a way that I think your father would have approved. I spent the money predominantly on books (for I did not want the money available to tempt me, or to have Wickham attempt to wheedle it out of me). Perhaps Mr. Bennet would have been amused to note that once this habit was firmly established, having thoroughly enjoyed the reading material I so obtained, I kept up the habit even after my father was gone."

The way Mr. Darcy spoke about my own father's likely approval, brought a fresh wave of grief to me (for those feelings were never truly gone, simply obscured by other things), but also a wave of resentment. Papa had loved his books, but spent far more on them than he ought to have, with five daughters who needed dowries. Nothing had come of it in the end but us selling them all to keep a roof over our heads. But whatever deficits my father had, I knew he had valued me and was not a lecherous man, had never dishonored my mother.

Mr. Darcy continued, "I tell you all this not as an excuse for how I have acted, for each man is responsible for his own behavior, but in the hope that you might understand me a bit better. Being raised as I was, I knew full well how my father would have wanted me to deal with you."

He looked down as he explained, "My father expected me to marry well, suggested my cousin Anne as a prudent choice for the likelihood that in bearing me a child she would conveniently expire and leave Rosings with the Darcys."

Mr. Darcy forced out a bitter laugh. "I was never to marry anyone I should care for; that was not its purpose. Marriage was to advance our family, to gain wealth, status, land. As my father had married the daughter of an earl, I was to do as well. If I thought he would have disapproved of you before, that was nothing to what he would have thought after."

Mr. Darcy shook his head, then hung it. He ran his fingers through his dark hair. His eyes still avoided mine. "My affection, my passion was to be let loose upon a mistress. Father would never have conceived you fit for any other role; he and all the rest would have thought me weak, stupid, imprudent to ask for your hand. I will admit to being tempted to have you in my life anyway I could, honor be damned. I think my very anger at your past refusal let me justify considering that.

"Still, that temptation was relatively short-lived. I could have never acted thus and ever faced my sister again. By the time I approached you, I was determined to marry you no matter what. I selfishly was unwilling to let you refuse me and determined that if you showed no interest in me I would explain what I could have done and you would be pleased to accept my more honorable proposition."

Mr. Darcy shifted a little in the wooden chair, rubbed at his neck. He looked right at me as he declared, "Elizabeth, if you had but smiled at me, shown some sign of being pleased to see me, some hint that I might receive a positive answer this time, I might have just fallen on my knees, declared my undying love and begged for your hand, but you did not."

I could not help but huff back "So it is my fault that you proposed so ill?"

"Not at all," said he. "But your dullness, seeming disinterest in what I had to say, it made me angry and determined to rouse some reaction in you, good or bad. Your indifference was worse to me than your prior anger, and I was scared that you would refuse me, even knowing the likely degrading other options. I was honest in that if I could not have your love, I still wanted you."

"Did it never occur to you," I heard myself raising my voice, "that I was dull and depressed because I had lost my father who I adored, was trapped in the misery of seeing the life that had always been mine slip away, having with Jane and Mary to take care of the rest while trying to maintain some modicum of dignity?

"Your proposal was just one more degradation when I would have welcomed some sign that someone cared for me, myself, and not just what I could do for them."

Mr. Darcy pondered this for a few moments. "So if I had arrived with a bouquet of flowers, gotten down of my knees, declared my undying love, promised to care for you and yours and begged for your hand, you would have accepted?" Mr. Darcy queried in a tone of disbelief. "I cannot imagine it would have been that easy."

"Perhaps not," I conceded, "but I am certain I would have carefully considered your offer and thought much better of you for it. I am sure, in time, I would have seen the sense in accepting it."

"I was not sure you would have," said he, "so I suppose I was a fool. I could not bear to present my heart on a salver and let it be trampled on again."

"That I can well understand," I acknowledged. "I have a philosophy of life that I suppose I should be adhering to more closely than I have of late which may be of some use to you, too. Think only of the past as gives you pleasure."

With a sudden inspiration I amended, "Can we not add to this that by mutual agreement we recall only the pleasant lie of the proposal you just described and that I accepted with joy? We are equally married in any event and even though I do not feel as you do, at least not yet, I still intend to be a good wife to you."

"Agreed," said Mr. Darcy, and a certain tension in his shoulders eased, "and I have always intended to be a good husband to you, but I feel I shall always be falling short and seeking to recompense you where I have failed.

"Last night, for example, I planned to give you all the pleasure I could, but even after satisfying my own needs earlier, I was overcome by my own desires, feared to spill myself upon your bedding like a callow youth and then not be able to consummate our marriage later if you would but let me. I begged and you gave into me, and I lost myself in that pleasure, but when it was complete I was embarrassed and fled like a naughty child who has claimed a sweet before it be time."

Mr. Darcy's eyes darkened and his voice pitched lower. "My dear wife, I would very much like to make it up to you. Please, let me please you. I will do better this time, I swear. Just tell me what you would have me do."

Oh, how his voice, his eyes were like a physical caress, from across the room! I felt my breath quicken, more warmth pool. I very much wanted that.

If Jane or Mary had been Mr. Darcy's bride, I doubt either would have been brave enough to tell him what each desired most, but my courage rose and I confessed in a tumble of words even as I looked away from him, embarrassed to say what needed to be said, "I liked very much all the kissing and sucking everywhere, upon my face, my neck, my breasts, how it made me feel.

"But besides that, what I truly desire most, at the end . . . there was a place down below, but outside that gave me the most pleasure when your mouth was there. I felt something building inside me, hinting at a delight I have never known. If you can but give me that, I will freely give you what you want."

"May I now?" asked he in his deep rumbly tone, his eyes gleaming with intensity and passion.

Judging we had spoken more than enough for one night, I made up my mind to agree. "Yes, but I have a condition."

"Which is?"

"Tonight, and as a usual practice, do not leave my bed after unless I tell you to go. I always shared a bed with Jane and I have a feeling you will be better at keeping me warm than she ever could."

In answer, Mr. Darcy burst from the chair, casting the fluffy pink blanket upon the floor. He paused to blow out the candle, then in the dim light remaining from the moonlight in the slight divide between the curtains, I saw him divest himself of his banyan as he strode to my bed.

If I had thought Mr. Darcy's ministrations to be intense the night before, I soon discovered he had been holding back. He feasted upon me most thoroughly and I revelled in every sensation, did not restrain myself from reacting to each lovely feeling. Indeed, I do not think I could contain myself had I tried.

After a long interval of him raising my passions to a fevered pitch, suddenly I found out what pleasure a wife could have from the marital bed and it was more than I could have ever anticipated. The physical sensation of joy was strong as a flash of lighting felling a tree and just as intense. I screamed, cried, quivered, and he kept licking and touching me until he had rung every bit of pleasure out of me.

I was halfway towards sleep an instant later when he lifted himself up on his elbows and asked in a hopeful tone, "Please, my darling?"

I recalled what I had offered earlier, knew that Mr. Darcy had certainly held up his side of the bargain. I murmured, "Yes," thinking muzzily that I might as well let him rut as it certainly shouldn't hurt, given that we had done this before and considering how slick I had to be.

I was surprised then how pleasurable it felt, to have him rocking within me, with me still feeling so much. I pulled him close in my arms, wrapping my legs around him in an effort to be closer still, for both my inside and my outside tingled and hummed with delight. I murmured, nay chanted "Oh, Mr. Darcy, so good, so good, so good."

Spurned on, he moved quicker and quicker and then burst within me. I did not reach another peak like before, but was well satisfied. Within moments I slept.

In the middle of the night I awoke to him touching my breasts and kissing my neck. From the way my body tingled, he had been delighting me for some time. "Please?" my husband begged me.

"Yes," I told him and then he climbed a top me, I pulled him into my arms, and he entered me again. This second time felt good also, but less so than right after I had received my pleasure, but I did not care. After the experience I had before, I was not sure I could take such intensity for some time again. This time he had much more stamina and lasted a long time before he filled me (with a detached curiosity I noted that it was of a lesser amount than he had given me before, although he had worked harder to achieve it).

It occurred to me early the next morning when Mr. Darcy kissed me and touched me awake once again, his member hard against my side and said "Please?" that his warning during his proposal about how often he planned to have me, might in fact be true.

I turned toward him and said, "I am a little bit sore and tired just now. Go back to your room, please." This was very much true, for I ached, in a mostly pleasant way, but I thought that more interaction then might be less pleasant.

My husband could have refused me or demanded his rights but he did not. Instead, Mr. Darcy kissed me on the cheek, got up (giving me quite the view of him in his proud state, which was even more impressive than I would have anticipated), picking up his banyan as he left but not bothering to put it on. I will admit I stared at Mr. Darcy's fit form in the dawn light, noted as he walked away his broad shoulders, wide back and narrower waist, muscular bottom and hairy legs. Naturally, although I desired to have sleep claim me quickly once again, it was not as easy now that dawn had broken.

I had the presence of mind to put on a nightgown so as to not shock Frank when she would come in with my breakfast. I felt content, so much more content than I could have imagined. I was certain now that I could find some happiness in my new life, that my husband was a far better man than I had previously believed. His willingness to admit his faults and how he had fallen short, his willingness to share some of his personal history, his willingness to make amends, to seek to please (and to please me so well), it all boded very well for our future. It made me thankful, indeed.

I fell asleep and awoke recalling jumbled dreams of eating bacon, eggs, and toast, and sharing a warm bath with Mr. Darcy as he scrubbed my body clean.


A/N: To everyone, may Mr. and Mrs. Darcy inspire some marital bed fun for you all. To my U.S. friends, I hope you are having a wonderful and not too hectic Thanksgiving, making wonderful memories with family and friends.

Now after this past chapter, does it feel like we are wrapping up? I frankly wasn't expecting such a breakthrough yet, but it feels right. Thoughts?