Col. Fitzwilliam finally caught a glimpse of the light of the inn at Meryton. His horse breathed hard under him. Its poor condition, the best he could get under his harried circumstances, had delayed him again and again on the road.
In the days since he had left camp, he wondered if God's hand was turned against him in this endeavor, as he had never found travel so difficult.
Wearily he turned the horse over to the sleepy stable boy and entered the inn, intent on dinner and a room. His mission could wait for morning.
Refreshed by a night's sleep, Col. Fitzwilliam found his way to church, certain of finding the Bennets there. Seating himself at the back of the congregation, he almost missed the family, as it was much diminished since his last view of them. Three only sat in the pew, the father, the mother and a girl, whom he thought he recognized as the youngest but one.
Frantically did he scan the rest of the pews for sight of the girl he had come to help. Her vivacity had made her stand out in his memory, and he saw her likeness nowhere in the crowd.
Kitty, ever vigilant for male attention, noticed his glances, though it meant taking her attention from the sermon, and welcomed his regard. His countenance seemed familiar, but she could not place him. He was dressed as a civilian, which fooled her memory, and she saw only a well-dressed stranger, very welcome among the humdrum Sunday collection of her well-known neighbors.
As they left, she evaded her parents' vigilance to find him. He had been waiting in the church yard, hesitating to approach them on such a delicate errand, and was relieved to be approached.
Smiling, she welcomed him to Meryton.
"You must think me forward," she said coquettishly. "But I believe we must have been introduced."
Happily, he admitted the acquaintance and identified himself.
"We met when I was here for your eldest sister's wedding," he said, then hesitated, judging what to say of his current endeavor.
"Yes, but you had to go away before Lydia's wedding," Kitty said, happy both to place him and that he was entitled to the red coat.
Fitzwilliam staggered mentally. Lydia was married already! His quest, his abandonment of post, were in vain.
Kitty could see that her words has upset the colonel but had no idea why and looked at him questioningly.
While he groped for understanding, her parents found them. Mr. Bennet was displeased to see his daughter speaking with a strange man and addressed him harshly, annoyed to once again be called to dragon duty.
"Do I know you, sir?" he asked. "I do not recognize you as a member of this parish."
Caught wrong-footed, Fitzwilliam started guiltily while Kitty explained the relationship.
"He is Mr. Darcy's cousin," she exclaimed. "We met him when he brought Miss Darcy for Jane's wedding."
Mr. Bennet, relieved of protective duties by the relationship thus revealed, relaxed. Mrs. Bennet, as ever happy to see one of her daughters receiving the attention of a gentleman, took over with fulsome inquiries of his health and his journey. The effort to make her understand that the regular army had a different summer encampment than the militia brought him to himself once more.
"Is Darcy yet with you?" he asked. "My cousin wrote to me from Netherfield and I journeyed here to meet him."
"He and Lizzy went away to the north from London," she explained, unwilling to share their failed mission to this well-looking and connected gentleman. "They went above a week ago."
Puzzled by his cousin's abandonment of him, tempered somewhat by his understanding of how much Darcy had looked forward to sharing Pemberley with his wife, Fitzwilliam fought briefly with anger against his cousin's ill-use of him.
As his humor was not for resentment, he quickly rallied and saw the humor in his situation. The necessity for disposing of a troublesome younger sister was vanished, all that was required of him was to return to camp before he was missed.
As he could not travel until the morrow, he happily accepted Mrs. Bennet's invitation to dinner, which Kitty had prompted her to give.
As they walked to Longbourn, Kitty attached herself to Fitzwilliam, asking countless questions about his regiment with the ease of an officer's lady. He was not unwilling to be pleased and answered her gladly. Mr. Bennet, who had grown wearied by the weeks of vigilance, was glad for his wife's company in exchange for his daughter's.
By the time they were seating themselves while Mrs. Bennet went with orders to the servants about dinner — for no cousin of Mr. Darcy was to be scorned, even if he were not a great man, himself — Kitty had wholly engrossed the colonel. He was addressing her by her nickname, by her invitation.
Learning that he was put up at the inn, Kitty insisted that her mother invite him to stay the night, if he could not be persuaded to visit for longer. He was firm he must depart early to return to his duties, and, pouting coquettishly, she accepted his departure, swearing to rise early to join him for a farewell breakfast.
For Kitty, the advent of the colonel was as a breath of clean air in a dungeon. So closely had her mother kept her immured, so carefully did her father keep watch on each excursion, that she had scarce spoken a word to anyone not family for weeks altogether. The loss of every sister had stricken her with a loneliness that she had never anticipated. The shock of London, the bigness and crowdedness, served as a stark reminder of how comfortable and delightful the season the regiment stayed in Meryton had been.
The promise of being presented in winter held no joy for her, but a colonel and a cousin of the mighty Mr. Darcy was a most attractive prospect, and she plied her charms assiduously. He was not handsome, but he was polite and well-spoken, and had an air of quiet competence that she responded to instinctually.
"Lizzy says I shall come to Pemberley for Christmas," she said, having helped him to the best of the veal.
Fitzwilliam smiled warmly. "There is no Christmas like one at Pemberley," he said enthusiastically. The best holidays of his boyhood had been spent at the great estate, and well did he remember the well-lit halls, feasts and festivities practiced there in his uncle's day.
"Will you join us?" she asked hopefully.
Fitzwilliam blinked, caught aback. For a moment, he had forgotten the possible doom hanging over his head. He could make no truthful answer, for he did not know. Command could send him overseas, ask him to resign his commission. He could even face a court martial. His fate was in the wind, and his vulnerability remanded itself to him.
"Darcy often invites me to Pemberley," he said, hedging the truth. "If I am given leave to attend, that is another matter, as you understand." He asked her about the regiment that had been stationed in Meryton, happy to direct her from that line of question.
After dinner, Mr. Bennet claimed their guest's company, a savory change from the constant diet of his wife's and daughter's company, which had not been proving sound to his mental digestion.
Kitty pouted, waiting sullenly for the Fitzwilliam to reappear. Her mother scolded her slightly.
"He is very well, but you know you can do better now, Kitty," she said. "The colonel, you know, depends on his profession."
"And a fine profession it is," Kitty said defiantly. "Lydia married an ensign, and an ensign in only the militia at that, and it was well enough."
Mrs. Bennet was flustered and reminded Kitty briefly that those were circumstances that need not be mentioned.
"But Col. Fitzwilliam is an officer of the regular army," Kitty continued. "With my dowry, why should not that be enough?"
"But in town you might have a great gentleman, like Mr. Bingley or Mr. Darcy," her mother delivered the oft-repeated appeal afresh.
"But I don't want a great gentleman. I want an officer!" she cried.
Mrs. Bennet hushed her and, with increasingly harsh words, extracted Kitty's promise to wait until the winter to decide on a husband.
Mr. Bennet detained the colonel long, and they scarce reappeared before supper. Kitty barely whetted her appetite on his conversation before it was time for bed, and as she undressed, she scorned the elderly caution that steered both of her parents to such staid, unexciting courses.
She could do better, she thought, smiling to herself.
Fitzwilliam appreciated the feminine touches of the room he was given. The well-worn but well-kept environs of Longbourn spoke of comfort to him, a pleasant medium between camp and the homes of the great, and the welcome he had received was a balm on his aggravated sense of duty.
As he lay in lavender-scented sheets, sleep came quickly, and soon he was immersed in dreams both threatening and tantalizing.
Kitty quickly closed the door behind her, reassured to see the man's form asleep on the bed in the dim light of her shaded candle.
He would rise and leave in but a few hours, and this was her only chance. Her heart beat fast in her breast, her throat constricting with anticipation. She padded barefoot toward him, her muslin making no whisper as she moved. To be thus alone with a man, though he slept, sounded the parts of her schooled to avoid scandal. But the other parts, those that longed for passion and for freedom, held sway here in the dark.
She drew close and carefully extinguished the candle before setting it down on the bedside table. Now on the precipice, she dared not hesitate, but doffed her night dress, drew back the covers and lay down beside him.
Feeling too exposed, she pulled the covers back up. He stirred, but still slumbered. Emboldened, she lay her hand on his breast and drew nearer to him. He again stirred, and his arm came about her to clasp her.
Now secure in the trap of her own making, Kitty thrilled with fear and desire. Some part of her yearned for the sound at the door that meant that they were revealed, which she vaguely thought meant they would be immediately bundled off to be married, but another wished to do and feel as her sisters had already. To lie with a man, to know his touch and submit to his embraces. She and Lydia had penetrated further into the mysteries than their older sisters while they were all still at home, but she had never seen the act in its entirety, only in glimpses through chinks in canvas.
Fitzwilliam's dreams recurred to a memorable evening in town, when fellow officers had accompanied him to a particular inn. Dares had culminated in his paying for the company of a wench, fresh from the country and delighted to share her bed with an officer.
In the years since, he had often remembered her willing complaisance, and that this dream savored strongly of those memories seemed fitting.
Now those sensations of her nearness, of the feel of her skin beneath his hands, was compellingly real. Instinctively he pulled her toward himself, and Kitty felt his warm flesh with only the linen shirt between them. His mouth descended on hers, and the warm, demanding touch of his lips softened her. Melted, she felt, as he pulled her again toward himself, still in the grips of sleep.
In his dream, the wench beckoned him into deeper delights, and he pursued that feeling, her whole self wrapping around him as he wrapped himself about her.
His lips were upon Kitty's throat, kissing and tasting her flesh, and she thought even in her overwhelmed state that he must be leaving marks there.
Then it was done. He collapsed next to her, and for a moment she thought that he would wake, that his eyes would open. But the effort and crisis of passion had sent him yet deeper into sleep, and he lay insensible.
Panic seized her. She could not believe what she had done, and she yielded to the impulse to undo it, to make it never have happened. With some pains she extricated her hand that lay beneath him. She carefully slid out of bed, slid back into her night dress and tiptoed back to her room. There was no sign of stirring, and the first dim light of morning lit her way.