sex was playing with fire…But is that really so different from the way things are today?”
“Oh, yes,” Darcy said emphatically. “In 1810, even sex in marriage was preposterously dangerous. More women died in childbirth than from any other single cause. And there was almost as much risk of contracting an incurable venereal disease from husbands who, more likely than not, frequently consorted with prostitutes in order to relieve their sexual urges.”
Eliza grimaced at the thought. “Lovely!”
“God knows our society today is far from perfect,” Darcy said, “but I was afraid that telling Jane how very different things would one day be might make her own world seem intolerable by comparison.”
He hesitated for a brief moment before continuing. “It would have been far easier for me to make up some safe, fictionalized future version of her own society,” he said.
“But you didn’t do that, make up a safe version of the future.” It was a statement, not a question.
Darcy shook his head. “In the end I told her everything, about birth control, women’s rights, female CEOs… In short, I told her the truth.”
Alarmed, Eliza suddenly reached out and gripped his hand. “Good God, why, Fitz?” she asked, her voice filled with genuine compassion for the long-dead English writer.
“Because she
Darcy halted his narrative and looked down at Eliza’s hand. He slowly covered it with his own and leaned forward until their faces were almost touching. “Like you, Eliza, she was only thirty-four years old,” he whispered, “and though she didn’t know it, her life was almost over.”
His voice broke and he retreated, shaking his head. “I wanted her to know that the future held something better for women than what she knew.”
“And how did she react to your revelations?” Eliza was intensely aware of the pressure of Darcy’s hand squeezing hers. She squeezed back, encouraging him to go on.
He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of her touch. “Considering the fact that she had marked me as an arrogant, insufferable scoundrel, Jane reacted in the most unexpected way imaginable,” he told her.
“Then a woman in the society of your time may choose and discard her lovers at will, all without fear of censure?” Jane had listened in wonder to everything that Darcy had had to say about love and society in the twenty-first century, interrupting him frequently to ask pointed, intelligent questions, for which he had not always been able to supply ready answers, questions like that one, that were central to the freedom of all modern women.
“It’s not quite as simple as you make it sound,” he said, attempting to carefully qualify his answer, as he had several others before it. “But, essentially, yes, a woman of my time has that choice. Because for the most part lovemaking is no longer regulated by church or state, or even one’s relatives.”
He smiled then. “The individual’s right to privacy and personal choice in matters of love and sex theoretically applies to any activity that occurs between consenting adults.”
Jane silently considered the alien concept of a society filled with consenting men and women who were free to make love to one another whenever and however they liked.
“But what of morality?” she suddenly asked, following a long pause.
Darcy shrugged. “Oh, I suppose that morality is still around in my time,” he said thoughtfully. “God knows people still talk about it enough. But then, what we call morality is always only relative to the standards of a given society. In my world it’s a word that’s come to be applied more to corrupt politicians and bankers than to lovers.”
He saw her frowning at that and he knew that in her rigidly structured, class-conscious society morality and sexuality were mutually exclusive terms.
“Consider the plight of one of your own fictional heroines,” he said, hoping to draw for her a clearer distinction between the two words. “She is forced by mere circumstance and social custom to choose between love and fortune. Now where’s the morality in that?”
“Where indeed?” asked Jane, turning at last to smile at him. She sat there quietly for a moment longer, seemingly lost in thought. Then she abruptly stood.
Darcy immediately jumped to his feet, fearful that he had told her far too much. “I hope that I haven’t offended you with my frankness,” he said.
Still smiling, Jane shook her head. “No,” she replied, “you have been most delicate in your phrasing, sir. It is only that I find the swift and shining modern world that you’ve described nearly impossible to envision. It is like the telling of a dream.”
She paused, again seemingly lost in deep thought, then softly whispered to the cool breeze that had begun sighing through the trees. “Astonishing! The feminine spirit freed.”
“Jane…” Darcy was suddenly gripped with an overwhelming desire to pull her into his arms, as if he might somehow be able to protect her from the stark reality of her own rapidly approaching death in this age of primitive medicine and suffering, a reality that he alone in all that world knew awaited her.
“I should go now,” she said, interrupting his grim thoughts by looking up at the lowering moon. “It is very late and I must think on all that you have told me.”
Fighting his impulse to enfold her in a warm embrace, Darcy instead stepped forward and took her arm. She froze and gazed down at his hand on her. “Let me take you home,” he begged.
To his utter astonishment she raised her face to his and said, sounding for just an instant like a small girl, “Will you not kiss me good night first?”
He hesitated, then kissed her lightly on the lips. Jane pulled back from him and looked into his eyes, and for the first time he saw the woman that she truly was.
“Is that the manner in which you would kiss a lady if you were on a—what was it you called it—a date?”
Suddenly he was smiling, his tensions of a moment before running away like summer rain. “Well, maybe a
Her voice was teasing, her face perfection in the moonlight. “And for a second date,” she teased, “or a third?”
Then Darcy did pull her to him, and kissed her more thoroughly. She responded eagerly.
For long seconds they remained locked together in the moonlight. When their lips finally parted, Jane leaned her head against his heaving chest and softly sighed. “Please forgive me. I only wished to taste a lover’s kiss in the moonlight.”
She raised her sparkling eyes to his and seemed embarrassed by her sudden abandonment of all propriety. “Henceforth you may regard me as a foolish old maid who had never before been properly kissed by a man,” she whispered.
“No, dear Jane,” he whispered, placing trembling fingers on her lips to stop the self-deprecating litany. “For the rest of my life I’ll remember only the beautiful and desirable woman that you are at this moment. And in my thoughts you will never grow old.”
“And I shall dream of a man who loved me once,” she vowed in return, “if only for a moment. And in my dreams, dear Darcy, you shall be ever strong and kind and most exceedingly noble.”
She misread his look of wonder at those last beautiful sentiments. “Oh, do not be alarmed, sir,” she said, smiling happily. “For I know that you do not really love me. How could you when I have so harshly misjudged and vilified you?”
Jane sighed again, sounding like a contented kitten, and again she raised her face to his. “I am merely building up a store of dreams,” she told him. “So may I have another, if you please, dear Darcy?”
Gently he took her chin in his hand caressing her lovely face, he grew giddy from the scent of roses in her hair as they kissed in the waning light of the moon.
Chapter 27
