Title: Twelfth Night: Or, Oblivion
Author: Dream Writer 4 Life (Becky B)
Rating: R
Archived: FFN, AHA, and HG. Anywhere else, just ask and you shall receive!
Summary: While Mayhem's King and Queen rule from their throne/ Th' Master of Pemberley loses his head/ Wand'ring 'round gardens, he reaps what he's sown/ And winds up in Miss Elizabeth's bed. Twelfth Night at Pemberley.
Suggested Soundtrack: "Serenity" by Godsmack and "Magdalena" by A Perfect Circle
Author's Note: I fudged with the timeline a bit, here: it is the 6th of January, and our darling couples had not yet wed. Why? For some unresolved sexual tension that gets some resolving! Enjoy!

Twelfth Night: Or, Oblivion

He smelled her before he saw her, a waft of orange blossoms and peony that seemed to cut a swath directly to him. Its silky mist settled around his head, under his nose, upon his lips with singular intent, ensnaring him with the heady prospect of her impending presence. The air shifted, crackled with an indefinable reversal of pressure like an approaching storm, swirling and rumbling, and he wondered that the new arrivals to his Twelfth Night ball (the Powells, he believed) could not feel it. Flint sparked low in his gut, kindling the roiling boil he knew well. He sent the Powells toward the dining room for a slice of the Twelfth Night cake without turning towards the staircase; she could find her own way to the ballroom.

Besides, she was late.

She had been residing with him at Pemberley as its future mistress for the past two weeks, both of them impatiently awaiting their approaching wedding. After nearly a half year of chaperones, touching only with gloved hands, and riding in separate carriages, she was in his house on a day reputed for its merrymaking and hedonism. He salivated.

They had made a pact: meet by his portrait the family gallery, descend to the ball together, and then steal away at the first available moment. No one would miss them: no one would miss them but Caroline Bingley, and she had been pouting in Bath since the double wedding was announced.

But she was late, Bingley found him, and now he stood stiffly next to his sister with an arm behind his back, listening to the fawning insincerities of the Ton. He could not wait to whisk her away, to the Continent, a villa on the Sicilian coast or his ancestral home along the Marne, anywhere he could have her entirely to himself. They did not even need a cook: he hunted sport (how difficult could it be to actually skin the deer) and they could survive on bread, cheese, wine, and each other if need be—

"Lord and Lady Blainard, Mr. Darcy."

He startled but nodded curtly at his butler. "Thank you, Jenkins."

Probably her ridiculous mother's fault. Probably wanting her to make an entrance to impress his uncle and aunt, Earl and Lady Matlock, as well as the rest of the attending peerage. It was ultimately not her fault, but the result remained: he had somehow found himself promising his first available set not to her but a Miss Owens of Manchester whom he could not for the life of him remember inviting. Displeasing to the highest degree.

And by the time Lord and Lady Blainard had floated from the reception line, her scent — and she with it — had already disappeared again. Did she have second thoughts about their plan? Was she displeased with his forwardness? Then a riot of curls, specks of baby's breath, a grin barely repressed. So those were the rules of engagement. He could adapt.

Let the match begin.

Jenkins informed the family that most of the carriages had been emptied of their brocaded cargo and stowed for the evening. Georgiana's pale pink skirts swished as she turned to her elder brother. She smiled as he kissed her cheek. As he pulled away, he opened his mouth to say something reassuring about her hostess abilities but stopped in an awkward lips-half-open stance. Instead, he squeezed her hand and guided her towards the double doors, but her gaze lingered on him as she entered the ballroom. Could his intensions be that plain? Should he have said something after all? No, he shook his head, freshly coiffed midnight curls barely budging, and raised his face to the navy blue, long-nosed mask from another servant, who proceeded to tie it behind his head. Even though the occasion called for more elaborate costuming, he could not bring himself to concede to more than a Venetian mask. It would be undignified. And harder to remove later. With a tug at his matching waistcoat, he dove in.

Brushed silks, preened feathers, and turbans (the newest misguided fashion of the Ton) swirled among dark waistcoats, half of every face obscured by gaudy and sometimes downright lurid masks. They shuffled in beats of three — a waltz. What could be more fitting for a celebration of Twelfth Night than the most risqué dance newly arrived from the Continent? It complied well with the night's topsy-turvy tradition, a night when revelry replaced reserve. As the only ball for miles, and the first since the Crown had gloriously and finally repressed at Waterloo the Little Giant's threat to civilized society, the Ton's cabin fever would emanate tenfold. After years without a proper release, Society just might loosen its collective cravat.

At least, he hoped so. Darcy, himself, had more extreme plans for his evening and hoped to take advantage of everyone's lack of proprietary vigilance. Mrs. Bennet would target the militia until her younger daughter's dance card filled, then she would consequently quit Mary's dour company and surround herself instead with simpering ninnies in arm's length of the punch — she would be too in her cups to remember much past this first dance in the morning; a steady cache of amusement could be supplied for Mr. Bennet in the game room, which paired well with cigars and brandy; Mary and Kitty occupied themselves nicely; and Jane had Bingley. His sister could assume hostess duties for one more night. No one would miss them.

Eying the King and Queen of Misrule (some distant relation and Elizabeth's young cousin, respectively), already established on their makeshift thrones and still eating the cake that elected them, his gaze unfortunately encountered Miss Owens's, whose countenance immediately brightened. His features did not show his internal curse as her blonde head bobbed towards him through the crowd. He could not escape this dance, but maybe Miss Owens's card had already filled, and she would not hint at a second dance. But the blush in her high cheeks told him otherwise, and he deftly avoided any mention of a repeat performance.

And then that riot of curls bobbed in the corner of his left eye near the doorway, but by the time his entire head caught up, blonde had replaced it, and he pretended to listen to some drivel about lace as the waltz ended and people clapped politely.

"Is your fiancée here, Mr. Darcy?" Her upturned nose and pointed chin gave the impression of a particularly feminine mouse in want of cheese.

He nodded perfunctorily.

"I have not seen her as yet." She must have ignored the finality in his tone. Her eyes rounded out, and she tilted her head. "Perhaps she lost herself amidst the dandelions in Pemberley's gardens? She is rather . . . unacquainted with the peculiarities of large parks, is she not?"

Miss Owens must have conveniently forgotten to whom she spoke, but from the gasps behind them, enough Society matrons had construed her tone correctly to uninvite both women to the most fashionable parties of the upcoming Season in London. A double-edged revenge. He snatched her hand and pulled her to the floor as the string quartet struck the introducing bars. As couples filed into two opposing lines, he saw the curls again, this time from the right. Another man had asked her to dance. He seethed. She could not refuse unless she wanted to sit out the rest of the night, but the angle of her chin told him her choice had not been entirely benign. He recognized her play with a slight nod in her direction.

Their dance began.

She had taken a place down the line across from someone he could not recognize through a haze of red. He refused to truly look at either of them, narrowing his eyes at the punch bowl and willing apoplexy on the man instead. Her laughing, gliding specter haunting his peripheral vision affected him more than the thought it would; much more. His stomach stung with bile. He wanted to spear every man who even thought about perhaps asking her for a set. He wanted to challenge them, to duel them, to run them through and cuff them to the tree near the center of the closest town so he would always know just where those hands were—

Orange blossoms and peony. The scents rose above the eau de parfum every other fashionable young lady sported now. It rested upon his shoulder like her hand, whispered in his ear like her lips, and he was calmed.

Until he saw she partner the Colonel, grinning madly and darting calculating glances at Darcy. Then Darcy was just annoyed.

He did not want to look at her; he wanted this exquisite torture to last for as long as possible. Without seeing her, he could imagine how she looked, stare at his mind's image without reproach. He could trace her outline, investigate just where she sprinkled that orange blossom water while his imaginary hands glissed down her spine. He could see it so vividly that he stepped on Miss Owens's foot and only saved himself from falling in complete humiliation by awkwardly clasping her hand. Miss Owens herself grinned, but he could feel angry heat on the back of his neck from someone else's eyes. For a moment in the game, he pulled even with her, but then he imagined kissing that scowl off his beloved's lips, and he nearly repeated himself.

So Darcy glanced at her. He meant for it to only last a moment, but his eyes caught like a loose thread on a corner. She had worn his favorite dress: the red with black lace overlay, the only red that made her skin look cool not sickly and the only lace he did not mind discussing. Her mask, tinkling gold in color with a shot of silver, framed shrewd cherry wood eyes that seemed to exist merely to taunt him. But she studiously avoided his gaze. He could tell: when she bit the very corner of her lip like that, she was either concentrating or teasing him. Right now, it was both.

From those lips, his gaze traveled down the ivory column of her throat to the plain of skin beneath. He could still detect the remnants of her summer tan on that plain, depleting unevenly due to the different cuts of her dresses. He hoped she had burned that day at Pemberley. Her collarbones cast shadows, and her breasts rose and fell with each step and breath, and now everything seemed to be moving faster, and he remembered why he had not looked in her direction in the first place.

He imagined being one of the peony petals sure to be hidden in the bodice of that dress.

He felt distinctly less blood in his brain. Well played, love.

Suddenly the heat he had felt on the back of his neck relocated to his cheek, and he emerged from a turn to face her. The silver-shot blue swallowed him, without mercy. Her scent hit him head on — not wafting — and he almost fell prostrate at her feet. Then, pointedly redirecting her eyes to her partner, her lips crept into a smirk, and her breathy laughter sang out.

He raised a bemused eyebrow.

If she was going to bestow her smiles on such an unworthy creature, he could make it as hard as possible for her to keep her feet in time. His shoulders slid backwards, rounding out his chest like the arc of a barrel. His stride lengthened, gliding on the balls of his feet instead of the flat-footed gait of his previous reluctance. He forced his entire self to exude the confidence he usually only felt in intimate settings—he knew that would surprise her most of all. When the dance drew them together again, he smiled down upon Miss Owens. Elizabeth loved cultivating that aspect of his personality, he knew that; he also understood how livid she would be to see that relative liveliness bestowed upon another. The sheer ferocity of her gaze upon his proud back could have stopped a rogue stallion in his tracks, and his stomach (or perhaps an area a bit more to the south) fluttered unseemly at the mere idea of what she could do in retaliation.

Unfortunately, the last two notes vibrated from the violins, and he abandoned his partner in the middle of her curtsey, needing a moment to regain composure before he leapt back into the fray. The two players split to opposite sides of the ballroom, pugilists biding their time before the next strike, and circled the dance floor, cups of punch in hand. Without glancing about to see who watched, she raised her glass and dipped her head in a smug salute; he recognized her with a brusque bow.

From that acknowledgement on, he could not tear his eyes from her. He conversed with others, yet something forced his gaze to her person, something intangible but incontrovertibly powerful: a pull at his gut, at the very basic part of him underneath the rigid propriety that bond his hands at his sides when all he wanted to do was grip her in the most intimate way possible. He could feel the eyes on him — on them — watching the couple like they were caged tigers from the colonies, watching to see if they misstepped, misspoke, how many times they interacted, danced, how they watched each other. To see how naturally they could ignore their baser instincts. All utterly unnatural.

And still she strolled on. A hand glided over a chair back. A shoulder tilted, angling her head away from him. He quit the pretense of his own seduction, caught instead by her every move. He leaned as far as he dared, willing her to turn, grace him with an ear, a nose, a profile! Instead of pinned curls, he imagined those trapped strands surging down a bare back. His mind suddenly flashed to the potential image of the late Derbyshire winter light filtering through the drapes enclosing his bed onto that back, view only obstructed by his own hand—

"Take care, cousin: Miss Elizabeth seems to prowl tonight."

Darcy's composure slipped as he tossed his head and sighed loudly. He had no patience for Fitzwilliam's wit tonight. "Miss Elizabeth does not prowl; she—"

"Floats, gloats, soars on gossamer wings of solid gold." Fitzwilliam searched for Darcy's eye, but the latter refused him the satisfaction of gaining it. "You see her not with your eyes."

A tightening of the jaw. "I see her as she is meant to be seen."

Fitzwilliam visibly refrained from rolling his eyes. "Of course you do. But I do not want your good name sullied; you see the way she looks at you, and you know equally well what the matrons are saying."

Darcy bit the inside of his cheek. He did not like what his cousin insinuated, but instead of replying, he angled his chin higher.

Dipping his head to his chest and nodding once, Fitzwilliam slapped him on the back. "As long as you understand, Darcy, I need no part of it. But take care."

Darcy's eyes remained locked on his Elizabeth.

The coil begun with her smell descending the staircase tightened as the night progressed. When she danced, he danced; never together and never touching, even when the dance brought them together. The reward would be sweeter that way. He escorted Miss Owens to dinner, as that particular girl seemed to raise Elizabeth's pique to astounding heights like no one else. Throughout the meal, their eyes danced successively across the room; eyebrows tilted; mouths puckered to moues or scowls when someone else diverted attention.

The torturous meal ended, and he spoke to the quartet upon everyone's return to the ballroom. This time, a Viennese waltz thrummed through the room, and he did not hide his smirk at her jerk of pleased surprise — the physically painful hours in the Netherfield ballroom learning this dance under her father's unforgiving chaperonage; and we shared our first caress when Mr. Bennet excused himself to check on his eldest daughter. He merely raised his hand, and she appeared. The moment her tiny, delicate hand slid into his, he felt heat and light infuse every extremity; the hair stood up on the back of his neck; his eyes opened wider.

She had slipped a warm peony petal into his fist.

It nestled between their hands as they spun, dodging and weaving in between an increasing number of couples, and it remained there as the air turned frosty, and he realized she had wrested the lead from him, guiding them outside onto the balcony. They only ceased twirling when she abruptly left his embrace and pattered down the stairs to the garden, the peony petal wafting to the ground. He teetered at the top of the flight only for a fraction of a moment — long enough for the peony scent to overwhelm him and push him down the stairs.

It was his ball. He could do as he pleased. No one would miss them, after all.

She ran on fleet feet across the neatly-trimmed grass, skirts lifted and ankles bared. He followed at a slower pace, entranced by the new, forbidden sight. The moon tossed her shadow like a pebble, and for a moment, it seemed to wait for him on the threshold of his Orangerie, but then it melded into the side of the hothouse, and he did not even think to check around him as he, too, slipped inside.

The full moon contorted the shadows. Sleek palm trees turned to thorny briars, and the Christmas roses outside cast a net over the rare plants. Everything was still, the artificial stillness of a portrait sitting, like pausing an action in the middle. Unnatural.

The last play of their match. He called her name, but no answer came. He began his search, rounding those potted palms and searching the branches of his only indoor orange tree when he saw what he thought was a peony petal on a root.

"William."

He heard his nickname on a breeze, and he whirled around, his ears playing the same tricks as the rest of his senses. The morning glories had stirred, dead blooms curled and withered on the stone path, making way for the next morning's brightness. She had been here.

Now his body flared with need. Elizabeth must have smelled like his entire garden, like his. He circled round a cherry tree towards the open copse and small reflecting pool.

She lay calmly amongst the ferns, one arm folded beneath a head of mussed hair and the other twirling a rhododendron through the moonlight, casting its shadow on her abdomen. She flicked it into the pool, and it bobbed languidly. She looked like a wood nymph after a romp. "Where is your bachelor's button, Mr. Darcy?" Her voice smooth and cool, reserved and polite.

Unaware the game had yet to fall away, he subconsciously straightened his spine, hands gravitating to clasp behind his back as his chin rose. "No young lady has given me one, Miss Elizabeth. My buttonhole remains empty."

A slow grin melted her lips. "And so it shall be. A bachelor's button is too sedate. It will be a gardenia, or asphodel, or nothing." She rose up onto her elbows, and a shaft of unbroken moonlight sparked her chest into a white blaze. Her quicksilver eyes glistened behind her mask as her knees parted ever so slightly. "What will it be, sir?"

Without conscious effort, his own mask landed in the water next to the rhododendron. "Wherever you lead me." Without mercy.

Wherever you lead me.

Checkmate.

That white-hot coil continued to spiral as he fell into her, black and red dissolving to white and pink. He rubbed gardenia blossoms into her untouched softness, the petals topping tufts. She arched her back, and they tumbled.

It was in these moments that he saw her as she was meant to be seen: stripped naked and bare, in her natural element, without manners or words or le bon sens to hide behind. Melded to him in and with every sense. Among the ferns and flowers, they could be natural. His cousin was wrong; such a woman, such an alliance could only bolster everything she (they) touched.

As they crashed together, she pertly tucked an asphodel bloom behind his ear and smiled. "Forever." More a breath than a wish.

They both spiraled, and the coil let loose, spinning them into oblivion.

END