Author's Note:

So here we are! A long ago published story now being updated and continued for the first time in what can generously be called many... many moons. I decided to start over (sort of) by re-editing and refreshing the existing chapters not only to get them back in my head, but because I now have a different perspective on my previous writing since (ahem) so many moons have passed in my life as well. Fear not, more content shall be supplied anon, as they say. I ask that you be patient, as I am my own beta reader and editor. Please review, however, as I love the love and suggestions are always welcome. Thank you for reading a do enjoy! :) And review. Please do that too.

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There was a woman in his bed.

Not just any woman, to be sure; a woman with whom his familiarity was quite intimate. From the curve of her pretty nose to the pattern of freckles atop her left foot, he knew her body and its rhythms and pleasures with certainty. Astoundingly, she delighted in his touch as much as he delighted in hers. He could recall in an instant the silky texture of her skin pressed against him both in heated passion and in cooler moments of more chaste affections. He could recall the feeling of taking her slowly to the peaks of passion as well as the sounds she made along the way—sounds that heated his blood without fail.

Patiently, he watched her stir awake wrapped in nothing but bed linens still fragrant with the mingled scent of their bodies. Still and again he wanted her. Without question this scene had occurred before, perhaps hundreds of times in their shared history. An intense, all-encompassing love existed between them. Theirs was anything but a passing fancy or casual acquaintance; theirs was destiny, an answer to a question waiting to be found. And she?

She was his home, his life, his love and most remarkable of all she was his wife, the Mistress of Pemberley.

He awoke slowly with a sense of extreme disorientation. When his eyes opened reluctantly, even the familiar sight of his bedchamber at Netherfield failed to penetrate his dream-addled haze. For a moment, the false reality gripped him more strongly than the true, even as the latter encroached incrementally on his senses. He nearly turned toward her side of the bed. A light floral aroma lingered in the air reminiscent of her skin. The music of her laughter seemed to have just faded from the room.

As wakefulness finally won control, he bit back a loud groan, allowing his head to fall heavily against his pillow.

Who the devil was this woman who plagued him? How could he dream so intimately about a woman for whom he hadn't so much as a name? And how could a connection so strong, so sure in sleep leave next to nothing for him to cling to upon waking? Vague impressions of the relationship itself and his feelings toward her helped very little in the task of possible identification.

Intermittently for months now he had experienced dreams of an alarmingly similar nature. One occurrence was easily dismissed as an anomaly, two a strange coincidence. A significant passage of time after the initial grouping of dreams caused him to nearly forget the mysterious female presence that visited at night.

Until a few months later, when the dreams began to resurface, that is; then he attempted mightily to deny the forming of a clear pattern. All indications pointed to the dreams occurring in direct correlation to the level of turmoil in his life. Still, it could not possibly be the same as before, or so he told himself.

However, when the dreams increased both in intensity and… specificity, Darcy began to worry outright. For the first time in his life, he entertained the possibility that he was being haunted by some kind of strange ghost.

Never in his life had he been so completely arrested by something intangible and certainly not by a dream. He knew there were some who sought to assign meaning to the images found during slumber as though they contained portentous information. And amongst these he likewise knew (never mind how) there were self-proclaimed fortune-tellers who claimed the ability to divine the future by interpreting such images—for a price, naturally. Not only did he find such a notion ridiculous, he had never before dreamed vividly enough to concern himself with any sort of deeper meaning.

Until now, of course. Or more precisely, until her.

Each time he dreamed, he felt closer to this woman as though her fate wove more securely and intricately with his own over time. Which was preposterous. He was not entirely convinced of the idea that God let alone destiny guided one's life. (Not that he would ever own publicly to such an opinion. Only his private journal was privy to such Cartesian sentiment.)

Still, specific details eluded his waking memory. Try as he might, all he could be certain of was her eyes.

Her eyes are brown.

No, no. Calling them simply brown was nothing short of injustice. They were a brown redolent of freshly turned loam, fertile and rich, ready to burst forth with life at any moment. Warm and lively, they were framed by a perfect fanning of dark eyelashes. The combination was more captivating than strictly beautiful, but he was more profoundly beguiled by those eyes than he cared to admit.

They are the finest eyes I have ever beheld and I have never seen them.

In more fanciful moments, he pondered the strange realization that never once had he supposed he might be dreaming about no one in particular, simply a faceless someone who may or may not be in his life now, later, or ever. This seemed the general and most logical interpretation of such whimsy. Nor did he ponder the possibility that he may have already encountered this woman in his sphere. Neither possibility occurred to him until long after the dreams began.

Unaccountably, he simply knew these did not apply. A certainty for which he could offer no explanation and could not seem to alter whatsoever, no matter what he did.

Even more strange, he knew instinctively he would find not even the smallest reflection of her in any woman of his acquaintance to date. In less guarded moments, he found himself clandestinely searching the eyes of unfamiliar females (and familiar, just in case) hoping to find those that caused his heart to pound as it did in the dreams, a sensation he would never admit to missing when he failed to feel it. His disappointment, though acute, was quickly ignored or filtered away for later analysis if he allowed for any at all.

He also quite steadfastly refused to acknowledge the increasingly obvious supposition that he was plainly waiting for this woman to enter his life. Surely the endless prattle surrounding him in society regarding love and marriage had finally infiltrated his senses.

His mind had certainly concocted its own ideal version of events. After all, it was perfectly natural that a part of him should wish to marry for love and affection rather than mere pecuniary gains. Realistically, however, he had neither the time nor the inclination to indulge in such romantic fancies.

Hardly helpful was the added annoyance that each recent repetition of the nocturnal fantasy left him with a sharp sense of a thing missing in his life just at a time when he felt quite at ease with his general circumstances. Thus far, he had maintained the success of his estate without marriage, society be damned. Eventually he would have to marry if only to procure an heir but it was an inevitability he chose not to dwell on yet despite the pressure he felt increasing year after year.

Needless to say, the morning after such episodes always saw him in the blackest of moods. Days would pass before he could get through an entire one without reflecting on brown eyes clouded with desire upon a tender kiss or something far, far less appropriate. If several nights in succession featured dreams, he was doomed to foul moods for a least a week.

All of this vexed him to no end. If he had to dream about women at all, why must he dream about an affair passionate enough to make him blush? Though hardly naive, Darcy was not in the habit of meditating on that sort of intimacy in any setting but a bedchamber. To have explicit images pop into his mind while in company, while addressing his staff, or even at his club (no doubt the most suitable on the list, though not according to his scruples) was not at all to his comfort.

Once, while directing his housekeeper to refresh the linens in a rarely used room, an unseemly scenario involving a dalliance in the closet of that room filled his senses, making him stop mid-instruction and cough. Mrs. Reynolds asked if she could fetch him some tea with honey for the dryness of his throat or a cold compress to ease his flushed skin.

Darcy had merely thanked her, dismissed her, and then marched himself outside without a coat on (as it was quite cold at the time) to ease the heat in his own way, though not before fuming at himself and her, where he could more comfortably lay the blame.

No respectable woman would behave in such a manner and certainly no Mistress of Pemberley — past, present or future. Or so he wished to believe.

Yet, all the disappointment and frustration he coldly turned away in company and daylight returned with great vengeance when he was alone and in the solitude of darkness.

In those moments, he felt lost and more alone than ever, now and then going so far as to wish he could talk to someone from whom he didn't need to hide his true feelings and opinions. Which is also not something one can expect of a wife, he'd thought.

Certainly he experienced sensations of supposed isolation in the past. When his father passed, it had taken nearly a year to completely purge the incredible sense of loneliness the absence created. Aside from the grief, he felt adrift and inadequate to the challenges laid before him.

Master of Pemberley and guardian to his young sister both felt like titles he was ill prepared to bear though he had been groomed for both his entire life. He approached these obstacles as he approached everything, however, with an unwavering sense of propriety and obligation to his name and rank. Behaving as though every decision he made was unquestionable no matter the situation took no little practice until one day he came to believe it himself. He could allow very little to sway his stated opinions or belief in his right to express them lest he come to look weak or indecisive.

At times he wished the elder Darcy had left a slightly less illustrious legacy to his only son. In times of greatest uncertainty, he envied the simplest peasant the ease of near anonymity and sense of being answerable to no one but oneself.

Suffice it to say that for many reasons Mr. Darcy could be forgiven for awakening in an already foul state of mind on the morning in question. The dreams had been occurring with even more frequency of late but on this particular occasion he was more irked than usual. He had surmised some time ago the woman he dreamt of was somehow connected to his dream self. Because he was simultaneously shocked and fascinated by the… ardent nature of their imaginary relationship, he took for granted the association was more in line with that of a mistress. He never once fathomed that their connection was matrimony!

Mistress of Pemberley indeed. The idea of such a woman as his wife was laughable at best.

When he finally got his bearings, he remembered there was actually more than one reason to dread the day. Not only was he cursed to struggle against dredges of elusive and fictitious memories, which would undoubtedly present themselves at the most inopportune moments, but today was also the much anticipated (and much dreaded) Meryton Assembly. (He refused to think on it in the same terms as a ball no matter how similar it was to an event of that name.) Somehow he had allowed Bingley to plead and cajole him into pledging to provide moral support during what was sure to be an entirely boorish evening.

Bingley had the habit of working himself into a bit of a frenzy before such events, all but convinced something disastrous would befall him without Darcy's steadying presence. Darcy, on the other hand, held the opinion that it would be far more productive, especially to his own interests, to best encourage Bingley by building his confidence beforehand to a level high enough for his anxieties to allow him to attend such events with only his sister Caroline as company. No matter how often he expressed similar sentiments to Bingley, however, the younger man always managed to convince Darcy to accompany him with the added promise to attempt to enjoy the evening. Darcy rarely managed to uphold the second half of this agreement.

Therefore, it was with a very audible groan that Darcy raised his hands and scrubbed his face vigorously in an attempt to rid his mind of the decidedly libidinous dream. He would need all of his wits about him if he were to survive the assembly intact.

Joseph, his temporary valet, who had been hovering in the dressing chamber just beyond, cracked the adjoining door slightly at the noise.

"Forgive me, sir. Are you in need of assistance?"

"No, not at all. Why do you ask?" Darcy spoke rather sharply, mildly surprised at the man's unorthodox intrusion. Thus far, the man had proven to be quite as proficient and discreet in service as his man Benson at Pemberley. Usually, Joseph awaited his presence in the dressing chamber with all the necessary accoutrements for his morning toilette already laid out.

"My apologies Mr. Darcy, sir," he stammered. "I only ask because you've slept rather later than usual this morning." Darcy tilted his head in confusion. He usually rose his own volition about an hour after daybreak unless he wanted to take an early ride.

"Really? What is the hour?"

"'Tis just past nine, sir. I hope you have not taken ill?"

"No, I thank you. I shall be but a moment, Joseph." Darcy sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb.

"Very good, sir," Joseph said with relief. The door clicked softly shut.

Sitting up, Darcy laughed mirthlessly. Though it was not in his nature to indulge such thoughts, he was hard pressed to ignore the sense that fortune was not favoring him this morning. For as he threw the bed covers away, he realized his body had betrayed him in more than one involuntary fashion. It seemed he had more to be embarrassed by than simply sleeping too late.