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1. “If it is your preference, I shall give you your privacy and I will seek your permission before entering your chamber,” Fitzwilliam said stiffly, reminding Elizabeth so much of the aloof stranger she’d first seen at a Meryton dance that she could not keep from laughing.“Madam?” he asked, taken aback.She had learnt him well enough to wait to speak until she’d laid her hand upon his chest, where he could not fail to see his ring upon her finger.“I’ve never slept alone in my life and I shouldn’t like to start now,” she said. “I warn you and Jane will confirm it, my feet get cold but I despise bed-socks.”“It will be my pleasure to keep you warm, Elizabeth,” he said.
2. “I’ve made sure your suite was entirely redecorated, all in the loveliest shades of green and indigo, and I spoke with your housekeeper, to ensure your mattress here is just as you like it,” Emma said.George raised an eyebrow in inquiry. It was quite the most devilish expression and she wished she were capable of matching it.“You have already undertaken so much, leaving Donwell Abbey and coming to live at Hartfield, you deserved to have a place of your own, a retreat when you cannot bear another second of Papa’s exhortations about the risk of cold lettuce on a young man’s chest or my silly prattling,” she explained.“Mrs. Knightley, what I cannot bear is to be apart from you at night,” he said, moving closer as he spoke. “To wake without you in my arms.”“Well, you needn’t,” she said, while she could.She was not sorry when she couldn’t. Not one bit.
3. “If you’d like, my dear, I’ll sleep in my dressing room,” Charles said. “I know aristocrats don’t share a bed. My parents did but of course, Father was in trade, for all that Caroline wants to pretend we’re the obscure cadet branch of some viscount from the North. I asked Darcy and he turned rather puce but he did say it was so—”“We’re not aristocrats, Charles,” Jane replied.“You’re a gentleman’s daughter, Jane, a lady to the very tips of your toes,” Charles replied.“Whoever the Bingleys are, we’re only Charles and Jane here,” she said. “And whatever you consider the tips of my toes, I’m your wife first and last.”“You’ll send me to my dressing room if I snore, though. You must promise me that, you’re too good a creature to complain about anything but I shan’t have you exhausted,” Charles said.“If you snore, I promise, I’ll wake you,” Jane said.She’d learnt quite quickly how her husband took his tea and how to lie to him.
4. “When we choose an estate, I’ll make sure there’s a separate chamber for you, sweetheart,” Frederick said softly. “You’ll want that after being crammed into this crowded little cabin—”“It’s snug,” Anne said, turning slightly so she might see his dear face better. The moonlight from the porthole took him from the epitome of a British sea-captain and changed him into a figure of romance or myth, a god all silver and shadow. “I shouldn’t like anything better than this, this perfect refuge that’s ours alone and the sound of the waves.”“We’ll choose a place by the sea,” he said. “A house with a view, plenty of space, light and airy.”“But I don’t care to sleep apart, no matter had bad Ton it is,” she said. “We were apart long enough.”
5. “Don’t say we must be stuffy aristocrats about it and sleep in separate rooms and you’re to knock at my door and wait there in a banyan and slippers for me to bid you enter,” Marianne said in a rush, exhilarated by the fresh air, the vista before them, Colonel Brandon’s arm around her waist. He did not yet believe she was steady on her feet after her illness and she could not convince him otherwise, had she been inclined to try. “There is nothing romantic about that, nothing ravishing—”“There will be ravishing, my dear,” he replied. “In one room, one bed, if that’s what you want.”“I quite fancy the contrast, how splendidly massive Delaford is and then to imagine the two of us tucked away, almost in a garret,” she said dreamily.“I draw the line at a garret,” he said. “And I do wear a banyan and slippers when it’s chilly.”
6. “Some would say we’ve pretentions beyond our station, Mrs. Collins, yes, some would say that very thing, but for someone, if you will, attached to a lady as elevated as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, for a clergyman with refined taste and a sense of elegant delicacy derived from a close association with an aristocrat like her Ladyship, well, it hardly seems the argument that we’re aping our betters should be given the least credence,” Mr. Collins declared, speaking much as he would giving one of his sermons. Anything to do with Lady Catherine called for that tone of voice, a fact Charlotte had gleaned after three days in the vicarage.“As you say, Mr. Collins,” Charlotte replied.“It’s a squeeze, I’m quite aware of that, but I had the box room fitted out and the alcove in the larger room can serve as a dressing room, if it comes to it,” he said.“I’ve no complaints, sir,” Charlotte replied.Indeed, her husband’s announcement that they would have separate sleeping chambers had made her nearly as happy as his offer to wed and might very well be her salvation.