Longbourn to London (4 page)

“I must tell you, Lizzy, it was their…
glee
that was most inexplicable. I cannot account for it. They knew we were made uncomfortable. Yet the more they saw our embarrassment, the more they hectored.”

“It was as if by design, Jane.”

“Oh, no, Lizzy, I cannot think so.”

Elizabeth pulled off her right glove, displaying her hand covered with the imprints of Jane’s fingernails. “Think well of them if you wish, but I
know
what you felt through the whole of it.”

***

The Bennet family dined at Netherfield that night. Again, there was no convenient occasion for either couple to be alone for more than a moment. But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour, and being with Darcy produced an easing of her temper.

Early the next morning, Elizabeth hoped to take a walk, but was, with Jane, purloined by their mother, who had awakened in an excitable state. Mrs. Bennet was in the mood for list making, noting every nuance of the coming nuptials with which her daughters must, at that very instant, familiarise themselves.

Since Darcy and Bingley had invited a few local young men to Netherfield that evening to learn billiards, Elizabeth and Jane attended an impromptu soiree at Lucas Lodge. Before the card tables were brought, the two eldest Bennets found themselves in another group of married women where they were again subjected to the improper ravings of their aunt, abetted by wine punch taken to excess. The more she drank, the more lurid grew her tales, until even Mrs. Bennet blushed and herded her daughters to the card tables.

Elizabeth and Jane were so shocked and distracted that they made poor partners. At home in their bedroom, they said only what was necessary as they prepared for bed, and although each knew the other was awake for quite some little time after blowing out their candles, neither spoke.

Chapter 3

Elizabeth’s Dream

“What, with my tongue in your tail?
Nay, come again Good Kate; I am a gentleman.”
William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew

Lizzy was lying on a large bed in a dark room. Off to her side was the dull glow of a waning fire, and from above her head, perhaps from a tall bedside table, came the light of one flickering candle. She realised she was naked, or nearly so. A swath of soft, silky fabric covered one shoulder and draped across her chest, flowing onto the bed. Was it a dressing gown?

Her pulse began to race. Her head and shoulders were propped on pillows, and she could look down at the rest of her body. There was her belly and the dark patch of hair that hid, or in this case seemed to draw attention to, the secret place, which Mama had always insisted must be cleaned but in no other way touched. Except that now her legs were spread and bent up at the knees, and someone was touching her there. A man was there! Between her legs!

Lizzy inhaled sharply. The feelings coming from her forbidden flesh were thrilling, and some sort of tension was building. She realised with a shock that she was moist. How mortifying… Had she wet herself? Was it her time; was she bleeding? She could see no evidence on her thighs, and she tentatively put her hand down to where she ought not, encountering…the hair on a man’s head! Her hand acted without her direction. Rather than pull away as she wanted, her arm would not obey, and her fingers, now both hands, stroked and caressed the masculine dark hair.

Inside Lizzy’s mind, words were flying about in fractured thoughts… I must stop this—it is improper. I must stop him…stop myself… How could he behave so? I should not allow this… Oh!

She watched with a strange, detached awe as the man’s head moved between her legs, and her mound of short dark hair seemed to writhe with expanding desire. What is he doing to me? She was becoming wetter, and she could not stop her fingers from encouraging what was happening by running through the man’s hair.

How could this be? Is he? Oh good god… He is kissing me there… The realisation of what was taking place coincided with the sensation of such a release of pressure that she moaned and raised her hips up to meet the mouth she could not see. Then the face rose from between her blushing thighs. It was a dear familiar face, darkened by a gaze of such wanton, unrepentant lust as she had never before seen. Mr. Darcy!

“What do you think, Elizabeth? Should I continue?”

***

Before she knew she was awake, Elizabeth was standing beside her bed, staring down at it. She was panting, flushed and light-headed. Her heat was followed by a cold tremor; she realised she was indeed wet between her legs, her nightgown damp. Her flesh and bones still perceived the waves of passion induced by the dream, now draining away.
So, I really felt it…
This was unlike any nightmare she ever had as a child. She experienced no true fear within the dream, yet she was horrified at herself upon awakening.

Moonlight filtered into the chilly room. Elizabeth grabbed her dressing gown and went to the washstand where a basin of fresh water awaited her morning ablutions. With a tentative gesture, she pulled up her nightgown and ran her hand quickly in and out of the union between her legs. She sniffed at it. It was not blood or urine; it smelled salty, musky. She washed her hands, confounded. After she dried them, she continued to stand by the basin for several minutes, her mind numbly searching…
for what? What could provoke such a dream? I must be more nervous about marrying than I knew… I have heard nothing these last few days but licentious tales from all my female relations… Every married woman we know has forced their advice upon us.

Of course…
Relieved a little by this explanation for the unseemly and vivid nature of her dream, Elizabeth went back to her bed, but she could not make herself lie down. She had lost, for the present moment, all trust in sleep. She sat upon a window seat, searching the eastern horizon for any sign of daybreak. At last, she determined a course of action. She comprehended that her anxiety, as was usually the case, came from a lack of knowledge.

Neither she nor Jane had any regard for the sagacity of their mother’s advice regarding conjugal relations, and they felt she had purposefully misled them in some particulars. Jane was reluctant to address the topic with Elizabeth under the best of circumstances, but if Elizabeth started the conversation, Jane would contribute her opinions when pressed.

Their Aunt Phillips, if in her cups, would continue to offer unsolicited advice and tales of intimate behaviour meant to scandalise and embarrass them. Indeed, she had started doing so years before when learning from Mrs. Bennet that Elizabeth had begun receiving her “monthly visits” at age thirteen. Elizabeth and Jane avoided such situations whenever they could manage, but now that both were engaged, Aunt Phillips only grew worse. The Lucases’ soiree had been unusually fraught.

During the brief visit the Wickhams paid at Longbourn immediately after their wedding, Lydia sought to thrill, but in fact, appalled all her sisters with tales from her marriage bed. The fact that she had been bedded by her husband for nearly a month before the ceremony—a shameless Lydia revealed that relations had begun even
before
her elopement—seemed to concern her not one jot. Lydia’s principal target was Elizabeth, to inspire her sister’s envy since Lydia believed herself to have scored a great triumph by securing a man first regarded favourably by an elder sister, and by marrying before any of her siblings. While Elizabeth was of no mind to pay heed to Lydia’s ranting, she perceived that at least some of what Lydia said had frightened and confused Jane

After becoming thoroughly chilled sitting at the window, and finding no solace in the view of the frozen night landscape, Elizabeth remembered the two disturbing books she had once found hidden in her father’s desk. Although the Bennet daughters were welcome to use their father’s library, only Elizabeth, and Jane to a lesser extent, did so. Once Mary’s prim tastes settled on reading topics to improve her morals, she found few books in her father’s collection rewarding. Kitty and Lydia took no pleasure in reading except for fashion magazines and gossip in the London papers. The latter rarely held their attention as they knew few people in town, though over the winter they noted several mentions of Fitzwilliam Darcy, which they trumpeted to the family.

All the girls, however, were admonished never to disturb the sanctity of their father’s desk. Mr. Bennet could have locked it but would not be bothered. He feared he would misplace the key, and he had no reason to believe any child of his would disobey him. Only Elizabeth, the most curious female in the house—and, most likely, in all of Hertfordshire—breached it at age fourteen.

She found little of interest except for the drawer containing two books of illustrations. One appeared to be of Oriental, or perhaps Indian, origin with captions and text of an unknown language. In fact, on her first perusal of the book, she thought the words were illumination-like decorations used to frame the images, later realising the squiggles and dots of repeated shapes must be words. The pictures were quite disturbing, and at the time, she deemed it for the best that she could understand none of it.

The other book was in French, and she determined from what little of the language she understood that the drawings were meant to be amusing. She delved into her French studies with rather more enthusiasm than previously shown. Once she mastered a better knowledge, she crept into the book once more, and found the cartoons not particularly diverting, even perhaps as unsettling as the more exotic publication. She never sought the books again—until now.

The house was still, and as Elizabeth passed the hall clock, she could just make out it was three-thirty. It would be an hour before the earliest servants stirred. She avoided the squeakiest steps as she descended and entered her father’s library. The books were still in their drawer. She sat cross-legged on the floor in a pool of moonlight with the tomes in her lap. Gathering her courage, she opened the first, the one in French. Pictured were cavorting couples—sometimes trios!—in various states of undress, just as she remembered. The women had ridiculously large bosoms and the men were outrageously endowed, except in one or two drawings where men with small reproductive parts were derided by other fellows and ladies. There were representations of men and women with their mouths all over any and all parts of the opposite sex. The captions indicated the characters found all of these variations immensely pleasurable.
Oh, dear…
Elizabeth shivered.

She was just putting the French book aside when she detected a swirl in the air. She startled but suppressed any sound. Looking up, she saw Jane joining her on the floor.

“What are you doing, Lizzy?” she asked, settling herself next to her sister so their knees touched.

Elizabeth whispered, “How did you know where I was?”

“You awoke with such a start, you roused me. I thought you had a nightmare. When you were in the window seat, I nearly dozed off but then you left, and I thought you might have come down for a little brandy to help you sleep. You did not return, and here you are…” Jane looked at her sister questioningly.

Elizabeth decided not to confide the particulars of her dream. “Jane, have you ever ventured into Father’s desk?”

“No.”

“I thought not. There are two books here of an intimate nature. I discovered them some years ago and understood very little, but they seemed to cover rather thoroughly the topic of conjugal relations.” She assumed Jane was blushing in the dark. “I am decided to try to learn as much as I can about what is to befall us on the wedding night. I am not of a docile nature, as you well know. I cannot face something so momentous in a state of complete ignorance.”

Without a second of hesitancy, Jane held out a hand.

“How is your French?” Elizabeth asked in a whisper, handing her the book she had just closed.

“Passable,” hissed Jane, flapping the cover open.

Elizabeth opened the book of Oriental drawings and both sisters sat in silent absorption for many minutes.

“Lizzy,” Jane whispered. “What is a frisson?”

Elizabeth looked at her sister and gave her head a little shake. “I do not recall ever knowing the word. Here…” She hopped up to retrieve the French-English dictionary from its shelf. She found the English translation and held it to the moonlight. “It says, ‘a brief moment of emotional excitement often experienced as a shudder or shiver; as used by the French, an intensely pleasurable physical response generated in either sex by physical stimulation of one’s self or by another.’ Oh dear…”

“These are just silly.” Jane quietly closed the French drawings.

“Yes,” mused Elizabeth, returning to the Oriental book. “I thought so, too.”

Jane leaned against Elizabeth’s shoulder to look at the other book. After sharing a page or two, Jane shook her head to banish the images she was seeing and turned away. “Learn what you can, Lizzy, if you must, but I cannot bear it.” She started to rise.

“Fitzwilliam and Charles are Englishmen, Jane, and gentlemen. Surely, they are not such savages. I have not the least hope these drawings are helpful. I can only say they are…unsettling. Perhaps what is shown here is possible, but I cannot think any of it at all likely.”