Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (23 page)

“I can ensure the happiness of only one woman, Lizzy. Let it be you.”

At last, the evening found an unequivocal meeting of the minds.

* * *

That afternoon’s coze left Jane quite as discomfited as her sister. Rarely did exchanging confidences with Lizzy leave her thus. Had anyone but Elizabeth—sensible, dependable Elizabeth—intimated that Jane’s connubial necessities with Charles were left wanting, she would have been affronted to the core. Lydia’s rantings about copulation could be dismissed as just that. But not Elizabeth. It must be true.

Jane, who would venture any lengths to spare others blame, worried. She worried it was she who was the culpable party in not allowing her husband to rouse her passion.

Such fretting led her to recollect her wedding-night. It was not a memory she liked to invoke, as it had not been the event to which some poets alluded. It was unthinkable to disappoint poets. It was undeniable, however, that when Charles Bingley came to her the first night of their marriage, angels did not sing.

* * *

Having inadvertently preceded him to the bed, she patiently awaited for some time. As it happened, so much time passed before he presented himself that she had begun to wonder if she had retired to the correct room. Her wait had not been unproductive, for she had busied herself. She readjusted the covers. Fluffed the pillows. Spread her hair just so. Tied and retied the satin bow at the neck of her gown. Fortuitously, Mary, her new lady-maid, left the door open leading to Bingley’s dressing room. Hence, Jane was relieved of the possibility that he would knock upon the door and she would have to arise to answer it, thereby undoing all the adjusting of bed covers, hair, and bow.

Was she not uneasy enough, Mary was an intimidating woman, suffering not fools gladly, and her mistress’ wishes with no great humour. (All of the Bingleys’ female servants were called either Mary or Anne regardless had their parents, with all due contemplation, named them Beatrice, Elinor, or Phoebe. In the Bingleys’ service, you were Mary or Anne. It was, of course, not discourtesy, simply expedience, for it did relieve the good ladies of the house the ghastly chore of learning the names of their all and sundry servants.) Even Jane knew it impolitic to be hectored by your own lady-maid and promised herself she would stand more firmly in the future. In the future, when she was not so otherwise anxious.

After the third retying of the bow upon her night-dress, Bingley finally appeared. He wore a night-shirt buttoned to the neck and a look of excited apprehension. Jane thought that top button looked uncomfortable for sleeping, but she did not want to initiate any comment that could be remotely construed as critical. His face managed a nervous smile, but she no more than caught sight of his bare feet before he hastily doused the candles and scrambled beneath the covers.

There in the dark, they lay side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, not unlike had they been upon the settee in the parlour.

For every day of their engagement, Bingley had vowed his undying love, declared she was the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld, and lovingly kissed her hand. The darkness, however, apparently found him mute as well as paralysed. After some time had passed without the barest hint of movement, Jane finally reached over and placed her arm across his chest. A gesture that appeared to be in reassurance that he was, indeed, still there. Evidently, that broke the stalemate, thus unleashing from Bingley a torrent of affection. He gratefully kissed her cheeks and repeated every manner of accolade he had previously bestowed upon her.

Once the floodgates of love had opened, so flowed his fervour. He covered Jane’s lips, her chin, her forehead, and both cheeks with quick little kisses (sometimes quantity overrides technique). Foreplay culminated, he bade her favours.

“May I raise your gown?”

Blushing in the dark, Jane allowed that she found that acceptable. That he raised her hem no higher than her knees did introduce more manoeuvring and less finesse in consummating their marriage than Bingley would have hoped of himself. He desired not to frighten the demure Jane with his ardency. That wish, coupled with the fact that the only practise he had experienced of a sexual nature was no more than some groping of a nubile young lass in a hayloft, left him keenly interested in the possibilities, but no less enlightened about the act. Moreover, it lent their first encounter less than a compleat success.

As it happened, Jane was not at all certain their marriage actually was consummated, however heavily Charles snored beside her. The prolificacy of bed covers and bedclothes made it hard to determine, but she did not believe herself transgressed. It was her understanding that her husband would enter her with an appendage and that it would be painful. It was not. Nor did she feel any intrusion upon her person. The only thing she felt was a sticky wetness upon and about her thighs. She dabbed at that with the corner of the bedcloth and, ever mindful of the laundry, lived in hope it would be over-looked by the help.

It took several nights and just as many attempts before Jane was certain she was, indeed, a wife. Charles seemed happily satisfied with himself if he managed to insinuate his member anywhere near her womanhood. Apparently a little uncertain of the actual whereabouts of the intended orifice, he chose not to intrude upon Jane’s privacy any more than necessary in search of specifics.

Uncertain of the correct avenue herself, all this random prodding was a little disconcerting to Jane. Indeed, during their initial intimacies, she had raised her hands above her shoulders. This was not only to allow him free access to whatever he wanted to access, but because in his somewhat meandering explorations with his organ, she had once inadvertently grasped it. When she flung it hastily from her hand, it had startled Charles almost as much as his member had her. (She had not yet seen it and it had felt as if a separate entity, possibly amphibian, had accessed their bed.) It was altogether an unfortunate incident.

However, subsequently, Charles seemed quite happy with his performance and as he lent little imposition upon her time, Jane thought their coupling was of great success as well. At least insofar as the satisfaction of her husband, for was that not the duty of a wife? To make her husband happy?

Jane had assumed she had experienced all that a woman could ask of the act of love. Lizzy had always had a more adventuresome nature. It was likely that she would spend her life experiencing everything more fully than would Jane. Although Elizabeth was more willing to discover, Jane did not dismiss her own strong feelings of love, for she loved Charles Bingley deeply.

* * *

In Jane’s opinion, both sisters had married men who were good. Although Charles was open, affectionate, and amiable, Mr. Darcy, conversely, appeared taciturn, staid, and remote. Yet Jane had realised sooner than had Elizabeth that the closely regulated Mr. Darcy knew himself to need that stern control. That he was of a passionate nature initially escaped Lizzy. Mr. Darcy’s sentiments were found only in depth. By the standards he set for himself and others, it was as if he dared self-satisfaction. Charles Bingley was less ambiguous. He wanted everyone happy.

Jane’s most salient joy in life came from the happiness of those she loved. She and Charles were of the same disposition. They were both amiable and agreeable. That the task of being wife to the frightfully complex Mr. Darcy fell to Elizabeth invited Jane’s sympathy. It was only when Lizzy told Jane to what passionate heights her husband brought her that Jane bethought the possibility of envy. But if she was covetous, it was only momentarily. Jane judged her own happiness and satisfaction to be less important than that of others. If the man she loved were happy, she could find happiness in that as well. Everything else was inconsequential.

Elizabeth eventually gathered the courage to question Darcy about the family that had offended him so grievously by their very appearance at the Pemberley ball. His explanation was terse.

He told her that the man only recently had decided to promote his son in society. Elizabeth’s raised eyebrow, which he now knew to mean she was not satisfied by his answer, forced him to expand upon the subject at hand.

Hence, he put down his newspaper and deigned to explain thusly: Mr. Howgrave’s elderly father had taken a decided dislike to his oldest son for some distant misdeed, and refused to entail his rather extensive holdings upon him. Rather, he intended to leave the place to a grandson, or failing that, a nephew. Mr. Howgrave had no younger brothers who were father to a son, but there existed one male cousin in Aberdeen. In no way did Howgrave want to lose title to the family property, and most certainly not to a Gael. The matter of a child born of his housekeeper by him had lain unclaimed until the matter of entailment had arisen.

“In presenting the young man to society and giving him his name,” Darcy said, “Howgrave hopes he will find favour and his grandfather will keep the property upon his behalf. Mrs. Howgrave is not affronted by standing next to the proof of her husband’s infidelity in society. That makes it perfectly clear that she values herself no higher than does her husband.”

It was a harsh assessment, but not unexpectedly so, when considering from whose sensibilities it sprang. Elizabeth longed to query Darcy as to just which indignation he found most objectionable: that Mr. Howgrave had a relationship outside his marriage, or outside his station, or that he had decided, upon merit of economics, to make it public.

However, she dared not. She let the matter drop, allowing her husband to return to his paper uninterrogated. Still, she wondered which was the man’s greatest sin in Darcy’s eyes. Knowing her husband as she had just begun to, she thought he probably saw the greatest damnation in that Howgrave had chosen not only to publicise a bastardy, but had done so at Pemberley.

* * *

Not to be outdone by man, woman, or biblical indiscretions, Elizabeth’s mother arrived within a fortnight with as much folderol as she could muster (which was an impressive measure). Encapsulated in a coach with his wife for one hundred and fifty miles was the long-suffering Mr. Bennet, whose weary countenance announced he was inordinately ready to relinquish the office of martyr to his wife’s ceaseless tongue.

Having new ears to afflict, Mrs. Bennet was not inside the door before she embarked upon a lengthy recitation of Lydia’s labouring travails. Uncharacteristically, she had little to remark upon her new grandchild other than that he had an impressive head of hair. It was presumed that her lack of enthusiasm was equally due to the child’s dearth of primogeniture expectations and that Mr. Bennet had taken to calling her in the third person, “Grandmother Bennet.”

Howbeit the Gardiners and Bingleys had departed (Bingley saw quite enough of Mrs. Bennet in Hertfordshire), Kitty and Maria stayed. Yet with fifty bedchambers, bed-closets, and sitting rooms from which to choose, one would not have expected any accommodation complications. Regrettably, there was one.

Because Mr. Darcy simply did not want to hear Mrs. Bennet’s blathering any more than necessary, he had Mrs. Reynolds situate the Bennets upon a higher floor. However, Mrs. Bennet would not be so easily eluded. She insisted two staircases were too many for her to climb and found a pretty prospect overlooking the lake. Alas, the room that manifested this view lay just down the hall from her daughter’s bed of amour. As Mrs. Bennet’s shrill cackle wafted down the corridor, Darcy chastised himself relentlessly that he had not thought of the staircase dilemma and frantically sought a duplicate prospect upon the ground floor. But to no avail.

Whilst her husband had been silently setting his own plans of installing Mrs. Bennet as far away as possible, Elizabeth agreed for reasons all her own.

With just her sisters in the house, her coronation as an exalted marital partner was not moderated. The only true alteration was the occasional giggle if she became too boisterous, imagining Jane and Bingley might hear from across the wide corridor. Having her parents under the same roof, however, was a far more imposing hindrance.

When the Bennets inadvertently ended up on the same floor, Darcy came to understand Mrs. Bennet’s voice was not the only discomfiture he would suffer. For, although she admitted it quite unreasonable, Elizabeth found it was impossible to think of herself concurrently as a passionate vixen and daughter of a father just down the hall. She was convinced her parents would hear them making love. Had not Goodwin heard her small shriek in the bathtub? (Had she had any notion of the dog business, she would truly have been mortified.)

This was initially a nettlesome apprehension. However, it rapidly blossomed into full-fledged paranoia. Darcy insisted it was impossible to be overheard. They were half the house-length away, the doors were massive, the windows were closed, the passageways carpeted. Sound did not carry in Pemberley.

“But,” Elizabeth reminded him, “Goodwin heard.”

Not truly of a mind to deny herself or Darcy pleasure, Elizabeth did not consider abstaining from marital connexion, but their couplings were certainly more sedate. At her insistence, a few nights of love were endured beneath two quilts, a counterpane, and a bedcover. Drenched in sweat, Darcy finally threw off the padding in disgust.

“I will suffer for your love, Lizzy, but I refuse to suffocate!”

“Shush,” was her only rejoinder.

Had not there been all this concern for silence, the other senses might not have been as compleatly investigated as they came to be. With their sounds of passion suppressed, the other four faculties became enhanced. Touch, taste, and scent had been fully explored and examined; perchance sight was slighted, if only by half. For, by reason of configuration, Elizabeth could only imagine what Darcy saw when they came together. This is what she whispered one night as she watched him watch himself do a kindness unto her person.

“Darcy, it has occurred to me that women are at a distinct disadvantage in the act of love. A man, evidently by nature’s intent, is able to view what I, as a woman, can only feel and enjoy.”

He did not stop, but glanced at her face as if considering her literal viewpoint, for this was not something over which he had ever puzzled. In a moment, he did stop. Her comment had been meant to be simply philosophical, just an observation. Nevertheless, Darcy was a man, and men tend to approach such inquiries as tests, not passive observances. Hence, he rose and purposefully strode to the far wall. This interruption was not an utter hardship. Indeed, his bare-buttocked stroll across the room was a significant treat. The thew his naked body exhibited as he strained to lift a heavy pier glass from its hooks well-nigh gave her the twitters.

Resting it against the bed board, he made a few adjustments to the lay of it. Thereupon he grabbed her ankles, drew her playfully about, the friction of the silk beneath her heating her back. She shrieked at that, and then clamped her hand over her own mouth.

He pointed at the image in the mirror, asking, “Do you approve?”

Looking at the enormous reflection of her own feminus denudata, she blushed, released her mouth, and covered her eyes in mortification. As curiosity is always a stronger force than embarrassment, it took very little coaxing for her to look with him and watch their bodies locked in conjugal union.

“It is really rather fascinating,” she told him. “A voyeurism, but without any guilt.”

Conversation withered away in absence of any true interest in talking, whispered or not. He had only glanced in the mirror to see what she had seen. As it bore no -revelation for him, her ambitiously renewed fervour caught him unawares. (The few times he had seen mirrors above a bed, he had fancied it for titillation of the man, such was the catering.) Hence, he was amazed that the mirror aroused Elizabeth as it did. Amazed and gratified. And neither was particularly silent about it.

Knowing that she had reached new heights of carnal pleasure, both sensual and vocal, Elizabeth did not come down to breakfast the next forenoon, feigning illness. The lie only exacerbated circumstances, for when she finally appeared, her mother rushed to an outlandish conclusion.

“Perhaps you are with child, Lizzy! Oh, Mr. Bennet! A son for Mr. Darcy! Our Lizzy will give him a son!”

“We have not been married five weeks, Mama.”

* * *

The mirror was stashed beneath their bed for the duration of the Bennets’ stay. However, the dust had not settled from their departure before it was retrieved. (Thenceforward, that looking-glass witnessed more carnal pleasures than did a knocking-house piano player.) It was secreted again beneath the bed for convenience sake and, without question, another adornment found its place upon the wall. As far as Elizabeth knew, the looking-glass and its hiding place were their little secret. In time, she laughed at her own naïveté. For she eventually realised that each time they drew it from beneath the bed, the glass was always dusted.