Always George had made him feel that what they did was disgusting, a perversion. If George sometimes seemed to enjoy it, well, that was how men are, he implied. Vile, debased creatures, at the mercy of their appetites. Laughing all the time as if it was a great joke.
But here were scholars and masters, men of learning and virtue, and they taught of a different time, when love between men was the basis of all that was noblest and virile in a great civilization. When warriors fought side by side with their lovers and when democracy was giving birth to the greatest art the Western world would see in over a thousand years.
It hadn’t been one big molly paradise, of course. There were many, both students and tutors, who were vehement in their hatred and condemnation of what they called the sin of sodomy, a term Fitz had heard all his life but had never connected with his boyhood passion. Still, friends sought each other out, introducing likeminded friends, and everybody as circumspect as college men can be, which is to say, not very. But wealth and connections meant something, even here, and Fitz and his friends were left alone. That was one valuable lesson Fitz learned from his father, to behave responsibly with the great fortune they were privileged to enjoy, to husband their riches and not squander it on fleeting pleasures and dangerous indulgence.
In Fitz’s first year down from university, his father passed away, leaving Fitz the master of the entire estate, free to pay Wickham his inheritance and send him off. What a glorious liberation that had been! Taking up his residence in the house on Grosvenor Street, entering London society. And finding that a tall, well-built, wealthy young man from a noble family need not work very hard to win the favors of ladies. Not the country girls and cotters’ wives of George’s youthful indiscretion. Not even the clean but businesslike denizens of a house like Madame Amélie’s. Real ladies, like Caroline Finchley, who knew the same people as Fitz, who came from a similar sort of family and spoke the same language.
That had been an astonishing initiation. Caro was careful never to talk of love, treating the whole episode as a charming amusement, but all her gestures, her entire manner, spoke of deep affection. Fitz had not believed that women could truly enjoy the physical act. The famous argument of the Greeks, the gods debating which sex had greater pleasure and deciding in favor of women, had not been convincing to many a young Englishman. Always Fitz had been told it was the man who took his pleasure, the woman who tolerated it, trading her compliance for material reward—money, or a situation, or, in the best of circumstances, when she was of equal rank, marriage. It was the way of nature, of animals. Look at horses, dogs, bulls. The male snorted and sniffed and pawed the ground in his eagerness. The female was tied in place, stood still, endured and produced a foal or a litter or a calf. Yet here was a beautiful, voluptuous woman, wife of one of the country’s wealthiest knights, moaning and writhing in unfeigned ecstasy at Fitz’s increasingly accomplished touch. “Oh Lord, Fitz,” she would say, interspersing her words with cries and gasps of delight. “Your little head is as clever as your big one. Although with you, the two are much of a size. When my heart gives out one of these nights, I will die happy.”
After his year of training, Fitz had been subtly eased out of the lady’s graces, as a newer, greener youth took his place. It had been so neatly done, Fitz barely realized what had happened until it was over. There had been no farcical meetings on the stairs or mix-ups of time and place to create jealousy or suspicion. Just a few odd moments when Fitz was told the lady was not at home, even though the memory of making the assignation was fresh in his mind from the night before. And seeing another man’s hat and gloves on the table in the foyer. Not Sir Peter’s, who dressed twenty years behind the fashions…
But meeting Lydia Waring, the introduction made by Caro herself, more than assuaged any feeling of rejection. Sharp, quick-witted Lydia, with a curvaceous, well-developed figure and possessed of strong animal spirits, was more than happy to accommodate Fitz’s desires. Lydia found a pleasant suite of rooms in Chelsea at a reasonable rent, and she kept it in good order, opening the door, and her person, for him alone. She was rarely tired or out of sorts. Even her monthly courses never ran heavy or long. Lydia welcomed Fitz at all hours of the day or night and she needed no prompting or coaxing to fulfill her end of the bargain. She made him laugh, imitating the fashionable people she came across, and she had a keen ear for accents and mannerisms—and hypocrisy.
It was a pity she hadn’t been able to attend school or acquire an education, Fitz often thought, even going so far as to voice his concern once to Lydia. She dismissed that idea with contempt. “So I could be a governess and live worse than a slavey, neither upstairs nor down, at some pinchpenny family’s beck and call? I make a much better living as I am, and I enjoy my work.” She opened Fitz’s pantaloons as she spoke, leading him toward the bedroom, where she soon proved the truth of her words. It suited Fitz far better that she was honest about their relationship instead of playing at a travesty of love, as many women of her sort preferred. Yes, she had a temper, especially if it had been a while since Fitz had given her a new gown or a piece of jewelry. But that was infrequent, and even then she had the prettiest tricks for reminding him, and for thanking him when the error was rectified…
If there was sometimes a sense of emptiness, promptings of the heart, memories of those enchanted two years at Cambridge, that led Fitz to wish for more, he ignored it as best he could. But there were times when a stroll in St. James’s Park led to the quick easing, if only for a brief half an hour, of the loneliness. One day, in an awkward, perhaps inevitable meeting, he chanced upon Carew, looking far worse than the passing of a mere three years should account for.
They had gone for a drink and dinner at a decent inn, but nothing beyond that. “If I had money and connections, I would have belonged to a club like this,” Carew said, handing Fitz a gentleman’s calling card, “instead of ending up sick and rotten.” Fitz had almost thrown the card away—what did he care for some poxed old earl’s dissolute younger son? But he went around one day out of curiosity and met the Honorable Sylvester Monkton. After a rather stilted conversation, the topic had touched on mutual friends, to Carew, and to Fitz’s time at Cambridge, and in another week’s time he was being initiated into the Brotherhood of Philander.
Twenty
WHERE WAS PROVIDENCE now? George wondered. How had all his plans evaporated into empty air? Running from debts yet again, abandoning his regiment and fellow officers. Here he was, George Wickham, who had had hopes of heiresses, and who had dreamed of Elizabeth Bennet, reduced to hiding out in squalid lodgings in the worst part of town with her whore of a sister.
When Darcy finally found them, it was all George could do not to shake the man’s hand and thank him in the most piteous terms. It had been a miserable two weeks and no end in sight. At first it had seemed like all his other larks. A willing, lusty wench, the escape from importuning tradesmen and those ridiculous sums called “debts of honor” that self-styled gentlemen took so seriously. But Lydia Bennet had the sticking power that a girl of her tender years rarely showed. More like Mrs. Younge, with three decades of hard experience. No matter how many tricks George tried on Lydia, things most whores demanded extra payment for, her appetite only increased. He should be glad of her company, he supposed, instead of an empty bed at night, and yet, like most men, he preferred to be the pursuer, not the prey.
He hadn’t been gentle with Lydia when he took her maidenhead. He was rough and quick, using her like the cheap goods she was. That would teach her for stealing what belonged by rights to her sister.
She didn’t cry, just stared up at him, her lips trembling, and reminding him, as almost made him spew, of Elizabeth’s bright, expressive eyes. And then, to his amazement, grabbing him there. “Can we try it again, Wick? I think I’ll like it better the second time.”
And she had.
“Wick, darling,” she said, “here’s your old friend Mr. Darcy to see you.”
There he was, handso
mer than George recalled and looking both stern and benign, as if something wonderful had happened to him since they had last encountered each other, on Meryton’s high street.
“Why don’t you go for a walk, George,” Darcy said. “Let me talk to Miss Bennet alone.”
“No,” Lydia said. “Whatever you have to say to me, Wick can hear it too.”
Darcy turned, allowing his eyes to rest briefly on her face. He did not bow, but merely inclined his head from his great height as if to address her on her level. “I beg your pardon, Miss Bennet,” he said. “You are too young to know what is in your best interest.”
“I may be young,” Lydia said, “but I’m a woman now. My Wick has seen to that, and made a good job of it too, so he should hear whatever it is you’re proposing.”
“For God’s sake, Lyd,” George said. “Listen to what Mr. Darcy has to say. It might be valuable advice.” He gestured like an innkeeper or a thieves’ tout, rubbing his fingertips together. That silenced her. “I’ll be most appreciative of anything you can do,” he whispered in Darcy’s ear as he passed by on his way to wait in the other room.
Darcy wasn’t alone with her long. He wrenched open the door after about five minutes, letting it bang against the wall with the force. Lydia slipped past him into the bedroom, for once in her life looking abashed, and George sauntered back into the sitting room. “My God,” Darcy said. “She has absolutely no sense of the situation she’s got herself into.”
“No,” George said. “I was afraid of that. If she doesn’t give a fig for what Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley has to say—”
“Why should she?” Darcy asked. “I suppose you taught her that.”
“She’s a quick learner when it suits her,” George said. “The only person she listens to is me, and then only when I’m saying something she cares to hear, such as how I’m going to warm her arse all night.”
“That’s enough,” Darcy said, his face taking on the familiar expression of distaste. “You could have told me that going in.”
“Thought you’d need to hear it for yourself,” George said. “Still, I expect you tried.”
“I did,” Darcy said. “I represented to her all the dangers of—”
“Please, don’t repeat it,” George said. “Look, Fitz, I truly am grateful, but I didn’t expect you to succeed. Just tell me what you think I should do now.”
“Grateful,” Darcy said with a snort. “I gave up expecting gratitude from you years ago. Right around the time you told me just what you thought of my lovelorn sentiments, and what I could do with myself.”
George smiled up at Darcy. God, he really was a beautiful man. “As you should, Fitz. As you should. But honestly, this time it’s different. She’s like a barnacle. Can’t scrape her off no matter how hard I scratch.”
“Serves you right,” Darcy said. There was none of his old smirk, none of that self-righteous, overbearing hauteur. Almost a kind of sympathy. His next words blew that thought to pieces. “Marry her, George. You’ll have to marry her if I can’t convince her to return to her family.”
“Jesus Christ, Fitz! I can’t marry her. You know that. You of all people. You know I’ve no more money than she has—”
“That was my argument,” Darcy said. “But I rather suspect you’ve met your match at last.” He showed his teeth in a repellent, unusually sunny smile.
“Perhaps,” George said. “But it’ll take at least ten thousand—”
Darcy let loose with a peal of laughter that threatened to bring down the rafters of the rickety old building that had somehow survived the plague, the Great Fire, and the Gordon Riots more than a century later. “God, George,” he said. “You’re priceless. Here you are in a situation where you should be down on your knees begging for anything I can do—and yes, I mean every improper implication of the expression—and instead you cry for the moon. You are not going to get anything close to ten thousand for marrying Lydia Bennet.”
“Fine,” George said. “Then I wash my hands of her. Let her go back to her family and explain how she got her swollen belly.”
“Wouldn’t lay too much on those odds,” Darcy said. “It’s only been two weeks.”
“A very busy two weeks,” George said. “Do you want to take that chance?”
“Me?” Darcy said. “You’ll be taking the chance when her family comes after you for ruining her.”
“That’s the funny thing, though, isn’t it?” George said. “Her family didn’t come after me—at least, they didn’t find me. You did. What’s it to you, Fitz? Revenge for Georgiana?” He stepped back hurriedly as Darcy raised a fist.
“Do not mention my sister’s name, George. I can promise you, you won’t do yourself any good that way.”
“All right, all right,” George said, shielding his face with his hands, just to be on the safe side. “By the way, I met some friends of yours recently. A very pleasant baronet—Verney, I think his name was. That’s right—Sir Frederick Verney. And an extremely obliging individual, younger son of an earl—Monk-something-or-other? Although not at all monklike in behavior. Then again, ‘Monk’ Lewis would no doubt see the resemblance. And now that I think about it, those supposedly celibate brothers in monasteries are notorious for their addiction to the same vice so heartily indorsed by that delightful fraternity of yours—what is it called? The Brotherhood of Philander?” He watched from under half-lowered lids, awaiting the explosion.
Nothing. Perhaps a slight twitch at the reference to Monkton, but not the outburst he had braced himself for. He had not thought Darcy would have allowed him to get this far without a forceful interruption, but he soldiered on, attempting to put a crack in that inscrutable façade. “Quite a luxurious establishment you fellows have there. Park Lane. Used to be called Tyburn Lane not all that long ago, wasn’t it? Where they had the gallows. More appropriate, eh, Fitz?”
Darcy shrugged. “You know, George, you’re becoming rather tedious on the subject. I haven’t been anywhere near Park Lane. Only reason I’m in town is to assist Miss Lydia Bennet in her difficulty.”
George could see Darcy was telling the truth, more or less. It was clearly the truth as he saw it. But there had to be something…He thought back to his time in Meryton, putting things together in his mind. And he got it—so obvious and clear—how he could come out of this ahead after all. Just a question of playing the man the right way—but hadn’t he always known that? It took more courage than he had ever needed, and he worked at keeping his voice steady. “I have it—Elizabeth Bennet! That’s where this tender concern for the virtue of a natural-born strumpet comes from.”
This time there was a violent flinch, almost immediately contained, but unmistakable. George smiled to himself and pursued his quarry with renewed vigor. “Well, well. Fitzwilliam Darcy in love with Lizzy Bennet. Never thought you had such discerning taste in the petticoat line. No wonder you’re in such a state—I’ve suffered that same torment myself. Making you stiff with her wit and her pretty tricks one minute, the next protesting her virtue, until you’re doubled over in a constant state of aching balls. Still, if you can catch her, she’ll be worth it, yes indeed. A very hot little piece, judging by the sister. Ever noticed the resemblance? Only real difference between them, Lydia doesn’t tease, just gives a man what he wants. In fact, when I’m with her, I picture Lizzy to myself, most of the time. Lydia’s built on more generous lines, a wallowing barge compared to Lizzy’s trim little yacht, but they have the same dark hair, and those eyes. Those wide, innocent eyes that just beg for it.” He raised his voice an octave. “Please, George. Oh, please, give it to me hard because I’ve such an itch in my cunt I can’t bear it—unh.”
George went down with a thud.
FITZ SHOOK OUT his fist and watched as George scrambled to his feet, stumbling over the overturned chair, working his jaw and holding out his arm for protection. It would never do to be caught off guard. George looked vulnerable now, but that was just when he would be most likely to kick a
man in the balls or pull a knife. “I’m warning you, Wick,” Fitz said, unaware he’d reverted to their boyhood name, “dragging a lady’s name into this isn’t going to help you.”
George grinned. “As I was trying to say, Fitz, Lizzy Bennet’s too sharp to fall for a confirmed sodomite like you.”
Fitz saw George’s ethereal smile with a strange sense of relief. Thank goodness the man’s jaw wasn’t broken, although Fitz suspected his blow might have loosened a tooth or two. He contemplated opening the door, walking out and downstairs. Better a knife in the back than to listen to any more of this. And he couldn’t very well strike George again, not with his mouth all bloody like that. “Your words are beneath my notice or that of any gentleman. But once I make your whereabouts known to Miss Bennet’s father and uncle, they will no doubt find a way to shut you up.”
“You leaving?” George said. “Give my love to Lizzy. And tell her, I’m sorry we are not to be brother- and sister-in-law, but Mr. Darcy couldn’t spare anything to make it possible. No, wait—her sister can deliver that message herself, along with her nameless bastard.”
Fitz cursed under his breath. “What do you want from me, Wick? Name a reasonable price and I’ll meet it.”
“Five thousand,” George said. “And I’ll bend over for you, like old times.”
Fitz laughed again. “Poor old Wick. I’ve had dreams of that for years. Now, seeing you in all this dirt, with that young whore draped around your neck like a noose, all I can say is, five thousand pounds is one hell of an exorbitant price for admission through the rear entrance.”
“Can’t get it up, Darcy? Got the pox from those madge culls at the Brotherhood?”
“You’ll find out,” Fitz said. “Five hundred.”
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