Ann Herendeen

by Pride / Prejudice (v5)

  Things were going so well that Charles didn’t like to press his luck, but he couldn’t resist. He slowly lowered his free hand the length of Jane’s skirts, feeling for the hem, only dimly aware that she was simultaneously gathering them up. He found his way under, encountered stocking and garter, then a rounded, smooth knee. Did he dare move higher?

  “Oh, Charles. That’s very nice. Don’t stop.”

  He slid up the length of a soft, yielding thigh, the skin like finest satin. Only sighs commented on his progress. His hand ascended until he could go no farther, yet magically the way parted and the road was opened again, leading into humid paradise.

  “Oh! Oh, Charles. I do love you, Charles. Oh, I wish we did not have to wait an additional two weeks, just so that we can all be married on the same day.”

  He had the presence of mind to say her name before speech became impossible for her and unnecessary for him.

  Twenty-Three

  “MR. DARCY?”

  “Fitz, my love. I want you to call me Fitz.”

  “Yes, Fitz. I cannot quite accustom myself to that name. There is something undignified about it, whereas Mr. Darcy suits you perfectly.”

  “You would not be comfortable always using the honorific.”

  “Like my mother, calling my father Mr. Bennet?” Elizabeth felt the involuntary shudder and squeezed her betrothed’s arm. “Don’t worry. I will make every effort to learn the ways of your exalted society, so that by the time we marry I shall be as odiously familiar as Miss Bingley.”

  Another tremor brought the trilling laugh Fitz had so longed to hear all those miserable months. “Oh, Fitz, we are perfectly suited, are we not? I know precisely how to ruffle your feathers. But I hope I shall know how to smooth them as well.” This last statement was said on a husky note, and Fitz dared not look to see if the unspoken meaning behind the words was as he had guessed.

  Elizabeth smiled up at him, drawing his gaze despite his best intentions. With her bonnet thrown back and secured only loosely around her throat by its ribbons, her teeth shone white against the slight tan of her face, still ruddy from the summer sun, and her eyes sparkled in the dim autumn light.

  Fitz wished only to possess her. How ridiculous it was! A mere two weeks remained until their nuptials, yet he was as impatient as a boy. It was undoubtedly a mistake to go on these long walks, but the alternative was to sit in the same house—the same room—as Charles and Jane, and that was clearly insupportable. And so they rambled, every fine day, as far as they could, both energetic walkers who took pleasure in the activity for its own sake, until they were as isolated and adrift as Robinson Crusoe. Oakham Mount was their favorite, the site of their first excursion as an engaged couple, where all the riddles of the past months’ misunderstandings had been unraveled. Their conversation flowed like sparkling rivulets around the many companionable silences, so different from what Fitz recognized now as the awkwardness they had endured at Rosings.

  They had come to a stile supported at one end by a mossy old oak. As he helped Elizabeth over she fell back against the tree trunk and, still holding his hand, pulled him with her. It was done so neatly he had no chance to prevent his body leaning most improperly along the entire length of hers. She lifted her head, and it was impossible not to kiss her little pink mouth. His cock swelled in a massive and painful erection, but instead of drawing back she nestled her thighs around it, pressing herself even closer.

  He forced their mouths to separate, although every part of him protested, and stepped away. “I beg your pardon, Elizabeth.”

  She reached up and traced the outlines of his lips with the tip of her gloved index finger. His mouth burned at the touch, as if the heat of her peppery skin had worked its way through the kid. “That was a lovely kiss,” she said. “There is no reason to apologize.”

  “You are too innocent,” Fitz said. “You do not know what you are risking, what you are tempting.”

  “I have a fairly good idea,” Elizabeth said. “It is I who should beg your pardon for subjecting your gentlemanly honor to such calculated teasing. My own restraint is lacking.”

  “I must disagree. A gentleman—”

  “A gentleman never contradicts a lady,” she said. “But you are right in this, as you are in most things. To behave with such abandon so soon before our wedding would be imprudent; if we were not equally delighted by the endeavor, we would have anticipated one of the classic disappointments of life—the unsatisfactory wedding night—and have nothing but repetition to look forward to on the day itself.”

  Fitz laughed from deep within his chest. She was truly extraordinary, to refer to such indelicate matters with the equanimity of a courtesan and yet retain her innocence. Her courage demanded equal candor. “Your argument is most persuasive, especially as I hope very much not to prove a disappointment. And I have a far better chance of success in a warm, comfortable bed than out here in the cold and the damp.”

  “You are assuming,” Elizabeth said, peeping up at him from under lowered lids, “that you are the one in danger of disappointing, when it is entirely possible that I—”

  “Never!” Fitz spoke much louder than necessary.

  “The only gallant answer,” Elizabeth said. “Indeed, I think here the laws of polite discourse put the gentleman very much at a disadvantage. If you agree with me, you are implying I am cold; if you disagree, you are accusing me of wantonness.”

  “Your logic is unassailable,” Fitz said, “and only goes to prove the unfitness of the subject for conversation, especially between the two people intimately concerned.”

  Elizabeth dared not pursue it. She had had to take the lead to induce Fitz’s proposal, thanking him for arranging Lydia’s salvation, despite his natural wish to keep his part in it hidden. That knowledge, gleaned from her sister’s careless words and her aunt Gardiner’s subsequently coerced explanation, had swept away all her doubts of his regard. Surely a man who undertook so distasteful a task, from which he gained nothing, was a man in love, needing only a little push to overcome the last constraints of shyness and previous rejection. Now it was up to Elizabeth to prove their compatibility, and she must gather the evidence herself. Anything, even a broken engagement, was better than discovering, too late, that they did not suit in this, the most intimate aspect of married life. They walked in silence while she steeled her resolve. “Do I disgust you?” she asked, after a long climb to the top of the scenic viewpoint had revealed only a misty opacity.

  “What?” Fitz was so taken aback he could not answer with his usual courtesy. “How can you think that, after what has just passed between us?”

  “No, I mean in my character, that I am impatient for our wedding night. Gentlemen rarely expect a lady to be capable of a passion equal to theirs.”

  Fitz felt his heart pounding. What she was hinting at was more arousing than naked flesh or improper touch. What would be an appropriate answer? And even if he thought of one, his throat would probably close up with excitement and reduce the words to choked gabbling. The image of Caro Finchley, moaning with pleasure at his caresses, came inconveniently yet with benevolence into his unguarded mind, calming him just far enough for coherent reply. “The combination of strong feeling with delicacy of mind and superior intellect is rare in either sex. Few men look for it in a woman, contenting themselves instead with coarse appetite or languid decorum as meets their requirements. But in you, it seems I have found what I thought existed only in imagination.” He could not so much as glance in her direction. All his powers of self-command would give way at one glance from those brilliant eyes.

  “It feels that way for me, too,” she said, finding it easier to speak frankly when he wasn’t looking at her face. “But gentlemen often assume that if a woman shows a preference for one man, she is indiscriminate in her affections. And I would be most unhappy if you believed that my earlier, mistaken partiality for Mr. Wickham merely indicated an overfondness for men in general.”

  “Such a gross misr
eading of your character is impossible for anyone with an ounce of intelligence,” Fitz said, his own tension receding at her discomfiture.

  “You give me perhaps greater credit than I deserve.” Elizabeth at last dared raise her head, saw Fitz smiling down at her with a very warm expression in his cool gray eyes, and quickly dropped hers to the ground again. “It’s one of the many ways you and I are alike, I think, and well suited. Mr. Wickham tempted us both, working on our baser emotions to provoke a desire that we gave the name of love because it was new to us.”

  Fitz was too shaken by the kiss, the thwarted expression of his love leaving him drained, to wonder how she knew of his disgraceful boyhood attachment. There was no answer he could make, nor did she seem to expect one.

  “You loved him, didn’t you?” Elizabeth said. This time she watched his face as she spoke, a task made easier by the fact that he would not meet her eyes. “Or confused lust with love. As I did.”

  “Wickham and I were like brothers, closer,” Fitz said. Without any conscious change, he could talk about it, openly and without embarrassment. It was simply there between them—total and complete understanding. “I thought he must love me as I loved him. I would take the blame for his misdeeds and bear the punishment myself. It was my way of proving my devotion. My poor father went to his death still half believing I was deficient in every moral quality. But Wick—George—Wickham—always showed me his gratitude in a, shall we say, tangible form. And I was weak.”

  “You were very young,” Elizabeth said, her fingertips stroking his forearm where she rested her hand while they walked.

  “I was a year or two older than you before I entirely freed myself from that misguided sentiment,” Fitz said.

  “It’s different for men,” Elizabeth said. “A man of twenty is but a boy, whereas a woman of the same age is expected to know right from wrong, and have the discernment to tell an honorable man from a fraud. But it took me reading a letter you should not have been forced to write to begin to see the truth. And only when he ran off with my sister did I comprehend what he was. Sometimes I think it is because my vanity was wounded that it was so hard for me to see clearly. I would not admit that if I loved a man, or thought I did, that he could be anything less than admirable.”

  “You make it sound almost logical,” Fitz said. “I only wish I had such reason on my side.”

  “Men are not made for celibacy. I have often wondered how gentlemen retain their reputation until marriage. And no, I do not expect an answer,” she added with a broad smile.

  “Thank goodness for that,” Fitz said, returning her smile and reveling in the relaxed atmosphere. How had she done it, made all his vice and misbehavior of the past years seem almost trivial? It was, he decided, just as she said: they were well matched—in passion, in understanding, and in temperament. He must write to Colonel Fitzwilliam and crow his triumph, that he had been right all along. Still, it would not do to dwell on this matter. “But I must beg you, Elizabeth, if you care for me, not to continue with this painful subject.”

  “I am sorry, Fitz,” Elizabeth said. “It’s only that I need to make sense of things on my own account. The knowledge that you had sought out Wickham, the person you least wanted to meet again, and paid what must have been a huge sum, even for you—it compelled me to accept the truth. The truth about him and the truth about you. And it filled me with gratitude, although I hope I can show it in a less disreputable way than he did.” Another mischievous smile nearly undid Fitz’s resolve.

  “That will not be difficult,” he said. “We are to be married. There is nothing disreputable here. And I repeat what I said when we last discussed this unwelcome topic of Wickham and your sister—that the business I conducted with him was bearable because I undertook it solely for your sake and thought only of you during its commission.” He barely grimaced at the lie. It concealed, as Elizabeth had just made clear, a deeper truth.

  “I wish…” she began, remembering her last, odd conversational exchanges with Wickham, the gross suggestions he had hinted at, when he and Lydia had visited after their marriage. It was her fault, she knew, for encouraging his earlier accusations against Fitz, and unlike her original imagining of that connection, the pictures it gave rise to were not pretty. “I hope,” she started over, “it makes the memory less painful for you to know that it was when I learned how thoroughly wicked he was, and how—good—you are, that all my feelings for him were extinguished, and blazed up the stronger, for you.”

  The last words were whispered, so faint he could barely hear. As he leaned down to catch them, it was inevitable that their mouths should meet again, natural that lips should part and tongues touch and taste. She had taken Fitz’s hands as she spoke and guided them to her waist. He didn’t resist, but continued in the direction she had started, and she lifted herself up into his embrace as soon as he completed the circle. She was so small, and he was so much taller, it was awkward at first—until it wasn’t. He lowered her carefully onto the ground as she locked her arms about his neck and raised her knees. He had unbuttoned, God help him, his skill at opening his flap one-handed developed over the years until it had become a mindless reflex, and he parted her thighs with his…

  Something in her face saved him—a look of longing mingled with fear. Fitz rolled away in the nick of time, convulsing with the discharge he was powerless to contain. He could only pray she did not see, but she was there, leaning over him, her hand caressing his back and flank. “What must you think of me now?” He almost cried in his despair.

  “That you are as proficient in the art of love as in conversation, and as unwilling to flaunt your skill until you find the right partner,” Elizabeth said. “And that you want me very much. Almost as much as I want you. I doubt I could have drawn back like that if things were reversed. And I wish you need not.” She laughed, although with more of a quaver than her usual resonance. “Now what must you think of me?”

  “That you are as quick with an epigram on the brink of disaster as if you were safe in your own drawing room.” Fitz answered her with difficulty, his back turned, wishing to shield her—and himself—from the ugly truth of men’s unruly flesh. “And that you are kind merely to laugh at me and not condemn.”

  Elizabeth waited until Fitz had wiped himself on his shirt and stuffed himself back inside his breeches before replying. “You know my way is to laugh whenever morality allows it,” she said. She stood up and shook out her gown and cloak, hauled her crushed bonnet up by its strings and attempted to reshape it, the purposeful, jerky movements concealing the trembling of her limbs. “Perhaps I am audacious in making fun of us, but I feel safer that way.”

  “I should prefer you to feel protected when with me, not to have to constantly guard against my taking liberties,” Fitz said. He was able to button and stand up also, brushing the soil from his knees.

  “You could take nothing I did not choose to give,” Elizabeth said. “I imagine many a marriage has been consummated on this very spot, by couples who had not our—your—strength of will. I used to come here on occasion with my dearest friend, Charlotte Lucas. Mrs. Collins now. My mother would scold me for my ‘green gown’—another example of country vulgarity, I suppose, but I am merely quoting.”

  The abrupt change of subject helped Fitz, as she had intended. He found his hat where it had rolled and knocked it against his palm to dislodge any insects, then replaced it on his head, tapping on the crown to push it firmly into place. “Mrs. Collins,” he said. “Do I know her?”

  “Surely you remember your aunt’s vicar at Rosings?” Elizabeth said, chiding him gaily, her light tone appropriate for the idle chat of a morning call. “Charlotte married him, against all my protestations. But I think she is content with her choice.”

  They walked again to distract themselves, holding themselves apart. Fitz pursued the inane, harmless line of conversation with gratitude. “Mr. Collins? He is an abomination—an obsequious, arse-kissing fool, utterly lacking in intellect or j
udgment.”

  “Precisely. Which is why I turned him down and begged Charlotte to reconsider. Oh, I am looking forward to our marriage. You say exactly what one thinks and dare not. I should have so liked to have called Mr. Collins an obsequious fool, although it would probably be better if I did not use that other phrase.”

  Fitz was shocked out of his newfound calm. “Are you serious?” At Elizabeth’s nod, he exclaimed, “But there are laws against such things!”

  “Against my saying that Mr. Collins is an arse-kisser?”

  “Of course not. There ought to be a law requiring that he be stood in the pillory for an hour every week and proclaimed one with a sign around his neck. No, against bestiality. Men—or women—having improper relations with animals.” He was again rewarded with her laughter.

  “That is cruel!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “And so very true. I only wish I had thought of it at the time.”

  “You say the man, and I use the term very loosely, proposed marriage to you?”

  Elizabeth gave a stiff little nod. She could barely bring herself to acknowledge the shame of it, even now. “But after I refused him, and convinced him that I was not being overmodest—the work of a very long morning, I promise you—he sneaked off to Lucas Lodge the next day and proposed to Charlotte, and was accepted immediately. I was heartbroken when she told me.”

  “I should think so. A good friend of yours.” Fitz tried to put a face or a form to the vicar’s wife, and could not. He had seen only her, the flame of his desire embodied. “But she likely has none of your beauty and, although I do not know her, I expect but half of your wit.”

  “No, Fitz. Don’t dismiss her so coldly. She was my closest friend, and I couldn’t have loved her if she lacked all good qualities, and she deserved far better than that—abomination. I imagine it’s the way you must feel about Mr. Bingley, and that’s why you worked so hard to keep him from my sister.”