“Just this once. I promise not to usurp the privilege to which you have long since acquired sole rights. Now, may I hope to entice you to say a few things you don’t mean?”
“Oh yes, Fitz. No more interruptions, I promise. You were going along so very well.”
He kissed her mouth again and fondled her cleft. Her trust in him was most gratifying, that she lifted her hips to his hand and moved herself against him. When he inserted his middle finger as far as the second knuckle, her muscles, surprisingly strong, clenched and released repeatedly, as if she had done this before. Yet she was as small and snug as any woman he had ever known—more, as he had known only married or professional women. She tightened herself around him with a sigh as he withdrew, as sorry to let him go as he was to leave her. But he must find that place that would bring her to pleasure. There it was, already red and engorged—and so sensitive he need only flick it with the lightest touch of fingertip. Much sooner than he had dared to hope, she was pulsing and throbbing against his palm, spurting with moisture.
“Please, Fitz,” she said on a sob, pressing her face against his shoulder. She locked her sharp little teeth onto the sensitive hollow where neck and collarbone joined, worrying at his flesh like a dog with its favorite stick. He put the head of his cock to her opening, holding back as long as he could, until she spread her legs wide and pushed up to meet him, still biting into him, gasping and panting. There was no help for it now; he must enter her or lose everything. With one powerful thrust they were joined, his shaft buried in her, one flesh, one soul. She opened her eyes wide and loosened her jaws from his neck, crying out so loud he was momentarily petrified, convinced he had caused her irreparable damage.
“Oh, Fitz,” she said, staring up at him, mouth quivering in what could be a cry of distress or teary laughter. “Oh, Fitz, I love you. I love you. Please, Fitz, don’t make me say it again.” Her teeth were pink with his blood.
He felt her spasms, and, responding to her own fierce rhythm, began to move inside her with increasing power, driving her forward against the piled bed cushions.
“Ah, I love you. Wicked, sweet man. I love you, Fitz. I love you.” Her fingernails dug into the muscles of his back.
“And I love you, Elizabeth,” he said, as he spent himself in her. “I will say it as often as you wish, and still it will not be enough.” He eased out of her, already regretting the desolation of separate existence, and fell sideways, rolling onto his back. “My love.”
Twenty-Five
IN A ROOM just along the corridor, Charles embraced his Jane. He wanted to devour her, slowly and methodically, the way Fitz was probably doing with Elizabeth. Charles could feel the explosion building within; at any moment he was going to let loose. Only the fear of frightening her or giving her a disgust of him allowed him a measure of restraint, and it took all his concentration. He caressed the luxurious waves of her golden hair, released from their bondage to ripple around her face, then dipped his head for a kiss.
“Charles, stop!” Jane said, leaping out of his arms as if scalded.
“My love,” he protested. “Surely I may kiss you? We are married.”
“Of course,” she said. “But the door is open a crack.”
“Oh Lord. Fitz did remind me about that. But I had so many more pressing things to see to.”
Jane giggled. “Lizzy told me about it too.”
“Lizzy? Your sister? Mrs. Darcy? When could she have—”
“Last autumn,” Jane said. “She was very witty about it.”
“How wonderful!” Charles stood still in a sort of daze, recalling those frustrating weeks with contentment, as for a long-past ordeal, easily endured. “Fitz decided it was my sister Caroline, you see, and he was scathing on that subject. I hope he is pleased that it was Elizabeth all along.”
“Charles, my dear. If you don’t shut the door and come to bed, I will put my clothes back on and sleep in the dressing room.”
“Jane! Oh, you are teasing.” Charles roused from his dream and pushed the door shut, watching in dismay as it sagged on its hinges and opened an inch or two into the room. “I suppose we shall have to find another chamber.”
“Just put a chair under the door handle. My sister and Mr. Darcy will be leaving in the morning and we can switch rooms then.”
“You know you can call him Fitz,” Charles said.
“Since he will very shortly be quitting our house, there is no reason for me to address him at all.”
“Jane, my love, you will have to forgive him sometime. Let’s discuss it in the morning.”
“There’s no need to discuss it ever, Charles. No, don’t blow out the candle. And would you mind very much removing your shirt? I want to see all that dark hair Lizzy told me of.”
Excited by the prospect of naked proximity to his beloved, Charles was able to tamp down the slight disappointment that Elizabeth, not Jane, had been the first lady to see him in the flesh. He wriggled out of his shirt like a schoolboy and stood diffidently before his bride.
“You’re blushing,” Jane said, laughing with delight. “Everywhere.”
“I didn’t know that ladies enjoyed the sight of men as much as we do the ladies,” Charles said, as his eagerness for his wife was revealed in all its unruly passion.
“We don’t,” Jane said. “At least, I do not. But once we’re married, and to someone we love, it does not seem so very wrong.”
“No, why should it? It is just that I was embarrassed to think of your sister.”
“Yes, dear,” Jane said. “If it makes you feel any better, she had nothing but praise for your person. I see, now, that she did not exaggerate.”
“May I not enjoy the sight of you, too? You are modest, I know, but—”
“It seems only fair,” Jane said. “And I should like to show myself to you, because I love you and I hope it will please you. Although I will have to start by turning my back, until I find the courage.” She took a deep breath before beginning, bunching the material of her nightdress with her fingers, until she had worked the skirt up over her hips.
Charles gasped. “Oh, my word! I had no idea!” Her backside was perfection—like a pale peach, its two large halves divided by the crease, the flesh mottled with fatty indentations. Charles had never seen anything so beautiful…
She waited for another two breaths, hoisted the gown above her shoulders, and, stretching the opening with her hands, slipped it neatly over her elaborate coiffure. She turned around. “There, Charles.”
…until he saw the front of her. Full, deep breasts, small, pink puckered nipples, wide hips, and plump thighs that curved in, away from her cleft, then curved out to meet, forming a neat line down to her knees. The slightest movement made everything shake or wobble, just a little. Just enough to make Charles think he was going to…
“Are you quite well?” Jane asked, bending over her husband where he lay on his back in what looked like a faint, while that one part of him stood straight up and grew rapidly in size, darkening in color. Jane watched in fascination to see it jerk with diabolical energy, as if trying to escape its attachment to Charles’s body and launch itself into the air.
Charles sat up, winced at the pain in his lower body, and took his wife’s hand. “No, my love. I am overcome by your beauty. I had seen only your face until now, and while I thought I could imagine the rest of you, I was unprepared for the goddess that was revealed to me.”
“You are sweet,” Jane said. “But if we don’t do something about it, that rather frightening appendage is going to erupt, or explode.”
“Very true,” Charles said. “Here’s what I propose.”
“No,” Jane said, “no more talking. Why don’t you kiss me again. We both like that. Then we’ll—Oh! I didn’t know you were going to kiss me there! And there! Oh, Charles!”
FITZ WOKE WITH an odd sense of being watched. It was like a memory from boyhood, drowsing away a rainy afternoon in the barn, and Rowley, the tomcat…He opened his eyes.
“T
here, you’re awake,” Elizabeth said, kissing his cheek. “I was debating with myself whether to wake you. I didn’t want to deprive you of your well-earned and obviously badly needed rest, but—”
“Elizabeth, is something wrong?” Fitz sat up too hurriedly and collapsed against the pillows as the blood rushed from his head.
“No, no, Fitz. It’s just that I know we want to get an early start this morning and—”
“Oh God, what time is it?” Again he sat up and again had to flop back down.
“It’s all right, Fitz. It’s not yet seven.”
“What is the trouble, then, my dear?”
“No trouble. That is, I was hoping we would have time for more pleasure before rejoining the world. But I see you are fatigued.”
“More pleasure? Surely you are fatigued yourself.” Fitz struggled with his conflicting desires and gave in to his baser nature, looking at his wife’s face. Ladies were not at their best first thing in the morning and should be left unseen to repair the night’s ravages. A young girl after her first night of love would be all the more fragile, feeling wounded, despoiled, and sullied, perhaps disillusioned. Yet Elizabeth’s beauty was no more diminished by the harsh light of dawn than her character had been by her family’s stark vulgarity. She was rosy and rumpled, her skin glowing, her hair wild and frizzed, the curls tighter and standing out in all directions around her face. Her eyes shone like twin stars in a vista of night sky. Without conscious thought, Fitz recognized, here beside him in the bed, a younger, softer version of Betty, the Fury’s visage of the cotter’s adulterous wife, and made peace with its womanly, fulfilled maturity.
“Oh, I’m not at all tired. After last night’s three enlightening sessions—or was it four?—I see that you poor men must do most of the hard labor in this business.”
“Four, my dear. I apologize for making such a sad job of that last attempt.”
“Not at all,” Elizabeth said. “It’s only that I wasn’t sure whether it was considered to be—that is, when the man doesn’t—when the male organ—I mean…” She blushed and swallowed.
“I never thought to see you at a loss for words,” Fitz said, lying back and clasping his hands behind his head, a self-satisfied smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “And so early in our marriage.”
“Are there words for—that?” Elizabeth asked in a challenging tone.
“Certainly,” Fitz said, “although they are not ones a lady would have reason to use, or even to hear.”
“Then you have no right to tease me on the subject,” Elizabeth said. “And you ought to tell me some of them, so that I may request it.”
“I take it you liked it well enough to want it again?”
“I think it will help to improve my vocabulary,” Elizabeth said, “associating the action with the word.”
“There are a number of terms, all impolite,” Fitz said, certain he would regret this freedom, but unable to deny her anything, even a word. “But ‘tipping the velvet’ is perhaps the least objectionable.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Very pretty. I imagine we will need to examine the etymology of that phrase on occasion.”
Fitz sat up to meet her lips, kissing her mouth and snuffling at her neck and breast, remembering his first intrigued scent of her, after her walk from Longbourn. “Is this, do you suppose, such an occasion?” he murmured.
She returned the kisses with equal and ardent inhalations. “Honestly, Fitz, no. You are about to observe that I need a bath. As you are in the same condition, it seems to me we might as well revel in our dirt and match our bodies plow to furrow, as we say in the country, and face to face.”
His “plow” turned to furrow-cleaving steel at the plain speaking; as throughout the past year, his whole being was stirred by this unique mix of artlessness and alluring sensuality. He wished there was an exclusive gesture or ritual, something beyond the common marriage ceremony, to mark their union as blessed above all others. “You are the most amazing woman I have ever known,” he said. “What have I done to deserve such happiness?”
“That is a very trite statement,” Elizabeth said. “But we cannot all conceive original epigrams before breakfast. I will let it pass until you have gathered your wits.” She put her hand on him. “Does this help?”
“Not with the wits gathering,” Fitz said, while speech remained a possibility. “But no, that was not a request that you stop.”
She stroked him up and down, fingering the soft skin that moved so tantalizingly against the hard shaft beneath. Her little fist barely encompassed him as he swelled under her ministrations. When the head began to emerge from the foreskin, she exclaimed, “It is like a sheath of velvet! Can a woman tip the velvet too?”
“No!” He dissolved in uneasy laughter, until his resolve for honesty between them compelled him to admit some of the improper truth. ‘“Velvet’ refers to the tongue; what you are proposing is an undertaking best reserved for men.”
“And you doubt a mere wife can do as well. We shall see.”
Never, he swore, thereby justifying his indolence, should her stainless honor be sullied with the knowledge that, among her sex, this was the principal business of whores.
Elizabeth, encountering no further resistance, licked tentatively at the shaft, like a cat tasting a dish of porridge left unattended on the kitchen table, then pressed her lips in a wide kiss over the head. By the time she attempted to swallow, he was so engorged as to reach the point of danger. At the last possible moment, before he committed the most shameful deed with his bride, she gave up her efforts, made all the more arousing by her lack of expertise. “You are too big,” she said, sounding almost sorry, “and my mouth and my throat cannot stretch like the passageway between my legs.”
It was easy enough, Fitz discovered, to exercise self-control when his beloved was uncomfortable or unhappy. “Come here,” he said, pulling her up beside him so she could rest in the crook of his arm. “We need not re-create all of Aretino’s engravings in one day.”
She brightened at his mention of the notorious name. “I suppose you have a copy in the library at Pemberley. Perhaps we can try one each week?”
“In time,” he said, unruffled, taking his first steps on the glorious lifelong progress of their marriage: learning to distinguish her innocent barbs from deliberate baiting. “It is kept in a special cabinet, with an admonition that it is not to be opened by those married less than a year. Until then, we shall manage very well on our own.”
For a minute or two there was silence, punctuated only by the liquid sounds of deep kisses and the shifting of bodies on tangled sheets.
“It is not such hard work as all that for us poor men,” Fitz said. “Why should you think it?”
“You groan and make grunting noises.”
“You are not exactly silent yourself,” Fitz said.
“Would you wish me to be?” Elizabeth asked. “Is it not a testament to your skill? I suppose Charles was too polite to mention it.”
“I wish,” Fitz said, “you could leave other people out of our bed, if only for a week or two.”
“That,” Elizabeth said, “is entirely your decision.”
“I begin to have my doubts,” Fitz said, preparing to engage in more heavy lifting, “that there will be any decision that is entirely mine from now on.”
“There’s nothing to doubt,” Elizabeth answered. “There will be no such unilateral decisions. Oh! Fitz! Oh no, please—don’t stop.”
“What did you say to me last night, my love?”
“Oh, you are cruel.”
“Yes, that. And something else, I think you said.”
“Oh, Fitz. Please. Oh. Oh! Wicked.” She thrashed and flailed, trying to escape his hand, but he held her in place, straddling her with his thighs. After much experimentation the night before, he began to have a better gauge of her wiry strength. “Magnificent,” she moaned out on a long breath.
“And what else?” He played with her nipples, tonguing and scra
ping with his teeth, until she was shaking with a passion that was as close to the peak of ecstasy as could be obtained from touching only the breasts.
“I see I will have to earn my every pleasure from now on,” Elizabeth said. “I love you, Fitz. I love you. Does that satisfy you?”
“For now,” Fitz said, success making him careless.
Quick and agile as the cat she so resembled, Elizabeth escaped from Fitz’s restraint, sliding around and rolling him onto his back. She flung one sinewy leg over and clambered neatly on top. “There,” she said, laughing with triumph. “That is much better. Lord! What an enormous staff you have, grandfather!” She lifted herself higher on her knees, like a jockey preparing to ride hell-bent for the home stretch, and sat herself down, slowly and deliberately engulfing his cock. She sighed and trembled as she slid into position. “Now what have you to say?”
Fitz lay supine, unable to speak, chest heaving in ecstasy. She began her posting, raising and lowering herself in the saddle. If she had a riding crop she would be whipping him inexorably to that glorious finish line. Never had surrender felt so like victory. As she released him from his torment—and hers—he gasped out, “I love you, my dearest Elizabeth. I love you.”
“And you accuse me of saying things I don’t mean,” she said on a soft exhale, collapsing forward onto his broad chest. “But it is sweet to hear, all the same.”
Over the next hour, as the manor house of Netherfield creaked, shuddered, and growled its way to morning bustle, in four hearts, in two separate bedchambers, the new day was welcomed with fervent gratitude.
Twenty-Six
FITZ RODE OUT early one morning, three weeks into his marriage, circling the park before heading for the uplands beyond. He needed one morning as he was used to, alone in the dawn mist, considering the tenants and their farms: how the Stowe family would manage after the eldest son’s death; what was ailing the cattle on the north pastures; whether the war would keep prices high—and whether there would still be a war after the next campaign season ended…
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