Fifty Shades of Mr Darcy: A Parody

by William Codpiece Thwackery

  Mr Darcy stepped back as if stung. ‘You have never climaxed during our encounters?’

  Elizabeth flushed, despite herself. ‘I do not wish to wound your pride, Mr Darcy, but no, never.’

  ‘How can that be so?’ Mr Darcy asked, incredulously. ‘Lady Catherine taught me everything there is to know.’

  ‘Then I believe she taught you very ill.’

  Mr Darcy’s eyes flashed in anger. ‘Lady Catherine is well versed in the ways of the flesh!’ he exclaimed. ‘She was an excellent tutor.’

  ‘She may know about flesh,’ cried Elizabeth passionately, ‘but she knows little of love, of eroticism, of intimacy. Of truly pleasing a woman!’

  Mr Darcy, clearly shocked, quickened his pace. His face was dark, glowering. ‘You do not like my Broom Cupboard?’ he asked. ‘I had thought you were enticed by my dangerous, dark desires.’

  Elizabeth shrugged. ‘Not really. I mean, yes, it’s something a bit different and all that, but have you never thought to leave aside your floggers and your nipple clamps, and just have normal sex once in a while?’

  By now Elizabeth was blushing furiously, both from embarrassment and passion, but she was determined to confront Mr Darcy with the truth.

  ‘No, I never have. That’s not what I’m about.’ Mr Darcy smiled ruefully. ‘I’ve told you, vanilla is not my flavour, Elizabeth.’

  Elizabeth gazed into his fathomless grey eyes. What was going on in there? He was so complex, so deep. ‘What is your flavour, Mr Darcy?’

  ‘Kinky, with lashings of whipped cream and a butt plug on top.’

  Damn Lady Catherine! Elizabeth thought, furiously. And damn Beaton for turning a vulnerable, defenceless young boy into a raging pervert!

  Tentatively, Elizabeth reached out a hand and touched Mr Darcy’s thigh, as delicately as a butterfly landing on a side of ham. He flinched.

  ‘Please – for me,’ Elizabeth pleaded. ‘I would like us to try.’

  So many emotions flashed across Mr Darcy’s chiselled features, like clouds scudding across the sun: uncertainty, fear, anguish ...

  ‘Dammit, Elizabeth,’ he said huskily, running his hands through his tousled locks. ‘I do not even know whether I’m capable of such a thing. I have been pervy for so long, I fear I am beyond redemption.’

  ‘I do not believe that is true,’ murmured Elizabeth. ‘Somewhere inside you is a predictable, run-of-the-mill, unadventurous lover. I shall help you. I want to discover the delights of unexciting, Saturday-nights-only, always-in-the-missionary-position sex with you. Come …’ She held out her hand. ‘Take a turn about the rose garden with me.’

  Mr Darcy’s eyes registered shock, and something else, something deeper – fear?

  ‘A turn about the garden?’

  ‘Yes, Fitzwilliam. Can it be so very bad?’

  ‘I have never, never simply walked about the garden for enjoyment alone.’ Panic was seizing him now. ‘Will I be expected to … to comment upon the flowers, or the view?’

  ‘You will. But you can do this.’

  Mr Darcy pulled her close, tugging her hair so her face was turned up to his. ‘You are an incredible woman, Miss Bennet,’ he breathed. ‘You have such confidence in me. You are doing all this for my sake?’

  ‘I would do anything for you,’ Elizabeth replied, tears beginning to pool above her lashes. ‘Except fisting, remember?’

  Together they began to perambulate the gravel path leading to the orchard, and thence through an arbour into the rose garden. Mr Darcy’s body was tense; he moved stiffly, as though preparing himself to flee at any given moment.

  ‘Do you notice the Floribunda roses there?’

  Mr Darcy’s eyes flashed with panic. ‘They … they are quite lovely, Miss Bennet,’ he blurted. ‘Very … yellow.’

  Elizabeth patted his hand reassuringly. ‘Indeed, they are very yellow. And quite gloriously scented. Would you care to smell one?’

  Gently, so as not to alarm him, she plucked a single rose from the bush and held it towards Mr Darcy’s face. ‘Try it.’

  For one moment she fancied Mr Darcy would turn on his heel and run away. He appeared to be wrestling with some inner demons. But at length he seemed to steel himself. His breathing slowed and he bent to inhale the rose’s heady perfume.

  ‘Exquisite,’ he announced.

  Elizabeth beamed with joy. ‘Oh, Fitzwilliam,’ she breathed. ‘You have just experienced a non-sexual pleasure! And you didn’t even say, “Watch out for pricks!” or make jokes about bushes as I was sure you would!’

  A slow smile spread across Mr Darcy’s face. ‘Truthfully, those puns did not occur to me,’ he said delightedly. ‘You have a powerful effect upon me, Miss Bennet.’ He bent his lips to hers for a chaste kiss. Elizabeth felt her nether regions stir.

  Together they moved towards the love seat at the far corner of the rose garden and sat down. Elizabeth gazed at Mr Darcy’s muscular body with longing. ‘May I touch you?’ she whispered.

  Mr Darcy frowned. ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘I thought I might start with your chest.’

  Mr Darcy’s eye gave a nervous twitch. ‘Very well, Elizabeth,’ he said, his mouth set firm and his jaw tense. He took a deep breath. ‘I am ready.’

  ‘Skip the bloody chest, go straight to third base!’ Elizabeth’s Inner Slapper hissed. ‘You might not get another chance!’

  But Elizabeth paid no heed. Slowly, oh so slowly, she slipped one hand inside Mr Darcy’s shirt and ran it over his magnificent nipples, gently tracing the lines of his sculpted abdomen. Jeez, he was ripped!

  Every muscle of Mr Darcy’s body was tensed; his eyes were squeezed shut, his breath coming in rasps.

  ‘You must tell me if this is painful for you,’ Elizabeth said anxiously. ‘You only need say the safe word and I shall stop at once.’

  Elizabeth’s roaming hands moved down, down towards the buttons of Mr Darcy’s breeches. ‘My God, Elizabeth,’ he gasped. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  One by one, the buttons popped open, released by Elizabeth’s eager fingers. Mr Darcy’s breathing was ragged now; his jaw was clenched and the veins in his neck were standing out like guy ropes.

  ‘I think you may need to stop now, Elizabeth,’ he gasped, ‘as I feel the end is drawing near.’

  ‘Oh!’ Elizabeth withdrew her hand. ‘So soon?’

  ‘I have told you, it does not take much to bring me to the brink,’ Mr Darcy said fervently. ‘A table leg is enough to inflame my desires. A quivering jelly upon a plate. Even a word can be enough – I have never been able to visit the Pump Room in Bath for fear of what might occur.’

  Elizabeth pondered for a moment. ‘Then let us try something,’ she said at last. ‘Let us make conversation about less … stimulating matters. This will take your mind off the task in hand.’

  ‘How so?’

  Elizabeth’s hand once again wandered to Mr Darcy’s breeches. ‘I recall you mentioned purchasing new wallpaper for the library,’ she said airily. ‘Do you still favour Chinoiserie?’

  Mr Darcy gave a groan. ‘Chinoiserie … is so … last year.’

  Elizabeth’s hand worked silently, caressing, teasing, tantalizing. ‘Might you consider, say, a flocked damask?’ Elizabeth continued. ‘They are all the rage in Town.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Mr Darcy gasped. ‘Although a … trompe l’oeil frieze would … work well. Would you … not agree?’

  Oh my! She was giving pleasure to Mr Darcy! At last! Slipping off the bench, Elizabeth lifted up her gown and then sat astride him, lowering her body down onto his. Oh, the delicious feeling as he filled her!

  ‘The Prime Minister, I hear, has a plaid design in his library, printed on satin paper …’

  Mr Darcy’s eyes were half-closed, his face tense. Gently, slowly, Elizabeth rocked up and down.

  ‘ … although I hear tell that it is a little garish. Perhaps a toile de jouy would be best? A little démodé, perhaps, but a classic nonetheless.’ Elizabeth’s own breathi
ng was becoming uneven now. Her secret parts felt deliciously warm, as if someone had poured honey over her insides.

  ‘Toile is worth … consideration.’

  Elizabeth increased her pace. Mr Darcy’s hands grasped her hips, and together, they moved as one.

  ‘You could … simply paint …’ Elizabeth panted.

  ‘Wallpaper would be best,’ Mr Darcy murmured. The bench was shaking now, as the intensity of their lovemaking increased. Elizabeth flung her head back. Her body shook as she felt an intensity building, threatening to shatter at any moment. Mr Darcy cried, ‘I am coming … round to the idea of …’ He gave a loud gasp, and his muscles tensed, ‘FLOCK!’ he shouted, as his body found its release. Elizabeth’s insides dissolved into nothingness as waves of pleasure washed over her, and she collapsed against him, breathing heavily, her fingers entwined in his hair.

  ‘Oh, Fitzwilliam!’ Elizabeth cried, stroking his copper mane. ‘You have done it! You have experienced run-of-the-mill lovemaking!’

  Mr Darcy sighed and held her close. She breathed in his musky, Doritos-y scent.

  ‘My Lizzy,’ he murmured. ‘You. Are. So. Special. You have done so much for me. You have entered my Blue Broom Cupboard of Seriously Kinky Shit. You have let me whack you with vegetables, and pummel you with newspapers. If ordinary sex is what you want, you shall have it.’

  ‘Let us meet halfway, Fitzwilliam,’ she murmured, her face still buried in his hair. ‘I shall sign your contract. How about Monday to Friday we have vanilla sex, then at the weekends we let our hair down and do all the kinky stuff?’

  ‘Oh, Lizzy!’ Mr Darcy cried, squeezing her so tightly she felt she might faint. ‘You’ve made me the happiest pervert alive!’

  Not everyone was delighted by Elizabeth and Mr Darcy’s happy news. Kitty was downhearted to be the only daughter now left at home; Lydia having finally sailed for New York on business, Jane being ensconced at Netherfield, and Mary having been despatched to the country to give birth to Mr Fiddler’s baby.

  ‘Mary is not supposed to have got a shag at all!’ Kitty raged. ‘She’s clearly the least attractive, and in the original book she is destined to remain a virgin all her life!’

  ‘But this is the sexed-up version,’ her mother pointed out. ‘Classics with bonking are all the rage now. Think of Northwanger Abbey, or Mansfield Pork …’

  ‘Or Enema,’ pointed out Elizabeth. ‘I do believe Miss Austen intended that particular novel to be about an interfering matchmaker, not one Mr Tightly’s penchant for anal sex.’

  Elizabeth’s new home was, of course, to be Pemberley, and although she missed her family greatly, she soon came to love it, and its inhabitants, even more than Longbourn. She and Mr Darcy kept to their agreement, with Saturday nights and Sundays, after church, reserved for kinkery fuckery, and the rest of the week devoted to unremarkable, nothing-to-write-home-about rumpy pumpy. In fact, all was felicity and concord, and that would have been an appropriate ending, had not one thing intruded upon their happiness.

  ‘What, pray, do you keep in the shed at the bottom of the garden?’ Elizabeth asked one morning, on returning from her daily perambulation about the grounds.

  Mr Darcy’s face darkened. His eyes turned from steel grey to black iron. ‘That I can never tell you, Elizabeth,’ he murmured. ‘Never. It is my darkest, darkest secret.’

  Elizabeth swallowed nervously. ‘I thought I knew all your dark secrets.’

  ‘Not this one.’ Mr Darcy’s body was tense, as if he was expecting a blow to fall. ‘If you knew what was in my shed, you would know how corrupted my soul is, how I can never be saved.’

  Oh, Mr Darcy! All Elizabeth’s compassionate instincts were roused. She stretched out a hand to touch his face, but he instantly recoiled.

  ‘You have seen my Blue Broom Cupboard of Seriously Kinky Shit,’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘But you do not know what lies within my Sage-Green Shed of Shocking Artefacts.’

  Elizabeth gasped. There was more? More licentiousness? More perversion? She certainly hoped so.

  ‘Please,’ she entreated. ‘I’ve told you before, I want to know the real Fitzwilliam Darcy. There is nothing you can show me that can shock me.’

  ‘You will never love me again. Never.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Very well.’ Mr Darcy looked on the verge of tears. ‘Then come …’

  The Sage-Green Shed lay at the far end of the wildflower garden; covered in ivy and overgrown with lichen, it blended beautifully into its surroundings, and looked to be no more than an attractive addition to the landscape. A winding path led to it, and Mr Darcy strode ahead, his gaze fixed, not saying a word. Elizabeth felt her chest palpitating with anxiety. Could she cope with what was inside? What perversions lay within?

  ‘Behold!’ Mr Darcy announced, throwing open the door. ‘My fifty shades …’

  Holy shit! Lampshades of every kind, of every aspect and design leapt out at Elizabeth. Shades trimmed with tassels and ribbon, elaborate candle sconces, storm lanterns, coloured glass shades for newfangled gas lamps … Many of the lamps had been illuminated, and the candlelight made them dance menacingly, demonically.

  ‘My collection,’ Mr Darcy breathed. ‘Aren’t they exquisite?’

  Elizabeth had not prepared herself for this. She struggled for breath. It was too much, too, too much.

  ‘This one,’ purred Mr Darcy, picking up a miniature chandelier, ‘I bought for a few farthings at a French flea market. Beautiful, isn’t she?’ The tinkling of the chandelier’s crystal droplets sounded, to Elizabeth’s ear, just like cackling laughter, mocking her. Mr Darcy ran his hands sensuously over the rim of a storm lantern. ‘My shades are my life, Lizzy. If we are ever to make a life together at Pemberley, you must accept my obsession. I am always looking out for more trimmings, for the perfect polish for brass fittings, for replacement tassels. I come out here most evenings simply to stare at my shades.’

  He collected bloody lampshades? Elizabeth felt her legs starting to give way beneath her.

  ‘Elizabeth?’ Mr Darcy asked, his voice full of concern.

  Her senses reeling, Elizabeth was already stepping backwards out of the shed. She was aware that she was speaking, but found it hard to recognize her voice as her own.’

  ‘This, Sir, is the lamest plot line I have ever encountered in a novel!’ she cried. ‘It beggars belief. I’m not even sure lampshades per se are in use in 1814, given that gas lighting will not become widely adopted until later in the century.’

  Mr Darcy stepped back in shock. ‘You find it lame? It is a fairly cheap gag, granted, but surely it has some small value?’

  Elizabeth shook her head. She could not believe her dreams were being shattered so. The non-orgasmic sex she could take, the arrogance that had led Mr Darcy to sunder her sister and Bingley, but this? This turned the whole title of the book upside down, and made a mockery of the entire premise. This she could not forgive.

  Turning, she began to run, despite her light-headedness and shock, back across the wildflower garden to the safety of the house.

  ‘Elizabeth! Wait!’ cried Mr Darcy.

  She ran on, tears blinding her, until Mr Darcy grabbed her by the shrubbery.

  ‘Where are you going, Lizzy?’ he asked desperately. ‘Please don’t run away. Try … try to understand.’

  Elizabeth shook her head wildly. She could not look into those intense grey eyes, for fear they would melt her resolve. ‘No … no … I must return to Longbourn. Let me go at once, I beg you.’

  Mr Darcy released her shrubbery and straightened up, and when he spoke his voice was cool and distant.

  ‘I feared my first instincts were correct, Miss Bennet. You cannot handle my fifty shades. Not many women can.’

  Curiosity pricked her. ‘Did you show your other Submissives?’

  His mouth tightened. ‘I did. And most fled. I had hoped you would be different.’

  By now the tears were coursing down Elizabeth’s cheeks. ‘Y
ou have misled me, Sir. You encouraged me to believe that “fifty shades” referred to your complex, multilayered personality. Not … not this.’

  Fifty lampshades? It was just a bad joke.

  ‘Wait, let us discuss this rationally,’ Mr Darcy said calmly. ‘We have two choices as far as I can see. We can leave this hanging, and there could be a sequel …’

  They both paused, considering the implications. It would mean even more double entendres, more schoolboy-level sexual innuendo, with the puns becoming progressively weaker and weaker as the author ran out of rude words – it would be, frankly, exhausting.

  ‘Could you honestly be bothered to go through it all again?’ Mr Darcy asked. Elizabeth wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  ‘Not really,’ she confessed. ‘I think it’s probably best to make this book a one-off.’

  ‘In that case, should I just shut the shed door?’ Mr Darcy asked. ‘We can just pretend this never happened.’ He looked so hopeful, so vulnerable, that Elizabeth could not find it in her heart to deny him.

  ‘Very well,’ she breathed. ‘Let us shut the door, Fitzwilliam.’

  ‘You know what they say – when one door shuts, another one opens,’ Mr Darcy said salaciously, with a wicked glint in his eye. ‘How about we open your back door, Elizabeth?’

  ‘Let us save that for another time, Mr Darcy,’ Elizabeth said curtly. ‘I believe it would be best to end this book on a traditional note.’

  ‘You mean, “they lived happily ever after”?’

  ‘That would be perfect.’

  Mr Darcy sighed. ‘Very well, Elizabeth, if it pleases you. We will live happily ever after.’

  Elizabeth gazed deep into his mesmerizing, steel-grey eyes. He was a complex, fucked-up, psychologically unstable billionaire, but he was her billionaire, for ever and ever.

  ‘The end,’ she breathed.