After the curtain descended, Caroline insisted they visit the Duke of Orford's box and they stayed there until the pit had cleared of the hoi polloi.
Descending to the foyer, Darcy made his excuses, claiming another engagement at the Daffy Club. That almost caused Charles to laugh since Darcy never drank gin. Then he was in a hackney, wending his way alone in the darkened streets to Darcy House, thinking of his brief encounter with Miss Elizabeth.
Why had he sought her out? He knew no good could come of it. But there, it was done.
In the darkness he imagined her sitting beside him in the hackney. He leaned in to kiss her, and imagined peeling off that lace overdress…
Stop it! he told himself, You are only making things worse!
In the morning, of course, he knew himself to be a hopeless case. He had not been so ridiculously enamoured of a woman since his teenage crush on Lady Miranda Crossley: a lady five years older than himself who seemed to possess every feminine grace and charm. But at fifteen, five years was a third of his lifetime–an impossible barrier. In his innocent state, his midnight interludes with a phantom Miranda consisted of some heated kissing and vague notions of disrobing her. Two years later, she married his boorish cousin, the Viscount Stanley, and he dutifully turned his mind elsewhere.
His dreams of Miss Elizabeth were, however, infinitely worse. After matriculating to Cambridge, he had been dragged to a brothel with his cousin Richard by his uncle, the Earl of Matlock. He remembered the incident with repugnance. His initial hope that he might pay the girl to leave him alone had been thwarted when he realised the proprietress and his uncle were watching through a peephole from the next room. He had dutifully shed his clothes. At least the girl, Rosamund, had seemed to know what she was doing, and after subjugating himself to her ministrations, his body had betrayed him. From then, he was in no doubt as to what happened during conjugal relations.
He had not made a habit of going back to the brothel initially, but he'd caved to Richard's influence when he'd returned from the war in the Peninsula. Having tasted the forbidden fruit, his naive dreams of Miranda had transformed into sensory feasts of Elizabeth–like opening Pandora's box. It was torture.
Several days later, Richard stopped at the Darcy townhouse on his way back from delivering a communiqué to Newcastle. When he suggested they spend a night on the town, Darcy did not demur.
"Very well," said Darcy, rising from his desk. "Shall we be off?"
"What, now?" asked Richard in surprise. "It's only five o'clock!"
Darcy raised an eyebrow.
Richard considered for a moment: the communiqué in his pocket was not an urgent one.
"Lead the way," he smiled.
They caught a hackney.
Chapter 21: Madame Amelie's
"Mr Williams, Lieutenant Fitzhubert, what a pleasant surprise!" said Madame Amelie as they walked in the door.
Like many men who visited her brothel, Darcy and the colonel had adopted pseudonyms that they used in front of the ladies. Because Richard casually referred to his cousin as "Wills" and Darcy called Richard "Fitz", they had played it safe with plausible variations of these names. Darcy had become "Mr Williams" while Richard had decided on "Lieutenant Fitzhubert". Darcy wasn't entirely happy with Richard's choice because it was the surname of the Regent's mistress, but Richard thought himself terribly clever in finding a name apposite for their nefarious purposes.
Of course, Madame Amelie knew exactly who they were: they would not have gotten through the door of her exclusive establishment otherwise. But she was quite willing to play their game and privately thought them very wise. She discreetly sent her assistant scurrying upstairs to ensure that their girls were ready.
After engaging Richard in polite conversation about the war effort for five minutes, Madame Amelie led them upstairs to the private sitting room shared by the two girls she had selected several years ago for the cousins.
Most of the girls at Madame Amelie's establishment shared cramped quarters in the attics. They entertained in the public rooms on the first floor, and only retreated to the boudoirs on the second floor to service their clients in privacy. Sarah and Genette were among the lucky few who had quarters on the third floor where they had their own bedchambers that adjoined private parlours. The ladies of the third floor had exceptional qualities: many of them were very beautiful, and most of them were better educated and more genteel than the ladies who slept above stairs. Members of this elite group were reserved for specific gentlemen, and Darcy paid a handsome retainer for the privilege. Richard wasn't so fussy, but he certainly wasn't going to argue with his cousin's generosity.
By the time they had made it up the stairs to the third floor, Madame's assistant had already descended past them with a nod to her mistress. Thus Madame opened the door to a handsome parlour decorated in a French style to reveal a scene of remarkable domesticity: Genette sat embroidering upon a settee while Sarah sat beside her in a fauteuil reading a book aloud.
As they entered, the girl in the fauteuil, who had strawberry blonde hair hanging loosely on her shoulders, stood with real pleasure on her face and ran to her swain.
"Fitz!" she cooed as she fell into his arms.
"My god, is this a salon?" exclaimed Richard, grabbing his squeeze, Sarah, by the waist and swinging her round, "I thought it was a brothel!"
Madame Amelie smiled as she retreated into the hallway.
"What are you reading?" Richard asked, as he playfully snatched the book from her hands.
It was Fanny Hill.
"Ah," he smiled, "It is a brothel."
After tickling her belly, Richard made a great show of hoisting Sarah onto his shoulders and carrying her off to her bedchamber while she giggled.
In contrast, Darcy stood silently near the doorway. Genette had lowered her embroidery to her lap upon his entrance while she watched him expectantly. On the disappearance of her companion, she sought to set the embroidery aside, but he raised a finger to stop her.
"Continue your needlework," he murmured as he paced nearer.
Dutifully she complied.
Sitting demurely on the settee with her black locks twisted up in a braid, Genette was perhaps the most unlikely inhabitant of Madame Amelie's house. She had started her life as Ruth, a clergyman's daughter from Yorkshire, who might have been sitting at that moment in a comfortable sitting room in the North if not for her somewhat hasty decision to run away from home at the age of seventeen. Her flight had occurred on the day she had become betrothed to a fat gentleman of forty-odd years, who had sought her father's permission to woo her on completing mourning for his first wife. That poor lady had died shortly after delivering their fifth babe.
Wrapping her belongings in a tablecloth, Ruth had fled her family home in the middle of the night to take the Mail to London. Her original intention had been to make her living respectably as a governess or paid companion. But after many weeks at the agency, she had failed to find an employer and had run to the end of her funds. A gentleman had met her as she contemplated the waters of the Thames from Blackfriars Bridge, and after listening sympathetically to her story, he had taken her along to Mme Amelie's, whence he was destined.
That lady had treated Ruth with a consideration she had not expected, and after a short stint in the attics learning her trade, she had arrived, relatively unsullied, to Darcy's arms on the third floor, with the more experienced Sarah as her companion.
She considered Mr Williams, as she knew him, as he hovered nearby. He was obviously rich, far better off than his cousin, who she had heard was an earl's son. He was also quite handsome, better looking than his ordinary cousin but without his charm. He was a very serious man. She had never seen him smile, but she had no cause to repine: he was a skilled lover. This she had determined through her conversations with Sarah. Though somewhat aloof and mechanical, she would not have traded him for his more affable cousin for his weight in gold.
When he knelt on the Aubusson rug in fr
ont of her, she paused with her needle poised.
"Keep stitching," he reminded her gently again.
Genette obeyed as she watched him reach for her hem and thread his hand beneath it. He coaxed her knees apart and caressed the insides of her thighs with the backs of his knuckles before moving higher. He watched her face imperturbably as he moved.
The needle wavered. It was difficult to keep a steady hand.
Satisfied with his progress, Darcy stood up and, finally casting the hoop aside, pulled Genette to her feet. Standing behind her, he planted several kisses on the back of her neck. This surprised Genette: he had never kissed her much before.
He balanced her over the back of the settee, pulling her skirts up high as he ran his hands up the backs of her thighs and caressed her bottom with his fingers. She heard him open the drawer of the bureau where the sheaths were kept. Then he hoisted her hips higher, tipping her head downwards onto the cushions of the seat, as he insinuated himself into her.
A giggle erupted from Sarah's bedchamber as he began to pick up pace, but Genette did not make a sound. She braced her hands above her head to maintain her position against his pushes. Her eyes were screwed shut as she sought desperately to keep silent.
Finally he gasped, and after pausing for a moment, withdrew. He reached down to cup the front of her shoulders in his palms, hauling her over the back of the settee, before walking around it, and depositing her gently on the cushions. Genette noticed he had already closed the front of his breeches.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" she asked as she raised herself on her elbows.
"No, thank you," he said as he tugged at the cravat which he had loosened at some point.
Darcy stuffed the creased strip of snowy starched muslin into the pocket of his greatcoat, which he had draped over the back of the fauteuil and produced a patterned silk Belcher neckerchief from another pocket. Only his valet could tie the complicated waterfall knot that he favoured for his cravat, and even if Darcy did manage to effect a simple knot in it, it would not look well with the remnants of the original creases showing.
He walked to the bureau to pour himself a glass of brandy, then tied the neckerchief, using the mirror above it.
As an afterthought, he turned to Genette and added, "Do you wish for tea? Shall I ring?"
At this point, the door to the bedchamber opened and Richard emerged, pulling on the jacket of his uniform. He was flushed and somewhat surprised to see Genette recumbent on the settee.
"Didn't get very far did you, Wills?" he laughed.
Darcy regarded him coolly over the rim of his glass. "Are you ready?"
After the gentlemen had left, Genette rang for tea, then settled down to contemplate her taciturn lover while she waited for it to arrive. He had seemed somehow different this time, and she was at a loss to put her finger on the change; but she worked it out over the ensuing week when he arrived every evening, sometimes with, and sometimes without, his cousin: Mr Williams was in love.
Her father had been a devotee of Chaucer, and Genette often amused herself by inventing stories for various interesting looking characters she encountered in the street. Now, she imagined a tale of her own situation. She would be The Proxy Doxy.
Chapter 22: The Parsonage
The night after her theatre outing with Jane and the Gardiners, Elizabeth set out for Kent with the Lucases.
Sir William Lucas had gone out the previous night to White's whence he'd been invited by one of his grand acquaintances from St James. He spent the first half of their journey relating anecdotes of his evening. His daughter Mariah, not yet being out, was more eager to hear Elizabeth speak of the play and of their meeting with Caroline Bingley; for she had whiled away the evening playing spillikins with the older Gardiner children before they were put to bed.
As they left the city behind for the countryside, every object in the journey was new and interesting to Elizabeth, who had spent most of her days in Hertfordshire, and never been beyond London. Mariah, too, had her nose glued to the window.
When Sir William finally ran out of stories and grew drowsy from the rocking carriage, Lizzy cast her mind back to the chance meeting with some of the Netherfield party last night during the interval at the theatre. Caroline's revelation that her brother had gone to Vienna on business had been rather startling. It was a shame that Mr Bingley was not in London–she knew her sister still craved his company. After the incredibly condescending conversation with Caroline, Mr Darcy had seemed almost eager to greet them. The kiss he had bestowed upon her hand had been unexpected, and she was quite perturbed by the reaction it elicited in her body. But it would not do to think of it: he had kissed Jane's hand also–she knew he was just being courtly in the more refined setting of London.
Elizabeth's mind flew back to the Netherfield Ball: Mr Darcy had almost seemed a different person there, enjoying the reel and bantering with her; and the waltz had been truly sublime. He quite put her uncle in the shade as a dance partner! But then he reverted to his familiar starched and haughty form in the supper room, like a reverse frog prince. Clearly it had been a mistake to mention Wickham, but why the man could not have a simple discussion was beyond her.
When their carriage left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye was in search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to bring it into view. The palings of Rosings Park flanked the road on one side. At length the Parsonage was discernible: the garden sloping to the road, the house standing in it, the green pales, and the laurel hedge, all just as Charlotte had described it. As the carriage stopped at the gate, Mr Collins and Charlotte appeared at the door.
Mrs Collins welcomed her friend with the liveliest pleasure, and Elizabeth was gratified to find herself so affectionately received. She saw instantly that her cousin's manners were not altered by his marriage; his formal civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some minutes at the gate inquiring of her family, particularly dwelling on Mr Bennet's health. As soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time, with ostentatious formality, to his humble abode and punctually repeated all his wife's offers of refreshment.
After sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account of their journey and of all that had happened in London, Mr Collins invited them to take a stroll in the garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of which he attended himself. To work in this garden was one of his most respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of countenance with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the exercise and owned she encouraged it as much as possible.
Every view was pointed out with a minuteness that left beauty entirely behind. Mr Collins could number the fields in every direction and could tell how many trees there were in the most distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome modern building, well situated on rising ground. Sir William was particularly taken with the grand structure.
From his garden, Mr Collins would have led them round his two meadows; but the ladies, not having shoes to encounter the remains of a white frost, turned back; and leaving Sir William to accompany him, the women retreated to the house.
Upon re-entering the parlour, Lizzy walked over to the pianoforte.
"Is this the goat piano?" she asked, moving a runner on the top to reveal some deep scratches.
Her mother had generously bestowed the damaged instrument on Mrs Long, who could not play, but expressed a wish to add to the gentility of her parlour.
"Yes!" laughed Charlotte, "Mrs Long gave it as a housewarming gift! None of the officers in her house play, and it ended up being used as a rather expensive sideboard. My father paid for the cartage. It arrived two days ago."
Being a keen piano player, Charlott
e had been saddened to discover the Parsonage had no instrument. Instead, she had been invited to use the second best piano at Rosings which was located in a room 'where she would bother no one'.
"Thanks to your father's goat and Mr Darcy's generosity, I now have a piano to call my own."
They both laughed.
Charlotte took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased, probably, to have the opportunity of showing it without her husband's help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient, and everything was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency of which Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr Collins could be forgotten, there was really an air of great comfort throughout, and by Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten.
Over dinner, Mr Collins continued to simper and boast of his patroness, with Sir William unwittingly encouraging him by exclaiming at each new revelation.
The ladies were only too glad to withdraw when the port was set on the table.
At breakfast, the catalogue of Lady Catherine's beneficence continued.
"We dine at Rosings twice every week and are never allowed to walk home. Her ladyship's carriage is regularly ordered for us. I should say, one of her ladyship's carriages, for she has several."
Mr Collins then thankfully took himself off for his daily spiritual visit to Rosings. On returning, however, he had sad tidings: Miss de Bourgh had caught a chill and there was no possibility of a dinner at Rosings that week.
Over the course of her first day at the Parsonage, it could not escape Lizzy's notice that Charlotte had only one servant. This girl not only acted as a handmaid to Charlotte, but as the housemaid, doing everything from the dusting to hauling water. Charlotte herself presided in the kitchens with the girl as her assistant. As they sat down to tea in the afternoon, Lizzy could not help remarking on it.
I Met Mr Darcy Via Luton Page 11
