A Dishonorable Offer

by Timothy Underwood

  Jane stared at Elizabeth for a moment, and then with a large, open, and genuine smile she exuberantly threw her arms around Elizabeth. “I’m so very, very, very happy for you. I knew you loved him — oh, I have never been so happy to hear such news.”

  Elizabeth whispered, “You are not jealous then…since, well…”

  “Of course not! How…how could you think that?" Jane embraced Elizabeth again. “Oh never mind, I am too happy to be hurt or annoyed.”

  Elizabeth returned her sister’s tight embrace, and she knew that underneath it all, Jane was still the same sweet sister who tended to think too well of everyone.

  Jane said, “Besides, after disliking how you would always expect me to be perfectly sweet and never jealous, I cannot be unhappy when you wonder if I might be.”

  They both laughed, and Jane added, “We are happy, and there is nothing more I could wish for.”

  Jane suddenly looked sad.

  “What is it?”

  “I shall miss you all. Mama will correspond, so long as we are discreet and use other names, but Mr. Darcy might be displeased if he learns that—”

  “That is no worry. My Mr. Darcy is entirely his own man. He thinks different than most on such matters. He convinced Mrs. Gardiner to let me call on you.”

  Jane sparkled. “Oh I am so glad. So very glad. Now that I know I shall keep your friendship, I am completely happy.”

  “And you shall — you shall. Things may change, but we shall be the closest of sisters. I must have you meet Georgiana, Darcy’s sister. There will be no problem there, as her uncle has always made certain she knew her governess was his mistress. She delights in seeing scandalous matters.”

  There was a knock on the door and Mr. Bingley entered.

  He smiled at Elizabeth and stepped forward to shake her hand. “I just saw Darcy at the club — I must congratulate you, and very heartily too.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “You must.”

  “I confess I was shocked to hear his news, but almost immediately I thought this to be a fine thing. Your minds match. Darcy will be a terrible laughingstock for the next six months or a year, and people will likely roll their eyes at him for a few years more, but sooner or later that will all settle down — you two suit very well. And he does not need more money or connections.”

  Bingley laughed, and Elizabeth and Jane joined him.

  The group talked for another minute, however there was an awkwardness in Bingley, and Jane kept eyeing him in a brazen manner. With a start, Elizabeth realized the two were somewhat like a young married couple desperate for privacy. So Elizabeth excused herself, saying she was to meet Georgiana this afternoon.

  *****

  Jane was so happy to see Elizabeth again. Even though she now was ruined, and a sinner, and a bad girl, Jane thought everything had turned out perfectly. She knew she could not trust the happiness to last forever, but perhaps if she worked to keep Bingley attached to her, it would.

  He had told her he loved her. Right before she gave her maidenhead to him, when they were entangled together, he said it. “I love you, Janie.”

  She was glad he had not said it before. It showed how he meant it. He said it because he wished her to know, not to seduce her. He was a good man.

  People fell out of love often, but Jane believed she could keep Bingley happy forever. Bingley was much like her in wishing a calm domestic happiness. They felt so safe and warm together, and Jane was certain he would not tire of her simply because she would grow old. If she never took him for granted, she could maintain the attachment. She would always strive to be the perfect woman for her Bingley.

  The news of Elizabeth’s engagement was a complete, delightful, shock. As was her promise that they would remain as close sisters. Nothing could increase her present happiness.

  However, once Bingley returned, even though she wished to focus on her sister, it was impossible.

  The sensation was still too fresh for her to be used to it. She kept glancing at Bingley’s lips, and hips, and shoulders and hands. Their feet would fall right where Elizabeth sat when they made love on the couch. Jane’s face flamed at the thought.

  She wanted his masculine lips on hers. And to pull at the curly hair all over his body. He caught her eyes with a promise in them, and he glanced at her breasts.

  It was embarrassing to feel this much lust while talking to her sister, but hopefully Lizzy had no idea what they were thinking.

  Elizabeth suddenly blushed and hurriedly said, “Oh. I just recalled. I must go, I am to meet Georgiana this afternoon. But I will call on you again soon. I wish you could call on me, but Mrs. Gardiner would not allow that. Till later.”

  While a small part of Jane was unhappy that her reunion with Elizabeth was so quickly over, most of her mind was focused on leaping forward and hungrily kissing Bingley before the door was fully shut.

  She felt so deliciously wicked pressing her tongue into his mouth, and the elated lightness grew in her belly. However, when Jane reached her hands into Bingley’s coat to remove it, he stopped her.

  “I have something I must say.” He brought her to sit down, holding her hands.

  “Yes?” Jane was half curious and half desperate to return to removing the coat.

  “I… Miss Elizabeth’s engagement to Darcy. It changes matters, and… well…”

  Bingley swallowed. Jane stared at him with a sudden terror that Darcy had asked him to put her aside because he didn’t want his sister-in-law to be in such a situation. How would she convince Bingley to keep her? She couldn’t lose him now. She cared nothing for any money he might give her for compensation.

  “Dash it all! I’ve wanted to marry you since the day you told me you were glad you knew me. You were so hurt, but you worried about me more than yourself. I have hated what I owed my family. But now that you’ll be Darcy’s sister in law, Caroline will accept it eventually. Besides, I…I loved you before, but now, after what we’ve shared, and what I feel in your arms. I don’t wish to ever be with another woman. Jane” — he moved off the sofa dropped to his knees, still holding her hands — “will you make me the happiest of men?”

  Jane squealed and embraced him.

  Sometime later, they lay naked side by side on the deep carpet of the drawing room, warmed by the brightly burning fire. Jane rested her head on Bingley’s chest and her fingertips drew slow circles on his skin. She beamed and he kept his arm around her, pulling her flush against him.

  “We could marry by special license tomorrow.” Bingley’s fingers played with her hip as he spoke. “We might go back to Meryton and spread around in the neighborhood the story that we always intended to marry.”

  Startled by a sudden anger that broke through her happiness, Jane lifted her head and snarled, “I don’t care what they think. I want them to think ill of me.”

  Bingley’s hand that had been playing against her side froze, then he pulled her tighter against him and kissed her hair. They were quiet, and Jane slowly relaxed again into the warmth of Bingley’s skin against hers.

  She tried to identify where that anger had come from. She imagined her one-time dearest friend Harriet Gould visiting her, eagerly calling her Jane once more, and begging to know when she would hold a ball.

  Respectability and money meant that even though everyone would know she had run away with a man with no intention of marrying him, they would now treat her as though she were the best sort of person, while when she did everything she was supposed to, they all had thought ill of her.

  People so often treated those who had good fortune as though they were good, and those who had bad fortune as though they were bad. Jane knew she did too. Elizabeth was the only one she knew who mostly did not.

  “Could we… If you do not wish me to, I will not, and nothing more will be said from me on the matter, but… I wish to call on my sister, Lydia. I need to apologize to her.”

  Bingley shifted so that he looked directly at her. His brown eyes poured into hers. Growing ne
rvous, Jane brushed some of her curls back from her forehead, and said, “Elizabeth calls on her. At least she did. Maybe Mr. Darcy will not let her anymore. I will not… I should not have said anything.”

  “I wish I had been brave enough to ask you to marry me a long time ago. I wish I hadn’t waited till Darcy prompted me. I wish I had not let you come to me this way, but instead asked you to marry me when you offered. I wish I was… I wish I was a man who had done everything for you, instead of a coward who only asked you to marry me when Darcy became the one who everyone shall laugh at. It was never Caroline; I could not care about her at all. It was everyone else.”

  This confession made Jane so happy she began to cry.

  She pressed her mouth against Bingley’s fiercely, and despite his confusion he kissed her back passionately.

  Bingley drew back and said, “You could have her and the blacksmith live in the big house with us, if you wish. And we’ll marry but not tell anyone; we’ll scandalize the neighborhood by openly living in sin, and only if the owner of Netherfield demands we stop will we tell everyone. And we’ll—”

  Jane giggled wildly. “That is the silliest idea I’ve ever heard.” She kissed him again. “Oh, I love you so much. So much.”

  Bingley kissed her back and then said with a smile, “Are you certain, I rather fancy shocking all the good people in such a manner.”

  Jane giggled again. She was so happy; she wished to imprint the moment forever in her brain, with her skin against his, his smile, the taste of his lips, the faint pleasant pungency of the burning wood, the long threads of the deep carpet against her naked back and sides.

  “I won’t hurt you again.” Bingley brushed his hand down her cheeks. “I won’t ever let fear of what another person thinks cause me to hurt you.”

  Jane placed her hand on his cheek, and they looked at each other, their eyes inches apart, each pressing a hand against the other’s face. She said, “I’m glad I came to you this way.”

  Chapter 26

  Elizabeth forced herself to not nervously fidget as the carriage turned onto the road along which Matlock House was situated.

  Darcy squeezed the hand he held again. “You are too charming to not charm. Do you not recall that a single gaze from you was enough to pierce my heart?”

  Elizabeth nodded, but she was too tense to giggle. Darcy loved his uncle and cousins dearly, and she would make a terrible impression. Darcy expected them to embrace her like Georgiana did, but her vivid imagination could not stop seeing some social disaster that ended with a complete break that would be her fault.

  Anxiety that she was harming his position by marrying him had built over the past few days. Everyone had stared at her when she went to a pretty opera with Darcy the previous night, and she had not been able to enjoy the music at all.

  “I wish the new dresses we’ve ordered were finished.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “A poor sort of beautiful.”

  “It would not impress my aunt more if you looked the sort of beautiful that comes with too much money.”

  “No, I will look like a fortune hunter, no matter what I do.”

  The carriage rolled to a stop. Darcy kissed her on the mouth, carefully, knowing how much effort she’d put into getting her face to look just right. “Lizzy, do not worry. My uncle will soon adore you, and I shall have to box Richard’s ears to stop him from flirting with you.”

  When they were ushered into the drawing room, all of the gentlemen stood. Lord Matlock was a lean man with a full head of dark grey hair and a sharp intelligent gaze. Lord Derwent looked much like him, while Colonel Fitzwilliam was shorter, but he had a resplendent uniform.

  Darcy said sharply, “Where is Lady Susan?”

  “Introduce your bride to us, and then we’ll talk about her.” Saying this, Lord Matlock took Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it gallantly as Darcy introduced them. “My lady, your beauty will be a great addition to our house. Though I understand your intelligence and good sense will be of even greater value.”

  She was then introduced to Lord Derwent and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “By Jove, you are beautiful. I’d expected you to be quite the opposite from how Darcy talks about you. I thought you’d be a dowdy bookish sort, who was only made tolerable by the eyes of a man obsessed with a girl who finally would let him bore her endlessly without being bored. But you are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. How can you stand my cousin?”

  “’Tis a difficult task. But he quotes poetry to me so beautifully.” Despite the absence of Lady Matlock, Elizabeth’s nerves settled. She had an intuitive certainty that she would like Colonel Fitzwilliam.

  “Ah, so his bookish nonsense is the draw. It is his good fortune that such a one as you exists.”

  Elizabeth smiled back. “There are many who receive above their desserts. And I am known as a great reader, though not a dowdy one.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “Ah, if only I had seen you first. But let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment — proving that I can quote poetry also.”

  Darcy grabbed her hand, and they all sat down. The sofa had deep comfortable cushions, like those in Darcy’s townhouse. The carved mahogany lion’s paws for feet were also quite pretty to look at.

  Darcy said, “Richard, you’ve been a deuced problem the entire time.”

  Elizabeth shifted around on the cushions to become more comfortable. Being set at her ease by the goodhearted way she was greeted helped Elizabeth decide that, while she had not set out to marry a very rich man, she would enjoy the luxuries associated with doing so.

  Colonel Fitzwilliam replied, “The story of our modern Pamela would not be so charming without such impediments as the family might throw up beforehand. Now you are one of us, and we are all united in bowing before your beauty. A task made far easier because of how great that beauty is. Had I’d known you were so deuced pretty, I would have told Darcy to offer for you straight away.”

  Elizabeth exclaimed, “Modern Pamela?”

  “Yes, yes,” Lord Matlock said. “That is what they are calling you. Now—”

  Darcy spoke over his uncle, “Where is Lady Susan?”

  “She was deuced displeased with you after you refused to pretend you thought you had made a mistake when she lectured you yesterday. She has decided to go to her brother’s place to lecture Margaret for her part in what she has labelled ‘the disaster’.”

  Elizabeth bit her lip as the anxiety came back. “Does she dislike me so much? I do not wish to create dissension, and…”

  Matlock waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t be bothered by that at all. She doesn’t care a whit for you. In so far as she thinks about you, she thinks well of your sense. Better probably than she should. She’ll do what is necessary in public. It is Darcy and Margaret she is angry at. My wife has always known I kept mistresses, and she has had her own lovers. We get along very well together, and always have. But Susan finds it hard to accept that other people might wish a different sort of marriage. She is not so flexible in her thinking as I am.”

  Elizabeth blinked.

  “Are you going to be the prudish sort who can’t talk about such matters?”

  “I think I can speak about them. I shall have to if I am going to be as dear a friend to Georgiana as she expects me to be. I do not know that I approve of your philosophy of education, but I confess it does have advantages.”

  Lord Matlock laughed. “Yes, everyone says that, except the ones who completely deplore it. But Georgie is a good sensible girl.”

  Elizabeth smiled brightly. “I like her very much.”

  “So, my wife is telling Margaret she should have convinced Darcy that she would not mind in the slightest if he kept a mistress whom he loved far more than her. Now, this is how it will likely be, you’ve been labelled by the gossip as a real life Pamela, and—”

  “Now wait. I was perfectly content that you would sound about that Darcy asked me to come under his
protection before he offered for Lady Margaret, since anything I can do to help her position I must. But I certainly was not a housemaid, and” — Elizabeth squeezed Darcy’s arm — “he too politely let me alone once I declined the offer. Pamela was a silly sort, and Darcy is entirely different from that rake.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed, “Are you not charmed by the romance of the whole thing?”

  “I am very charmed by the romance of the whole thing. But it is similar to an entirely different book — I absolutely refuse to be called a Pamela.”

  Matlock snorted, and then laughed boomingly. “It is like some book. Two days before he left to see Bingley, I remember it clear as day, Darcy swore up and down that he would never let himself fall in love. Anyone who says that inevitably shall straightaway.”

  Darcy sheepishly looked up at the ceiling while Elizabeth grinned at his handsome face. “Did you quote Shakespeare to him? ‘I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love’.”

  “No.” Matlock’s booming laughter echoed again. “I ought to have. In any case, the story about Pamela will help you. A fair number of empty headed women, most young, but some old enough to know better, are completely charmed by the story. They will eagerly invite you about and call on you once you are settled in.”

  “Really? There are ladies wish to know me because my story is similar to Pamela’s — except it is not. Not at all.”

  Darcy poked her in the side with his elbow. “If you did not despise the novel, you would admit the similarity yourself.”

  “But I do despise the novel, so I claim the right of my sex to be irrational and arbitrary at times.”

  Matlock said, “Don’t try to convince everyone you meet that you hate the comparison. It would not be politic. But do try to convince them that you were not a housemaid, and that your father was a respectable gentleman.”