And the Devil Makes Three (Pride and Prejudice variation)

Chapter One

MISS ELIZABETH BENNET hurried across the lawn of Rosings, clutching the letter she’d just received from Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in one hand, the papers flapping madly as she ran.

Mr. Darcy himself was just ahead, walking across the lawn, heading towards the estate.

Elizabeth cried his name. “Mr. Darcy!” She had done so before, back when he had first come into view, but she must have been too far away, because he had not turned round.

But this time, he did. He took her in, rushing at him, and he started for her.

She stopped moving, smoothing out her skirts, folding the letter back up, trying to get her breathing under control.

“Miss Bennet,” he said as he approached. “I am sorry if my letter caused—”

“Is it true?” she gasped. “What you say of him in here? Of Mr. Wickham? Is he really such a dreadful liar?” But the minute the words were out of her mouth, she wondered at herself.

What was she thinking he would respond? Of course, he would say they were true.

Had she really run after him like this, made herself into a spectacle, stopped him from going back inside, all to ask such a stupidly nonsensical question?

She suddenly felt like bursting into tears.

But Mr. Darcy only rejoined, “What has Mr. Wickham done to you?”

She looked around the empty lawn. No one was there. No one was watching. She looked up at Mr. Darcy’s face. “I thought he would marry me, you know. He didn’t really promise it, however, when I looked back on it, so I must have simply inferred it because of how forward he was being.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Mr. Darcy.

“After reading your letter, I suppose I think he must have said everything he said just for the purpose of manipulating me,” she said.

“What has he done?”

She swallowed, very hard.

Yesterday, Mr. Darcy asked her to marry him and she refused him.

She hadn’t refused him entirely because she still held out hope that Mr. Wickham was going to marry her, because she had mostly set that hope to rest, his actions notwithstanding.

No, there had been other reasons why she had not wished to marry Mr. Darcy.

He had separated her sister Jane from a man she had been in love with and bragged about it, calling it his “triumph.”

Not to her face, no, but she had heard about it secondhand, and she knew that it was the sort of thing a man like him would say.

He had purportedly been quite awful to Mr. Wickham, and she should have been angry at Mr. Wickham, really, after the way he’d treated her, but she simply did not know how to be angry at Mr. Wickham.

He was everything amiable and good. He was such a fine sort of gentleman—even if he really wasn’t a gentleman at all, she supposed. He was very handsome.

She had not herself one to have her head turned by a man’s looks and charm, but she had proved rather weak to it all in the end.

But now, with the information in Mr. Darcy’s letter—that Mr. Wickham had tried to elope with his fifteen-year-old sister, that he had been a spendthrift with a large amount of money, that he had misrepresented all of these things to Elizabeth herself—she knew that there was absolutely no hope of a marriage between herself and Mr. Wickham.

But yesterday, Mr. Darcy had wished to marry her, and she should, perhaps, conceal the real extent of the things that had occurred between herself and Mr. Wickham, because if he knew he would never wish to renew his pursuit of her.

“He kissed me,” she said.

Mr. Darcy looked her over.

She could not hold his gaze.

“When?” said Mr. Darcy. “Where?”

“Oh, one of our walks, those walks to Meryton.”

“Oh, yes, you’re a great one for walks,” he said. “Hems muddy, walking for miles. You and your unchaperoned walks.”

She gave him a weak smile. “Just so.”

“And you have run at top speed after me, crying my name, to ascertain how much of a liar he is because of a kiss, Miss Bennet?”

She drew in a breath, not answering. He didn’t believe her.

Mr. Darcy stepped closer to her, his voice lowering. “I know the man, Miss Bennet. I know how he can be. I know how he can talk until things seem confusing and up seems down, and soon you are finding yourself party to all manner of various debaucheries. Believe me, I know.”

She looked up at him, not having expected that.

“I should not blame you, that is all. But I also think you should tell me everything that happened. In detail. Where did he take you?”

“Just on a walk,” she said. “In the woods.”

“Him and you together, alone?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. She summoned her most serious and believable voice. “But it was just kissing, sir.”

He stepped even closer to her. His voice dropped even further in pitch. “It was not just kissing, and you and I both know it.”

She squirmed.

“And in light of that, Miss Bennet,” he said, “I would strongly urge you to reconsider my proposal of marriage from yesterday.”

She looked up at him, eyes wide, thoroughly shocked. “But you… truly?”

“Well, in your position, I can’t see how things could turn out better for you than that,” he said.

“I know you do not want me, but perhaps we can…” He shook himself.

“Well, there will be time for all of that later, I suppose. I do need to know if there’s a chance he got you with child. That could be a bit of a wrinkle.”

“N-no,” she said, thrown by all of this.

“He did it through my clothes. It really was mostly kissing, but he did this thing to me. He put his hands all over me, and… I don’t know.

I suppose I’ve done it to myself before, maybe once or twice, but it didn’t quite feel like that, because of the way he did it.

I knew it was shameful, but it…” She hunched up her shoulders. “It felt very nice.”

“A thing to you? What sort of thing?” He was eager for this, and she could see that, writ all across his countenance.

This surprised her even further. “A thing. I know not. Like a… bursting, over and over, in my…” She turned bright red.

“Oh,” he said, quite quickly, and he looked away, a smile twitching on his lips. “You mean he made you come.”

Mr. Wickham might have used that word, she remembered.

The experience had been ever so strange.

She thought back on it often, and she always thought that she should have protested more, should have been less biddable, less willing, but she had put up very little resistance, in the end, and it had felt very nice, and she had thought he would marry her, had truly thought that.

“He was very insistent that I wouldn’t be ruined,” she said.

“That none of my clothes were going to be removed. That only… his…” But that part had been a bit more confusing, she supposed.

It had all happened in the wake of the bursting pleasure he’d given her, and he said it was only fair that she return the favor, and then he was undoing his trousers, and it was just there, that part of him, and he wanted her to touch it, to stroke it, so…

“It’s all right,” said Mr. Darcy. “That wretch. That absolute wretch.” There wasn’t as much rancor in his voice as she might have expected, though, not for someone who had written that letter to her about all of George Wickham’s wrongs.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t wish to pressure you, of course, so perhaps I can return to see you at the parsonage this afternoon, to see if you have had some time to reconsider my proposal. ”

“And you do still wish to marry me?” she said. “After that?”

He eyed her. He licked his lips. “I shall let you… with him, sometimes, if you say yes,” he said. “It can’t be immediately, or… well, perhaps, but not… the heir needs to be mine.”

She drew herself up, a tight feeling coiling up in the middle of her. What was he saying?

“I shall wish to watch, though,” he said.

She was too stunned to speak.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve scandalized you.”

She supposed the proper response was to reassure someone that they had, in fact, not done what they claimed they had done, but she was, actually, scandalized in this moment, and she did not know what to say.

“All right,” he said. “I went too quickly. I am sorry. But you do want him. You were quick to defend him yesterday. I heard the way your voice lifted around the syllables of his name. You have an attachment to him, and I am saying that is all right.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“I do not have to be,” he said. “Nothing that you don’t wish, of course, madam. But you might consider what happens if you refuse my proposal. You will not get a chance like this again. You will not have a man like me asking for your hand—”

“Yes, yesterday, you made it clear how much it pained you to have to lower yourself in such a way,” she broke in, for the proposal itself, it hadn’t been much of a proposal, and now, this, it was all rather a nightmare.

“It was partly him, you see. He marked you,” said Mr. Darcy. “I didn’t pay you any mind until he did.”

“Until Mr. Wickham did?” Her breath caught in her throat. “What is it between the two of you?”

“It’s complicated,” said Mr. Darcy. “But you must know that no matter what he did and how he claimed that you were not ruined, most men would not like it to find that their bride-to-be had been manhandled in the woods, fingered through her skirts, or that she’d seen some other man’s prick. Because he showed you, did he not?”

She nodded, wordless.

“You touched him?”

She bowed her head.

“So, then,” he said. “You may be assured that you will never find another husband willing to accept that who isn’t me.”

“Well,” she said, “no one needs to know. You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“No,” he assured her. “But you will know, madam. You will know, and whenever your husband touches you, you will think of it, and you will feel guilty.”

“And with you, I shan’t?”

“With me, it excites me,” he said, his voice dropping in pitch again.

“Oh,” she said in a different voice.

“So,” he said, “think about it.”