This Mad and Sinful Thing

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

COLONEL RICHARD FITZWILLIAM was drunk, but he didn’t think that could entirely account for the fact he’d said such a very dreadful thing.

He was spending a pleasant evening at Pemberley with his cousin Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and his cousin’s wife, Elizabeth. The couple had been married now for nearly four years, and Richard often came to stay and would spend weeks in their company. They traveled together sometimes as well.

The evening had been a typical one, one of wine and cards. They had been playing at loo earlier that night, but the other members of the party, which included Mr. Darcy, his sister Georgiana, and Elizabeth’s younger sister Kitty, who was also visiting, had gone off to bed one by one, leaving the colonel there with Elizabeth. So, they were now playing Ving-et-tun, because it was easy to play with two people, and it didn’t require much skill or strategy to a mind addled by glass after glass of wine.

The game stopped immediately, though, after he said it.

What he said was, “Well, I don’t know that it’s always the lady’s fault in these cases.”

And then Elizabeth looked up at him with a positively stricken look on her face, and he stared back for too long, for he was drunk, and his reactions were all a bit delayed. Then, belatedly, he registered that he oughtn’t have said that, and he turned back to his cards and cringed.

Long, long moments of silence passed.

Then, Elizabeth set down her cards and got up from the table, walking off across the room until she practically collided with the back of one of the couches. She stood there, running her fingers over the curved back of the couch.

It was ever so quiet.

Here was the real problem with this entire situation.

Richard was in love with Elizabeth.

He had been for some time. He wouldn’t say he’d fallen in love with the woman at first sight or anything, but he certainly hadn’t—at first sight—seen anything about her that he hadn’t liked. She was beautiful, witty, self-deprecating about her foibles like piano-playing, altogether good-humored, and a wonderful conversationalist. Being in her presence was simply enjoyable, and he liked her.

Every time he was in her presence, he liked her more, and at some point, he was in love. He could not pinpoint when.

But it didn’t matter, of course, because he couldn’t marry her or anything of that nature. He was a second son of an earl, and he did not have estates, not like Darcy did. He was supposed to marry a fortune. He knew this.

But after Darcy had married Elizabeth, Richard hadn’t married anyone.

For quite some time, he hadn’t even thought about getting married, truth be told. It wasn’t a necessity. He was comfortable enough with the allowance he received from his family. His salary in the army was really a pittance, but it was something. Anyway, the war was over now, so he wasn’t being dragged onto the continent to fight France all the time. The British Empire was always getting into skirmishes somewhere, in some part of the world, of course, so he could be uprooted and shipped off at any time. Right now, he was on a long leave, and he’d been stationed near London for some time. He felt he could live this sort of life indefinitely. He thought of a life tied to some snobby heiress who would wish him to escort her to all manner of balls and society events, and he mostly felt tired.

As for children…

Well, sometimes he thought about it, he supposed, but it was easy enough here, with the Darcys, because they’d been married four years, and they didn’t have any children.

Richard knew this was a sore subject for Elizabeth and usually he would have avoided it entirely. It was only that he’d somehow fallen into saying what he’d said because she had brought it up.

Well, she had not brought it up as a topic of conversation, of course. She had alluded to it offhand, and he had commented on it, instead of letting it go and sticking with easy topics.

Here was the other thing about this evening between the two of them. It was rather typical as well. It was quite common for there to be evenings of drinking and cards that ended up with everyone else going to bed and only Richard and Elizabeth left up together.

They would usually make some attempt at the cards but abandon the attempt quickly and then fall into talking drunkenly for several hours before they would both be yawning and exhausted and off to bed. The next day, everyone in the house would tease them for being half-asleep in the breakfast parlor.

It was all very typical, yes, but Richard knew it was wrong.

Not wrong in the worst of ways, he supposed, not a grievous wrong. It was a sin, however, what he did, the sin of covetousness. He sat up into the night, talking to his cousin’s wife and wishing she was his. It was the kind of behavior that was bittersweet. It felt good; it was torture. And then, after it was done, he was guilty.

He should stop doing it.

He definitely shouldn’t be saying things like that to her. The implications…

Before Richard had said the very dreadful thing, they had been chattering gaily about a funny story about Kitty, who had been playing the piano-forte downstairs in Pemberley all alone, thinking no one was listening. She had been singing as well, very loudly, apparently from memory, since she had gotten the words wrong, and was belting out “be of some the double door” instead of “be of sin the double cure.”

“So, anyway,” Elizabeth had said, “there she was attempting to sing ‘Rock of Ages’ and I thought to myself, well, there is something I can count in my own favor, then, isn’t there? I may be barren and unable to give my husband an heir to Pemberley, but at least I know the proper words to that hymn!” She crowed with laughter.

Then Richard said the very dreadful thing. “Well, I don’t know that it’s always the lady’s fault in these cases.”

Then she stopped laughing, went very still, and then got up and left the table.

Richard didn’t look at her for some time. He only looked at his cards. He knew that he must rectify this situation, but he did not know how. “I should not have said anything, Mrs. Darcy,” he finally said in a very quiet voice. “I well know it is best not to speak on it. I remember when my own mother was so very insensitive about the topic two years ago, and you were so agitated by it that you—”

“Oh, don’t bring that up!” Elizabeth rounded on him. “That’s ever so embarrassing, Richard.”

What had happened was that Lady Matlock, Richard’s mother, had tittered over dinner that Elizabeth and Darcy did know “how it was that babes were gotten” didn’t they? And everyone had laughed except Elizabeth, who had excused herself, white-faced, claiming a headache. And when she was gone, her husband had stood behind his chair and scolded everyone, saying that Elizabeth was heartbroken, and no one could know what they went through, month-in and month-out, and that if anyone else ever said anything about the subject to his wife, Darcy would never speak to them again. And then Darcy had walked out without excusing himself.

“Look,” Richard said, still too drunk to think better of it, “I didn’t mean anything by it. That is, what I meant was that it’s not fair to call yourself barren, is it, madam? You don’t know if it is your fault or not. How could you know?”

“Richard,” said Elizabeth with a very loud sigh. There was a long pause. Then, “Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord.”

“Not that we need to discuss anything about that,” he said. “Just that you should blame him. Maybe it’s Darcy’s fault. After all, if he’d ever fathered a bastard on someone, I would know. And he never has, though that’s likely because he would never bed anyone, I suppose, but at any rate—”

“ Richard. ”

He set down his cards. “Let’s change the subject.”

She hesitated and then, abruptly, nodded, coming back over to the table and gathering up his cards along with hers as she sat down. Briskly, she began to shuffle them. “We could play piquet, I think.”

“That’s a bit of a lot for me right now,” he said. “Just deal out another hand of Ving-et-tun. I can easily count to twenty-one, I think. That’s the extent of my capacity at the moment, however, I believe.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth, nodding, looking up at him. “You’re quite drunk, then.”

“Not quite drunk,” he said. “But drunk enough, I suppose. I did just put my foot in my mouth.”

“Are you…?” She licked her lips, turned bright red, and shook herself. She turned back to the cards, but her hands were trembling, and then she dropped them everywhere.

He pulled back, eyeing her. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly well,” she said, but her hands were still shaking.

He took the cards from her. “Let me do this, hmm?”

She let him take the cards. She twisted her fingers together. “Of course, we’ve discussed this, you know.”

“Who has discussed what?”

“My husband and myself,” she said. “We’ve spoken of the fact that we can’t be sure where the fault lies. Will says there’s only one way to test it, and that’s that someone would need to lie with someone else. He says it would be easier if it were me, he supposes, because if he gets some other woman with child, trying to pass it off as mine is going to be much harder than trying to pass off some other man’s child as his. And—”

“Stop, Elizabeth,” Richard breathed. His fingers had not moved on the cards since she began to speak.

“Yes, apologies,” she said.

Richard set the cards down.

It was entirely silent.

The silence went on and on.

Richard remembered once encountering Elizabeth at a gathering, one of friends and family, where she had been hiding away from the fray, quietly crying. He had not done much except give her his handkerchief, of course. Displays of emotion were meant to be kept private. Such was propriety. He did not wish to make her feel mortified on top of everything else when she was so clearly distraught.

So, he could not be sure what had made her so very sad, but he thought it was seeing all the small ones. Her sister Jane had one babe at that point and was increasing again, and Georgiana had been increasing as well. Georgiana’s husband had been away. He was quite often away, in fact. There had been other children running all around the grounds, and he thought it must be quite a painful thing to see it all and know one would never have children of one’s own.

His heart would have gone out to her even if he hadn’t been in love with her.

Truly, he’d probably thought it for the first time, then, even if he’d squelched the thought immediately and told himself it was ignominious, beneath him, and abundantly disgusting and that he would never even think it again, let alone say something aloud to the woman.

Christ in heaven.

He licked his lips. “He, um, he actually said that?”

“He did.”

“That, erm, that doesn’t sound like something Darcy would say.”

“Well, you don’t know him like I do,” she said. “He has this side to him when it comes to…”

“When it comes to what?”

Elizabeth was blushing quite fiercely. “To those sorts of things. To marital things.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam raised his eyebrows. “Proper, staid Darcy has a ‘side’ to him?”

Elizabeth put both of her hands on the table. “We, in fact, discussed possible candidates.”

Richard swallowed. Two things happened to him physically. One was that he had a nervous and unpleasant sensation in his belly, and the second was that his prick got hard. The juxtaposition of these two feelings, one good, one bad, had the effect of a negation of good and bad, leaving him in a place of wary neutrality.

“You were the clear winner,” said Elizabeth.

“I was the… what? ” He sputtered it, and he was aware of the fact that his face was heating up, so they were now probably a pair of blushing fools.

“It’s just that you share some of the same blood, so that would mean that Will would be related to the child, and that is preferable to not having any familial connection, and that he trusts you, he says, and that—”

“He didn’t tell you that you could…” Richard could not find a word for it. “With me. He did not .”

She licked her lips and folded her arms over her chest and looked uncomfortable. “No,” she finally settled on. “No, there was no express permission given to such an activity. Not exactly. When we have discussed it, it has been more of a hypothetical exploration.”

He nodded.

“Anyway, I brought up objections,” she said. “Though he didn’t think they were objections. He thought it made you a better candidate.”

“What are you talking about?” Richard began to claw at his cravat, because he couldn’t breathe. “We are not… let’s play cards, Elizabeth, and leave this. Why are we…?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes, all right.” She picked up her glass of wine and drank a large gulp of it.

“Don’t drink more ,” he said. He was very flustered.

“Apologies,” she said again, hunching up her shoulders.

It was very quiet again.

He picked up the cards, which he had somehow, at some point, managed to neatly stack into a pile. He picked them up and set them back down again. His voice was scoured. “What did we decide we were playing?”

“I should go to bed,” she said. “We are, you and I, obviously in a position of having imbibed far too much, and we must… let us never speak of any of this again, if you please.”

“Clearly,” he said. “We shall pretend this discussion never happened. Indeed, there really was no discussion, I don’t believe. Truly, there is no reason to ever even think of it again.”

She nodded. “Well, then. Good night, Richard.”

“Good night, Elizabeth,” he said.

Neither of them moved.

Moments passed.

He peeled one card off the top of the stack and turned it face up next to the stack without really looking at it. “Well, you might as well tell me what your objections are to me.” He didn’t need to know, but they had, once, had a conversation. He hadn’t said, in so many words, that he wished to marry her but could not due to his circumstances, but he may as well have. She had given him a sharp look. He thought she had understood. They never spoke of it again.

That very day, she had turned down Darcy’s first proposal, which had warmed him. He’d even thought of proposing to her himself, all sensical considerations be damned.

But that would have been awful to Darcy, who was in love with her, and his cousin was used to getting his own way, and Richard was used to catering to him, and… and anyway, Richard was not in the habit of being cruel and unfeeling.

He didn’t ever say anything else to her.

And then Darcy wore her down, he supposed. Sometimes, Richard had told himself strange little ridiculous tales, that she had turned Darcy down in the hopes of Richard’s proposal and that—when it never came—she settled for Darcy. He saw the way they looked at each other, of course. He knew it wasn’t true.

But to say she had objections.

Well, he should have realized how very ridiculous a tale it was he was telling himself.

He turned over another card on the stack. “Is it my face? I know I’m not what women consider handsome.”

“Oh, God, Richard, no.”

He looked up at her, since she was so forceful.

“No, heavens…” She drank all of the rest of the wine in her glass. “It’s this, of course, can’t you see that?”

“This?” No, what was she talking about?

She poured more wine into her glass and topped off his.

He could have protested. He didn’t. He drank instead, several long drinks, shaking his head.

“This, you and me,” said Elizabeth. “The way we do this.” She shrugged. “I have had ever so much to drink, Richard, and if you hold me to having said this in the morning, I shall deny it vehemently. I love my husband to distraction, and nothing changes that. Nothing ever will. But when you and I first met, I thought you such an amiable person, so easy to be around, such a conversationalist! And I thought, after I was married, after I had fallen in love, my attachment to you would fade, for it was quite shallow at first, if you must know. But…” She licked her lips. “But it hasn’t. And you, for your part, seem just as attached, probably more attached. So, that is my objection.”

He drank more wine because his mouth was dry. “What are you saying?”

“Do not make me repeat that!”

“I only mean, how is that an objection, that we both…” He swallowed again. “Fancy each other?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Oh, pardon me,” he muttered, slugging at more of his wine. “Let us truly cease this. No good can come of this conversation. We are both going to regret it. I am finishing this glass of drink and going off to bed, and that is my final thought on this matter.”

“Yes, indeed,” she said, nodding. “I cannot but agree. We must not voice any of these things, I do not think. It can only bring about calamity and pain to everyone involved.”

She was right. He had already felt pain as a result of it, and his prick was still hard, and he felt quite confused and quite uncomfortable. He gestured to the door. “Think if Darcy came back down right away and asked what we were speaking of, for instance.”

“Indeed,” she said quietly.

He furrowed his brow. “Wait a moment. You did not say that to him. You did not say you had an attachment to me.”

“Not exactly, no,” she said with a grimace. “I said that you had an attachment to me.”

“Oh, God in heaven, Elizabeth, you did not .”

“And he said that he could tell that, obviously, and that was partly why he thought you would be the best choice,” she said. “Because he said that it would mean you cared about me, cared more for me than for any child you might make, and you would not tarnish my good name or do anything to hurt me. You’d allow him to claim your child, which he said most men wouldn’t do, because you would wish me to be happy.”

“That sounds more like him,” Richard muttered. His cousin was shrewd and intelligent, after all. Trust him to be a strategist about getting some other man’s seed into his wife’s womb. “I suppose I should be glad he hasn’t barred me from your company, though. Why does he simply go to bed and leave us alone like this all the time?”

“I don’t know, but maybe he wants us to,” said Elizabeth. “He and I did speak of it, Richard, on more than one occasion.”

His jaw worked.

“I don’t think he’d be angry, anyway,” said Elizabeth.

He let out a disbelieving laugh. “You already said that he did not expressly give you permission. You also admit you didn’t tell him that you have an attachment to me. You know that he would be angry.”

She grimaced again.

“You know it,” he said.

She nodded, picking up her wine glass. “I really can’t see how he could possibly be anything other than desperately jealous and quite hurt if we did this.”

“We’re not doing anything!” he protested.

“No, of course we’re not,” she said.