Chapter Thirteen
I went back to London afterward to make arrangements for bringing my wife there and to tell my family of the news. They were not what I would call pleased, but there was much less of an outcry than I supposed I had expected.
I had a letter from my aunt Lady Catherine, who went on for some time about how I had betrayed my mother’s memory, that her dearest wish had been for me to be united with Anne.
I read the entire letter, but I did not respond.
I decided it was better for my aunt to have a bit of time to calm herself.
Any response I made would only cause her to feel she must shame me again.
Richard’s parents, however, seemed practically indifferent. They made a few inquiries about who she was connected to and when they discovered she was connected to no one, they asked no more questions.
As for her indiscretion with Mr. Wickham, news of that had not reached London or any other part of society because no one knew who she was, and the information wasn’t pertinent.
In the area in and around Meryton, most of the gossip seemed to have changed to speaking of the fact that she was marrying me, and to discussing whether or not this would mean that she would not inherit from Lady Susannah.
Because of Lady Susannah, and because of my new bride’s brother, we would need to be settled in the area. Perhaps I should make arrangements with my aunt and uncle to stay in the house in Redbourn or perhaps not.
If we were to spend a great deal of time near her brother, we would obviously need to have more permanent lodgings nearby. I would need to make some inquiries about what could be found for us.
My plan was to marry her in the country, then to bring her to London for several weeks so that I might introduce her to my sister and my family. No one would be in London for much longer anyway. It was late May, and everyone would be off for the country for the summer.
We would spend our first summer together near to her family and to Lady Susannah, who had come to rely on my wife’s presence and company. This way she could still visit her often. She would also be close to her brother.
If all went well, we might attempt to plan a trip with Bingley and Bennet in the late summer or the fall, since everyone was so keen on our having travels together.
These were the plans for the future, and I felt quite secure in them, looking forward to my life with her.
I returned to the country a week before our wedding was to take place, and I visited her daily. We took walks under the blossoming trees in the warmth of the spring afternoons, and I held her hand and she blushed sometimes, often, when she looked up at me.
But one day, she was blushing quite a bit, very shy, when she asked if I was planning on kissing her.
I took a deep breath and felt my body go into that floating feeling that it went to with her, especially when I thought of things of that nature. I felt shy, too, bumbling, idiotic.
Had I ever kissed a woman?
The plain answer was no. I was not the sort of man who was going to go around kissing the young daughters of gentlemen willy nilly.
A kiss meant something, I thought, and it was not to be bestowed without thought.
If I kissed a woman of a certain social circle, I wanted to feel as if I was rather sure of her, and I had never felt that way with a woman before, not until Miss Bennet.
There were other sorts of women, of course, but I didn’t truly hold with that kind of behavior.
It seemed to me that everyone knew such things were wrong.
There was no question of it. It was condemned in scripture, condemned from the pulpit, condemned by the strictures of good behavior, and yet, men like my cousin paid it all no mind, doing all manner of things with strumpets and opera singers and other women like that.
I was not going to do that.
“I should quite like to kiss you,” I said, my voice having taken on a strangled quality. We were walking in the fields around Longbourn, close to where I had proposed to her. I stopped moving, and she was holding my hand, so she stopped moving too and looked up at me, expectant.
I took her other in mine, clutching both of them and peered down on her.
Her chest rose and fell. Her breath hitched.
I squeezed both of her hands. “And this would please you, then, Miss Bennet? A kiss would please you?”
She smiled at me, her sunbeam smile. Her voice was hushed, “Oh, yes, Mr. Darcy, it would.”
“I live to please you,” I said, and I put my mouth on hers.
She tasted like springtime. She was like light and warmth and pink flowers. She was soft and wondrous and small. I gathered her into my arms and held her close as I deepened the kiss.
I had thought… I don’t know… the tongue business sounded sort of strange and awful but it was not. Stroking my tongue against hers made me feel dizzy and half drunk on her.
When we broke apart, her lips were reddened from my attentions, and something rose in me at the sight of it, the sight having left some mark on her body, some sign of my claim on her. It was very good.
She lay her head on my shoulder and sighed. “Oh, so that’s what it’s meant to be like.”
I went stiff. Of course I must have known, but I had not thought of it. “He kissed you.”
She placed her hand against my chest. “It was awful. He was awful. He plastered me into the side of the carriage and shoved his tongue in my mouth and his breath was foul and I…” She huddled into me. “I wanted this to wipe that away, you see?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
My first kiss, but not hers.
Why did such a notion plague me?
I did not try to kiss her again.
One day, she asked me about it, and she was concerned.
“Did it not please you?” she said. “I found your kiss so exquisitely pleasing, you see. I take the memory of it out at night as if it is a treasured letter that I can unfold, and I replay it as I lie alone in my bed. I think of the way I felt in your arms, Mr. Darcy.” She was smiling her sunbeam smile.
I coughed, looking away.
“But you have not kissed me again?”
“I, erm, I think it’s not proper,” I said. “I think we ought to wait until we are married for there to be too much of that sort of contact.”
“We are to be married in a matter of days, sir,” she said. “Are you thinking of…” Her smile was mischievous. “Of our wedding night?”
I coughed again. “I hardly think that’s an appropriate topic of conversation.”
She stopped smiling. “Apologies.”
We walked together in silence, then.
I felt as if I had been harsh upon her. “Miss Bennet,” I said gently, “I think very fondly on that kiss as well. I…” I swallowed. “I think of it at night as well.”
“Oh,” she said, smiling back up at me. “But you wish to wait?”
“I think it will be best to do so, yes,” I said, though I supposed the truth of it was really that I felt a bit intimidated by her, by the way she was so eager and the way she sought things that she desired.
I was beginning to wonder if I had made an error, never having done anything with women at all.
I was beginning to wonder if I was not, in fact, going to be able to please her.
And I had always thought that she knew far too much about her brother’s activities, and that this may have corrupted her to some degree, let a bit too much of the wanton leak into her.
Of course, perhaps a part of me found that wantonness in her appealing, but I felt a bit ashamed of that. It didn’t seem proper.
“Well, maybe there’s something a bit romantic about that,” she said. “About both of us yearning for the other. I think it might make our time together after we are married all the more intense for the fact we have not given in at all, not even to kisses, and I like that.”
“Well, we should only ever give in to kisses at this stage of our association!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I thought so, too. Because I knew that you turned down the idea of bedding me while I was married to Bingley.”
“You knew of that,” I muttered. “Of course you knew of that.”
“I did not ask them to ask you that. I was horrified. But I knew you would not agree to it. You’re not that sort of man.”
“I am not,” I said.
“And I want you to understand, it is not about that for me. I think it is different for men in some way. I don’t simply wish to be taken in that way.
I want to be cherished and desired and chosen and…
” She made a face. “Well, listen to me going on, and I used to think I didn’t even need a man at all. ”
“You did say that,” I said, remembering that.
“Yes, but that was before whatever happened with Mr. Wickham, when it all became clear to me that I was so weak and vulnerable. And then you were there.” She looked up at me.
“And you should have blamed me. I would have sworn that a man like you, with the way you look at the world, you would have declared me ruined and it my own fault—for it was! But you asked me to marry you instead.” She gave me her sunbeam smile.
I wondered at myself. Why had I asked this woman to marry me? I knew I had been obsessed with her, drawn to her, and that I was, even now, fiercely in love with her, but I did wonder at it. Looking at it from a certain perspective, it seemed foolish.
“You have rescued me, truly. And if it had been only because of… of wanting to lift my skirts or something, it would have made everything very tawdry and awful.”
“It’s obviously not because of that,” I said.
“Good,” she said.
Then we walked in silence again for some time.
Eventually, she broke the silence, her voice tentative. “But you do like kissing me? You do…” She swallowed. “You do want me in that way?”
I coughed again. “Here we are again, having this very improper conversation, Miss Bennet.”
“Mr. Darcy, it would please me that you wanted me in that way, as a man wants a woman. I would be quite pleased.”
I let out a noisy breath and I tugged her against me, and I kissed her again, kissed her and she gasped against me, catching my face in her hands.
When I pulled away, I whispered in her ear roughly, “I want you, Miss Bennet.”