Chapter Fifteen
She was fearless, my new wife.
When we went to the opera, she had read the libretto of it before we arrived, and she explained to me excitedly all about the story, and people around us gave us looks, and I shushed her.
In the carriage ride back, she asked me about it, her voice small. “It wasn’t during the performance or anything. Was I simply boring you with it? Sometimes I go on and on about things, I know. I’ve been told I should not, because no one else is remotely interested.”
“No, no,” I said. “You were a bit loud is all.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Too loud.”
When we visited my aunt and uncle, she and my uncle struck up a conversation about the slave trade, both agreeing such things were appalling and that it all must be abolished, that the economic elements of the argument must not be taken into the consideration against the magnitude of the moral implications.
My aunt and I both attempted to change the subject multiple times, but they seemed oblivious.
Finally, I said, rather pointedly, that there were some topics that did not make good dinner conversation, and my wife turned rather red-faced and quieted entirely.
When we met my sister, Elizabeth turned down the notion of singing while my sister played the piano, even though I was most desirous of hearing her voice again. She said that she would be far too embarrassed to do so after she heard my sister’s singing voice.
Well, I suppose that was not her being fearless.
No, the truth was, by the end of the three weeks we stayed in town, something in her had dimmed.
Even the delivery of the dresses from the modiste did not quite ignite it, nor did my kisses, nor did the prospect of the final ball in town, which I had spoken of.
I tried to engage her on the subject of which of her new dresses she would like to wear, but she only said that I should likely choose for her, since I would know what it was that she should do to be proper.
I felt a bit alarmed at this. I said that we did not need to go to the ball at all if she did not wish it.
She said that we should do whatever I thought was best.
And that was when I knew what the issue was. “I wonder,” I said, “if you are missing your brother, Mrs. Darcy?”
She looked up at me. “Well, we have been apart for some time.”
“Let us go back to the country early?” I said. “Would that please you?”
There was a little smile on her face, not the sunbeam smile, but some echo of it. “But you had such plans for us. Are you certain?”
“I would rather make you smile,” I said.
“I wish I made you smile,” she said.
“It makes me smile to see you smile,” I countered.
Though I could have continued to make use of the house my family owned in Redbourn, I did not wish to do so indefinitely. My wife and I would be settled here for some months, and it seemed only right that I looked into finding something for us that would be our own.
I had sent out inquiries to this effect, but there had been very little of the sort of appropriate house we might need to rent in the nearby area.
Eventually, I had been obliged to take Lady Susannah’s offer.
Trawlings was vast and had enough room for us both, and Lady Susannah would be delighted at our presence there.
We would be quite close to Netherfield, where I supposed we would spend a great deal of time with my wife’s brother, and if there had been any concerns about the way we would be as newlyweds, unable to keep our hands off of each other at inopportune times, well, all of that had essentially stopped.
Of course, I had never been the one initiating kisses in improper places. It had been her, and I supposed it was better to say that she had stopped. It should have pleased or reassured me, I supposed, but I found that it didn’t. I found that it made me feel sad and a bit hollow.
At any rate, it was all for the best, since we would not have our privacy staying here with Lady Susannah, not in the way we might have had if we’d been in our own house, at any rate.
We made arrangements to come a week earlier than planned, but no one had any objections.
We were greeted at Trawlings by both the Mr. Bennets, her brother and her father, who were eager to see her and embraced her, one after the other, in public, in front of everyone, and I supposed I knew why my wife had internalized these sorts of habits from her effusive family.
Mrs. Bennet, however, was nowhere to be seen, and my wife said that her father and mother did not like to take the carriage together, so that probably explained it. We would see her mother soon enough, for we had been invited to dinner at Longbourn.
Mrs. Darcy and her brother lingered close, heads together, and eventually, I told her to go off for a walk with him on the grounds.
She clearly wished to speak to him alone.
I supposed she was going to tell him positively everything that had passed between us, and I did not know how to feel about that.
It would be worth it if her sunbeam smile returned, I decided, and that was that.
Later that night, I looked in on her before bed. All right, all right, I visited her bedchamber for purposes of marital associations, which—truth be told—I had been doing with startling regularity since all this began.
She was always eager to accept me, turning her face up to mine to be kissed, pressing into me and sighing, and she was quite the most perfect and wondrous of wives in every possible way.
When it was over, I did not leave, though I had been trying to do better about that, to make myself go back to my own bedchamber, for certainly it was not comfortable for either of us to share a bed all night.
But it was increasingly difficult, because I did so love the way she felt in my arms, and also she had a tendency to cling to me afterwards, to burrow in against me.
She used to beg me to stay, but she didn’t anymore.
Still, I knew she wished me to stay, and I wished to stay as well.
So. I stayed.
“Your brother?” I said. “He is well?”
“He seems so,” she said.
“You are happy to have seen him?”
“Yes, very much.” She had her head pillowed on my shoulder, her eyes closed. Her hair was down and it was lovely. She was lovely, impossibly lovely. It made my heart squeeze to think I somehow had this woman in my bed, that she was my wife.
“So, it was a good thing for us to have come to the country, Mrs. Darcy?”
She chuckled, not opening her eyes. “You might call me Elizabeth when we are not wearing clothes, I should think.”
“You have said this to me before,” I said. “I suppose I forget is all.”
“I don’t mind being called Mrs. Darcy, I suppose,” she said, sighing into me. “It is nice.”
I kissed her. “I like calling you Mrs. Darcy,” I said huskily. “I still often cannot believe you are my wife. I am the luckiest man on earth.”
She opened her eyes. She touched my face with her palm. “You like to say things like that, but I don’t think you really believe it.”
“What is this?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, nothing. It is as I told James, I am still learning to please you, and so much of what I do, you do not like, so I must make the necessary adjustments.”
I furrowed my brow. “That is not true. I do not feel as if I do not like much of what you do.”
“You are often scolding me,” she said.
“Scolding?” I said. That made me sound like some kind of mother hen or a old lady nag. “I do not think so.”
“James said that he was going to talk to you, and I was horrified, and told him he must not do such a thing, and that you would not like it if you knew I was telling him anything at all.”
I sighed. Because it was true that I wished the two of them were not as close as they were, but I also loved my wife and felt a bit concerned at the dimming within her.
“You would rather I did not speak to him about us,” she said.
“You and your brother have a very close relationship,” I said. “I have understood this since the beginning of it all. He is very open with you, though, and I fear as if his openness with you has had a bit of a… an influence over you.”
She sat up, looking down at me, furrowing her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you were a young and innocent girl, and there was no reason for you to have known about your brother’s unnatural affections. There was definitely no reason for you to have known about whatever carnal activities he has taken on with other men.”
She let out a breath. “You do not actually approve of it.”
“No one approves of it. It’s a sin, Mrs. Darcy. It is the reason that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”
She tilted up her chin. “Well, all right, I suppose, but there are a number of things in the bible that we do not really follow to the letter, a number of elements in the Old Testament and even certain things in the New Testament that we have determined are relics of ancient culture, and I think this may be one of them.”
I gaped at her. “You cannot be serious. You are denying that this is wrong?”
“How could I think that my brother’s lifestyle is sin?” she said, glaring at me.
“Well, that isn’t the way it works. We do not decide what sin is. God does.”
“Yes, but every other thing that is sin is about hurting other people,” she said. “And this doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Not every other thing,” I said. “Because there is also the fact that carnal relations between men and women is meant to be done only within marriage.”
“Yes, something that no man on earth except you follows,” she said.
“That is not true.”
“Well, I am not saying I want it different, Fitzwilliam,” she said.
“Because being your one and only, it has been the most affecting of things to me, and I am ever so grateful for it. I would not have a husband—I could not imagine being married to anyone except you. I love you and I love that neither of us has ever been in anyone else’s bed. ”
“Well,” I said, “you have kissed Mr. Wickham, and that can never be taken back.”
She tilted her head to look at me. “Am I the only woman you’ve ever kissed?”
I huffed. “The point I am trying to make, Mrs. Darcy, is that if you had never been exposed to all of this rush of iniquity by your brother, you would never have done any of that in the first place. Your brother’s influence made you take up with Mr. Wickham.
You have owned it yourself, saying you were jealous of his lifestyle. ”
“That is not what I was jealous of, Mr. Darcy!” she snapped.
“I was jealous of the way that someone wanted James, jealous of being desired in that way. But Mr. Wickham did not want me. He wanted to use me for his own pleasure. And I thought that you… but now I wonder if all that you want is to have someone who fits some perfect mold, and anyone who falls the least bit short must be chastised!”
“I am not so exacting,” I protested.
“Oh, it is all I hear of you,” she said.
“Your sister says to me that you once told her that your good opinion once lost is lost forever, and that she knows that she has lost it already, and that you will never accept her back into your household again, that she must be shipped off here and there because you cannot bear to look at her.”
I struggled to sit up in the bed, leaning against the headboard. I could not quite make heads or tails of what she had just said. “That is not even remotely true.”
“And since we have been married, you have made it quite plain that you wish me to be quiet, demure, and proper. Even if I speak too loudly at the theater, you must scold me!”
“I did not mean to scold you,” I said. “I suppose that I should not have… other people were looking at us and I felt embarrassed, and I suppose I could have borne it, but I—”
“I do not even know why you married me,” she said. “You want someone entirely unlike me.”
I shook my head. “I do not. I want you. I want you exactly as you are, and I have noticed… you are different… I suppose it is my fault. I have dimmed your sunbeam myself.” I felt that like someone had struck me.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
I shook my head. “I suppose you want me to go.”
She let out a breath, looking me over. “That’s it, then? You are just going to leave in the middle of all of this?”
“What else would you have me do? I suppose I can apologize. I shall endeavor to do better in the future, also, but you do know that simply because I tell you to be quiet, it doesn’t mean that you have to obey me.”
She gaped at me. “You wish me to vex you, that is what you are saying?”
“No,” I said. “No, but when I said that I liked that you were fearless, I meant it.”
There was a long, long silence.
Finally, she tossed her head, and the expression on her face went rather playful. “Well, I am very, very angry with you, husband.”
I swallowed, unsure of what to do with that, with her playful expression, with the way she was telling me she was angry.
“I want you to leave,” she said, and as she said this, she was crawling up the bed towards me.
“I very much do. I want you to get up and walk out of that door and to think about what you have done.” She swung a leg over my body, straddling me, and she was bare and sitting against me as I sat against the headboard and my mouth went entirely dry.
“I do not even want to look at you, husband,” she said.
“I suppose I must close my eyes.” She did so and kissed me.
At any rate, erm, I stayed.