Chapter Seventeen
My valet discovered us together the next morning, and I only woke to his apologies as he left the room.
She moaned into my chest. “You will likely never forgive me that, being here and his seeing us.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” I said. “I like waking up with you in my arms, you know?”
“I do not know that,” she said. “Because you seem to despise it.”
“How could you say that?” I say, rather wounded. “You can see how much I delight in you, how much I care for you. You know I am desperately in love with you, my beautiful wife.”
She flushed a little and her smile was practically the sunbeam smile. “But you never wish to do it, to wake up with me,” she said. “You always leave in the night, even if we fall asleep in each other’s arms, you tend to leave and go back to your own room.”
“That’s not about you,” I said. “I suppose it’s mortifying, is it not?”
“Mortifying,” she said.
“Well, it’s not proper.”
“Mr. Darcy, there are a number of things that you seem to think are not proper, but I ask you, what could be more proper than a husband and wife cleaving to each other in this way? Why, are we not told in the bible to do it, to be fruitful and multiply? Is it not entirely natural? Every servant in this house who is married is doing all manner of improper things together, you know. I should think they would all understand that you would do them, too.”
I grimaced. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I was being foolish. “Yes, but here. At Lady Susannah’s? What if we are the subject of gossip by the servants? What if she hears about it and feels we are encroaching on her hospitality?”
“I think she expects it, considering we are newlyweds.”
I considered that. Could she be right? Was I overly worried about all of these things? “Perhaps I am being foolish, I suppose. We shall stay together at night, then, while we both wish it, and I shall stop thinking overmuch on it.”
“Truly?” She was surprised. “Have I changed the great and mighty Mr. Darcy’s mind about something?”
“That’s not fair,” I said, chuckling at her. “But you are quite pretty when you are in my bed in the morning after sleeping in my arms, and it is terribly difficult to be cross with you.”
“You are cross with me.”
“No, you are cross with me,” I said. “I suppose it’s about your brother—”
“Well, we never finished discussing your sister marrying Mr. Bingley.”
“Oh, that will never happen,” I said. “Because I should not saddle my sister to a marriage like that one. I want her to find a man who adores her the way I adore you. I want her to experience that. She deserves that. She deserves much better than to be a convenience, some shield so that Mr. Bingley’s shameful secret does not come out.
I did not wish it for you, and I would not wish it for anyone.
In fact, I do not approve of it for Caroline. ”
Elizabeth let out a long, slow, thoughtful breath. “Oh,” she said.
“Oh?” I said. “Has the great and mighty Mrs. Darcy deigned to say that her husband might have a good point about something?”
She poked me under my ribs. “Oh, please, if you will, call me Elizabeth in bed?”
“Yes,” I said. “I should. I should quite call you Elizabeth. I apologize.”
“Even Lizzy,” she said.
“Will,” I said.
She beamed at me, and she was as sunny as ever.
We may have been nearly late for breakfast that morning as well. What could I say? I had a difficult time keeping my hands off of her.
“Apologies for our lateness, my lady,” Elizabeth said as she slid into a chair at breakfast.
“No, no trouble,” said Lady Susannah. “I know you must have a good excuse for it.”
I noticed a footman smirk at this, and I tried to hold his gaze, but he left the room shortly afterward. I did not see him again until sometime later, when my wife and I were sitting down in the morning room to write some letters.
I muttered something about my pen needing mending, and she said, “Oh, certainly, let me have a look at it if you please.”
“I can mend my own pen,” I told her.
“Yes, but isn’t it nicer if someone mends it for you?” she said.
“Clearly,” said the footman, who was in the corner of the room.
I looked up at him, but he was just smirking again.
Elizabeth turned to look at him.
“What was that?” I said.
“Nothing, sir,” he said, all innocence.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “if you do not mind, there is an inkwell over there and if you could bring it to me, I would be much obliged.”
He brought the inkwell to her, and he said something, but I couldn’t hear it.
Elizabeth turned bright red and made a choking noise. She snatched the inkwell from him and shook herself.
The footman, still smirking, left the room.
I shot to my feet. I came over to her. “What did he say to you?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said.
“It does matter,” I said. “What did he say?”
“No, it only proves you are correct, and I am incorrect,” she said. “The servants are clearly not capable of allowing us to sleep in each other’s rooms all night without noticing.”
“What did he say?” Now, I was livid.
“Mr. Darcy—”
“Mrs. Darcy, you are my wife, and he has no right to speak to you about anything of that nature, none at all. What did he say?”
“He said,” she whispered, “that he supposed I was very concerned about your pen needing mending if I had to go to your room myself instead of your visiting me. And that since I stayed all night, it must have needed mending numerous times.”
I slammed my hand down on the desk. I could not breathe. I had never been quite this angry in my life, I did not think. I stalked out of the room, hands clenched in fists and went up and down the hallways, until I found the footman in question.
“I could have you dismissed,” I said to him.
His eyes widened.
“Do not speak to my wife,” I said. “Do not look at my wife. Do not think to imagine things about my wife.”
“I—sir, it was only a jest. I meant nothing—”
“You meant to make her feel uncomfortable and to make her feel ashamed. You meant to impose yourself over her and to feel some rush of power from that, small as it may be. You meant to make yourself large and her small.”
“I swear I did not,” he said.
“Regardless, you will never do anything like that again.”
“I shall apologize.”
“No,” I said. “You will not speak to her again. Have I not just finished saying that? You will never do a thing to cause her any distress ever again.”
He bowed his head. “Sir.”
I turned and stalked off, back to the sitting room where I found Elizabeth writing a letter as if nothing had happened.
I was still too angry to do anything other than pace.
“I think,” she said, looking up from her letter, “that there is a difference between you and me, and it is why you are so hard on yourself and why you convey those same strictures to me. It is because you have been looked at your whole life. Everyone looks to you. You are Mr. Darcy, you have such position and such wealth, and I am not used to it, because I have spent my life going unnoticed.”
I stopped pacing.
“At any rate,” she said, “we might as well take better care. We do not need to spend the entire night—”
“Nonsense,” I interrupted.
She sat back in her chair, startled at that. “Excuse me?”
“We cannot simply not live our lives because we are worried about how other people are going to react to it.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Well, yes, this is what I have been saying, but I have to say that I’ve been saying it from the perspective of someone who has never had much in the way of a reaction to anything I’ve done.”
“If we wish to sleep in each other’s bedchambers, we shall,” I said. “We are married, for God’s sake.”
She gave me a small smile. “All right.”
“And if any of the footmen, or any other servant, says one thing to you again, you will come to me, and I will take care of it.”
“What did you say to him?” she said.
“That isn’t important.”
“He will say it was only a joke, I suppose.”
“I made him see that it was serious,” I hissed, settling down at the other writing desk.
“Well,” she said. “I likely oughtn’t find that so swoonworthy, but I think I do. You are always my protector, Will. Thank you.”
I looked up to meet her gaze. I felt that floaty feeling again, and it quite wiped away the anger I was feeling.
The Bingleys called upon Lady Susannah that afternoon, with Mr. Bennet in tow, since he seemed to come everywhere with them these days.
I endured even more of Miss Bingley’s attempts at flirtation with Mr. Bennet, who seemed to be as uncomfortable with them as I was.
When Mr. Bennet was not trying to avoid Miss Bingley’s adoration, he was stealing glances at me, and I could see his ire when he did.
I said, at one point, perhaps stupidly, for I knew not where I thought such a comment might lead, “I have been thinking, Lady Susannah, of a conversation we had with you once where you said that you thought men tried to convince women that they needed them, and I wonder if it is not quite this way, if it is only that men feel such fierce protective instincts towards women that they sometimes apply them when they are unnecessary.”
Mr. Bennet knew this was directed at him, that I was commenting on his protection of his sister and he sat up straight and started to respond.
But before he could, Lady Susannah spoke, for I had addressed her, of course. “Well, it is the same thing, I think. Men think women need their protection, and this is why they behave as they do.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“No?” she said.
“Well, at least for me, it is not a question of whether anyone needs anything at all. I never think of that before I am acting. If a woman I care about is in need of my protection, I simply act. I don’t think at all.”
“Yes,” spoke up Bingley in a languid voice, “I think this is the difference between men and women. Women are always pondering things out and men are rushing into it without much thought.”
“I wonder what your cousin would say about that as it applies to war,” said Lady Susannah.
“Men can be thoughtful,” said Mr. Bennet. “They can think things through. They can calculate.”
“No, of course they can,” said Bingley, coming to sit down next to him.
“And as for me,” said Mr. Bennet, finding my gaze, “I certainly have not acted, though I have wished to, though I feel as if I ought to have, but I have done nothing, all at the behest of the women I wish to protect. If she doesn’t wish my interference, I do not interfere.”
“That is an admirable trait,” said Lady Susannah, “but it goes back to the heart of it, I suppose, which is what I was asking on that day, whether or not women need men to do these sorts of things for them.”
“And you said that men were manipulating women to keep them under their control,” I said.
“Oh, I do not know if I would put it quite so strongly,” said Lady Susannah. “But I suppose I do think it sometimes, yes.”
My wife spoke up. “I know we have spoken many times, my lady, and I have said often that I agreed with you that women do not need men, and I am still of that opinion. However, I think that they are nice to have around, men.” She met my gaze across the room and gave me her sunbeam smile.
“There are ever so many nice things about them.”
Lady Susannah chuckled. “Well, my dear, you are still a newlywed, so you would say something of that nature.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps it is only that I am quite taken with my new husband and that I shall change my mind about it all by and by, but I hope not. I daresay it is lovely to not need him.”
I was not quite sure how to take that comment, but she was smiling, so perhaps it did not matter.
“As for protection,” she said, “that is very nice, too, I suppose. Or, at least, it can be. I know it is a sign that the man in question cares about me.” She looked at me and then at her brother as well.
“But do you need it?” put in Bingley. “For that is the purpose of the conversation, I suppose. Do women need men’s protection?”
“Oh, obviously,” said Caroline. “Why, we are far too weak on our own. If there was any threat, we should quite need men about to protect us.”
“Oh, come now,” I said. “Look at us. Are we likely to protect you from any threat, truly?”
“You would indeed try,” said Elizabeth. “You would leap at any danger for me, and I am positive of that.”
“But, as Lady Susannah has pointed out, we have civilized ourselves out of most of that,” I said.
“It is true,” said Lady Susannah. “We have little need for brute strength in today’s world. Indeed, when it is applied, it is often to the detriment of whoever is using it.”
“Could we protect ourselves if men did not protect us?” said Elizabeth. “Absolutely.”
“No,” said Caroline, horrified. “No, of course not. Obviously, we do need men.”
“I don’t know that we do need men,” said Elizabeth. “But the world is ever so much better with them in it, I think.”
“Do you?” I said, smiling at her. “Do you truly think that?”
“Well, God must have created your sex for some reason,” she said.
“Yes, if not protection, then what?”
“It is not about the fact that we need you or not,” Elizabeth said. “It is about the fact that you do it for us. Even if I do not need the thing you do for me, I am touched that you cared enough to do it.”
I laughed softly. “Well, that is a bit patronizing, I suppose.”
“And a bit of a blow, yes, not being needed at all,” said Bingley.
“Yes, but it quite makes sense,” said Bennet.
“It doesn’t make sense at all!” said Caroline. “Obviously men are very necessary. Why, Mr. Bennet, when I think of what we should all do without you, I am quite beside myself.”