Chapter One #2
THE MOST DIFFICULT thing about what had happened with Mr. Wickham was that Elizabeth had no one to speak to about it. She could not come out and tell anyone about what had occurred, because she was not supposed to have done it, not at all, and she feared the judgment of anyone who she would tell.
For quite some time, she had considered telling Jane, because Jane was her closest friend and confidante, her older sister. But she thought that some things were truly beyond the scope of Jane’s understanding, and that this was one of them.
It had happened because one indiscretion begot another, she supposed.
Mr. Wickham convinced her to walk with him, just the two of them, and they had spoken alone before, her and him, at a whist party, and she had enjoyed speaking alone with him, and she knew that a walk alone with a man wasn’t entirely proper, but no one was keeping strict count of where everyone was, and she supposed she would say that they had been in a group and the group had fallen off, and she was acquiescing.
And then, when he stopped them and they pressed into the tree trunk, he hadn’t tried to kiss her at first, just talked, just flattered, just on and on about how beautiful she was and how he could hardly keep control of himself and how she spurred him on to try all manner of things.
And then after the kiss, his hands, and that felt so nice…
She knew it was not like her.
She knew that it was something her ridiculous sister Lydia would have done.
She knew that she could not tell anyone.
And she had also known, when Mr. Wickham had been purring in her ear that there was no way she could be ruined, for her clothes were still on, that she was ruined, that she was destroyed, that she was not going to have any chance of marriage, not unless it was Mr. Wickham himself.
It was insult to injury, of course, to have had both of those proposals of marriage—one from Mr. Collins and one from Mr. Darcy—both of which she would have refused anyway, even if she hadn’t been ruined—well, she thought she would have refused them, anyway.
She did not even quite know at this point. It was all so very awful.
Now, in the parsonage, she was shut up in her room, saying she had a headache, because she could not face Charlotte, her friend.
Charlotte was now married to Mr. Collins, whose marriage proposal Elizabeth had turned down. Elizabeth was visiting them here. It wasn’t even that awkward, really, because Mr. Collins spent so little time thinking about anyone except himself and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
To think that Mr. Darcy wanted to marry her and then wanted their marriage to be some game of his watching her with another man.
She had heard tell of a scandal when she was a girl, not much of the details, she had to own, because she had been quite young, but it had been all over, in the courts, in the gossip rags in London, and people had chatted about it.
Not in front of children, truly, but she had listened here and there and picked it all up.
Some man had taken another man to court for running off with his wife, and the wife and the other man said that the husband had forced her to bed her lover in the first place, and he had enjoyed watching it all.
So, Elizabeth knew this was something that happened.
It wasn’t what she wanted out of her own marriage, not something sordid, something made for gossip and ridicule, not something that people laughed about and talked over and thought was deviant.
Who would have thought it of Mr. Darcy? Prim, proper, severe Mr. Darcy?
No, perhaps that was exactly the type?
Oh, and Mr. Wickham, he had never shut up about Mr. Darcy, had he, now that she thought about it. Every conversation she had with him turned back to Mr. Darcy in one way, shape, or form.
But Mr. Darcy himself had been out of sorts the one time she’d mentioned Mr. Wickham to him, at the Netherfield Ball, right before he and the Bingleys had all left town and had not been seen again.
Why?
What was between the two men?
She was curious, she had to admit, but was she curious enough to accept this marriage proposal, just to find out?
And if Mr. Darcy had been so amenable to sharing her with Mr. Wickham, why send her that letter enumerating all of Wickham’s ills?
None of this made any sense.
Eventually, she did go in to see Charlotte. She supposed, however, she knew the answers that Charlotte would give when she put questions to the other woman.
“Let us say,” said Elizabeth, “you have received a proposal of marriage from a wealthy man.”
“Oh, we are playing a game, are we?” said Charlotte, smiling. “How wealthy?”
“Quite wealthy, very wealthy, as wealthy as Mr. Darcy.”
“I see,” said Charlotte. “All right, then, if this is the case, I should accept the proposal with all haste.”
“Let us say this man has indicated to you that some aspects of the marriage might be irregular,” said Elizabeth.
“Irregular how?”
“In the bedchamber,” said Elizabeth. “Let us say he has shocking tastes and predilections, and he has communicated them to you ahead of time.”
“Well, that isn’t very proper.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Elizabeth.
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “What is it, Elizabeth? What does Mr. Darcy wish you to do?”
“It isn’t me, and it isn’t Mr. Darcy,” said Elizabeth, but she felt like an idiot about this, too, because she was going to be accepting his proposal soon enough and Charlotte would obviously put it together.
Oh, accepting his proposal, was she? Well, clearly, she’d already decided.
“All right,” said Charlotte. “So, then what is it that this wealthy man wishes her to do?”
“That’s not important either,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, it very much is,” said Charlotte. “Is it going to hurt? Does it involve farm animals? Will there—”
“Farm animals?” said Elizabeth, gaping at her friend. “Where is your mind going to?”
“To the places where I would say no,” said Charlotte.
“So, you draw the line at farm animals,” said Elizabeth. She considered. “That’s a good line, I suppose.”
Charlotte laughed.
Elizabeth smiled and then a laugh burst out of her too.
“So, then?” said Charlotte. “It doesn’t involve farm animals?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. She rubbed her forehead.
“Oh, I was thinking to myself before I came in to speak to you that I knew exactly what you would say, that you would do what is practical, and I shall likely never get another proposal of marriage, so if I turn this one down, it is absolutely idiotic.”
“So, it is you, and it is Mr. Darcy.”
Elizabeth buried her face in her hands. “You cannot breathe a word to anyone about this.”
“But what is it, Lizzy?” said Charlotte. “It must be very bad, if it is giving you pause.”
Elizabeth only shook her head.
“All right, well, if you like, I shall tell you something that my husband—”
“Oh, please don’t,” said Elizabeth. “I shall not be able to look at him again if I have pictured such a thing.”
Charlotte smirked. “You know, he is quite obliging in that way. I would have married him regardless, of course. I thought it would be a lot of lying on my back and staring at the ceiling whilst he told me about how Lady Catherine had instructed him in breeding me like a prized mare—”
“Oh, Charlotte!” guffawed Elizabeth, unable to hold back her exclamation.
“Sorry, I do know that you didn’t wish for me to be too detailed,” said Charlotte.
“But he is quite obliging, quite concerned with my pleasure, and I am not sure that all men are so, just from what I have heard, so I am only saying that I…” She shook her head.
“I don’t know what I am saying. You do not like Mr. Darcy. ”
“You were commenting, only a few days ago, that he must be in love with me, were you not? Because he had come to visit me in the midst of the morning here, and he talked all to me of how you were settled near your family and I objected and he said that it was fifty miles of good road and—”
“You remember this conversation with startling detail.”
“Well, it seems you were right,” said Elizabeth. “He came, oh, I don’t know, it wasn’t yesterday, it was the day before. When everyone was at dinner—”
“Yes, he did not arrive at the table. We inquired to be polite, of course, but we were rebuffed, saying that he had deemed not to come down for dinner only, not that he was ill or anything of that nature.”
“You didn’t mention this to me.”
“You don’t like him.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Anyway, Charlotte, you cannot imagine what a travesty this proposal was. He went on for most of it about how he had been trying ever so hard not to feel anything for me at all, for I was a most improper choice, but that he could not help it. I could not believe it, of course. He has never shown me anything but scorn.”
“Now, I do not know if that is the truth of it,” said Charlotte. “Certainly, there was that slight the first night that he saw you, the one you overheard, but has he really shown you scorn since? He has been all solicitousness to you here, since your arrival at Rosings.”
Was that true? Elizabeth thought back over it, and she nodded. “Yes, I suppose. But I did not feel as if he had any especial feelings for me. How could I have suspected such a thing?”
“So, then, what happened? You must have said you needed time to think about it?”
Elizabeth paused only a moment and then said, “Yes, indeed,” because she thought that was a much better way to explain it than anything she could think of, and she had no intention of telling Charlotte that she had allowed Mr. Wickham such shocking liberties.
“He is coming back this evening, to the parsonage, for my answer. I suppose I am going to accept him.”
“Well, you must, I think, unless this shocking bedchamber business is very bad. Is it illegal?”
“You ask if it’s illegal, as if that wouldn’t have covered the farm animals bit?”
“Well, I just mean, it isn’t…” Charlotte lowered her voice. “Sodomy, is it?”
“No,” said Elizabeth, who did not really know what sodomy actually was, truth be told.
She considered asking Charlotte, and then couldn’t bring herself to do so.
“I truly don’t wish to talk about this. It doesn’t matter what it is, Charlotte, what matters is that I strongly suspect the reason he wishes to marry me is because he knows that he can not convince a woman who is of his social circle to engage in such things—”
“You are of his social circle, Lizzy!”
“Oh, but am I? Truly? He is lowering himself to marry me, and if I had any doubt of that, he made it very plain,” said Elizabeth.
“And the reason, I think, is because he wants me to be so grateful to him that I shan’t object to his prurient interests.
” Or that he thought she was already tainted by whatever it was that Wickham had done to her and therefore would have no reason to object anymore.
“Well, it sounds as if you are going to have little choice,” said Charlotte. “However, wives rarely do, you know. You must simply put up with whatever his desires are and do your best to meet them, I suppose, but if they are awful—”
“No, as I say, it’s not really about that.”
“What is it about, then?”
“He doesn’t love me,” said Elizabeth. “He said all these pretty words in the proposal—”
“I thought the proposal was awful and very insulting.”
“Well, there were parts to it. There was an insulting part and there was a part where he was a bit complimentary, I suppose,” said Elizabeth.
“He said he admired and loved me. That he ardently did so, in fact. But he does not. He simply lusts after me, that is all. I am an object of lust, Charlotte, I am to be used for his pleasure. It is going to be only about that. It will be base and low and coarse and if I agree to that, I shall be agreeing to be that.”
Charlotte regarded her. “Lizzy…” But then she didn’t finish her sentence.
“What?” Elizabeth finally demanded.
“It is only… why do you think men get married at all?”
“Well, not because of that,” said Elizabeth, “because they can get it elsewhere.”
“Oh, yes, and once a man has had it elsewhere, he is quite satisfied?”
“He is not?”
Charlotte’s voice was gentle. “It does not matter what sort of marriage you have, it is always, at least a little, for you to be used for his pleasure.” She shrugged.
“Men wouldn’t agree to it else, do you see?
There is nothing else in it for them. They have to provide all the protection and the land and the money and the food and housing and the—”
“Yes, all right, you’ve made your point,” Elizabeth muttered.
“That does not mean, of course, that anything he wants should be allowed. If he is asking for something unreasonable, something that frightens or disgusts you, you must not agree.”
Well, it did not frighten her.
Disgust her? It ought to, she supposed, but maybe Mr. Darcy had been there all along in all of her interactions with Mr. Wickham already.
Because Wickham was always talking of him, complaining about him, saying things like, I wouldn’t be in this position, unable to marry where I chose, if he had just given me that living in Derbyshire.
So, maybe it wouldn’t matter if Mr. Darcy were now actually there, watching it.
Maybe he had been part of it from the very first.
After all, would Mr. Wickham have been so interested in her if she had not responded when he brought up Mr. Darcy? Wasn’t that the reason, at that whist party, that they had struck up such a lively conversation at all?
It has been the three of us all along, thought Elizabeth. Perhaps this is where it was always headed and I simply did not realize it.