Chapter Five
ELIZABETH WALKED TO town with her sisters even though she feared Wickham’s anger because she could not bear staying home. A week and a half and no word from Mr. Darcy, her intended, and nothing to do at home but sit about and wonder at the course her life would take.
Perhaps Mr. Wickham would have answers.
When she saw him, her stomach turned over the way it always did when she saw him.
He had an affect on her, and she knew not how to handle it, she had to admit.
She still felt confused as to the nature of Mr. Wickham’s character.
Was he a frightful liar and a manipulator?
Was he the perfect gentleman that he had presented himself to her?
He came to her straightaway, his face all wreathed in smiles. He was fair where Darcy was dark. His eyes were blue. “Miss Elizabeth,” he said. “I thought you would never walk to town again. I have been awaiting you, day after day.”
She looked up into his blue eyes, remembering the way they had held hers when he had his fingers on the pulse of her pleasure, through her dress, and she felt quite undone. “Well,” she managed, “you seemed so angry with me.”
He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Difficult to be angry with you, Miss Elizabeth.”
“You still are, though,” she said in a small voice, comprehending that he was.
“Let us walk,” he said.
And she allowed herself to be taken away from the rest of her sisters, as she had done before, and to go off walking alone with Mr. Wickham.
They walked in the woods, as they had before, but it was a warmer walk in the spring, and the trees were all covered in buds and the air had a promise to it.
“You agreed to marry him,” said Mr. Wickham finally. “I did not think you liked him.”
“He improves upon acquaintance,” she said.
“Does he.” Wickham’s lips turned down.
“He told me you went to him for money to marry me,” she said. “Was that after our walk in the woods or before it?”
“Does that matter?” he said, sounding a bit sulky.
“I wanted to be yours,” she murmured. “I thought I was, in fact. I knew I shouldn’t have allowed you to touch me in that manner, but I did, and I thought… but then you ignored me afterwards.”
“I didn’t ignore you, Miss Bennet—”
“You most certainly did,” she said, interrupting him with some heat, for she felt the sting of it as clearly as she had then.
“I felt so foolish about it. I felt so ashamed. And then he gave me that letter and it said that you had done all manner of things, that you had tried to elope with his sister and that he had already given you money in lieu of the position at Derbyshire, and I wondered if that weren’t simply the sort of man you are. ”
He stopped walking.
She did too, feeling nervous about it, though, trying to search his expression for something to understand how he was feeling.
He pressed her into a tree trunk.
She gasped, still searching his expression.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, “what sort of man am I?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” she said.
Mr. Wickham leaned close, his face looming over hers.
She shut her eyes. He is going to kiss me, she thought.
And he did, his lips on hers quick and sweet like the press of the wings of a butterfly.
She gasped.
His fingers stroked her chin.
She opened her eyes.
“I am not a bad man,” he insisted. “It is not like Mr. Darcy thinks. He sees everything only one way.”
“What way does he see it?” she said. “Is this part of it, where he likes it if I… am yours first? He said that he likes it when you give women to him.”
Wickham flinched. He backed away from her.
She wrapped both of her hands around her torso. “Oh, I am sorry. I just don’t understand any of it, and—”
“He’s a very rich man, and he can have what he wants, can’t he? Even my women, who all seem to want him more than me anyway.” His mouth twisted. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
She flinched again. “Well, I didn’t like him, and I wouldn’t have liked him, but you have not answered for why you abandoned me! If you had not left me alone, I might never have softened towards him.”
“You went to Kent! How did I leave you alone?”
“Oh, it was before that,” she said. “Why did you do it?”
He shook his head.
“It was just before the ball at Netherfield,” she said.
“You knew he wanted me, I suppose. Or, at least, you knew that he would not facilitate a marriage between us. You know that he danced with me at that ball? He asked for a dance, and I could not understand it, why he would seek me out, because I did not think he thought much of me. He told me that he did not, not until you asked him for assistance in marrying me, and then he began to notice me in that way.”
“I know when it happened,” he said. “Believe me, I think about it, madam. I think about you.”
“I think you did it to hurt him,” she said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with me at all. I think you were thinking only of him when you did it. I think you knew you were ruining me, and you just wanted to make sure that you had me first so that you could ruin me for him.”
He was quiet.
“Not even going to deny it?” She shivered into the tree trunk, though it wasn’t cold. He was that sort of man, after all. She had been taken in by him.
He was there, hand on the trunk right next to her face, leaning over her, his voice urgent. “You do not understand, Miss Bennet. You do not know what he has done to me over the years.”
“You told me,” she said, “but everything you said, he contradicted. You lied, Mr. Wickham.”
His face twisted. “He’s the one who started it, who wanted to bring me into it at all. He’s not marrying you because he wants you, he’s marrying you because he wants me.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. Was it really that way? Well, she supposed it would make sense. “He does get very agitated whenever your name comes up.”
“You see?”
“Of course, you bring him up in conversation more often than makes any real sense.”
“I do not.”
“You do,” she countered. “So, this is what it is, then. There is some longstanding feud between you, and you like to bring women into the middle of it, and I am simply the latest in a long line of them. I’m nothing, just a prop in your saga with each other.”
“No,” said Wickham. “No, we are marrying you.”
“We?” she said.
He kissed her again.
She pushed him away. “Should you stop doing that? You know, he hasn’t even kissed me, and I am marrying him.”
“I spoke to him,” he said. “You are marrying both of us. He said forever, if we wish it.” He touched her chin again, running one forefinger over it. “Once you are with child, with his child, he says that I can—”
“Oh, dear God,” she said. “You two are plotting things about me, about my body, and I am not even part of the conversation!” And this made her press her thighs together. It was frightening, but it was exciting. It was exciting because it was frightening.
“You have spoken to him about me when I wasn’t present,” said Wickham. “Here you and I are, discussing him, and he is not present. I think it may be the nature of the arrangement. It is awful, but it is typical for Fitz.”
“Fitz,” she repeated, trying out the nickname in her mouth.
“He could not stand the idea of my having something on my own,” said Wickham. “He would not allow me to simply marry you. He had to be part of it. So, he married you and now he says he got you for me. This is the way he works, you see. He is the devious one, not me.”
She regarded him, wondering to herself if both of these men could believe what they were saying, if both of them thought the other man was the one in the wrong.
“Do you wish me there on the wedding night?” Wickham asked.
“I wish to be there, but Fitz says that if you have objections, you are not under any obligation to go through with any of this, and I agree, of course, but you must reassure him that you do not object to me.” He kissed her again. “You do not, do you?”
She swallowed. Two men on her wedding night? “Are you both going to…?” But she didn’t finish the sentence.
“He’s quite concerned about his heir,” said Wickham.
“The sooner you are with child, the better, I think. Then there is no concern and everything can be done. So, no, the first night, I shan’t be able to do that to you.
” His hand was on her now, cupping her through her clothes, cupping the mounded part of her, right over her secret parts.
“But there will be other things I can do. And I do wish to look upon you, of course, pretty Lizzy, to see you bared to me.” His voice was a whisper.
She shut her eyes.
He massaged her mound. “You wish it, then? For me to be there?”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, of course.”
“Of course,” he echoed, kissing her again. His hands still moved on her.
It felt tantalizingly good, and she wanted him to do whatever he had done to her before, again. She rocked her hips against his hand, which was a bit shameless, perhaps.
He noticed and chuckled.
She felt embarrassed, and she felt heat rush to her face.
“Are you wearing drawers, Lizzy?” he breathed in her ear.
She swallowed again. “No, my mother says only shameless hussies put things between their thighs like that.”
“I thought not,” he said. “Perhaps I could see a little hint of you now, not all of you, just a hint. You’d like to show me, would you not?”
Something zinged through her and it seemed to settle right there where his hand was massaging her. It tingled. She moaned.
He kissed her again. Now his other hand was reaching inside her bodice under her stays, to find one of her breasts.
He had touched her here before, but through her stays, not skin on skin like this.
When he got her nipple between his fingers and teased it, she cried out at the sensation, but he swallowed her sound—his mouth was on hers.
He kissed his way to her earlobe. His voice was scratchy as he urged her, “I’ll move my hand, and you’ll reach down and slowly lift your skirt to present yourself to me, hmm?”
She moaned. She nodded.