Chapter Eight #2
Elizabeth drew the banyan tighter around herself. “I wonder you told me none of this before I agreed to marry him.”
“Apologies.”
“No, you wanted me like this, I suppose,” she said. “Wanted me nude and in a bed, my mouth wrapped round you, swallowing you down? You were as eager to convince me as he was.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I know that I said I was not a bad man, but maybe I am. However, I am not a very bad man, Lizzy. And you must understand he’s not a good man. On the balance, he is worse than me.”
She let out a funny noise. “I think he would disagree.”
“Perhaps,” he said again. “All I am saying is that what I did with his sister crossed some line. He was angry with me. I have been angry with him, and he is indifferent to me, but this was something else.”
“Well, you tried to debauch his very young sister.”
“I didn’t touch her,” said Wickham. “I wouldn’t have.”
“You were going to marry her.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t… it wouldn’t have been… I’d have been respectful about it.” He considered. “I suppose I didn’t think of it from the perspective of his thinking I wanted his sister in my bed. It wasn’t the primary motivation for me.”
“Yes, you wanted her money.”
“I wanted to be a Darcy,” he said. “I used to think I was a Darcy. I am not, I know that now. I never will be.” He sighed.
She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I see.”
“Do you?”
She nodded. “And this is why you think he has wronged you. You think you are family, and he…”
Wickham bowed his head.
“But George, you do not behave thus with family,” she said, gesturing around at the three of them. “You do not go to bed with your family.”
He supposed she was right. Perhaps that was when it had all gone wrong, when he had delved into deviant sexual practices with Darcy. They’d been so young, then, adolescent boys. He had no capacity to think of consequences back then.
She picked at the banyan she was wearing. “You truly think he will squirrel me away somewhere, simply be done with me after he has tired of me?”
“I have seen it, Lizzy,” he said.
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “then you can come there. Or do you plan to abandon me as well?
He eyed her. This was all quite different, that was what she didn’t understand. He would never have a conversation like this with one of their women usually, and there would never be any real promise of a future.
Darcy had married this woman.
Married her and then shared her with him on his wedding night.
What was this travesty?
He got up from where he was seated and began gathering up his clothes. He did not wish to strip off the banyan and dress in front of her, so he moved out of her sight line.
“You’re leaving?” she said. “I suppose you do plan to abandon me.”
“Oh, Lizzy, no.” He came back around and he knelt down in front of her, setting his clothes in a pile on the floor. He rested a hand on her knee. “Are you all right? I mean it, really and truly?”
“I suppose,” she said faintly. “You have just said he will tire of me, and I am not quite convinced he is very much interested in me in the first place. He is only interested in you—”
“That is not the case,” he said. “I suppose I meant whether you were all right physically, though.”
“Oh, well, nothing particularly unpleasant has happened to my physical body,” she said ruefully.
He smiled, squeezing her knee. “Good. And you must speak up if we ask too much of you. We want you to enjoy yourself.”
She let out a disbelieving laugh.
“I shall do what I can for you, of course,” he said, giving her knee another squeeze. “I cannot come and… and live with you if he tosses you aside. People would talk. He would know. He would come straightaway—”
“Good.” She seized his hand. “Then you will do exactly that, and that is how we shall, together, keep him interested.”
“I mean he would come straightaway and throw me out,” he said.
“But, yes, all right.” He patted her knee and got to his feet.
“You’ll be all right. You are his wife. You will bear his children.
You will be well taken care of and you will want for nothing.
He takes his responsibilities very seriously.
He may not live with you, but he will never truly abandon you. ”
“No?” she said.
“No, he is still looking after Mrs. Younge. And this is after she schemed to marry his sister to me. He promised her, and he…”
“Fucked her,” she said in a very small voice.
“Yes,” said Wickham. “It’s all right, though, truly. You are his wife.”
She nodded, but she did not speak.
Was she about to cry? What had he done? He picked up his clothes and began to hurriedly pull them on, right in front of her now. He did not care about the indignity of it.
“You must go?” she said.
“I shouldn’t stay all night. The servants will talk.”
“He has paid your commission and you think until autumn, and the servants will know—”
“All right, all right,” he said. “I have handled the servants, but…” He looked at Darcy on the bed and then back to her.
“Could we not lie back down all together?” she said.
He leaned in and cupped her cheek. “He will like waking with you alone.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”
DARCY WOKE SOMETIME in the night to find his pretty naked wife in his bed, and he was pleased and aroused and happy.
Lamps were burning low in the room, but they had not been extinguished. She was asleep, covers pulled up around her. Wickham was gone.
Typical for Wickham to flee, actually. Darcy might have expected that.
Darcy caressed her bare shoulder and she sighed in her sleep. He marveled at the sight of her. She was beautiful this way, and there was something so unusual about having a woman in his bed like this, something that still made him feel shy and unworthy, like a boy.
Well, the truth was he would never have gotten this woman on his own.
It was Wickham’s doing.
He was lucky to have Wickham or he’d never have women at all.
And this one. It robbed him of sense to think that he could have secured her, that she would have agreed to marry him, that she would have willingly let herself be stripped and stroked and gazed upon, and then that she had accepted him inside her, surrendering her virtue to him.
She had been under him just here, right here, and he remembered the way it had felt.
Her body soft and small under his, her warm heat surrounding him.
She doesn’t even like me, he thought, gazing down at her.
He traced his forefinger over her shoulder, up to her neck, over the line of her jaw.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“Apologies,” he murmured. “I did not mean to wake you.”
She stretched, looking up at him. “It’s all right. What time is it?”
He lifted up to see the clock across the room. “Quite late. After midnight.”
“Oh,” she said. “I was not certain if I should be here or if I should have gone back to my own bed. George said you would like it to wake with me.”
“You spoke to him before he left?”
She nodded.
He settled himself against her. “I do like waking to find you here, Lizzy. But if you would like to go to your own bed, you needn’t make all your decisions to please me.”
“Should I go now?”
“What do you wish?”
“What do you wish?”
He laughed, smoothing a hand over her back through the covers. “All right, I shall take charge of you. You will stay right here, with me, for I wish it.”
She beamed up at him. “All right.”
He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
That was better, then, perhaps, just kissing and no need for talk. He kissed her sweet lips and slipped his hands under the blankets to explored her smooth, soft skin.
She sighed and moaned as he touched her.
He found her breasts, and she gasped prettily against him as he teased her there.
Then he touched her between her thighs and she was wet there, but he supposed it could be his release in her, but that only made him surge, the thought of having claimed her, having left his seed behind.
He rolled her under him, reached between them and fitted himself to her opening. “Take me, Lizzy? Take your husband in your sweet cunny?”
She gasped and reacted as he breached her.
He slid all the way home, and she felt divine. “All right?” he breathed in her ear. She had not responded before.
“Yes, Fitz,” she managed. “Yes.”
“Good Lizzy,” he breathed in her ear. “What a sweet and lovely wife you are.”
She moaned against him.
He worked himself in her, kissing her, her body perfect and delightful. He could wake this way every day for the rest of his life as far as he was concerned.
His climax came for him, slow at first, and then quite quick, like a rush of a waterfall. He grunted and twitched into her and she made little noises in response.
He pushed up over her. “Oh, I suppose I did not wait for you, did I?” He looked down at her. “You did not come, did you?”
“No,” she said.
He slipped out of her and wrapped his arm around her from behind. “Well, it will come with time, I think. It is only the first night. I should like to feel you come on my cock, of course. If you would like to toy with yourself and bring yourself now, though?”
“Oh,” she said, turning in his arms. “Touch myself.”
“Mmm,” he said, wrapping himself around her. “Touch yourself, my Lizzy, come in my arms.”
“All right,” she said with a sigh, and she put her fingers between her thighs.
He kissed her shoulder and her neck, whispering encouragement to her.
But he fell asleep before she climaxed.