Chapter Fourteen
WICKHAM HAD BARELY made it out into the hallway when she was there, a vision in her nightdress which floated about her, and so did her hair which was down and lovely, a dark cloud. She was entirely too beautiful, and he did not know what he was going to do with himself.
“What are you doing?” he demanded of her. “Someone will see.”
“Come back to bed, then,” she said.
“Don’t say that. People will hear you say—” He seized her by the arm and yanked her into a sitting room where Darcy did his letters in the morning. He shut the door behind them both. “What are you doing?”
“Why did you run off on us?” she said. “And why did you say that thing at the end, about my being his wife?”
“I just realized it was all horrible,” said Wickham. “He relies on me… I should not be selecting the women he beds. He should not need me for that.” He threw up his hands. “I should not be speaking of this with you.”
“How many women would you say there have been?” she said, twisting her fingers together.
He groaned, because of course she was going to be jealous. He lied. “Two.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
He groaned again. “Look, it really is not that many, but sometimes, there were nights, women we purchased just for— Lizzy, that was never like this, do you understand? And nothing we have ever done has been like it is with you. The night we deflowered you, it was on some entire other level. You are so innocent and yet eager, and you are the most beautiful woman in all of England—”
“Stop that,” she said. “I am certainly not.” She shook herself. “This is not why I came, not so that you could reassure me. I came to see to you, because you left us. Why did you run off in that way?”
“I feel guilty, I suppose,” he said. “For interfering. He should have been left to woo women himself.” He considered. “On second thought, I strongly suspect, if I had not intervened, he would, even now, have never bedded a woman. He’d likely have gone to his wedding night a virgin.”
“Perish the thought,” she said, her voice a bit ironic.
“Oh, don’t be that way about it. You’ve done it now, so you understand it’s not about purity.
It’s only about men’s insecurity. They make double standards for women, because they are frightened that if a woman comes to their bed having known other men, she’ll compare them unfavorably to those who have come before.
” He considered. “Well, that and the bit about paternity, I suppose. Maybe that’s the more important aspect. ”
“You feel as if you overstepped with Fitz?”
“I feel as if he must think that I wished to make myself indispensable to him. He thought that I meant to be his servant. He thought that I was doing it on purpose, and he was grateful enough to allow me that. He gave me access to himself in ways that he knew were embarrassing, but he trusted me. And I…”
“I am not following this, I’m afraid,” she said.
“All right,” said Wickham, “here it is. I should have seen it earlier. But I was jealous. Because when he came to me for advice about women, the girl I was seeing was quite eager to seduce him. And I went along with it, with her, and I somehow ended up in the middle of it. She did it to use him, you see? She was a scullery maid.”
“Yes, of course, she thought that if she could keep his attentions that way that she could beg favors?”
“She was correct,” he said. “He kept her in a house on her own for years. He told me recently she married, but…”
“So, the first instance was this woman’s idea?”
“I was just to give her to him, you see? I was just going to let him have my…” He squared his shoulders.
“You didn’t wish it?” she said, furrowing her brow. “Why did you agree?”
“Well, she wanted it, didn’t she? And she talked me into it. ‘Oh, Georgie, it won’t mean anything. Oh, Georgie, it’ll be for us.’”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, nodding. “I see.”
“He asked if I wanted to watch,” said Wickham. “To join in.”
“And you did?”
He nodded.
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” said Wickham. “But what she was doing to him, you see, what her plan was? To ingratiate herself, to use him, that’s what Fitz thought of me. He thought I was manipulating him.” He shook his head. “So, no wonder he always treated me the way he did.”
“No, he knows that you were not doing that,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, truly, I see it now. For some time, he’s behaved differently, and he’s known. But I’ve been progressively worse to him.”
“This is something you need to be saying to him,” said Elizabeth.
Wickham shook his head. “No. You can express it to him—”
“I do not wish to be your go-between,” she said. “I am not here to be between the two of you.”
“That is exactly why you are here, Lizzy, and you are quite brilliant at it. You are healing us, whatever rift there is between us.”
“Yes, but I am not meant to be here just for the both of you,” she said.
“Certainly, you are.”
“But not just for that.”
He was confused at what she was getting at. “Well, I suppose it’s not your sole purpose in life or something.” But she was a woman, and she was a wife, and what else was her purpose in life?
She seemed mollified, however. “Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. And you two need to work these things out on your own. You must learn to speak to each other.”
“We talk all the time, Lizzy.” He kissed her. “Thank you. This was just what I needed, to hash it out with you.” He opened the door.
“Are you coming back to bed?”
“That bed,” he said in a low voice, “is really not big enough for three.” He took his leave of her.
MR. DARCY WAS having a hard time focusing on whatever it was she was saying because she was far too lovely.
She was pacing at the foot of the bed, and he was thinking about leaping up, taking her about the waist and tossing her on the bed.
He would lift her skirts and remove her drawers and slip-slide back inside her.
Especially if she was going to spend a night with Wickham tomorrow without him, he must have her tonight.
“…not listening to me.”
“Hmm?” he said.
She gestured to her face. “I am up here, and you are ogling me through my nightdress.”
He met her gaze. “Apologies.”
“I don’t know why I bother. Why do you not go after him yourself? You both need to talk to each other.”
“We do talk, Lizzy, but it’s…” He sighed. “I feel as if we never get anywhere. He takes offense at everything, and I suppose I understand it, to a degree, for he does not know where he fits, I think, but he also is frustratingly entitled.”
“Entitled,” she repeated. “You dislike how entitled he is.”
“You think I’m entitled,” he said. “You think I should not censure him for my own weaknesses. It is only that… he should be grateful.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” she said. “You deserve to think highly of yourself, but he is lesser and should therefore adopt a more humble attitude.”
He sighed. “Now, you sound like him.” He beckoned.
“Come here. Let us not speak of him any further. This night is a perfect example of it, you see? I allow him something I know he wants, I even tell him that he can have you alone, and does this satisfy him? No, he is so put out that he walks out on us.”
“It was not about that,” she said. “You were not listening to me. He didn’t understand before, he says. He says that you thought he was manipulating you at the beginning.”
“Manipulating me?”
“Yes, he said that there was some servant girl, and she wished to manipulate you, wished to use sex to get close to you and ask for favors. He says he didn’t realize you thought the same of him.”
“Oh,” said Darcy, thinking that over. “At one point, I did realize his intentions were not what I thought, that he wasn’t doing it only to gratify me. I realized he was gratified by it, and that he had done it because he wanted me in that way.”
“I don’t think so,” said Elizabeth. “You both seem to think the other is in love with you, whilst you only are in it for the women, who you both think only like the other man, and I think you’re both confused about it.”
“You don’t think he’s in love with me,” said Darcy, eyeing her.
“No, obviously he is. Obviously, you both love each other.”
“I do love him,” said Darcy. “But it’s not like the way I love you.”
She sighed. “Oh, I am done with you both.” She started across the room.
“Wait, you are leaving me? Please stay, Lizzy, please? If I am to send you off with George tomorrow, may I not have you one last time tonight?”
“Oh, Christ, Fitz, you have had your prick in my cunny a thousand times. You can’t be that eager for it again.”
“I am, however. I always shall be.”
She softened, a smile playing on her lips. “Is that so?”
“Lord knows, Lizzy, I shall never grow even the slightest bit disinterested in your cunny.”
She came back to the bed. She touched his chest. “You promise you will talk to him? He is not going to initiate the conversation. You must do it.”
“I shall talk to him,” he said, but he likely would have promised anything at that moment. She robbed him of all sense.
She had just been uncovered for him, not long ago, but he took great delight in uncovering her again, baring all her secret places for his own private viewing.
He reverently traced the outlines of her perfect breasts, drawing swirling circles from the base of them all the way up to the pink tips of them.
He nipped and licked them as she sighed against him.
He moved her drawers aside and touched her between her thighs. He had just done this to her, too, but he did not think he would ever grow tired of drawing these long, low sounds from the depths of her, of making her body bow up, tautening, growing more and more ready for her release.
Finally, he joined with her, and this was perfection, he thought, her body cradling his, his insistent hardness moving in and out of her warm, wet passage. It was transcendent. He was enamored of her, and he would never tire of this.
He had Wickham to thank for her.
If it had not been for Wickham, she would never have been his.