Chapter Twenty-two
SO, NEITHER OF them, neither Wickham nor Darcy, got her with child for a total of three entire years, even though there were accidents here and there all the time, one or the other of them accidentally spending inside her, and there were no less than six times that her bleeding was late, but it always came, until the time it didn’t.
Though neither of her husbands seemed particularly concerned that she had not conceived in three years, she had grown increasingly more alarmed, had been worried that she would not be able to have a child at all.
During this time, Jane had given birth twice, and Georgiana was married and was already increasing. Lydia, married as well, had given birth once, and even Caroline Bingley, who was now Caroline Granger, was round and ready to drop her first child.
The only holdout of her circle of married friends was Charlotte, who told her that she had told Mr. Collins that she didn’t think she wanted to have a child at all and he had shrugged and said it might be less trouble not to have one.
To which Elizabeth responded, and perhaps she oughtn’t have said this first, “Well, then, what will become of Longbourn?”
“It will pass on to someone else, Lizzy,” said Charlotte, “but you will be living at Pemberley, so I hardly see why it will matter much to you.”
Elizabeth could not help but be sentimental about her childhood home, it was true.
But Charlotte was also correct that there would be little hardship in her life when it came to the loss of Longbourn, and that her father should be there until his death, at least. May he live a long and full life, she thought.
Sometimes, Charlotte wanted to know about Mr. Darcy’s strange predilections in the bedchamber, and Elizabeth finally shrugged at Charlotte one day during one of these conversations and said, “All right, all right, it was sodomy.”
“Oh,” said Charlotte, shrugging. “Well, I think it’s rather lovely, don’t you? Quite pleasant, and I hardly see why everyone is so up in arms about it, in the end. I suppose it’s different if it’s between men, but really, between a man and his wife, it seems entirely harmless.”
Elizabeth had never wished to know this about Mr. Collins, never, though she had to be pleased in how often she had been able to visit her friend Mrs. Collins, for she was quite free to do as she liked, and many of the other women she knew, the ones with ever so many children, were beholden to their husbands and families in ways she was not.
She did not have ask permission to go and see Charlotte. She simply informed her husbands she was taking a trip. She did not have to beg for use of the carriage or to be given leave to go walking or shopping or any such thing. She decided and then she did as she willed.
Wickham had been the one to be the most insistent about it. “Lizzy must be able to make her own decisions. She must say where she goes and when and she must say in whose company, and she must suffer no consequences for such things.”
Mr. Darcy had been amenable, but confused. He did not understand why this must be.
“She is not equal to us otherwise,” Wickham had said.
“We are men, and she is not, and she must have the sort of freedom we have, as much as we—as her husbands—can grant it to her. Also, she must not be our servant, you see. She is not here for our pleasure. She is here to seek out her own pleasure, and we are to find pleasure together.”
Mr. Darcy objected that men had the freedom to do anything they liked with no consequences.
And Elizabeth pointed out that was so, but that she didn’t have the ability to inherit an entailed property or have a profession like law or to walk three miles in the mud!
Her husband pointed out she had indeed walked three miles in mud, that he remembered this most distinctly.
But the point was taken, and it was all as Wickham had insisted it should be.
She was given an abundant amount of freedom.
Three years of it before her bleeding was late, and she appreciated it, though she knew that they all must play their own roles.
If Wickham could never be in the same position as Darcy was, then neither of course could she.
The three of them were never to be the same as each other, and they were never to be entirely equal either.
Society’s dictates, after all, must be followed.
But they fought society as well. Society would dictate she should only have one husband, and there she had somehow gotten double what everyone should have. She was well content, though she would have been in any case.
Contentment wasn’t entirely a decision, of course, for one could not be content if one was starving or one had a broken limb or if one was freezing to death.
But given enough comfort, one could choose to focus on the comfort instead of the lack of it.
At any rate, after three years, Elizabeth’s bleeding was late, and continued to be late, and then it never arrived.
She and her husbands were residing at Pemberley, for it was late autumn, and she told them at dinner that she wished to speak to them both later that evening about a matter that wasn’t proper dinner conversation.
They were too free with each other here in the country, and they had lost two servants over it already, a scullery maid and a carriage driver who were both horrified and had to be given large sums of money to go away and keep quiet.
So, they were trying to be careful about their discussions, their behavior.
She did not tell them until they were in Darcy’s bedchamber, in the antechamber, where there were three easy chairs set up round a small table.
“Again?” said Wickham. “Lizzy, darling, I’m sure you’ll bleed soon. Usually, after you tell us, it’s the next day or the one after.”
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose that’s why I am telling you. It usually shows up once I do. And I am three weeks late.”
“Three weeks?” said Darcy. “It’s never been that late before.”
“No,” she said.
“Well,” said Wickham, “we don’t know who’s it is, do we?”
Darcy counted back on his fingers. “Was that time you half-spilled in her this month or last?”
“I know not,” said Wickham. “But I do know that you told me that when the two of you were together on your own last month, you were surprised and did not even attempt to pull out.”
“That’s true,” said Darcy.
“So, I think it’s likely yours,” said Wickham.
“Well, this babe shall belong to us all,” said Darcy.
“If there’s a babe at all,” said Wickham.
“Right,” said Darcy.
They both eyed her.
“How are you feeling?” said Wickham.
“I might have a bit of tenderness,” she said, gesturing to her breasts. “But I don’t know. Perhaps I am imagining it, looking for signs.”
“I am pleased,” said Darcy. “Are you pleased, Lizzy?”
She gave him a soft smile. “You know, I am. Or I shall be if I am carrying our babe now.”
“Yes, it’s different now,” said Wickham. “We are all quite settled together. We are sure of each other. There is no worry that we are having some kind of temporary lust-fueled situation that will end at any moment.”
“Well, there does seem to be a great deal of lust,” said Elizabeth.
“Indeed,” said Darcy.
“May we take turns in you tonight, Lizzy?” said Wickham. “Speaking of lust?”
“I should like that,” she said. It was common for them to all start out together, kissing and pleasuring each other, and then for them to both mount her in succession.
They were boring these days, she thought, having a perfunctory joining.
The men liked watching each other with her, though, and she liked to be filled with one man and kiss the other.
They had tried the thing she’d suggested more than once—both of their pricks prodding their way into her cunny at the same time, and it worked and was sweet and soft and good.
But one or the other of them was always and forever falling out, and it was difficult for them to find a position that worked, and they did not do it often. They had not done it, well, in years now, she did not think.
Later, she lay in between them with her arms around them both, while they both teased one of her nipples with their tongues and lips and sometimes, gently, their teeth.
“If Lizzy’s with child, I think we should be allowed to spend in her,” said Wickham, rubbing his bottom lip over her nipple, making it rigid.
“Not until we’re sure,” said Darcy, sucking her other nipple into his mouth.
“Well, if we’re all pleased about it, it seems to me that we might as well get her with child now. So, even if she’s not with child now, if we start spending in her, she will be, and that’s fine with all of us, yes?”
Elizabeth riffled his hair. “Fine with the both of you, who don’t have to grow the babe in either of your bodies.”
“Oh, very well,” huffed Wickham.
Darcy sighed around her nipple. He let it go and planted a kiss on it.
“I am going to be quite excited to see Lizzy’s body change, though.
I know we decided that we would simply fantasize about getting her with child, not truly get her with child, but I am serious about wanting to see her that way. ”
“No, so am I,” said Wickham. “She will be radiant, I think.”
Both of them rested their hands on her belly.
She traced patterns on their shoulders and hummed. She loved them both so very much.
SHE WAS NOT even remotely radiant, she did not think, though her husbands argued with her about this, telling her that they found her incredibly beautiful.
They also seemed to find the idea that the babe was fathered by the other man gave them both a jolt.
She would end up sitting close to one man or other, and he would run his hands over her swelling belly and whisper to her that he hoped it was the other man’s child.
Wickham would kiss her belly and say, “Ah, I hope it’s Fitz’s in there.
It makes something so powerful surge in me to think of you here, with his babe in you. ”