Chapter 9 Darcy
Darcy
Mr Bennet seemed more positive about Darcy as a person every time they met, and he had high hopes that whenever Elizabeth indicated that she was ready to become formally engaged, Darcy would be able to gain her father’s approval.
In the meantime, he hurried through his early-morning routine with a quick, cold wash and dressing for a ride.
On his way to the stables, he popped into the kitchen and larder to take a few hot rolls, a bottle of cider, several pieces of fruit, and a small hunk of cheese.
Gulltoppr received a greengage plum and an apricot, and Darcy carefully stowed the rest of the food in his saddlebags.
Swinging into the saddle, he rode towards Oakham Mount.
Courting Elizabeth had turned into a delicious sort of torture, and Darcy felt as if he had been transformed into a rake of the highest order. Nonsense, he scolded himself. A rake would make love to a parade of different women. I dream only about my soon-to-be wife.
But dream he did, and at nighttime his dreams were shockingly explicit for a man whose only knowledge about intimate pleasures had come from a single biology class and several texts on anatomy, plus the mutterings and boasts he had heard over the years.
Without knowing what was considered proper within marriage, and what was not, Darcy found himself imagining, for the most part while asleep, all sorts of scenarios in which hands and mouths and body parts deemed “private” interacted in all sorts of combinations.
Riding towards the highest hill in the region and, he hoped, Elizabeth, Darcy tried to empty his mind of all that he had dreamt the previous night.
You are a gentleman, he reminded himself.
Despite their private assignations. Despite holding hands without gloves and kissing her bare hand.
Despite taking her hair down and embracing her and longing for more…
. You are a gentleman, he insisted again. Act like one!
Seeing Elizabeth’s sweet and innocent face restored Darcy, and he smiled, leapt off and tied up Gulltoppr, and joined her in their usual upward climb. As they walked, he said, “Have you noticed that your father seems to look forward to my visits now?”
“I have.” His beloved laughed her unique, melodic laugh, and he remembered how swiftly he had come to treasure that sound, the first night he had met her.
She went on, “I believe that today you should start your visit with my father with a lengthy description of the library at Darcy House and then switch to speaking of Pemberley’s library as even larger and greater. What think you of this strategy?”
“I think that is an excellent idea, Miss Elizabeth. Although I do not always converse easily with people, I believe that I could speak of my libraries—our libraries—to anyone, at any time.
Chuckling again, Elizabeth said, “I love plotting with you against my father, quite behind his back, but then, when your own back is turned—by which I mean you are innocently sleeping or working on correspondence at Netherfield Park—I plot with my father to devise strategies against your chess game.”
Darcy playfully narrowed his eyes at her and said, “You participate in dastardly scheming against me? For shame, woman!”
They had reached the top of the hill at that moment, and Elizabeth suddenly dropped his arm and dashed to the flat stone, squealing, “And now I have won the race to the top of Oakham Mount!”
He felt a sort of loose freedom to act without thought, as if he was a child—something he certainly had not felt in years. Chasing Elizabeth, he scooped her up in his arms so that he was the one standing on the stone, not her, and he crowed, “And yet second place is more fun!”
“Mr Darcy!” Elizabeth’s voice did not sound as if she protested; it was light, exuberant….
All his internal lectures about behaving like a gentleman flew out of his head, and he lowered his mouth to hers in a soft, barely-there kiss.
Then he felt both the ignition of his passion and the horror that he had once again pushed their private time into him taking liberties he had no right to take.
He put her down instantly, murmured, “My apologies, Miss Elizabeth,” and retreated to the log. He sat there with his elbows on his knees and his head down.
She approached him, saying, “I know you feel guilty, Mr Darcy, and perhaps I ought to as well. But we are to be married, and I believe behaviour that is playful or romantic will be wonderful after we are married. Given that, why are these behaviours condemned before we wed? I am certain the rules that would keep us apart physically until after the wedding ceremony are meant to prevent a woman finding herself in a family way. And we have done nothing that could cause that. I know enough from life on the farm and from a biology book in my father’s library that we have not come close to that. ”
Darcy reached one hand towards her and clasped her gloved hand in his, replying, “I can accept what you are saying, and agree with it, except for the fact that I become…worked up…and I may….” Floundering among the unmentionable topics he had never discussed with anyone, let alone a maiden, Darcy said, “I do not wish to put us in a situation in which I so wholly forget myself that I cannot stop. And since I have no experience to know where the line is, I feel I am endangering you, endangering us, even if I am a mile away from the line.”
Still keeping her hand within his, Elizabeth sank down onto the log. She murmured, “I believe I understand you. Everything about our relationship is new to me, too, but the most unfamiliar part is the physical component. I had no idea….”
She laughed, and instead of sounding bright and joyful, as her laughter often did, this chuckle was low and private. It drew Darcy in. “No idea about what?”
“Well,” she said, “we have never spoken to one another about novels, but I have read quite a few. And the words used in them—pounding hearts, fluttering pulses, breathlessness—I had considered to be exaggerations meant to depict extreme emotions. But then, beginning the night I met you, it was all there: I could hardly breathe, I felt as if the beats of my heart must be visible even as I noted that my heart seemed to be skipping beats, my knees became weak. I felt as if I had been transported into a novel, and I myself had become sillier than a Gothic heroine.’
Darcy’s smile could not get wider, he was so thrilled to hear for the first time her early impressions of him. “I had similar feelings, Miss Elizabeth. It is notable that I could little tell your agitation, but I certainly felt my own.”
“I have an experiment to propose.” She raised her eyebrow and said mischievously, “I believe what you bestowed upon me earlier was a kiss?”
“Barely a kiss, I would say,” Darcy critiqued. He had imagined longer and deeper explorations.
“It was my first kiss—”
“Mine, as well.”
“—and I should like to try it again. And we will agree right now that we will not go further, not today. I will not find myself in a family way from a kiss.”
Darcy felt as if he had been split into two.
Part of him agreed with her logic and, naturally enough, wished for another kiss, but he still felt uncomfortable breaking societal rules.
But when he considered that it would be well accepted for him to kiss a mistress or a courtesan or even, to be honest, a married woman or a widow—just not the maiden he was determined to marry—well!
It was clear that societal rules were absurd.
Having given himself permission to kiss his beloved, Darcy turned towards her and gently pressed his lips to hers.
Her warm breath smelled of green apple, and even the merest touch of her soft lips started an inferno burning elsewhere, but Darcy paid no mind to fighting the fire. Instead, he just focused on the kisses.
His lips stroked hers, moved over hers, gave her pecks near her mouth rather than on her mouth, and finally opened enough that he could reach his tongue to touch her lips and, eventually, her own tongue.
She followed his lead and sometimes innovated on her own, as when she gently sucked on his tongue.
Conflagrations aside, Darcy decided that kissing Elizabeth was his favourite thing to do. Eventually, though, they stopped kissing in order to eat and drink the foods they had brought.
Food satisfied one sort of hunger, and cider slaked a particular kind of thirst—but Elizabeth filled him up in other ways, fed his soul and soothed his heart. And, Darcy thought, we have only begun.
As Elizabeth suggested, Darcy visited Mr Bennet for an hour of his stay at Longbourn.
He began by saying that he looked forward to showing him the library in Darcy House in London, saying, “It is the work of many generations, and I am proud to say that I have added to it with everything from poetry and novels to political and natural philosophy.”
There was some back and forth as Elizabeth’s father showed off some of his own rare books and first editions.
Darcy congratulated him sincerely on his finds and told of some impressive acquisitions of his own.
Darcy also rattled off the numbers of volumes in each of his major libraries, thus moving effortlessly to the much larger, much older library at Pemberley.
“I believe that your whole family will find Pemberley a pleasant place to visit.
Elizabeth will, of course, delight in all the gardens, the forests, the parkland.
I am certain your wife will enjoy the various public rooms, Miss Bennet will be fascinated by our still room, which is extensive, and Miss Mary will wish to try the three pianofortes.
Your youngest daughters will surely enjoy the ballroom, where I commonly host classes by a dance master, and they may love the sculpture garden and art gallery as much as I.
“As for you, sir, I wonder if we should move one of the beds into the library.”
He grinned unabashedly and delighted in the laughter he had elicited.
He wondered if Elizabeth would wish for a proposal on the seventh of August, which would be the three-month anniversary of the evening they met. As he bowed in farewell to Mr Bennet, he felt confident that the man would approve of their marriage.
That evening, Bingley discovered an express from his sisters.
Louisa, the eldest, had accepted a marriage proposal from Gerald Hurst, who was heir to a modest estate that earned three thousand pounds a year.
They planned to be married in a very small ceremony and then would come to Netherfield, bringing the younger Bingley sister.
“Our arrival will be earlier than we had originally planned,” Louisa wrote, “on the fifteenth of August.”
Bingley was thrilled, and Darcy smiled when he heard several exultations specifying that his friend was excited that he would not have to find a match for one of his sisters.
Bingley did not say, for one of my unpleasant and judgmental sisters, but that must have been part of the reason he was pleased to have the matter taken care of with no effort of his own.
It was a curious thing that Bingley was so dramatically different from his sisters.
They all three had the same parents and were close in age, but of course they had had different roles in the home and had gone to different schools.
Bingley was open, friendly, easy going, and unpretentious; his sisters were unfriendly, demanding, and snobbish.
Darcy knew that he and Georgiana had some differences, of course, but they were not complete opposites.
“Congratulations,” Darcy said, shaking Bingley’s hand. “I gather you are not going to the ceremony?”
“No. They seem uninterested in my presence, and it would be far to go for a short event.”
Darcy nodded. Most people had small weddings, although there might be a large ball presenting a couple upon their engagement or after the wedding. He hoped that his Aunt Helen would not insist on holding a huge ball in honour of Elizabeth and himself.
He was not looking forward to the Bingley sisters taking up residence at Netherfield.
Or—actually, it would at that point be Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley.
Darcy took note of the date and determined that he would make arrangements with his valet, the housekeeper, Georgiana, and her companion.
He needed to ensure that neither he nor his sister was ever alone with Miss Caroline Bingley, and he would prefer for Georgiana to have the least contact possible with Miss Bingley’s brand of negativity.
As he planned how to avoid Bingley’s sister, Bingley himself was chattering away, unaware that Darcy’s attention had flagged.
Darcy focused again on his friend in time to hear of his hope that Hurst would be a pleasant fellow and that he might like shooting.
The Glorious Twelfth was the twelfth of August, and Bingley was determined to speak with Netherfield’s gamekeeper about scheduling shooting events every few days following Hurst’s arrival.
“So, Darcy, how goes your courtship?” Bingley asked.
“As I believe you already know, Miss Elizabeth and I are bound together in an understanding; before long I will formally propose, and I will see to the wedding settlement and newspaper announcements as Miss Elizabeth and her family will plan a small wedding and a larger wedding breakfast.”
“I should have been more specific, Darce. I meant to ask, ‘How goes your courtship of Mr Bennet?’”
They both chuckled, and Darcy shrugged. “I believe he quite likes me, but of course I do not know if his original suspicion of absolutely everything and everyone will or will not be on display. We have high hopes.”
Bingley said, “I am taking things slowly, as you advised me to do, but I am almost certain that Mr Bennet likes me not at all. I shall have to court him if I decide that Miss Bennet and I suit. Thus, I am studying your example in hopes that I, too, will be able to win him over.”
Darcy chuckled. “I am certain that you cannot use my tactics, Bingley, because you do not play chess, nor do you own multiple extraordinary libraries.”
Bingley laughed easily. “Is that how you have been wooing the man? Of course I will not use chess and books in my campaign, but I hope to learn his favourite tipple, and of course his favourite sweetmeat.”
“Well, I will wish you the best of luck in your campaign, as you called it, if you wish me the same in mine.”