Chapter Sixteen
CAROLINE WAS PLEASED when Bishop Sulles wasted little time in arranging their marriage.
Though she was of age and there was no need to get permission from her brother, Sulles did come and speak to Mr. Bingley, who was absolutely pleased to be rid of Caroline and made little attempt to disguise this fact.
Since there were no objections, everything proceeded quite quickly after that.
The banns were read at the church in Neithern where they were all still staying, though Mr. Bingley was thinking about returning to Netherfield where Jane could be with her family until their marriage could take place.
They stayed with Mr. Houseman at Barralds until Caroline’s wedding.
They were the last guests to depart, for everyone else had left after the ball at Neith Abbey.
Caroline had very little occasion to be alone with her prospective husband, for he wasn’t one for courting her or taking her on walks or holding her hand or anything of that nature.
When he did speak to her, it was as if he was planning a business proposition for the two of them, and it was on their wedding night that he outlined exactly what his plan was.
He told her, pacing in the bedchamber, his eyes flashing, that he didn’t see any reason to leave Bartholomew, the current duke, in the position.
“He’s an imposter, and that dukedom is mine,” he said.
“I know my mother is in the way, however, so we’ll have to get her out of the way, by any means necessary.
You’ll help me, won’t you, though, my new bride? You are a schemer, are you not?”
Caroline was nervous, sitting on the bed wearing only her shift.
She nodded. “Yes, whatever you wish me to be, I shall be, husband.” She was nervous because she had heard all manner of awful things about Sulles, including that throwaway comment from Mr. Houseman about Sulles and the women he used badly for sport, and Caroline didn’t want to be used badly.
She’d had a very detailed explanation of marital relations from Louisa the night before, complete with a description of pain and blood. It had not sounded as if it were going to be pleasant in the best of times. How much worse would it be with Sulles?
She had considered, the evening before, trying to get out of it, but she had obviously not done that.
It had seemed impossible. She would never get another offer of marriage.
She could not jilt Sulles without bringing down his rage on her.
She would live a miserable life if she did not go through with it.
She did not know if she would be miserable with Sulles or not, but there was at least the chance that she would not, so she decided to take that minuscule chance that things would be better with him.
Now, she simply nodded and agreed with him.
“You do wish to be a duchess, do you not, my dear?” he said, looking her over.
“Oh, yes,” she said, nodding again.
He chuckled. “You don’t seem properly moved by that notion.”
She really was only thinking about the present. “I am sorry. I suppose I’m nervous.”
“Nervous? Whatever about?”
“It is my wedding night,” she said, looking down at her shift-covered knees, feeling self-conscious.
“Oh,” he said, as if he had forgotten all about whatever might occur on a wedding night. He stopped pacing. He drew in a breath. “Yes, indeed. Well, stand up, then, wife.”
She stood up. Her heart was pounding.
He gestured. “Off. All of it.”
Her hands were shaking as she gathered up the skirts of her shift, but then she noticed he was stripping off his own clothes, staring at her as he did so, making little mind as he tossed away his jacket and cravat and waistcoat.
She was wearing less. It look her less time to be bare.
He hummed his approval as he freed his shirt from his trousers. “Turn round in a circle,” he said, careless.
She obeyed.
“Stop,” he said.
She was facing away from him. She stopped.
“On the bed,” he said. “Face down, if you please.”
She did that.
He settled behind her. He did not kiss her. He knelt there and pushed into her and it only hurt a little, not nearly as bad as she had worried it would.
She glanced back at him at one point, and he was looking down at where they were joined with a leer and his face was red and he was making an expression as if he was concentrating very hard.
She looked away.
It was over fairly quickly.
He did kiss her afterward, a sloppy, sleepy, sweaty kiss after he crawled up to lie on top of the covers.
Then, he snored.
MR. DARCY HAD to keep reminding his sister that she was not, in fact, even out in society, and there was no reason to rush to find a husband, that she was young, exceedingly young, entirely young, that she had years of life ahead of her.
But, as it happened, he remembered the way of it when he had been an adolescent, the impossibility of understanding the future. It seemed that everything was happening now and that it would remain that way forever.
His sister was in an ecstasy of terror about marriage.
To her way of thinking, she had nearly married two men and both of these experiences had gone badly, and now she was doomed to never have happiness unless she found a husband immediately to remedy the situation.
He spent half of his time arguing with her about this and the rest of the time chasing her about.
She had gotten free of Mrs. Nable, her companion, on two occasions out in town and gone off on her own. (“And what did you think you were going to find?” he had asked her. “Were you going to find a husband on the corner all alone in the midst of the afternoon in London in the summer?”)
She had little answer to his questions.
Well, this wasn’t true. She had a number of answers, but none of them made sense.
They only made sense in that desperate way of youth, when everything is intense and impossible.
He knew not what to do for his sister. He was considering sending her away, though both times he had broached the subject, she had broken down into great hulking sobs and called him a brute for even suggesting such a thing.
They needed to go to Pemberley.
There was only one thing keeping him in London, of course.
Elizabeth.
He needed to go to her, had been trying to find a way to go to her, but between running after Georgiana and Richard’s funeral and seeing to his own business, he hadn’t gotten there yet.
Well, this was his excuse, but the other thing was that she was all alone in that house, and he was going to go there, all alone, and call upon her, and then he was going to…
The last time they were alone, things had progressed to a certain degree.
Mr. Darcy didn’t know a lot about this, he had to admit, but he had an idea that things between men and women never really went backwards.
He had progressed to the point of kissing two women he courted and regretted it both times, because then it seemed as if kissing was expected each time they could sneak in kisses and if there were no kisses, it was a calamity, and also there was a push to kiss longer, kiss more passionately, for one’s hands to wander…
You didn’t start kissing and then stop kissing, and he didn’t know what happened if you had not actually kissed a woman but had instead let her…
Oh, how had that happened?
He had sneered at Richard once, accusing him of seeing Elizabeth as a plaything because of her status as possibly ruined, and he wondered at himself. Had he moved her into a different category as well? Had he treated her differently than a woman like herself should be treated?
He was fairly certain that most men did not ask their wives to put their mouths on them in that way.
Of course, he hadn’t asked.
No, at some point, you ordered her to do it, didn’t you? You said she must take the tip of you.
The point was, if he went to her house, if he started visiting her regularly, things were simply going to start happening. He wanted it. She wanted it. It was inevitable.
Maybe there was nothing all that terrible about that, in the end.
He was going to marry her. She wanted him, of that he finally felt secure.
There was no way she had done that to him if she didn’t want him.
She had no reason to do it, none at all, and she had once professed to find the entire idea of male seed disgusting and she had willingly swallowed his, in her mouth.
So.
She wants me, he thought, and he felt good all over, actually good, like all was right with the entire world.
There was nothing wrong with his having her now, nothing at all. They were very clearly meant for each other, and this all made sense now, why he’d been obsessed with her for so long, and why he’d gone to the ends of the earth for her and why she was the most important person in the world to him.
He should take her to bed, because she belonged there.
Well.
There was nothing wrong with it except not yet.
Because he could not marry her yet.
But then, eventually, he got some letter from her, inquiring about carriages and servants, and he didn’t know what any of that was about, and then he started to worry that she might have some other suitor.
He could not think of who it might be, of course, but that possibly didn’t matter.
All of his confidence went to dust.
She had known, all along, that he wanted her. He had proposed to her, and the next day, she’d agreed to that picnic with Wickham. True, Wickham had tricked her, had used her, had been horrible to her. She hadn’t chosen to be with Wickham, but she had chosen to go on a picnic with him.
And then, she’d gone straight for Richard, had she not?
Of course, Richard had the gumption to go and take her.
He had gotten her alone and put his mouth between her thighs and then she fell for the man, even though Richard was awful to her, and if Darcy didn’t want to lose her, he needed to not assume that she’d stick with him on the strength of having pleasured him with her mouth.
So, finally, he went to her.