Chapter Seventeen
SHE COULD FEEL him through his trousers, and she felt lit up by the strange promise of him, because he was entirely too large there.
She was slightly frightened of the thickness of him, in fact, but she also thought to herself that it must fit, after all, because it wasn’t as if women didn’t birth babies.
Besides, some part of her was breathless at the thought of it.
“Not here,” she said to him, looking about at the sitting room. “Come to my bedchamber.”
He kissed her and sighed and she took this as assent.
She pulled free of him to go the door of the room.
He came with her, but he caught her before she could open the door. “Lizzy,” he breathed, and pulled her in against him. He kissed her eyebrow. “Let us think this through.”
She pressed her face into his neck, her mouth into his cravat. “If we think this through, we’re not going to do it.”
“What if I get you with child?”
“Well, don’t,” she said. “You can spill somewhere else, can’t you, and—”
“I cannot marry you yet,” he said.
She sighed, sagging into him. “All right, then. So, we wait? Even though you just said it must be right?”
“It’s right,” he said. “It’s just not prudent.”
She smirked into his cravat.
“Anyway, I owe you,” he said.
“Owe me?” she said.
He guided her to the couch where he had been sitting and he pulled her down with him. He reached down and bunched her skirts up in both of his hands and began to lift them.
“I said I didn’t want it here,” she whispered.
“Yes, and it will only be this,” he said. “My head in your lap, my mouth on you here. Nothing more. I owe you.”
She thought about protesting, but then, she didn’t. She remembered the colonel telling her that Mr. Darcy wouldn’t do this to her.
She felt a stab of guilt again, the guilt of not having mourned the colonel properly, not having waited long enough, and she thought of stopping Mr. Darcy, but then…
no. They would wait, then, they would wait to marry, wait to consummate, and that would be her penance, because maybe she enjoyed it too much, having had them both, having been adored by them both in their ways, having been pleasured by them both, having had the chance to evaluate the feel of both of their tongues on her most secret and sensitive of places.
So, she let him taste her, let him tease her, let him pleasure her, there in her sitting room, with the door shut against the servants out there.
She let him lift her thigh and pillow his head on the other one and apply his mouth to her, let him take her to heights of sweet and overwhelming pleasures.
When she crested against him, she felt as if some circuit had been completed, as if she had settled here, with this man, and she felt complete and whole.
With Richard, she had craved the security of his commitment to her, but he had offered her nothing but the pleasure, just the pleasure. The pleasure had been good—when is pleasure not good?—but something about it had been empty and fearful in some other way.
There had always been Darcy, though, steady Darcy, with a deep well of this passion in him, waiting to be probed, when it was right, when it was time. She trusted him.
She finally had someone to trust.
CAROLINE DIDN’T KILL her husband because he was plotting a dastardly plan against his family that might have meant the death of everyone from the Duke of Neithern to the Duchess of Neithern and Mr. Houseman.
She didn’t entirely approve of his bloodthirsty plan, which he had justified saying that Neithern wasn’t actually the duke and had usurped his rightful spot, but she wasn’t a violent person herself, so she had no intention of hurting anyone, least of all Bishop Sulles.
She had, in fact, full intention of simply standing by and letting her husband do as he would. She was not desirous of stopping him.
Being Mrs. Sulles had its advantages. Her husband was high-ranking clergy, and she found herself enjoying the role of his proper and righteous wife, having everyone look up to her as some paragon of what was virtuous and right.
It was a role she felt she had been born for, truly, for she had spent much of her life trying to discover what exactly was the proper way to behave and then embodying it to the best of her ability.
Being given leeway to do this, it was everything she had ever hoped for, truly.
Her marriage was not some dreamy existence, of course, but it was tolerable.
The marital activity had gotten, by degrees, more forceful, it was true.
This had started after he wanted to see her face when he was at her, which tended to make him more vicious.
At first, he only slapped her in places where no one could see, and she told herself it was normal for men to want to swat jiggling areas of women’s bodies, but then, it started creep beyond her buttocks and breasts and thighs and onto her face.
And then it wasn’t just open-faced palms against her jaw or her cheekbone—which hurt badly enough, and made her cry out—well, until she realized that the more noise she made, the more he hit her, and the harder each subsequent hit was, so she stopped—but his fists, pummeling her all over, leaving her bruised and breathless and frightened.
It was only a matter of time, she supposed, before this behavior was no longer coupled with sexual play, not that it even seemed playful anymore.
It was as if he truly delighted in causing her harm.
He liked that she was weaker than him. He liked proving it.
He liked that she was frightened of him.
All of these things were becoming more and more obvious.
Even so, she didn’t plan to kill him.
What happened was that she was staying in a room with a balcony.
It was a small little area outside a door, just a semi-circle of space with a little railing that only came about to one’s waist. There wasn’t even room on the balcony for a chair or anything of that nature.
It was only there to stand and look out, perhaps for someone to watch the sunrise in the morning.
The room was in Neith Abbey.
They were there because of her husband’s bloody scheme, except she wasn’t entirely sure if he was going to be putting into place right then, or if he was just gathering information so that he could put it into place at some point in the future.
Anyway, it wasn’t about that, her killing him.
It was…
Well, she didn’t plan it.
They got into an argument, well, it should not have been an argument. She should not have gotten angry. She tried to control such things within herself if she could.
He got angry, and this was not really her own fault, because she had learned quickly it was better to placate her husband than to cross him. It was only that he seemed to revel in finding fault with her, and he wasn’t entirely predictable.
He had once, you see, told her that he did not like her to wear yellow, and that he preferred her in blue.
So, she had practically remade her entire wardrobe in blue.
Except this was what he was angry about.
He was pawing through the dresses she’d brought, which her maid had hung up for her in her room.
They had rooms that adjoined each other, so that he could come and go easily through a door between them, and he had insisted—upon their arrival—that she not shut it for any reason.
So, he came and went between their rooms freely, and he saw her dresses and now he was sorting through them.
“Blue,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve brought nothing but blue dresses.”
She had the temerity to say, “I thought you preferred me to wear blue.”
And he turned and backhanded her. “Hush,” he said.
She put her hand to her cheek, tears filling her eyes. In truth, compared to other things he had done to her, that had barely hurt, but she felt the injustice of all of it coursing through her, and it was nigh unbearable.
“This is the problem with you, you see,” he said to her. “I make one offhand comment and you go out of your way to change everything. You try too hard to please me, and it makes you look pathetic, and it makes me hate you.”
Caroline wasn’t entirely certain why this went through her the way it did.
Maybe it was because the injustice was still coursing through her.
Or maybe it was because she had heard versions of this from every man she’d ever had a fancy for, even from Mr. Darcy himself, who had mostly been kind to her, but had seemingly begun to find her tiresome and did a poor job in hiding it.
She was angry.
She knew being angry wasn’t a good idea. She had been angry with him before when he hit her. At one point, she had even hit back. That had gone very, very badly for her. She’d been laid up in her bed for days afterward.
She knew she could not afford to be angry with her husband, but the anger was like a live thing. It had reared up within her and she had no control over it anymore.
So, she did the only thing she could do.
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room and onto the balcony. She slammed the door behind her, probably with too much force, and shut herself outside. It was still summer, so it was warm out here, quite warm, quite pleasant, in fact.
The pleasantness of the warmth and the balcony and the lovely view of the English countryside only seemed to make her angrier. How dare he visit this on her now, when everything else was so very, very pleasant?
She began to catalogue the times he had done things of this nature, found fault with her when his actions before had indicated he shouldn’t have found fault at all.
Once, he had gotten angry with her for starting breakfast without him, but the day before, he had specifically told her that if she ever found herself in the breakfast parlor alone to break her fast and not to wait for him.
Once, he had beaten her for making noises whilst he was doing his husbandly activity on her.
He claimed that she was enjoying it too much and that was sinful, that women weren’t to enjoy it.
And when she had said, in a small voice, that she was actually making noise because it was unpleasant, he had gotten quite, quite angry.
Once, he had told her specifically that they must arrive early at the church on Sunday but when she had appeared ready to go at the appointed time he had snarled at her, telling her that she needn’t attend to every little thing he said with such vigor, that they had time yet before they could leave.
There was, she concluded, hands clenched in fists, in the warm and pleasant summer air on that balcony, no pleasing this man.
He could not, in fact, be pleased.
The door opened.
She braced herself for more of his anger, but instead, he seemed contrite. He hung his head as he joined her on the balcony.
She looked at him askance and she realized it was going to be the point during which he professed to be sorry for whatever it was he had done.
This was part of the way he behaved, after all. He had a tendency to beg forgiveness.
Once, after the first time he wished to couple with her face to face, he had pulled her into his arms in the darkness and spoken in a halting voice about things that had been done to him when he was a small boy by his father the duke, and they were awful things, and he had cried and she had cried and she had stroked his hair away from his brow and told him he was safe now and he had buried his face against her breast and clung to her and said that he didn’t mean to be a bad boy—a bad man—and he would do better, that she was lovely and he wanted to earn her love not to drive her away.
It was only that it was all wearing thin at this point.
She believed he was sincere in the moments when he apologized, but it was as if there were more than one person residing in the duke’s body, and the sincere and apologetic one barely ever had control. Usually, the part of him in control was cruel and exacting.
“Caroline,” he whispered, reaching out for her. “I’m ever so sorry.”
She evaded his touch, regarding him coolly. She was too angry to switch to forgiving him yet. She knew that was likely a bad idea also, but she also felt out of control.
“It is quite a thing, to have a wife who will dress to please you, actually,” he said. “Men would be envious of me if they knew. I’m a fool and a right blackguard. Please, I am ever so sorry.”
She said nothing.
He came closer to her, and the balcony wasn’t very big, so she had nowhere to go. He was on top of her. He touched her cheek. “I didn’t hurt you overmuch this time, did I, darling?”
She only breathed.
“Listen, you must find some way not to wind me up so,” he said.
She let out a disbelieving noise.
He stilled. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” she said in a low voice. “You will wind yourself up.”
He furrowed his brow. “No, it is you who provokes me, you—”
“You are too easily provoked,” she said.
“Now, see here, Caroline, I know I have a tendency to boil over, but you are meant to be my help meet, and you must find a way to keep me from my anger, you see. It is your role as my wife. I know, if you but find a way, you can keep me from ever getting so angry that I harm you, ever again.”
“I can find a way?” she said, incredulous. “It’s my fault that you get angry with me?”
“Well, you’re the one I get angry with, so… yes.”
It came over her like a red, red wave that descended over her vision. She ground her teeth together for a moment, and then the voice that came out of her mouth barely sounded like hers. It was far, far too sweet and pointed. “I can think of a way to stop you from getting angry, my love.”
“Can you?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said, and then she shoved him off the balcony.
She leaned over to watch him fall, the redness still clinging to her as he yelled and flailed and then hit. Hard.
She sucked in a sharp breath, then, and she regretted it.
She backed away, her heart rising to beat wildly in her chest.
But she was only out of sorts for a moment before the schemer within her rose and took control.
She dashed across her room, flung open her door, and wailed, “Help me! Oh, help! My husband has just had a dreadful accident!”