CHAPTER NINE #2
As she was a virgin, she would be apprehensive her first time.
But he would make her feel safe, and when she was comforted, he would show her what raptures her body was capable of.
He would forever be thankful to Abby for this confidence and proficiency.
While he would never claim to be a superior lover, he had come far in his knowledge of carnal matters and the art of pleasuring a woman.
But would Miss Elizabeth be the sort of woman who would venture into the darker, wicked side of pleasure?
He remembered how astonished he had been when Abby had first introduced him to these elements.
“I could not,” he had protested, horrified, after she had shown him a painting of a naked woman straddling a wooden pony, her arms bound behind her, and a sketch of a woman dangling in rope from the ceiling while a man upon the ground wielded a flogger.
“But this is precisely why Her Grace referred you to me,” Abby had replied.
He had fallen in love with her friend, the widow of a Duke. Desperate to win Her Grace's affections, he had agreed to what Abby had been willing to teach him.
“When engaged in these sorts of play,” Abby had explained, “there is one who takes the dominant role while the other assumes the submissive role. We will discuss circumstances involving more than two later.”
How his mind had reeled at all that Abby had described! The concepts and actions involved were devilish and wrong, and because of that, they were titillating.
“To comprehend the responsibility of the one in the dominant role, you must first appreciate the submissive role,” Abby had said, “and the pain you propose to inflict upon her.”
Thus, he had bared his buttocks to Abby and allowed her to wallop his backside with a wooden paddle.
She had teased him to hardness before landing the paddle against his derriere, and the arousal had allowed him to withstand the pain with greater ease.
Still, he had resisted the notion that pain and pleasure could work in concert together till his third time with Abby, when, to his surprise, he looked to the paddling with anticipation.
The greater the pain, the harder he spent.
Such memories had hardened his cock, but relieving himself by hand could not compare to the interaction with a fellow being, from the thrill of making a beautiful woman spend. Getting out of bed, Darcy decided to begin the day early and relish the quiet before the others awoke.
The remainder of the day passed much as the day before had done.
Bingley’s sisters had spent some hours of the morning with the invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend.
In the evening Miss Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing-room and took up some needlework.
The loo-table, however, did not appear. Darcy chose to write to Georgiana.
Caroline, seated near him, rained commendations upon his handwriting, the evenness of his lines, and the length of his letter, all of which he received with unconcern.
"How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!" Caroline said.
He made no answer.
"You write uncommonly fast."
"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly."
"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!"
"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours."
"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her."
"I have already told her so once, by your desire."
"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well."
"Thank you—but I always mend my own."
"How can you contrive to write so even?"
He was silent.
"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp; and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley's."
"Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At present I have not room to do them justice."
"Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?"
"They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me to determine."
"It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."
"That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her brother, "because he does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"
"My style of writing is very different from yours."
"Oh!" cried Caroline, "Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest."
"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them—by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."
"Your humility, Mr. Bingley," said Miss Elizabeth, "must disarm reproof."
"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, surprised to find himself a little jealous of his friend, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."
"And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of modesty?" tried Bingley.
"The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting.
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of compliment to yourself—and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else? "
"Nay," cried Bingley, "this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning.
And yet, upon my honour, I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I believe it at this moment.
At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless precipitance merely to show off before the ladies. "
"I dare say you believed it, but I am by no means convinced that you would be gone with such celerity.
Your conduct would be quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Bingley, you had better stay till next week,' you would probably do it, you would probably not go—and at another word, might stay a month. "
"You have only proved by this," cried Miss Elizabeth, "that Mr. Bingley did not do justice to his own disposition. You have shown him off now much more than he did himself."
"I am exceedingly gratified," said Bingley, "by your converting what my friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my temper.
But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I could. "
"Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intentions as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?"
"Upon my word, I cannot exactly explain the matter. Darcy must speak for himself."
"You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged," deflected Darcy.
"Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favour of its propriety. "
"To yield readily—easily—to the persuasion of a friend is no merit with you," Miss Elizabeth stated.
"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either."
"You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection.
A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it.
I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. Bingley.
We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon.
But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it? "
"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of intimacy subsisting between the parties?"
"By all means," cried Bingley; "let us hear all the particulars, not forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will have more weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be aware of.
I assure you, that if Darcy were not such a great tall fellow, in comparison with myself, I should not pay him half so much deference.
I declare I do not know a more awful object than Darcy, on particular occasions, and in particular places—at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening, when he has nothing to do. "
Darcy only smiled. He would not have taken offense but for the fact that the words had been uttered before Miss Elizabeth, who appeared to check her laughter. Caroline warmly resented the indignity Darcy had received, in an expostulation with her brother for talking such nonsense.
"I see your design, Bingley," said Caroline. "You dislike an argument, and want to silence this."