To Teach the Admiring Multitude

by Eleanor Wilton

  Her father had attempted to make light of her evident uneasiness. “Well then, Lizzy,” Mr. Bennet had cried jovially. “Have you any questions? Will the pin-money suffice, do you think, for all your caprices? It is certainly a good deal more than Jane shall have, if that satisfies. Shall I argue for more?”

  She had replied, almost meekly, that it was far too generous. Mr. Darcy had attempted to contradict her claims of generosity, asserting it merely her “right and due” as the future mistress of Pemberley. Still, it had taken more than a moment for the agitation to pass and for her spirits to rise again to playfulness. Now she was indeed Mrs. Darcy she felt anew an unfitness that chafed uncomfortably against her nature.

  She lifted her eyes and saw him looking at her with the same penetrating, even gaze that had so confounded her when they were first acquainted. He smiled, but only just, and the quiet between them began to sit heavily upon her nerves.

  As the servants placed the first course and retreated to their posts, Elizabeth breathed deeply and let escape an anxious sigh. Mr. Darcy made the smallest of gestures with his hand and immediately the servants withdrew from the room, closing the door as they exited and leaving the anxious newlyweds in privacy.

  Darcy gently laid his hand upon her arm. “Elizabeth, you are very quiet, very still. Is all well with you?”

  How to speak the uncertainty that had so suddenly overtaken her? The day had been so full and had passed so rapidly, and here she now sat, Mrs. Darcy, in her elegant London dining room with her husband. She did not understand why this overpowering timorousness came to her just as they sat to dine, for when they had arrived to the house and stood together in her chambers before separating to change from their travelling clothes, there had been no such anxiety between them. He looked at her now with such gentle concern, she felt foolish.

  “I am well,” she replied softly.

  She did not appear so to Darcy. He surmised that perhaps she was simply as equally affected as himself by this new intimacy. For though they had certainly been alone innumerable times, there was a potent certainty to sitting to dine unaccompanied that ratified their new relationship in a poignant, powerful manner.

  He stood and urged Elizabeth to her feet. “Come,” he said gently. “It is a cool but not cold evening. The moon is bright. Let us step into the garden a moment. The fire burns too strongly and the room is a little warm and confining.”

  Crossing the room he opened the door to the neat little garden beyond. Stepping out, Elizabeth felt immediately refreshed by the cool air. She walked across the small garden and looked up at the clear sky. Darcy paused at the door and indulged the intensely gratifying sight. Standing in the middle of the garden, her simple, becoming cream-coloured silk dress glinted in the moonlight and lent a dreamlike quality to her presence. He took a deep, satisfied breath; he took a moment to calm his roiling emotions. He had spent many a solitary night in this house, in this garden, and standing before him now, her head thrown back and her face illuminated by the moonlight, was the only woman he had ever wished would come and banish that private, unspoken solitude which had sometimes weighed heavily upon him.

  Seeing her wrap her arms around herself to protect from the cool air, he removed his frock coat as he walked towards her. “Perhaps it is a little too cool?” he said as he placed the garment gently over her shoulders.

  Elizabeth turned to Darcy. “Not at all. The room was a little too warm. I am better now,” she replied with a bright smile. “The moon is very beautiful tonight.”

  Placing his hand upon her waist, he brought her closer to his person; he spoke quietly, as all between them had been quiet since arriving together to the house. “You are very beautiful tonight.” Enfolding her in his arms, he kissed her with an uninhibited longing that roused a potent craving within her.

  At length, Elizabeth laid her head against his breast and listened to the rapid beating of his heart, ran her hand down his arm and felt the shape of it beneath the fine cloth of his shirtsleeves. She could not distinguish between her own trembling and his. Darcy felt her body pressed against his own and imbued the fresh lavender fragrance that encircled her. His emotions were heady and he was pulsating with intense anticipation. Yet he felt no need for rush or haste. This provocative, delicious stillness between them was enrapturing and invigorating.

  “Of course I understand why you are so quiet,” he said at last, adjusting the frock coat that slipped from her shoulders. Elizabeth made no response, nestled closer to him, wrapped her arms about him, moved her hands up his back and marvelled at the sweet foreign sensations flowing through her. She longed at once for time to pause and for time to move forward.

  Darcy lifted her head from its repose upon his breast, caressed her blushing cheek, admired her lovely countenance and the warm expressiveness of her beautiful eyes. “Until you I did not comprehend what it was to love. I had never before felt for any woman more than a passing inclination. What is more, be assured that I have never gratified corporal desires as some men so freely do. I wish you to understand; Elizabeth, I come to you this night as you come to me.”

  Elizabeth caught her breath. How many people had congratulated her for the rich and handsome gentleman she had won, with no thought or consideration of his fine character? But it was this in him that she valued and cherished: his honour, his honesty, his integrity. “I should not have imagined it otherwise. You would not indulge your own pleasure at the cost of another simply because society allows gentlemen like you impunity from such transgressions. You are too honourable for it to be contrariwise. That you should wish to assure me, to speak it so clearly before you come to me, moves me and I am grateful.”

  “We shall love each other openly and without reservation as only a husband and wife ought.”

  “Yes,” she replied and tears rose unexpectedly to fill her eyes. He wiped them away with soft caresses and gentle kisses.

  “Why do you shed tears?”

  “I do not know.” She half laughed and half cried, rested her hands against the soft silk of his waistcoat and felt anew the force of his racing heart. “They are not tears of sadness, they are not tears of distress. I am at a loss how to explain it. My heart is so full.”

  “As is mine.” Embracing her, kissing her with a liberated desire that castoff his long-cultivated restraint, he besought her at last. “Elizabeth, my wife! Shall we not return inside? Shall we not retire?”

  She nodded her consent and they smiled in concert, but did not immediately retire. They felt no need for impatient consummation. They remained a little time longer in the cool night under the bright moon, indulging in an ever easier, more felicitous intimacy. When an unexpected rush of wind came and disturbed the stillness, Darcy clasped Elizabeth’s hands within his own, raised them to his lips and kissed them with devotion. “Shall we, Mrs. Darcy?”

  “Indeed we shall, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth affirmed.

  They retired into the house.

  ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

  When Darcy awoke in the morning to the warmth of Elizabeth’s body as she slept with her head resting against him, he felt a deep and powerful thankfulness wash over him. Thankfulness that when she had first so forcefully rejected him he had not succumbed to the resentfulness he knew himself subject to cultivate; thankfulness that she had thereafter opened her heart to him with generous forgiveness; thankfulness that as a young man he had resolved to lay with no woman who was not his wife and that he had gone to her with the same unsullied passion with which she had received him.

  He shifted her body slightly that he could better enjoy the sight of her sleeping. Darcy was bemused to recall how little he had regarded her beauty upon first acquaintance, for the face before him now in gentle repose was of a remarkable loveliness. He pressed her more closely to his side, smelled the faint sweetness of her hair, her skin, and his mind was flooded with each exhilarating, magnificent moment of the night.

  When he had first come to her and stood before her, captivated by her une
mbellished loveliness, his hands brushing through her loosened hair as it framed her face and fell over her shoulders, he had declared with unadorned simplicity, “I love you,” hoping in that common phrase she could comprehend the depths of his emotions and affections, the plenitude he felt opening before him. Raising her hand to his face she had gently run her fingers across his lips. “With my body I thee worship.”[2] She had barely whispered the words, but in the stillness of the room they sounded as reverberant as when he had that morning avowed the same as he placed the marriage ring upon her finger. Those quietly spoken words had removed all constraint between them and they had embraced with a generous, reverent discovery. When her head fell back, exposing to his eager touch the creamy softness of her neck, and his lips explored the length of it, and he heard the exhilarating exclamation of delight escape from her as she clung to him with a sweet, trembling demand, it was as though she had liberated his long contained desires and claimed them as her own.

  “Elizabeth, will you not awaken?” he insisted gently, for he was impatient to see again the expression of her beautiful eyes as she looked to him with intoxicatingly open affection, to see again the warm blush of fulfilment that had illuminated her countenance as they had lain together in the splendid rest of wedded union. He touched her cheek, let his fingers cascade gently down her neck, her shoulders, and marvelled again at the softness of her skin.

  He roused her easily and as she awoke she coloured momentarily, awareness of her bare skin against his sending waves equally hot and cold through her body. She sat up, dragging the heavy eiderdown with her. Raising her eyes to his, they gazed at each other in silence, a gaze filled with all the revelations and delights of their new intimacy.

  “So this is happiness,” Darcy declared into their delicate silence, reaching up and brushing his fingers slowly through her hair.

  “You have not been happy then?”

  “I have not been unhappy,” he replied, rising and gathering her into his arms. “But this, Elizabeth, this sweet communion seems to me apart from anything that has come before and anything that might come after.”

  “Indeed,” she whispered.

  She lowered her head and nestled it against his neck, the piquant aroma of his skin exciting memories of powerful, intense pleasure. As he held her in his arms, caressing her back with his strong, supple hands, she recognized that she had not anticipated such a stirring nearness. The delicate, surprisingly communicative silence between them was heartening, and yet Elizabeth was compelled to speak. She knew not which words could express her sentiments rightly. She lifted her head and looked into her husband’s face, his handsome features so becomingly heightened by the unmistakable felicity animating his expression.

  “So this is happiness,” she sighed, repeating his earlier avowal.

  “Incontrovertibly,” Darcy declared, bringing Elizabeth deep into the warmth of their bed.

  Chapter 3

  Much to Learn

  Mr. Darcy sat on the settee and observed as his wife of one day walked about the room that served as his library and study and with careful curiosity brushed her fingers over objects and furnishings, lingering upon a figurine or a book now and again. She looked particularly lovely: a fresh, blooming glow on her countenance; her light, pleasing figure prettily complimented by the simple, printed morning dress she wore; a shawl dangling from her arms; her hair almost carelessly gathered atop her head.

  Now they had shared the intimacy of the marriage bed he knew it would be some time before he could observe her with equanimity. For even now as he watched her fingers slowly graze the contours of a small marble figurine sitting upon the desk, he seemed to feel them instead gently moving across his bared chest as they had so tremulously done when he had first disrobed before her. Provocative as were the revelations of wedded intimacy, he was, nevertheless, at the moment, equally interested in what ruminations were formulating in her mind as she inspected with such calm, quiet privilege the objects and effects of his library.

  The library was generous in proportions, warm and comfortable. With burgundy damask wallpapering and rosewood furnishings, the room could have felt dark and confining, if not for the large windows that overlooked the garden in which the prior evening they had spent such memorable moments together. What is more, the paintings in the room were full of light, especially the large landscape that dominated. The library was adorned and stocked with all one would expect from a gentleman of his station and time in life. Books were plentiful; his desk neatly organized; carafes of wine and liquor filled and arranged; a chessboard at the ready; a bust of Homer; carved lions upon the shelves; a globe; an Egyptian artefact atop the mantel.

  As Elizabeth made her way around the room she felt with each object lifted, touched or inspected, that she was growing more familiar with her husband. She reflected upon his assertion, when they were only just promised, that whilst they knew each other well in all that pertained to character, as to all pertaining to the particularities of daily preferences, tastes and habits they had much to discover. The collection of classics upon the bookshelves, therefore, was just as she would have anticipated, but she was perhaps surprised to find as well so much new poetry, so much German and French literature.

  When she came to the large landscape that dominated the room she stopped and studied it for a considerable time. She was ignorant of painting, knew little of art, but recognized nonetheless how very different it was from any she had seen in her relatively narrow experience. It depicted a classic scene, but the quality of the image was disarmingly luminous. “This is a remarkable painting,” she said at last. “I have certainly never seen any similar to it before.”

  Darcy was pleased by her approbation, by her naturally discerning taste, for he comprehended she necessarily had limited understanding in such matters, having lived so little outside of Hertfordshire and its confines. Indeed, it gratified him in no small manner that at his side her lively mind would have opportunity to encounter ideas and experiences hitherto unavailable; he was certain her discriminating intellect would thrive as a result.

  “It is entitled Dido Building Carthage. The painter’s name is Turner. He is not always appreciated at the Academy, but I find his work extraordinary. I am not surprised you should appreciate it; he has a unique ability to stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature[3]. His watercolours are most unusual and we have some hanging at Pemberley.”

  “Are you a connoisseur?”

  Darcy shrugged his shoulders. “I would not describe myself as such. I know what appeals to me, that is all.”

  Elizabeth suspected otherwise, for just as at Pemberley, here in his London townhouse, everywhere were marks of Darcy’s good taste and refinement. “I have so much to learn. Wherever shall I begin?” she intoned with playful censor.

  “Have you concluded with your inspection?” he inquired, as she came and sat at his side.

  When they had been newly engaged Darcy had offered to bring her into London to see the house and to make any instructions she wished before her arrival, but she had declined. “I should like to enjoy these weeks calmly at Longbourn before I depart and give it up altogether. I have no need to see the house. I am certain it is all perfectly lovely. How could it be otherwise?” she had declared.

  He had been rather surprised at her apparent indifference; other women of his acquaintance would not have been so unconcerned for the materiality of their married situation. “You do not care at all about the house?”

  Leaning a little closer to him, she had replied sweetly, “I care about the person with whom I shall be sharing the house.” He had smiled in utter delight, leaned forward himself with every intention of kissing her, only to have her younger sisters Mary and Kitty burst noisily into the room. He had surely shot them a look of displeasure difficult for either young lady to mistake.

  Now Elizabeth inhabited the house her curiosity was great.

  “Do you approve?” he insisted, taking her hand into his own and pla
ying with the delicate ring he had given her as tribute of their marriage.

  She smiled and replied impertinently, with mock haughtier. “I must say that it is not so exceedingly grand as one would have anticipated for the illustrious Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. Indeed, the house in general is rather less than intimidating. It is elegant, to be sure, but not so very large. At any rate, the décor, as a whole, is rather masculine.”

  Darcy chuckled, amused. “If memory serves, my mother never cared for this house; it was always more to my father’s liking. My mother much preferred her brother’s house at Grosvenor Square[4] than her own, but my father insisted this was more than sufficient to their needs when business or entertainment brought them to town. With each passing year she came into town with less frequency; in her last years I believe she came not at all. As with my mother, my father came seldom enough in his last years as well.”

  “And you?”

  “I have resided here with regularity since leaving university.”

  “But always alone?”

  “Yes. This has never been Georgiana’s home. Living here with a bachelor brother was not, in my estimation, ideal. After she left school, she was provided with a comfortable establishment nearby. I would call on her daily, naturally.”

  “Had you no friends to visit with you?”

  “Occasionally. Colonel Fitzwilliam often prefers to lodge here when he is in town. Periodically other friends have lodged here as well.”

  “Did you never entertain?”

  “Predominantly gentlemen friends, when there was nothing of interest or obligation to attend about town, but not a great deal. On such occasions the club often sufficed as well as not. I confess, I have been more apt to be guest than host.”

  “For one person it is rather large; very quiet; very solitary.”

  “At times it has seemed so, but I am accustomed to my portion of solitude.”

  “Whereas I have never had a moment of quiet at Longbourn.”