Mr. Darcy's Indiscretions

by Valerie Lennox

  “Indeed,” said Darcy. He coughed. “Listen, I wonder if I might speak to Miss Elizabeth. Alone.”

  Elizabeth was so shocked, she stood up. There was really only one reason that a man asked to speak to a woman alone, and that was to propose, but… well, that could not be why Mr. Darcy was here.

  “Oh,” said Jane in a strange voice. “Why, of course. We will be happy to give you some privacy.” She stood up. “Come Kitty. Mary.”

  Kitty stood up.

  Elizabeth sat down. Mr. Darcy could not be proposing to her. He could not.

  Mary sniffed.

  “Mary,” said Jane.

  Mary eyed Mr. Darcy. “It was good to see you, sir.”

  Well, it was true that Mr. Darcy had proposed to Elizabeth before.

  “And you as well,” said Mr. Darcy.

  But, no, Mr. Darcy was married already. He had married Anne de Bourgh, and so he could not be proposing. So, then why—

  And then, suddenly, everyone had left the room, and it was only her and him.

  She gulped at her tea. Her heart had started to race, and she couldn’t understand why for the life of her.

  Darcy coughed.

  She squared her shoulders and waited. Her heart sped up. She drank more tea and set down her cup in her saucer with a clatter. “Well, Mr. Darcy, when a man asks to be alone with a woman, he usually has something to say. You had better come out with it.” There, good. She didn’t sound at all out of sorts. She even sounded a bit cold. Perfect.

  “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I must.”

  “Well?”

  “I have heard something dreadful about you.”

  “Well, that is interesting, I suppose.” Her stomach turned over. “I had not thought anyone bothered to gossip about me anymore. I thought they had moved on to more recent scandals.”

  “No, don’t worry. The person who told me doesn’t seem likely to repeat it. He forced me to pay him for the information.”

  Her heart sank. “Mr. Wickham? You have been speaking to Mr. Wickham?”

  Darcy swallowed, not meeting her gaze.

  Oh, Lord, he knew everything. Wickham knew about Chivsworth. He had told Mr. Darcy.

  Darcy stood up, looking agitated. “Listen, I don’t want you to do it.”

  She stood up too. This was horrid. She was mortified. That Wickham had heard her plans to debase herself and had repeated them to Mr. Darcy, it was more than she could bear.

  Mr. Darcy continued, “I know it is not my concern, but if the problem is simply that you need funds to cover your mother’s debts, I would be happy to provide the necessary—”

  “What?” She was shaking. She was angry and confused, and she didn’t know what to think or to do. “How dare you?”

  “I apologize,” he said. “But you are the one who is about to surrender your virtue to some horrible man for compensation, so—”

  “So, I don’t deserve the decency of your keeping your nose out of my affairs?” she demanded.

  “Well, I must admit that I feel responsible for your situation. If my aunt had not gotten wind of my proposal, perhaps none of it would have happened in the first place.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Elizabeth. “But I should not have been so stupid as to have allowed him to get me alone. I brought it on myself.”

  “I would like to help you.”

  “Just now? You’ve suddenly decided that you want to help? Where have you been for the past five years?”

  “I lost track of you,” he said. “No one knew where you went after your father’s passing. And then, I was distracted, I suppose.”

  “With your marriage,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Congratulations, by the way,” she said. “Belatedly.”

  He flinched. “I suppose you have not heard the news.”

  “What news?”

  “My wife passed away.”

  “Oh.” She looked at her feet. “I am sorry, sir. That is sad news indeed.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  They were quiet.

  “Listen,” he said. “I really do want to help.”

  “You’ll hand over the money that we need, then, and be on your way? You’ll want nothing in return?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t need your charity, Mr. Darcy.”

  “Would you accept the money if I asked for something in return?”

  “What would you ask for?”

  He looked up at her, his gaze piercing.

  She got the strange sensation that he could see through her clothing and she felt exposed and naked and frightened. A shiver went up her neck.

  “If you’re willing to do this for Chivsworth, then do it for me instead.”

  She took a step backward, knocking over a chair.

  His voice dropped in pitch. It was gravelly. “Be my mistress.”

  She gasped.

  He shook himself and turned away. “Forgive me. I do not know why I said that.”

  Elizabeth did not know how she felt. She still felt exposed, possibly simply from the conversation that had occurred between them, possibly from that searing look he’d given her. He had never looked at her that way, not when they danced together, not when he proposed to her. Perhaps if he had…

  But no, because it was a horrid way to look at her. It set her quite out of sorts, and she was not the least bit pleased about it. She should rebuke him for the look itself, let alone what he had just suggested. That, of course, was… was…

  Oh, Elizabeth didn’t know. Her heart had started beating fast again, and it was coursing blood through her body, making her feel warm and strange. The truth was, when she had thought of becoming Chivsworth’s mistress, she’d not allowed herself any real time to consider the, er, physicality of the arrangement. She had assumed that she would get through that when it became necessary. To think on something like that would make her more likely to back out of the entire thing, and she needed to do this for her sisters.

  But now, looking at Mr. Darcy, who wasn’t even meeting her gaze anymore, whose head was downcast, whose shoulders were so frightfully broad, and who was in possession of a rather immensely deep voice, she found herself pondering possibilities. Thinking of what Mr. Darcy might look like if he were not wearing anything covering those shoulders, for instance.

  Elizabeth did not ponder such things often. She knew what went on between men and women in bed now, though, even though she was not married. She could not have helped Lydia with her career if she had not had at least a rudimentary knowledge of how it all worked. She had to admit that it made her queasy to think on it very much, at least usually, but now that Mr. Darcy was—

  She shook herself.

  “I would ask that you leave, please, sir,” she said, and her voice wasn’t strong. It was the shadow of a voice, as if she were nothing but a shy girl. She hated that she sounded so weak.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Darcy, lifting his gaze to hers. “But you must consider taking charity, I think, Miss Bennet. You cannot allow this awful thing to befall you. I cannot allow it. Why I will seek out your mother’s debtors and—”

  “You will do no such thing.” Still the wavery voice, dash it all. “Please, go back to your life and forget about me again, please.”

  “I never forgot about you, Miss Bennet,” he said quietly.

  “Well, I forgot about you,” she said, and now her voice was fierce, when she was lying.

  He blinked and then nodded. “I do apologize again. I really should not have said— I don’t know what came over me. That is, I am utterly—”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Darcy.”

  “Goodbye,” he said, and then he did leave.

  Elizabeth sank down in a chair and tried to steady her beating heart.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Darcy thought she looked quite well, all things considered. She and her sisters were practically living in a hovel in the worst part of London, and they barely had enough room for all of them there
. It was a pity. And he knew that she didn’t want his help, but he would be damned if he let this continue. This was his fault. Well, at least it was his fault by proxy. He was the one who had proposed to Elizabeth, and he still wasn’t even sure why he’d done such a thing.

  When he had done it, he had been of two minds about it. He’d been less than complimentary because he wasn’t certain of himself. That was why she’d refused him, or so she’d said. But after she had refused him, he had felt better about it all. After all, it was probably better if things continued to stand that way. That was the right way of things. He couldn’t marry her. He was meant to marry someone connected.

  Of course, he’d had no intention of marrying his cousin Anne. His aunt wished it, and his mother used to joke about it, many years ago, but he didn’t take it seriously.

  Then the business at Rosings happened.

  Darcy hadn’t been there. He and Colonel Fitzwilliam had taken their leave of the place, and then his aunt had invited Cumberbottom to visit. Darcy did not know the man well, but the few times he had sat down with the man, Cumberbottom had struck him as a low, leering sort of man. Not the sort of man he’d want near his own sister, for instance.

  But then he heard the news, because everyone was talking of it. Cumberbottom had taken Elizabeth aside, purportedly so that he could hear her play the pianoforte, and then the two of them had shared a passionate kiss. Naturally, Cumberbottom had proposed to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth had refused him.

  Darcy had chuckled when he heard that. Of course she had refused. That was what she did, after all. Refuse marriage proposals.

  But then he realized what this meant for Elizabeth, and he was regretful. As a woman who had kissed another man, she was damaged goods. No one was going to be interested in marrying her now. And her loose morals looked bad for the entire family. It was unfortunate. Especially when Darcy rather blamed Cumberbottom for all of it. He imagined that the fellow had forced the kiss on Elizabeth, who hadn’t been interested in kissing him at all. Knowing Elizabeth, he couldn’t imagine she was the least bit attracted to Cumberbottom.

  Elizabeth was packed off and sent home so that her parents could talk some sense into her and see that she must marry Cumberbottom, for he was still willing to marry her, even after the slight to his pride of her rather public refusal, which had apparently been yelled so loudly that everyone in Rosings had heard it. She had also used some rather colorful language.

  That was when Darcy began to suspect something else was afoot. Why was Cumberbottom so eager to marry Elizabeth Bennet, a girl with no fortune and no connections? He’d pulled a nasty trick, but it was the kind of trick usually pulled with heiresses. That was why girls with fortune were guarded within an inch of their lives, so that cads like Cumberbottom couldn’t get to them.

  Darcy went back to Rosings to speak to his aunt about it.

  “Oh,” said Lady Catherine when he brought it up. “I should have known you’d be antsy about that bit of news. I only wish it had gone more smoothly.”

  “What do you mean?” said Darcy. “Did you have something to do with it?”

  “Well, you couldn’t expect me to stand idly by while you tried to marry that girl, could you? You are meant for Anne,” said Lady Catherine.

  “What did you do?” Darcy was angry. He was surprised at how angry he was.

  “Well, I simply arranged for Mr. Cumberbottom to propose to Miss Bennet. I can’t believe the ungrateful wretch of a girl refused him.”

  “You bribed him, you mean?” said Darcy. “You bribed him to assault her?”

  “Oh, you’re so melodramatic,” she said.

  Darcy gaped at her. “You’ve ruined her. She was a perfectly lovely girl, and now she’s ruined, and for no reason other than the fact that you were worried I might marry her. She refused my proposal.”

  “The first time,” said Lady Catherine. “She was playing coy, trying to determine if you still loved her.”

  “I assure you, that was not what she was about. She despises me,” said Darcy. “You have ruined an innocent girl for no reason at all.”

  “Well,” said his aunt. “Let that be a lesson to you. If you go about proposing willy-nilly to women you’re not meant to marry, I shall put a stop to it however I can.”

  Darcy clenched his jaw. “You can’t force me to marry Miss de Bourgh.”

  “Can’t I?”

  In the end, she’d had her wish. She’d bullied him into it. One reason was that he’d not met another girl that he liked nearly as much as Elizabeth. Another was the fact that he didn’t want his aunt ruining the reputation of any other innocent girl. In the end, he reasoned, marriage was about creating a family, and he already had ties to Anne. No matter he didn’t love her. No matter at all.

  At the time, he’d strongly considered the idea of a mistress, sometime later, after he’d squared away the business of an heir with Anne, and after the children were a bit older. Then maybe he’d have his dalliances. Then maybe he could have something that resembled love. What was love, anyway, but a short-lived period of infatuation that fed on things like absence and forbidden ardor? Certainly nothing like that could really exist with one’s wife, anyway.

  But he’d never taken a mistress, and now he had suggested it to Elizabeth, when he hadn’t even meant to. He hadn’t gone there with that as his objective. It was not the sort of thing he would ask of a lady such as her. Dash it all, he had gone there to save her from such a fate, not to provide it for her. To make her his mistress degraded her. It was the most horrid thing he could have proposed.

  But then, he was a horrid man, wasn’t he?

  He and his aunt didn’t speak anymore. Not since Anne’s funeral, when Lady Catherine had screamed in his face that he’d killed her only daughter as tears streamed down her face.

  Her words had burrowed into his heart like a poison barb. He feared it was all true.

  * * *

  Elizabeth did not tell Jane what Mr. Darcy had wanted to speak to her alone about. She couldn’t. She said that he hemmed and hawed and then seemed to lose his nerve and then hurried out of there as if there was fire on his heels.

  “I hear that his wife died,” said Jane. “Perhaps he came to propose to you, but our conditions here at home frightened him away. He must know that if he married you, he’d be taking all of us on as well.”

  “He would never marry me,” said Elizabeth. “He thinks me far too low beneath him for that.” He thinks of me as someone who could be his mistress. Ah, but that wasn’t fair. She was the one who had put the idea of her being a mistress in his head. He had not lowered her to that point. She had lowered herself. Anyway, perhaps in a way, it was flattering.

  He had wanted to marry her when he proposed, and he must have truly meant that he was attracted to her, because now he seemed to want her still.

  Elizabeth moved through the evening chores, thinking about it. She and her sisters cooked for themselves now, and they cleaned up as well. Lydia did not like the way that they lived. She often pointed out that they could save money and they could all live better if everyone went to live with Lydia. But that would mean embracing the fact that their sister was a fallen woman and the destruction that would wreak on the Bennet name. After what Elizabeth had done, they would be hopeless. So, they stayed in their home, and they did the best that they could. Elizabeth would not have minded, she supposed, falling a bit further, since she had already sunk so low.

  When she had denied Cumberbottom’s offer of marriage, her father had been staunchly in her corner, though her mother was in fits about it. Her father insisted that no daughter of his would be forced to marry a man she found abominable. And Cumberbottom was the worst. He made her skin crawl, the way that he had put his hands and his lips on her. It had been the most horrifying experience of her life. To marry a man who had forced his kisses on her, that was unthinkable.

  She was happy that her father had not made her marry him. She was glad of that. But it had consequences. She
was damaged goods and her sisters prospects had sunk low. She couldn’t move them all into Lydia’s house, even if it meant a more comfortable day-to-day life, because they would have no prospects after that. Kitty would probably become a courtesan herself. She had no common sense either. And Mary? Well, Mary might simply fall ill from sheer force of will from the disgust she would feel at the whole family. Heaven knew that Mary still bore a grudge against Elizabeth for not guarding her virtue more carefully.

  At any rate, Darcy had come and gone, and now Elizabeth was back in the same situation she had been in before, except she was feeling incredibly stupid for having turned Darcy down. It was her dashed pride, that’s what it was. If she had swallowed it all those year ago and married him, think where they would all be now! But no, she had not done it, and now she was too proud to be his mistress?

  Why, she was going to become the mistress of this Chivsworth, who she had never met, but who must be somewhat monstrous if he were so picky in his mistresses. Even if he weren’t monstrous, he was a stranger, and his touch would not be welcome to her. It would probably be like forcing herself to undergo the caresses of Cumberbottom. Well, no, perhaps not as bad. She wasn’t sure. But it could be that bad.

  And on the other hand, there was Mr. Darcy, who was altogether pleasing to look upon and who had that rumbling dark, deep voice and those… those shoulders, and he was offering, and she had sent him out of the house?

  What was she thinking?

  His offer was altogether more favorable than the one from Chivsworth.

  On the other hand, it would pain her, perhaps more than she could say, to have Mr. Darcy look down upon her so, to be someone who Mr. Darcy paid for services. It was horrible to think of, and she did not think she could bear it. And that was why she had sent him away. Perhaps it didn’t make any sense, but there it was.

  As the evening wore on, however, Elizabeth grew more and more agitated. Jane inquired what was wrong, and Elizabeth said that she needed to go and see Lydia about something important, a matter of finance. It wasn’t usual for Elizabeth to leave in the evening to see Lydia, but it had happened before, so Jane thought nothing of it and said she would make her excuses to their sisters.