“And you? Will you be so well behaved?”
“Can you doubt it?”
“I must say, you have not always been so,” she said. “And you do say that I cause you to lose your senses.”
“That is true,” he admitted. “Well, I shall do my best. What else can I do?”
* * *
The wedding was planned for some weeks in the future, and Elizabeth was lost to a flurry of preparation and excitement that she hadn’t realized she would find so pleasant.
Perhaps it was because she had resigned herself to never experiencing it. She knew that her family had no hope of marrying her off, and so she had come to terms with the idea that she would remain unmarried for the rest of her life, never to know what it was to be a bride.
Now, however, here she was, and it was all happening, and it was Mr. Darcy, and he was now a rather great man, having come into his inheritance. She felt as if it was all too much, that it was so much more than she had ever dreamed of.
She was happy.
She and Mr. Darcy had visited Mrs. Fortescue’s grave together. Since she had died in disgrace, her family had not wanted her buried on their plot. But they had paid for her burial in Hertfordshire, and the headstone and footstone were so elaborate that Elizabeth knew they had still loved their daughter and grieved her. She and Mr. Darcy grieved her as well. She knew they would visit this site often to come and remember her and remember the evil that had befallen the poor woman.
Darcy was in the process of renaming Hawthorne Abbey as Amelia Abbey, after Mrs. Fortescue. He thought it only fitting, especially considering it was Mrs. Fortescue’s jewels that had given him enough money to buy it back.
Over the coming weeks, Elizabeth was able to get to know Mr. Darcy’s sister Georgiana better, and she found her quite amiable, a truly sweet girl who she knew would be a good friend to her when they were together in Pemberley.
And she was able to call on Jane at Netherfield. She and Bingley were still in the blissful beginnings of their marriage, and they could not take their eyes off the other.
She knew what that was like, because she and Darcy were much the same way.
One afternoon, she managed to get Jane alone, and—through giggles—she begged her to tell their mother that she had spoken to her about the wedding night so that she would be spared a conversation with Mrs. Bennet about it all, which Elizabeth found frightful.
“Of course,” said Jane. “But do you have questions?”
“I have an idea of how it all works,” Elizabeth murmured. “And Mr. Darcy and I… well, things have happened. Not that thing, but other things. I am not worried.”
“Well, if you do have questions—”
“Perhaps just one,” said Elizabeth. “Is it better?”
“Is what better?”
“Is it better to marry than burn?”
Jane laughed. “Oh,” she said, winking. “Very much better. Very much indeed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
But when the ceremony was over, and the wedding breakfast had been held, and the day was done, and she and Mr. Darcy were finally alone together for their wedding night, Elizabeth didn’t feel quite as confident as she thought she would have.
Before, she had thought of the time they’d spent in that bedroom in Mrs. Fortescue’s house as something shocking and intense. But now, when she thought back on it, she felt as if very little had happened. They kissed on a bed, his body on top of hers. It had been thrilling at the time, but there was much more to it all.
Her nerves were becoming frayed at the prospect of it.
And it all grew worse because she was alone in the room waiting for Mr. Darcy for nearly half an hour, during which she wandered around in her shift and braided and unbraided her hair. There was some fruit and bread set out on a table but Elizabeth couldn’t bear the thought of eating, let alone actually eat anything.
Finally, there was a knock on the door.
“Yes?” she called and was horrified to hear that her voice trembled.
The door opened.
Her heart stopped.
Mr. Darcy came into the room in his nightshirt. It was unbuttoned at the top, like the shirt he’d worn at Mrs. Fortescue’s house, and she remembered when her hand had been inside his shirt, on his warm flesh, and she flushed all over.
Mr. Darcy closed the door.
She sucked in a breath and let it out. It was loud in the silent room.
Mr. Darcy cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m by no means in favor of compromising women before their wedding nights, but I must say… there is a bit of pressure on the whole enterprise now, is there not?”
Elizabeth laughed, but she was afraid her laugh was too bright.
Mr. Darcy didn’t seem to mind. He crossed the room to her, and his voice lowered. “I remember that all those months ago, things seemed to… flow between us much more naturally.”
“That is true,” she said softly.
“I’m sure we can get that flow back between us if we work at it,” he murmured.
“Do you think so?” she said. “How would we manage such a thing?”
“Hmm…” He looked around the room, as if casting about for an idea. “Well, perhaps we ought to recreate the scene.”
“All right, I suppose.”
“Yes, we should stand here, at the side of the bed.” He pointed.
“Certainly.” Elizabeth shuffled over to stand there.
He joined her, facing her. “And I should take you in my arms. Isn’t that the way it was?”
“Yes. You said something about how holding me thus was wrong.”
He slid his arms around her. “And you said it felt right.” He smiled at her. “It does feel right. It is like a waltz.”
“With my body pressed so close to yours, sir? I think we should make blushing fools of anyone who saw us waltz this way.”
“Luckily, there is no one to see,” he said. And he kissed her.
She clung to him, and the kiss opened her up, layer after layer, and she felt the sweetness of their connection stealing over her. She was a blossoming flower, and Mr. Darcy was the sun.
He gently lay her back on the bed and crawled beside her to continue kissing her.
The kissing went on and on, and it was lovely. She was reduced to nothing but sighs and gasps.
“There,” he breathed, “I think we have it now.”
“Have what?” she managed.
“The flow,” he said and he put his hands inside her shift, pushing it over her skin as he traced pleasant paths over her thighs and hips and waist and rib cage. When he reached her breasts, she was bared to him, and there was nothing for it but to surrender to the pleasure. She closed her eyes and a moan escaped her lips.
“Beautiful,” he said, his voice labored.
And she had an errant thought, of that first meeting with Mr. Wickham, when his silver tongue had praised her beauty so skillfully. And how this one word from Mr. Darcy’s mouth was more eloquent than all those words together.
She wound her hand around the back of his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers, wanting to kiss him so thoroughly that they melded into each other, that they became the one flesh that the wedding vows said they would become.
Mr. Darcy groaned in the back of his throat, and his hands on her body grew more urgent. He was parting her thighs, stroking her, and another sort of pressure was building in her now, something foreign and powerful. The promise of it was wonderful, and she surrendered to this too, another layer of her petals parting and letting in more of the sun.
Until they were both unclothed and joined, and that wish she’d had, for them to be one, it was granted.
For a blissful period of time, she wasn’t sure where she ended and Mr. Darcy began. They moved together and breathed together and their hearts beat in the same rhythm.
It was more than a dance, it was something ancient and potent, and it was an expression of the love she felt for this man, the love they bore each o
ther.
It was everything.
THE DREAD MR. DARCY
The Dread Mr. Darcy
a Pride and Prejudice variation
Valerie Lennox
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
THE DREAD MR. DARCY
© copyright 2018 by Valerie Lennox
http://vjchambers.com
Punk Rawk Books
CHAPTER ONE
Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy stood in the captain’s cabin on the ship he was planning on swindling opium out from under, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m Nathan Black, and I’m with the East India Company, and I’m boarding because your sails aren’t regulation. You can’t keep going in the manner that you are, or a dangerous accident might occur at any moment.”
The captain, who had given his name, but Darcy hadn’t heard it, looked completely flummoxed. “Regulations sails? What are you on about, man? And how does that give you the right to board my ship?”
Darcy shrugged. “It’s my job. I spend my time sailing in this area, observing ships that work for the company, and if there are any problems with them, I board and get them fixed.”
“Well, you’re obviously confused,” said the captain. “Because we don’t sail for the East India Company.”
Darcy’s confident facade cracked for a moment. “You don’t?”
“No, we’re just on our way back to England with passengers and a bit of spice.”
“You don’t have any opium on board?” said Darcy. That was, of course, the swindle. He intercepted boats that were meant to be taking opium east to China, and he made up some trumped-up charge about their ship, saying that he could report them to the company, or they could just pay him off with half of the opium they had on board.
Since China wasn’t allowing the opium legally across its borders anymore, it was easy enough for someone like Darcy to find a buyer for the opium. There was heavy demand for the stuff in China, no matter how the government was trying to keep its people off the stuff. Darcy pocketed the profit—pure profit since he didn’t have to pay for the opium, and he sent it back home to England to take care of his estate.
Without some money coming in, he would have certainly lost the family home. Turning to piracy wasn’t exactly an honorable choice, but whatever pride Darcy’d had he’d lost a long time ago.
“No, we don’t have any opium on board,” said the captain. “What would make you think something so ridiculous?”
“Well, you’re in the same waters as the ships that carry opium,” Darcy snapped. He was angry at having made the mistake of boarding this ship. This was a waste of time and energy, it seemed.
“Yes, there was a storm three days past. It blew us horribly off course.”
The storm. Darcy sighed. He remembered the storm now. He’d spent most of it locked in his cabin, curled around the light of his opium lamp, in a cocoon of warmth and wonder, but now he was running low on opium, and he needed it, and—
Darcy seized the captain by the throat. “You’re worthless to me, you know that?”
The captain’s eyes bulged.
What was he doing? Darcy dropped the man, letting him go. “Well, it seems this is all a misunderstanding.”
The captain massaged his throat. “What did you say your name was? Black?”
Darcy smiled thinly. “Nathan Black.” He always used a different name every time he boarded a ship, just as a matter of course. What he’d called himself didn’t really matter. “And I suppose that my men and I will just exit your ship now, no harm done.”
“I think I’ll want to get in touch with your superior,” said the captain. “The way you’ve treated me is abominable.”
“Oh, well, accept my deepest apologies,” said Darcy with mock sympathy. He turned and stalked out of the captain’s cabin. He needed to gather up his men and get off this boat. The sooner they sailed on, the sooner they’d find a ship that actually had opium on it.
But when he pushed open the door, he was met with some resistance.
He put his back into it, and the door slowly inched open. Only then could he see what was blocking it.
A body. The first mate was lying on the floor, his throat cut, his blood seeping into the deck.
“Dash it all, who killed someone?” Darcy said.
“Sorry, Cap’n,” said his first mate, Jacob Mackie. “He was going for his pistol, he was, and I wasn’t about to let myself get a belly full of lead, so I did what I had to, I did.”
Darcy sighed. “Is he the only one?”
“Well.” Mackie scratched the top of his head. “See, then the others started getting rowdy, and me and the others, we had to keep that from getting too messy, so we had to kill… oh, ten or so of them, sir. I’m sorry, I know you want us to do it bloodless when we can, but in this case—”
“Shut up, Mackie,” Darcy said darkly. He turned back to the captain. “I’m terribly sorry about this, sir. It really is unfortunate, but if I let you go at this point, after having killed ten of your men, there’s no way you won’t tell someone about me, and I do pride myself on keeping as low a profile as possible.”
The captain took a step backwards, his brows furrowed. “What are you? You don’t work for the East India Company after all, do you?”
Darcy shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He took his pistol out of its holster and leveled it at the captain. “Again, my deepest apologies.”
The crack of the gun echoed throughout the ship.
* * *
Miss Elizabeth Bennet was screaming.
She was screaming even though Mrs. Graham had told her not to, even though Mrs. Graham had told her to hide behind the bags of spices and not make a peep no matter what happened.
Because they had murdered Mrs. Graham.
Mrs. Graham was a portly woman who always spoke loudly and smacked her lips a lot. She wasn’t the most pleasant of company, and she had been the only other woman on the ship, and numerous times, Elizabeth had thought to herself that she should quite like to be shut of the woman.
But she had not meant that she wanted Mrs. Graham to be murdered, a dagger stuck into her heart in the middle of the hold, bleeding all over the bags of spices and not even making a noise. She was staring straight up at the ceiling, a grimace of pain frozen on her face.
Elizabeth couldn’t help but scream.
“Where’s that coming from?” said one of the pirates, the two men who had murdered Mrs. Graham. The ship was crawling with them. That was why Mrs. Graham had taken her here to hide.
The other man tossed aside several of the bags, revealing Elizabeth.
She looked into his face, which was a little dirty.
He had a scraggly beard, and he was missing a tooth. He leered at her.
She stopped screaming.
“This one’s younger than the other,” said the pirate.
“So what?” said his companion. “You know the cap’n’s opinion on women.”
“Nothing but trouble, yeah, I know it.” The pirate cocked his head. “She’s a comely one, though. Maybe we should have a bit of fun with her before we kill her.”
“No, that’s the trouble the cap’n’s talking of, don’t you think?”
&
nbsp; Elizabeth licked her lips. “Don’t kill me. Please, don’t—”
“Shut up,” said the pirate. “Can’t handle it when they beg. It makes me all regretful-like. Gives me nightmares.”
“Stab her quick, then,” said his friend. “She’s just going to keep whining otherwise.”
“I don’t want to die,” Elizabeth said. “Please, if you leave me here and pretend you didn’t see me—”
The pirate seized her by the bodice of her dress and dragged her up into the air. He slammed her into the wall. “None of that, I said.”
“I don’t know why you aren’t stabbing her already,” said his friend. “You’ve had enough chances.”
“You stab her, then,” said the pirate.
Elizabeth was feeling a little woozy from the sight of dead Mrs. Graham and from being slammed into the wall, but she was also terribly alert. Nothing had ever been more important. They were going to kill her, and she had to get away—
Abruptly, she began to struggle.
The pirate slammed her into the wall once more, pressing his body against hers. “None of that either,” he said, but his voice was gruffer.
“Get out of the way, Ned,” said his friend. “I’m going to stab her, I am.”
“Oh, I can’t,” said Ned. “It’s such a waste. She’s a pretty one, so soft and kind of bouncy. Creamy white skin too. Now, neither of us has had a woman—let alone an English woman—in more months than I care to count.”
“Cap’n says—”
“Well, the cap’n doesn’t have to know, now does he? We do it quick like, and then we stab her when it’s done.”
Elizabeth’s heart was pounding so fast that she thought it might rip out of her chest. She didn’t think she wanted these men to do whatever it was they wanted to do to her, but she also knew that doing it would extend her life long enough that she might be able to find a way to escape them, to hide better, and to survive, and she wanted that.
“What you mean is that you’ll do it quick like, and then there won’t be time for me to do anything, because we’ll be leaving the ship, and the cap’n’ll want to know where we are and what we been up to, and then he’ll find out everything, and—”
Mr. Darcy's Indiscretions Page 38