“I regret to inform you, sir,” said the provost, “it would have been impossible for him to be guilty of the heinous act brought here before us. Mr. Darcy is now, and has since Michaelmas, been observing the ruins of Rome and Greece.”
This was not the first (nor would it be the last) incident of this nature attributed to a Cambridge undergraduate. Hence, the provost was in no manner astonished at the possibility that one of their students might be guilty of dishonourable conduct. More often than not, the accusation was credible and the culprit was brought either to justice or the altar. Upon this occasion, that was not to be.
“But…but…” stuttered poor Mr. Gapp. “He gave his family name as Darcy, his Christian name, Fitzwilliam. I am not mistaken. He sat in my parlour…”
The provost shook his head sympathetically, but with finality, “It is of no use, sir. I fear you and your daughter have been duped.”
Mr. Gapp was inclined to think of a more fitting verb, but chose not to employ it.
The provost, however, had good reason to believe that he knew the identity of Fanny Gapp’s defiler, for the proctors were often in pursuit in the gambling dens and public houses surrounding the college a certain undergraduate. Although he professed to be meant for the church, his attendance had been highlighted by plucked exams, gatings, and rustications. All these offences led to his eventual expulsion. Had he not been under the particular protection of the most eminent family in Derbyshire, he would have been sent down upon his first malfeasance. Until Mr. Gapp’s visit, his recent doings had been unknown to the provost. But as that was only a guess and George Wickham was long gone from their institution, he thought it pointless to bring up his name.
However, in the absence of anyone else to blame, Mr. Gapp chose to blame Fanny. Hence, he banished his cherished daughter to a convent in Boulogne to live out her term, praying earnestly for her redemption and eventual return.
When the nuns took Fanny’s newborn from her arms, they shushed her tears, telling her that her daughter would have a convent upbringing.
“Your baby will not suffer from your disgrace,” the mother superior told her.
As Fanny lay recuperating on the narrow cot in her barren little room, she stared up at a bronze crucifix over her head. It was the single adornment on the wall and, other than her dispiritingly hollow belly, all she had to ponder. She had always blamed her father’s interference for her lover’s desertion—even when told that she was seduced under another man’s name. Like the star-crossed girl she was, she tenaciously held on to the hope that she, her daughter, and her lover would one day be united. She held on to that hope until one day she did not.
In the dark days that surrounded what could only be called a revelation, it was not redemption that excited Fanny’s esteem. Nor was it the thought of returning to little Donkey’s Fen as a fallen women. Through the agency of that lost lover, she had acquired a taste for wine and the delights of the boudoir. Moreover, in living in enforced poverty in a French convent, she began to believe that she liked money above all else and soon did not scruple how she came to have it.
Whilst still at home, she had spent long hours dreaming of London and eloping there with her lover. Unfortunately, once dispatched to Boulogne, a sizeable body of water lay between her and escape to London. The fare for a channel crossing was quite beyond her means, in that she had none whatsoever. However, the governing principle of Fanny’s nature was nothing if not autonomy and her spirit was quite indomitable. Hence, she took a look at the lay of the situation and made a judicious decision. Early one morn (and bearing a determinedly innocent expression) she set out on the pretext of herding a bit of livestock to market. Allowing neither muddy road nor stricken conscience to impede her, she walked the way from thence and on to Paris in her bare feet, prodding a trio of geese before her with a stick.
Consequently, hers was not the typical tale of violation and ill-use that drove many a young woman from the countryside into the arms of disgrace as a fille de joie, but it certainly was a fair approximation. Fanny had come there with the full knowledge that Paris was where a girl without means could support herself, if not with scrupulosity, at least with style. (It remained unquestioned whether it was actually cruelty that ultimately compromised Frances Gapp, or ambition.) The sale of the geese bought her a pair of slippers, surreptitious diligence of netting purses and feathering hats in her sparse convent room accoutred her to win a position as a milliner’s helper. Hovering about the pretty shop, she was soon espied by the husband of a customer who had quickly tired of the office of holder of the purse. When it was evident that she had procured her first protector, she cast out her past compleatly by eschewing the name (however prophetic) of Fanny Gapp. She assumed a nom de guerre more fitting the courtesan she meant to become—evermore she was known as Césarine Thierry.
She left Fanny Gapp and all her girlish longing behind her—save one paradoxical desire. As had Fanny, Césarine hoped to see her truant lover just once more. When she gave it any thought, she shook her head at her own capriciousness. It was a compleat whimsy, she knew—perhaps attributable to the propensity for always recollecting to whom one had surrendered one’s virtue. Either that or an obsessive desire for retribution. In the end, she decided to forgo that vengeance. Rather, it was a life lesson that she would fully embrace. For how could she be angry at a man for loving himself more than her?
She would never again allow a man have sway over her heart.
***
One unfamiliar with the tenets of courtesan society might have believed all disappointment and vexation past. But inherent to success in a realm such as this was a rude predicament. Existing in this exclusive circle demanded not one, but a succession of lovers, each one surpassing the last in wealth. A courtesan who had reached the apogee of her calling was not judged only on the price her time could command, but discretion in the choice of lovers that she could exercise. In attracting those lovers, a display of ostentatious finery was essential—one must feign wealth if one wanted to obtain it.
To look the part was only half the struggle. These potential protectors were lured by way of grand soirées beholding vaunted guests. Moreover, one must have elaborate rooms with a fashionable address in which to hold them. The grander the soirées, the more vaunted the guests, the more lucrative the potential quarry, the more money she acquired. And the more money she made, the more her expenses grew. It fell to her to spend rather than save, for the conventions of the age demanded an extravagant peacock to dress a lover’s arm, not a scarlet woman secreted away in a garret. It was an altogether voracious lifestyle, devouring men and their fortunes with rapidity.
So rapacious were these denizens, respectable mothers feared that these lionnes—these queens of beasts—would devour their guileless sons. This dread generated an equally lucrative avenue of revenue for a courtesan—that of gentle, but tenacious, extortion. Baroness, countess, and duchess alike would pay handsomely for a courtesan to leave their son’s heart and his bank account in peace. (Visiting any putain held the substantial threat of a disease that offered not only madness and early death, but the sloughing off of one’s virile member—if that was not a deterrent to amour for young men, maternal exhortations were all but useless.) Rumours abounded about lovers Césarine Thierry had jilted and aristocrats she had ruined. Occasionally these rumours were spread and slightly embellished by Césarine herself (for one must present oneself as a temptress if one is to tempt). If her reputation was wicked enough, the mothers of endangered sons were quite happy to be extorted.
Despite such embroidery, Césarine was undeniably gifted in the art of beguiling these young pigeons—er, lords. She took great care to procure them fresh from the nest, with only delicate pinfeathers of sagacity clinging to their flesh—ready for the plucking. She lavished them with exotic pleasure until, compleatly picked clean, they fell to earth in a bewildered heap. Ignoring their heartbroken pleas, she quickly t
urned to her next prey.
Although Césarine told her lovers variously that she had aspired to become an actress, a singer, or, upon occasion (most fancifully), a nun; truth be told, she had none of these ambitions. She aspired only to be rich. One of her earliest protectors was Count Francesco de Nuncio, a landed gentleman of Portugal who caught her eye by dangling an exceedingly enticing jewelled necklace into her cleavage. The count had neither a nervous mother nor a nose for duplicity, hence Césarine convinced him to accept her hand in marriage. As she was no more inclined to sleep with him than he was to settle her ever-mounting gambling debts, their alliance deteriorated with undue rapidity. Other than a new taste for exquisite jewels, her lone acquisition from this union was the title that she would carry the rest of her days and a determination to allow no one to learn that Count de Nuncio’s title was as fictitious as her Russian birth.
Vivacious and restless, yet undeniably mercenary, La Comptesse Césarine de Thierry, as she called herself thereafter, settled into a life cushioned by considerable pelf, spending her afternoons dispatching billets-doux to her lovers and her evenings in her box at the theatre surveying the crowd for her next armigerous conquest. In her evening soirées, she plumped her guest list with poets, painters, and princes and compleatly disregarded the anarchy that was taking place on the very street on which she resided. She feigned great disregard of it all, but it was a hard-fought battle to appear so insouciant when one of her dearest friends was literally dragged from the bed of her lover and with him to La Force prison. (She had heard that Juliette had escaped the guillotine through bizarre circumstances, but the story was so unlikely and was not told with enough certainty for her to hold it compleatly credible.) She most certainly did not want to lose her head, but returning to England was not a temptation. She no longer considered herself one of that race. Yet that someone she knew had stood in a tumbrel was far too close a connection for her to do otherwise than reinforce her dedication to her own amusement.
To attend her circle, if one was unencumbered by wealth, the alternate currency was an abundance of charm or copious celebrity. For those young gentlemen who had nothing but charm to promote themselves to her, there was always the possibility that Césarine might be engaged in a passing flirtation. Because she was a woman of voluptuous tastes, having a young lover to satisfy her more passionate needs, and a rich one to sate the most fundamental, was the best of all possible worlds.
Moreover, if the young lover’s allurement lasted no longer than the bloom of a rose, it was all the more efficient. It allowed more time to pit marquis against duke, racheting up the value of their gifts with a seemingly ambivalent Césarine benefiting from the cachet of duelling paramours. The diamond-studded, ruby-encrusted choker from the count was a particularly favourite gratuity. It looked to have first been seen adorning the neck of a courtier of Louis XIV, therefore when it graced hers, it was an excellent ambassador to entice lovers to vie for the uppermost position on her dance card. (It was some time before it was missed by the de Nuncio family, and even longer before it dawned upon them where to look.)
***
By the year ’15, Césarine had amassed, and then frittered away, several fortunes. As was her fate, she had not saved a franc. The summer of Napoleon’s ultimate defeat, she was peeking into the abyss that represented her fourth decade. Some courtesans kept their looks and their lovers (if price and discretion were adjusted ever so subtly). But those who managed that were women of superior learning and wit. Time had not mellowed Césarine’s nature and nothing compromised a lover’s esteem more than an aging ingénue with an ill temper and a persistent cough.
Indeed, dear Césarine had not only done the unthinkable of outliving her funds, she had contracted the courtesan’s cliché—a galloping case of consumption. (It was an undeniable scientific truth of the times that the resultant breathiness of a surfeit of erotic spasms resulted in a weakened chest.) Yet even with compleat calamity perched on her doorstep, she did not retrench. So disposed was she to live life, she little knew how to brook impending death.
The particulars of her case were unknown to George Wickham when, with freshly arranged hair and ill-gotten suit, bearing a pinched invitation, he sidled into one of her soirées.
31
Love Has Its Fashion
“It is a fine day, Darcy,” Elizabeth announced pertly.
“Hmmm,” was his noncommittal reply.
They had long since finished their breakfast and were enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee. History had taught him that a seemingly innocuous statement by his wife could betimes betray an ulterior motive. Hence, with his brief utterance, his cup had stopt short of his lips, temporarily suspended. Ever collected, he had the presence of mind to blow in its direction as if it were still a tad too hot.
Noting from him a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the weather, she furthered the subject, asking, “Excellent weather to take a turn with the horses, do you not agree?”
With exaggerated care, he returned his cup to its saucer and turned to her. Then cautiously he agreed that, indeed, it was a fine day. He had, however, no comment as to the appropriateness of the weather for her suggested activity. Time had allowed them a return to easy familiarity that had always attended their private moments. This day they had no guests with whom to contend and hence no propriety to protect. Yet clearly her last horseback episode was much on his mind. Understanding that probability, Elizabeth sat looking in his direction, waiting for him to oppose her suggestion. She was fully prepared to rebut. They both knew that it had been proven unconditionally that of late there was little that she could not stay astride—and no limit to her endurance. Therefore, he drummed the fingers of his right hand in frustration.
Knowing her husband as she did, she understood his rapping fingers made his point on his behalf. She was not to be so easily deterred.
She said, “You have insisted that I take fresh air. I propose that is done to best advantage from a saddle. The exercise is invigorating. My proficiency is wanting. We are of the same mind that one must take the time to practice.”
Darcy looked as if he might have liked to present an opposing argument, but his attention was arrested by a red indention that adorned his drumming forefinger. It was not pronounced, but quite visible just below the knuckle.
He stopt drumming and hastily removed his hand from sight.
As it happened, that small injury was a visible reminder of the previous night’s amatory exercise. It came about in a manner of utmost privacy and gazing upon the evidence in the very bright morning light was a bit mortifying. The injury had occurred at the crescendo of a very unbridled event. Elizabeth’s mention of riding only intensified the recollection of her straddling him the night before. She had—or possibly, he had (the exact perpetrator under such circumstances is not always identifiable) wedged his forefinger deep in her mouth. The impetus was not in question, for it was a manoeuvre that had often been employed at the very height of their passion. It sated his pleasure and silenced hers (the sheer intensity of her achievement could betimes expose itself through auditory overexuberance). But lost in the throes of delight, she had inadvertently bitten him. At the time, it had not hurt whatsoever; it had only enhanced his gratification.
He had been uncertain if she was aware that he still bore the memento of that exquisite moment—until he glanced in her direction. Her expression was unambiguous. Had it not been, she then raised one eyebrow, a device which could have been construed as over-egging the pudding insofar as his composure was concerned.
Indeed this disturbance was irrefutably identified by the bright red splotches just then blossoming high on both his cheeks. Bent on concealing this disconcertion, he first frowned and then coughed, finding great occupation in stirring his coffee. He quickly realised this activity exhibited his rapturously bitten digit and became even more unsettled. His neckcloth had suddenly become constricting and he first tugged a bit at
it, then ran said forefinger round just under the edge. He then rose and gave his wife a slight bow as if disposed to take his leave.
She replaced her cup in its saucer and brushed the crumbs from her lap, ready even then to don the riding habit that hung in wait for her in her dressing-room. She had taken the precaution of trying it on and was happy to learn that, with the hooks loosened a bit, she could manage to wear it. But it was not that small triumph that tugged the corners of her mouth into a smug smile. It was the undeniable success of her tease. It was one of her sweetest conceits to be able still to discompose him so compleatly.
By the time she stood from the table, she was humming with self-satisfaction.
Therefore, her husband standing directly behind her took her quite unawares. As he bent low and whispered to her, she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear.
“Lizzy dearest, if practice you must, I would much rather you perform to my delectation.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
She sank back in her chair, a small whimper escaping from her throat. He turned as if to quit the room, but then stopt and looked back upon her, clearly appraising the level of mischief he had wrought upon her composure. Satisfied, he strode from the room. She recognised the direction his footfalls took to be heading towards the staircase.
Sitting yet in her chair, Elizabeth had not moved. Nothing changed in her attitude save the crimson that then flamed in her cheeks, crept down her throat, and settled into her décolletage.
“Well,” she thought to herself, “the weather will be as fine at eleven o’clock as it is at half-past nine.”
As she then scurried after her husband, she also reminded herself that complacency over any part of his inclinations would always be a grievous error.
Had Elizabeth not been so single-mindedly disposed that morning, another observation might have interested her thoughts. It was the first morning since Jane had returned to Kirkland Hall that Elizabeth had not longed to see her face across from her at their breakfast table.
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