by Nia Farrell
Charles, of course, has eyes only for Miss Jane. “What happy fortune!” he exclaims. “How good it is to see you so! We were going to call, were we not?”
This last part is directed to me for confirmation in support of a friend. I cannot disclose that dangling the carrot of a potential visit was the only way I could get Charles to leave off his moping, and I am not about to let him go unchaperoned. This trip is a test, and both of us are failing miserably.
Miss Elizabeth looks skeptical. Just as I nod my head in affirmation, one of the officers turns around to look at me.
George Wickham. Here. In the militia and untouchable, otherwise I would be tempted to beat him to a pulp.
Or kill him.
The bastard mocks me, touching his hat in a parody of greeting. I nod stiffly, appalled that social mores require such civility. I feel my face grow flush. My breath escapes from behind clenched teeth. Miss Elizabeth stares at me, sees my quiet rage, and shrinks back with widened eyes.
I shake my head. It is not her. It is him. “Wickham,” I snarl, more warning than greeting and far from civil. I have shocked Miss Elizabeth, I know. But I have told her that some men must not be teased. I trust that she has the sense to recognize George Wickham as one of them. Tearing my gaze from her puzzled face, her questioning eyes, I pull one rein to spin my horse around and spur him back the way we came, leaving Bingley to stay or go as he chooses.
He does not linger long. Enough to make apologies but not enough to invent excuses. Not that I need to be excused. George Wickham’s very existence offends me. His baser nature disgusts me. What he did…what he does….
Do take care, Elizabeth.
As soon as I reach Netherfield Hall, I write to Hugh—two identical letters to be dispatched to Rosings and to my town house in London, the most likely places he will be, once Aunt Catherine has finished with him. Gavin agrees to take them, with my revised letter to my aunt, into Meryton for me. He is a good man. If his situation were different, I think that he would be a good match for Victoria, who has been spending time in the kennels, sketching the black-and-tan setters with the intention of painting or embroidering their likenesses…or so she says. When the three young Bingleys beg Charles for pin money and permission to visit the local haberdashery, I suspect that more than artwork draws Victoria to her brother’s kennels.
Hmmm.
It is none of my concern, of course. Neither is Miss Elizabeth Bennet, or so I tell myself. At twenty years of age, she is old enough to know better. She has been warned. Protecting her is not my responsibility, and yet…
She does not know what Wickham is. Does not know that, beneath the easy smile and affable manners, lies the blackened soul of a twisted man. A deviant with a lust for virgin blood and an innocent’s tears. I can only pray that she is too old to tempt him, or too wise to fall under his spell.
My prayers are destined to go unanswered.
Charles follows through with his plans to host a ball at Netherfield. Although there are officers in attendance—the newly engaged Colonel Forster among them—George Wickham is conspicuously absent, and Miss Elizabeth clearly blames me.
I am unaware, at first. She enters the ballroom with her entire family (including the seldom-seen Mr. Bennet and his cousin Mr. Collins), scans the crowd, and goes straightway to her friend Charlotte Lucas. I watch, wait, bide my time with every intention of asking her to dance. Reverend Collins claims the first two. From the way her mother beams, Mrs. Bennet would delight in their match.
I wait too long, and watch as she dances next with an officer. When the music swells, then stills, ending the set, she returns to her friend Miss Lucas. It is now or never.
“Miss Elizabeth.”
Upon hearing my voice, her dark eyes snap up to meet mine, suspicious, with animosity flaring from their depths, and I know, in that instant, that she wishes I were another. Well, fuck that. Suddenly, I need to know just how far he has gone. Has he done more than simply charm her?
Has he smelled her perfume, grown heady with the scent of night-blooming jasmine, and dared to drink from her skin?
Has he tasted that mouth? Touched those breasts?
Has he claimed her body as well as captured her imagination?
“Might I have your hand for the next dance?”
“Yes.” She blinks and swallows hard, disbelieving, as if she cannot fathom why I asked or why she agreed. She pales just a bit but does not rescind her acceptance.
Good girl.
Pivoting, I return to where I have been since this ordeal began and wait for the musicians who are on break to reseat themselves. When the dancing is to recommence, I approach Miss Elizabeth to claim her hand. Seeing me, Miss Lucas whispers something in Miss Elizabeth’s ear. She makes no response but takes her place in the set opposite me.
She seems almost in a state of shock, to find herself my partner. But then I shun dancing like others avoid the plague. She stares at me, unspeaking, accusations shining from the depths of her dark sapphire eyes.
Wickham. Her mind has been poisoned, her sentiments turned. She has been beguiled. Duped. Caught in his spell. God knows what he has told her. Wickham is too clever to be where I am, when I can refute whatever untruths have been purported. I can strike down lies, old and spread anew. Wickham is not here because of it, and Miss Elizabeth blames me for denying her his company.
Too bad, pet. Someday you shall thank me.
Her dark eyes look across, in my direction, but she stubbornly avoids my gaze.
Brat.
The realisation shocks me, that I did not see it before. That much intelligence, so much initiative and determination…
She will not submit easily. But when she does….
As if speaking first might gain her the upper hand, Miss Elizabeth makes an observation on the dance, deliberately worded to provoke me into disagreeing, or arguing against it.
“As you say,” I reply, then am silent again, watching her as she moves through the pattern of the dance.
She is grace in motion. If she fucks like she dances…
Miss Elizabeth looks at me crossly, not happy at all. Apparently I have missed something that she said. “I am sorry.”
“I said,” she snaps, “it is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some sort of remark on the size of the rooms, or the number of couples.”
Jesus God. She is pissed about Wickham. She clearly does not wish to dance with me, yet expects me to chit chat while dancing to her tune?
My smile serves its purpose and throws her off balance. “As you wish. You would know best if the room is sufficient to accommodate more than…four and twenty dancers, I believe.”
She casts a satirical eye. “Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. But now we may be silent.”
Really? When she is still itching to confront me about Wickham? I let it go when the pattern of the dance parts us. Together again, I ask if she talks by rule, then, when she dances.
“Sometimes,” she says. “One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for…half an hour together….”
This, a deliberate dig at me, on her last day at Netherfield, when I chose a book over her company. At the time, I believed it to be in both of our best interests. As much as I might wish otherwise, I believe it still. She cannot give me what I need, and I will not take what I want.
Unlike Wickham, I refuse to ruin her for other men.
“And yet for the advantage of some,” she continues, “conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they have the trouble of saying as little as possible.”
Now it is my turn to be skeptical. “Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case?” I wonder aloud. “Or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?”
“Both,” she says archly, “for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds.”
/> Our intelligence, perhaps, but not the direction of our thoughts. If she knew mine just now, how I envision her bound, naked, thighs spread wide to reveal her wet, pink sex, she would run from me and not look back, not if she wished to save herself.
“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb.”
I am certain that she believes her description to be a faithful portrait of me, yet I see no striking resemblance to her own character and tell her so.
She answers like her solicitor uncle, noncommittally. “I must not decide on my own performance.”
What the deuce?
Just to vex her, I say nothing more until we have gone down the dance. I ask her if she and her sisters do not very often walk to Meryton, daring her to speak of the last time we were there.
“We do,” she says. Unable to resist the temptation, she adds, “When you met us the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance.”
Wickham. And she did not heed my warning. Pity.
Disappointment clouds my features. Seeing it, she pursues the subject no further.
I confess, I am troubled. Miss Elizabeth has formed “an acquaintance” with George Wickham. She has not a clue how dangerous he is.
Remembering my sister, I am compelled to warn her to beware. “Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends. Whether he may be equally capable of keeping them is less certain.”
Oh, that ruffles her feathers. She avoids meeting my gaze when she retorts, “He has been so unlucky as to lose your friendship, and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all his life.”
I wonder what twisted version of the truth he has told her. I am tempted to demand it from her, but Sir William Lucas spares me from the indignity of defending myself. Coming near us, he bows courteously and compliments me on my performance and my partner.
“I have been most highly, highly gratified indeed, my dear sir. Such very superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong to the first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not disgrace you. Miss Eliza, I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain desirable event—” he glances pointedly at her sister and my friend “—shall take place.”
Dear God. Is this the consensus of the neighborhood, to have them as good as wed when no offer of marriage exists, when no such desires have been expressed, no sentiments exchanged, no vows made? I perceive Mrs. Bennet’s hand in this. I am convinced that she is the source of this unfortunate rumor.
“What congratulations will then flow in!” he chortles. “I appeal to Mr. Darcy—but let me not interrupt you, sir. You will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me.”
Are they? I resist looking at Miss Elizabeth to confirm it. My concerned gaze is fixed on Charles Bingley, dancing with Miss Jane. I wonder what can be done to halt the rumour mill, when the way that he looks at her provides its very grist.
Jesus God.
I did not swear aloud, but my partner seems to think that my unhappiness stems from her. Miss Elizabeth lifts her stubborn chin, her dark eyes snapping. “I do not think we were speaking at all,” she clips. “Sir William could not have interrupted two people in the room who have less to say for themselves. We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine.”
My imagination is not so encumbered, but I can say nothing that she is ready to hear, that would not send her fleeing. She haunts my dreams, fuels my fantasies, and tempts me without trying. If I could, I would drag her upstairs to my room and assuage this hunger inside me.
Enough, Darcy!
I must not think of her in my bed. I must remember where we are, surrounded by eyes that miss nothing and tongues eager for gossip.
Refusing to argue, I focus on the dance and choose another subject to discuss, one safer than and far removed from Wickham. “What think you of books?” I ask, smiling to encourage her.
Apparently, she will have none of it. “Books? Oh, no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings.”
“I am sorry you think so, but if that be the case, there can at least be no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”
And if the brat in her argues for argument’s sake, I will happily spank her for it.
“No,” she says. “I cannot talk of books in a ballroom. My head is always full of something else.”
I am skeptical—until I see how the very subject distracts her. “The present always occupies you in such scenes, does it?”
“Yes, always.”
While dancing with me…is she thinking of him? Of Wickham? My suspicion is confirmed when she blurts, “I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgive, that your resentment once created is unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its being created.”
Ah, back to Wickham. “I am.”
“And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?”
“I hope not.”
“It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion to be secure of judging properly at first.”
I am secure, damn it. Leveling my most serious, dominant stare at her, the one that brings submissives to their knees, I demand to know the purpose of her questions.
Her gaze drops to my chest. “Merely to the illustration of your character. I am trying to make it out.” A furrow appears in her brow and she seems perplexed, trying to solve the enigma of me.
“And what is your success?”
She shakes her chestnut head and admits to failure. “I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.”
“I can readily believe that reports may vary greatly with respect to me,” I say, all seriousness when it comes to what she may have heard from Wickham. “And I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either.”
That stubborn chin comes up in protest. “But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have the opportunity.”
For a moment, I wonder if she knows that I am yet determined to separate her sister from my friend. Miss Jane, although pleasant, has not yet shown the firm, guiding hand that Charles needs. Unless she proves herself worthy and capable, I am pledged to see us permanently gone from here.
Gone from her.
Just as well. Miss Elizabeth is too tempting. Nothing lasting can happen between us, and a taste of her will not satisfy, not when I want her willing submission. I want those plump, full lips around my cock. I want her on her hands and knees as I pound into her from behind. I want to hear her gasp and moan when I take her anal virginity, pinch and twist her pebbled nipples and bring her to another shattering climax.
Accepting that it will never happen fouls my mood. The idea of abandoning her to Reverend Collins and George Wickham disturbs me even more.
“I would by no means suspend any pleasures of yours,” I tell her, struggling to banish the image of her, naked, suspended from a St. Andrew’s Cross, her fair skin striped with lovely red outlines of my favourite crop. My tone is warning enough, inviting no response. Sensitive to it, she says no more as the dance progresses.
We part in silence, each of us dissatisfied.
Chapter Thirteen
After our dance has ended, Caroline is quick to corner Miss Elizabeth. I can only guess what is said, but none of it is to Miss Elizabeth’s liking. Her face grows flushed—with anger or insult or indignation—and she huffs off to Miss Jane. Their two heads stay close together in quiet conversation until Charles joins them, whereupon Miss Elizabeth seeks out her friend Miss Lucas.
Reverend Collins joins them shortly thereafter.
Miss Elizabeth’s refusal to offer so much as a smile is telling. She may not be pleased to see him, but can I wish him ill in his suit when he is, on the surface, so far better a choice than George Wickham?
Unless the Reverend has a dark side to his soul…?
I no sooner resolve to ask Aunt Catherine about him than the Reverend accosts me, forcing an introduction that is both unwelcome and inappropriate, given our stations in life. He manages a bow, effuses an apology, and thinks to impress me with his connection to my aunt. I let him ramble, but when I respond with civility that he does not deserve, he gets a second wind and launches into another speech, this one about his connection to Longbourn, his fate to inherit, and my aunt’s express desire to see him settled with a wife.
Fuck.
He excuses himself with another bow and returns to Miss Elizabeth, as if to stake his claim upon her. I am forced to watch it from a distance, like a capsized boat, seeing the promise of the evening slowly sink from view. I do not hope for more when I am seated across from her at supper, not with her mother next to her, and beside her mother, Lady Lucas.
Mrs. Bennet casts a sly glance in my direction, then tells Mrs. Lucas that she expects Jane and Bingley will soon be married.
“Mother! Please!” Miss Elizabeth’s whisper carries across the table. Appalled by her mother’s audacity, she casts a distressed look in my direction, but her mother pays no heed. Indeed, Mrs. Bennet becomes more animated and waxes eloquent on the advantages of the match: his being such a charming young man…
True.
“And so rich…”
Speaking from where she sits, I am certain that he seems so.
“And living only three miles from us….”
We shall see about that.
“Such a comfort it is, to think how fond his two sisters are of Jane. To be certain, they must desire the connection just as much. Moreover, it is such a promising thing for my younger daughters, as Jane’s marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men. Ah,” she sighs. “It is so pleasant at this time of life to be able to consign my single daughters to the care of their sister, that I may not be obliged to go into company more than I like.”