by Nia Farrell
“Why?” I ask her, nipping her earlobe and making her moan. “No one but us will ever know. If virgin you are, virgin you shall remain—albeit a more enlightened one. Do you feel how swollen you are? Feel the blood pooling, pulsing in your loins. Feel your own arousal. The knot of tension that grabs at your core, taking hold of you, until you would do almost anything to ease it. Touch yourself.”
I take her hand and flatten it, guiding it between her legs. Her fingers replace mine, but my hand is over hers, adding pressure, helping her learn how it is done. “Plump, tingling nether lips. That tempting seam between them, dripping with juices to ease the way inside. One finger, then two, then three…stretching you out…, readying you for possession. Later,” I promise when she whimpers with need.
“Find your crowning jewel and treasure it. Discover what feels best. Keep doing exactly that—and soon you will reach the pinnacle of pleasure.”
She is a quick learner, so beautiful, bringing herself to the point of orgasm and hovering on the precipice. I dip my hand inside her bodice, catch her nipple, and pinch it to send her flying over the edge.
“Ah. God!” she cries, her whole body shaking with a paroxysm that goes on and on. When the last waves subside and she goes limp in my arms, I pick her up and carry her to the settee.
I lift her hand and suck her juices from her fingers and mine, memorizing her taste as she slowly regains consciousness. “Good girl,” I praise her, rubbing her hand, working any soreness from the muscles. She gave it quite a workout. “How do you feel?”
“Confused,” she says, her honeyed voice swirling with emotions. “I had no idea….” Those sapphire eyes snap to mine, widen, then narrow dangerously a second before she shoves me as far as her arms will reach.
“You…you…bastard,” she hisses the foulest word to have ever crossed her lips. “How could you do what you have done to my sister and think you can do this with me? Tell me you want to bind me? Spank me? Make me kneel and call you Master? Are you mad?”
Perhaps I am. Damn Hugh. I tamp down my anger with him and manage to regain my composure, cursing myself for being seven times the fool. Cursing her for making me want her when she so very clearly does not reciprocate.
She called me “bastard.”
For that alone, I should punish her. I consider it for a long moment, while dread shapes her face at what I will do. We are alone. There is no one to stop me from doing what I will, only my conscience and the fact that, unlike Wickham, I am a gentleman.
She called me a bastard.
“And this is the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting?” I ask, with a voice of forced calmness. “I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.”
She bristles like a cat with its fur gotten up. “I might as well inquire why, with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have.”
Thanks to Hugh, curse the luck.
“Had my feelings decided against you,” she hisses, “had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps forever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”
Guilt—a seldom felt emotion—assails me. I cannot deny her charges. Rather than interrupt, to try to explain my side of things, I bite my tongue and resolve to wait until she has finished.
“I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other—of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.”
There is a raw emotion in her speech that I recognize all too well—the sound of one who has watched another suffer and stood by helplessly, unable to do anything but be there for them. She makes it sound as if Miss Jane is devastated. Has Bingley hidden more hurt than I realised? No. No. I know him too well.
“Can you deny that you have done it?” she chokes out, on the verge of tears.
I sigh, defeated. “I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself.”
“But it is not merely this affair on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? Or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?”
Colour rises in my face when she dares to accuse me of misrepresentation, taking the word of a seducer, an instrument of ruin for young women naïve enough to fall for his practiced lies. “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns.” I grind out the words between clenched teeth.
She lifts that stubborn chin and challenges me. “Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?”
“His misfortunes?!” There is no disguising the contempt in my voice for the man who raped my sister. “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”
“And of your infliction,” she cries. “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty—comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule.”
I have to walk away. It is either that, or take her across my knee and give her the walloping she deserves for taking his side without question, without investigation. She has spent hours with Hugh. One word, and he could have set her aright. But no. She stayed mute, and now I am to blame for everything.
“And this is your opinion of me? This is the estimation in which you hold me? I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps—” I pause in my pacing and pivot to look at her “—these offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections?—to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy,” she says tightly, “if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”
Refuse me? I think back furiously, pulling threads of speech, untangling the mess we have made to see what the hell she’s talking about. I told her that I admired her. That I wanted her…
Fuck. She took it a step too far. She has translated wanting into having and holding, until death us do part.
She thinks that I offered a proposal, rather than a proposition. Her next words confirm it.
“You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
Oh, that stings. But I am the dominant. As such, I must take responsibility for us both.
“From the very beginn
ing,” she grates, “from the first moment—I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
Rather than point out that would require an actual proposal, I resolve to put an end to this painful conversation. “You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”
I leave her, quitting the room, quitting the house. Quitting her.
Except I cannot. Not yet. Not when she is headed back to Meryton and Wickham and believes every lie that he has told her. But how much do I say? Too little, and she will dismiss it. To tell all would involve my sister. Although I am still pissed at Hugh, he is the best to judge if Miss Elizabeth can be trusted to keep secrets.
“She can,” is his answer when I have recounted the fiasco at the parsonage, every detail of our conversation given while the scent of her arousal yet lingers on my hand. He does not need to know that she brought herself to climax under my guiding hand, after I shared with her my fantasies of bondage, spanking, and submission.
I sigh. “I cannot speak to her. Today, it was all I could do to be coherent when I could feel myself, ready to trip on every word. No. I shall write to her. Will you read it and give me an honest critique before I send it?”
“Of course,” he says, pouring us both another glass of wine. We did not stop at dinner, but had a bottle sent to the study, where we are once again safely ensconced in our masculine domain.
Hugh drinks. I write. The fifth draft is as perfect as I can make it. The rest are consigned to flames.
Chapter Twenty
Hugh offers to take the letter to Miss Elizabeth for me, but I must be the bearer. Perhaps it is as penance, that my hand must be the one that places it into hers, with a prayer of hope that I can at least save her when I could not save my sister.
She does not take her favoured path today. I pace among the trees, which serve to hide me, in case she is trying to avoid me, and will hopefully allow me to see her before she notices me and can make good an escape.
Suddenly, she appears near the gate of the park. The grove is at its edge, the gate a straight shot down. I head for it, hoping to reach it before she does. Our strides are equally determined but mine is longer and sets me in place before she reaches the gate.
She refuses to look at me. She has no idea of the sleepless night I have spent, nor of my fatigue, having paced miles while waiting for her to make an appearance. I thrust the letter before her line of vision, making certain that she sees it, at least.
She reaches for it instinctively, and is ready to give it back when she realises what she has done.
I shake my head in silent warning. If she cannot obey me in this, there is no hope for us. None.
She sighs, defeated. Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she mulls upon it. I tamp down the need to taste it and compose myself enough to deliver the words I have practiced all morning. “I have been walking in the grove for some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?”
Before she can refuse, I bow and return to Rosings, desperately hoping that I have done the right thing.
Before we leave for London, I make one more attempt to see her, to make certain that she read my letter and did not destroy it. In case she has, I drag Hugh along with me to the parsonage, but Miss Elizabeth is gone. Too pent up to stay, I go out, to see if I can find her but luck is not with me.
I return to Rosings alone. Hugh comes back an hour later, having stayed as long as he could, but he missed her as well.
By the next morning, we are gone.
The journey home is filled with angst. Worry that I have said too little. Dread that I have said too much. Hugh says that Elizabeth Bennet can be trusted. If she cannot, I will not know until it is too late and my sister’s reputation is in shambles. Hugh, of course, cares but in his own fashion; for him, either outcome offers the potential for benefits. If Miss Elizabeth does not share the Darcy family secrets, she can be trusted to keep more. If she exposes Wickham as a seducer of unnamed innocents, she does the world a service. If Georgiana’s ordeal is leaked, her list of potential suitors is reduced to Hugh who remains committed to her regardless.
I think of the letter. My own words haunt me.
Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those offers which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice.
Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley from your sister, and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham. Willfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison. But from the severity of that blame which was last night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope to be in the future secured, when the following account of my actions and their motives has been read. If, in the explanation of them, which is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which may be offensive to yours, I can only say that I am sorry. The necessity must be obeyed, and further apology would be absurd.
I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with others, that Bingley preferred your elder sister to any other young woman in the country. But it was not till the evening of the dance at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious attachment. I had often seen him in love before….
Enamoured of potential Mistresses, actually, but that is Bingley’s secret to share, not mine.
At that ball, while I had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir William Lucas’s accidental information, that Bingley’s attentions to your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage. He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend’s behaviour attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Bennet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced from the evening’s scrutiny, that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment.
Nor did she command them.
“If you have not been mistaken here, I must have been in error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable.”
I was wrong. I misjudged. The sick feeling lodged in the pit of my stomach tells me so. Carriage rides never make me queasy.
“If it be so, if I have been misled by such error to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not scruple
to assert, that the serenity of your sister’s countenance and air was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is certain—but I will venture to say that my investigation and decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. I did not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it; I believed it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. My objections to the marriage were not merely those which I last night acknowledged to have the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case; the want of connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. But there were other causes of repugnance; causes which, though still existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before me. These causes must be stated, though briefly. The situation of your mother’s family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison to the total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure, is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your elder sister, than it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both….
Jesus God, how I struggled with that part. In the end, it was no less than what I would do in a punishment session. Correct. Chasten. Care for the wounds inflicted with each lashing word.