Here she grasped one end of the ribbon and held it daintily in her fingers.
.”.. or not.”
She pulled it loose. Therefore the top of her drawers fell just far enough down her hips to reveal the cleft of her derriere. He could not see the dimple in the middle of her soft, round buttock, but he knew it was there.
Not altogether trusting his voice, he nodded. To what he had just acquiesced, he was uncertain.
He gathered his dignity, bowed from the waist, and said, “I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours.”
“I do not take your meaning, sir. Do you, or do you not, approve of my morally ambiguous undergarment?”
With remarkable fluidity, he slid onto the bed behind her, his hands resting lightly at her bare waist.
“On closer inspection, they have improved on me.”
These drawers were ruffled, two rows of lace adorned the drawstring. He had not fully appreciated the frills upon the other pair as he had suffered from a severe case of masculine want at that time. Indeed, he had not investigated them in a gentlemanly fashion at all. He had meant to apologise for his fit of pique. But addressing his want of gallantry would come later. Just then, there was a more important mission at hand.
His fingers spread wide, nearly spanning her waist. Skimming beneath her drawstring they slid across her abdomen and down between her legs. Her breath, which had been quite relaxed, increased at his touch. It became even more stirred as his lips found the indention just behind her ear lobe. That kiss begat a frisson of electricity that shuddered down her body and pooled into the deepest reaches of her womanhood. No caress, no endearment could ever surpass that kiss—save for the one to come.
Such was her fervour, she fell to the side, her arms open and inviting. With great economy of movement, he drew himself atop her, his fingers still reconnoitring with tender urgency.
“There is no need...,” said she.
She need not fear that he would tear this garment asunder. When he had rent the other, it was simply to make a point. The separation of the leggings was quite impassioning. Within that gap could be found the most bewitching furrow; the great persuader of his flesh. Nothing at all lay between him and his single-minded need to have her. Every sinew—so ungovernable still—very nigh overtook his reason once again. Nothing would have kept his passion in check except for the knowledge that there was found far greater pleasure in removing the offending garment, aided by his every stroke, her every response, the bending knee, and undulating hips.
It was quite unlike him to be moved to whisper a sonnet in her ear. But he did.
“Love is not love,” he said. “Which alters when it alteration finds,
“Or bends,” she whispered, “With the remover to remove....”
Drawing the last of the lace from her legs, he tossed them over his head and said no more.
“O, no!” she gasped, “It is an ever-fixed mark....”
Indeed, it was.
Chapter 21
The Daisy is Also a Flower
Although London’s citizens were beyond her counting, in many ways its insular neighbourhoods made it as meddlesome and gossipy as the quaintest village in Sussex. Daisy had learnt of what direction little Miss Arbuthnot had taken before she was a hundred feet down the path.
Sally had always been an odd little chit. Daisy harrumphed at her strange need to return Mr. Darcy’s money to him—what with him being richer than Croesus and all. That girl always was in want of some pence in the shilling. Likely she would follow the man all the way to the North Country to repay him. Sally always had a peculiar view of honour. Daisy had learnt from an early age to watch out for her own interests. But then she was the last living issue of her mother’s various unions and alone in the world.
Daisy’s mother, good Mrs. Mulroney had been a prolific breeder, but only three of her children survived to adulthood. That was not unusual; only the strongest lived to see their majority in the Dials. If they did, they were hardened by meanness and pinched by want. Both her brothers met an inglorious fate. Frank had managed to find a good situation, but allowed Tommy to lead him astray. Tom Reed spent time on the Newgate treadmill. Folks said he was rotten before he got there. He should have hanged for murder, but escaped by garrotting a guard.
Daisy had not been the poorest naïf in London. In the warren of rooms crowding every festering street, the hungriest begged from open windows and bawled in doorways. Some of them were able-bodied; some of them were not. There were plenty of peg-legged men, one-eyed women, and toothless oldsters of both sexes. Children went barefoot in all seasons and babies often had long-standing coughs (severe enough to influence their parents not to form a deep attachment for them).
Daisy counted herself amongst the fortunate of her neighbours. She was not mad, sick, nor otherwise impaired. Being a bit stunted never held her back. Some called her a dwarf, but she was something far rarer than that. (Yea, had she been a dwarf, she would have been turning summersaults for the Crown in the corridors of St. James Palace.) She grew no taller than fifty inches, forever a child—at least in body. In spirit and understanding she was a woman.
Early on she displayed an extraordinary head for business. There were not many ways to earn one’s keep. With no man to see to her, like most girls she sold what she had—and she had something quite unique. The usual sexual favours were bought and sold in every nook and cranny in the Dials (notwithstanding the breadth and imagination of the possibilities) for what you could get. Attending to carnal perversities paid best. The taking of a young girl’s maidenhead was the most rare and therefore, expensive. Daisy sold herself as a virgin over and over again. Executing this farce involved cat guts and the like—quite a messy business. Daisy had engaged in the ruse for years. It paid for her lodgings, two dresses, and an ermine tippet—high-living when it came to her neighbourhood.
Her high commissions did not last forever. Eventually word got around to potential clients that she was no virgin.
A saggy, old street woman (whose only entertainment was to interfere with another’s trade) began hooting at likely clients, “Daisy’s been ‘round the block more times than a hackney coach!”
The exposure of this information did not compleatly put off her clients. There were always the sort who liked to pretend they were docking a maid—and she was happy to oblige. When anyone hollered at her on the street, calling her a loose woman, she was good-humoured.
“I are nothing of the kind!” she liked to whoop. “Tight as the bark on a tree, that’s me!”
Opposed to illicit trade in general, her friend Sally Frances Arbuthnot was more appalled by the purchasers of debauchery rather than the purveyors. Daisy sniffed at such pretensions. Hip cocked and a perennial cigar in her hand, Daisy blew one cloud after another.
She asked, “Will fools burn in hell any hotter for one sin more ’n the other?”
Sally knew as much as the next person that Daisy was no more a sinner than half the people in Mayfair. Daisy Mulroney was a survivor.
As the history of her brothers suggested, Daisy had many influences that held sway over her beyond just a premature inauguration into the flesh trade. The money they took off of Wickham meant to her what it would have meant to anyone else. Money meant power—and power meant freedom. Daisy would no longer live by anyone else’s leave—and that was a price above rubies.
When Daisy left Wickham’s lodgings that night, she was in no particular hurry. Having bid her goodbye to Sally, she was not yet disposed to indulge herself of her new-found wealth. Another might have run up the street offering pints to everyone in sight. Daisy knew that particular move would have aroused the suspicious. Thieves were always on the watch for unusual signs of affluence. However, she did not return to the Gates of Hell brothel. She had other, grander plans.
She took a slow, thoughtful stroll down Gowell Street. Usually she fancied morning walks. But that night the air appealed to her. It had been late enough not to be bothered by street u
rchins, but too early for blood-leaking corpses to be a threat to one’s shoes. The air stank and fog enveloped her. Still, she had wanted to savour her last day as a poor harlot of St Giles.
Several streets over, she took lodgings in a small house, paying for a night. The innkeeper looked at her queerly, haughtily explaining they did not let rooms by the hour. Daisy gave him a sovereign and told him to keep the change. It was a dangerous thing to do, but she could not deny herself the expression that overspread the man’s face. The trip from disdain to awe was brief, but profound.
Once locked in her room, she paid a single tribute to the riches she had just gained. Throwing the bank notes in the middle of a tattered counterpane, she tore off her clothes and jumped in the middle of them. Baying like a hound with a cornered fox, she allowed herself to enjoy her very first sexual release of her life. Suddenly, a question that had always troubled her was answered.
Why were men so bewitched by a piece of a woman’s snug?
It was quite clear to her then. A man did not ride a woman merely to get his bangles rung. He did it for domination. Nothing was more titillating than power. He who had the funds had it all. Men had always held the legal tender, the guinea, the coin, the gold.
Now, at long last, she had it too.
Chapter 22
The Last Word
The night after his wife’s bravura argument in favour of the scurrilous breeches, Mr. Darcy (happy to capitulate) fell into a deep, satisfied sleep. Nothing brought rest surer than spent ardour and an untroubled brow. His wife was happy for that. Not withstanding her own satiation, slumber did not come easy for her. She lay quietly by his side waiting to waft off to dream, but her mind did not rest. It revelled in every urgent beat their hearts had taken. Eventually, she was lured to the balcony by the same soft moonlight that had enticed her husband to their bed.
She padded from thence to the doors and opened one. The air was brisk, but she stepped outside. As she gazed upon the glistening lawn, it pleased her to know that their guests would find their way home well lit by the full moon and cloudless sky.
From the darkness behind her, she heard a moan. Startled, she was relieved to see that it was only Cressida. The dog had managed to insinuate herself into the room and was laying in a corner thrashing her legs—most likely chasing a rabbit in her sleep.
Perchance that was why Elizabeth did not desire sleep just then. She had no influence over her own dreams. Awake, she held sway over where’er her thoughts took her. They went no further than the hour past.
Leaning against the door post, she closed her eyes, recalling her husband’s every touch, his every murmur. Their blood had been so stirred; she wanted not to forget a moment of it.
As her pregnancy progressed, they would continue to enjoy carnal embraces, but not with the same abandon. He (a master of coitus reservatus) would become increasingly cautious, daring not to plumb the depth of her womanhood. Their pleasure would be undiminished, but less wanton, more tender. Her own passion, however, was not as disciplined. In recent weeks she had become evermore eagre to lay with him.
One would think that maternal serenity and libidinous inclinations would be at odds. Once a woman was with child, nature’s wisdom should have convinced her that further ministrations to that end should have been superfluous. It was quite the reverse. Her erotic desires, which were usually quite... sedulous, had become even more ardent. The merest flick of his finger sent her writhing with orgiastic spasms—the sort that threatened to never to end. Yet riding the crest of exhilaration a half-dozen times, she remained aroused.
Perhaps it was nature’s plan—to inspire a husband to keep league and truce through the long winter of gestation. That thought amused her. Granted, alterations would have to be made were they to continue such excitations. Nature’s glory could be incommodious to her vessel’s wants.
But she did not receive pleasure from her satisfaction alone. Her excitation had always been furthered by his achievement. She had once confided in him that she could discern when he pulsated his seed into her—and that the sensation inflamed her passion. Had they not been lying hot and depleted, she might not have been so forthcoming. The moment she said it, she wished she had not been so frank. She had dared not gauge his response. God save a husband from a candid wife
Looking back through the doors, she could see the bed and his outline. His chest rose and fell in deep, even respirations. One arm was flung out to his side as if reaching for her. His hair was tousled, begging her to return and run her fingers through it. His dishevelment always pleased her. Only when he slept did he fully divest himself of lordly pride. Their bed and his warmth beckoned her.
The urge for sleep overcame her ruminations at the precise moment that it should—ere her thoughts became caught up in a labyrinth of the night’s intrigues and scandal. There would be time enough to consider those vexations in the cold light of day. One more glance at the moonlit lawn, however, and any chance for brooding was compleatly lost.
A caped figure caught her eye as it swept like a bat across the grass.
It ran to the edge of the drive where a carriage sat, its door open wide. No footman stood by to hand the lady into the coach—if it was indeed a woman. Nonetheless, the figure leapt into the coach and the door slammed shut. Elizabeth fancied that the door shut on a corner of the cape, but she could not be certain. The coachman cracked his whip and the horses lunged in response, with the coach lumbering on its way. She did not watch as thither it went up the road.
For some reason, her eyes darted to her husband still fast asleep.
As to why the fleeting vignette left her with a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, she could not say. The livery was familiar, but its colour unclear in the darkness. Was it Beecher? And if it was Caroline, why did she steal away. The scene left Elizabeth so unsettled that she well-nigh tempted to awaken her husband to tell him of it. She should have told him. Furtiveness was reason enough to believe something was amiss. For some nebulous reason, she chose not wake him.
It was easier not to tell him at all than to explain to herself why she needed reassurance that her beloved Darcy was, indeed, in his own bed.
Chapter 24
A Note Too Late
Due to a throbbing headache, Lady Howgrave had her husband summon their coach not long after she spoke to Mr. Darcy the night of the Pemberley ball. Except for her sudden bout of ill-health, she appeared quite pleased with herself and the evening.
She was not.
———
When Elizabeth Darcy chanced to see them standing on the gallery above her that night, Juliette had been utterly delighted. Darcy’s smile was as rare as it was fleeting, therefore all the more propitious that it occurred when his wife looked up at them. Juliette had kept her countenance however. It would have been imprudent to reveal her pleasure to either of them. It was enough to know that Darcy’s wife had espied them together—in what looked to be nothing less than a stolen moment.
Was fate not grand?
No woman was immune to jealousy’s cruel barb—that was a certainty. Creating marital disorder was not Juliette’s true calling, just an amusing consequence. In deliberately gazing up at Darcy when (and how) Mrs. Darcy did, Juliette was not only aware that she might vex his wife, she gloried in that possibility. It had long been decreed that all is fair in love and war—although generals bow to ladies when scruples do account. Surely, Miss Bennet did not marry Mr. Darcy without understanding those rules of engagement.
There was a time when she might have liked Elizabeth Darcy, but once Juliette embarked on securing Darcy for herself, she was deemed a mortal enemy. A successful courtesan employed her conscience only marginally more frequently than her heart. That was the way of the world—her world, the demimonde.
Knowing full well that Darcy would tarry with her for but a moment, it was imperative that she put what time he allowed her to good use. Yet hurry could cause the most well-plotted seduction to go awry. It had only been thro
ugh considerable guile that she had managed time alone with him at all.
Mr. Darcy was unlike other men. He did not come when she beckoned. (She had only to curl a finger and a College of Cardinals would be veritably panting at her slippered feet.) He was haughty and terse; passionate and particular—and he alone seemed immune to her charms.
If he was arrogant, she knew he had good reason to be so.
He had spent his life thwarting unwanted female flirtations and in doing so, become almost legendary for his refusals. One story had a lady passing Darcy a note asking him to meet her in her carriage. Somehow that note was secreted into the coat pocket of the lady’s own husband. When he, rather than Darcy, climbed into her coach, the man’s wife was called upon to perform more improvisations than a Piccadilly puppeteer.
Had Juliette not known Darcy so well, she could have expected to fail the way countless others had. Libidinous women forgot to take into account his immoveable pride. He did not dally with inferiors. He held his family name above all else. As all rich men, however, he enjoyed the power of doing as he liked. It was unlikely time had mellowed that inclination.
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