Ann Herendeen

by Pride / Prejudice (v5)

  “Now, Georgie, you know better than to repeat such vulgar sentiments. You will do very well, so long as you repress your childish desire to show off. Young gentlemen don’t like a clever female. Just make sure to wear a becoming gown, and let your natural modesty be your guide.”

  Georgiana set her partially eaten second piece of toast on her plate. “I think I may have caught whatever it is that Mr. Bingley is suffering from,” she said. “I seem to have lost my appetite. Perhaps I’ll just return to my room.”

  Fitz decided to go for a walk. What was the matter with everybody? Charles rejecting balls, of all absurd things—what had been, only a couple of weeks ago, his favorite pastime. Georgie afraid to attend a simple gathering in her natural milieu. At least, the spiritless state Charles was in, Fitz need not fear leaving him alone in the house with Georgie, however much Caroline and Louisa favored anything that would further that cause. He would stroll in St. James’s Park, clear his head, then take care of his own business. Perhaps things would improve over time. They usually did.

  Eight

  IT WAS EASY enough, Elizabeth decided, after suffering a few sleepless and remorse-filled nights, to enjoy the consolations of being in the right. As the days approached for Charlotte’s sacrifice, and as Christmas brought her aunt and uncle Gardiner for a visit, she sympathized with Jane in her loss, attempted to treat Charlotte with reasonable consideration, and reveled in Mr. Wickham’s continued attention.

  Here was living proof that such a man as Elizabeth had only dared dream of existed in the flesh. Mr. Wickham was handsome, intelligent, charming, and open. Where Mr. Darcy looked down his well-shaped nose and sneered, above his company and unconcerned with displaying the sin of pride, Mr. Wickham threw himself into all the lowly pleasures of village society. He did not save himself for whist, but gladly played commerce and lottery tickets with the other young people, laughing at fish won and lost. He danced at assemblies and at family parties where the only music was provided by any girl willing to play the pianoforte for a set or two. He sat with old ladies and children and listened to prattle of weather and high prices and all the housewives’ gossip. And always, his eyes followed Elizabeth.

  He angled to sit by her at supper and to partner her at cards. When she walked into Meryton, often enough he would have arranged to be free from regimental duties and could escort her and her sisters to shops and the library, then home. Nothing improper, no liberties attempted. The best of it was, he talked. Not for him the silence and implied disparagement of a Mr. Darcy. And now that the Netherfield party was all gone back to town, he made no secret of his mistreatment at that man’s hands. Apart from the one most scandalous aspect, which remained Elizabeth’s great confidence to hold for him, the rest of his entire story was now common knowledge and the talk of every gossip in the neighborhood.

  There was only the one problem in all this felicity: money—or the lack of it. It was what had led to Charlotte’s self-immolation, perhaps what had prompted Mr. Bingley’s hasty departure. And without it there was no prospect of marriage, the ultimate purpose of such heady pleasures. There could only be disappointment and loss, the same as Charlotte’s and Jane’s.

  But money and marriage couldn’t change Elizabeth’s feelings. The way her heart leapt when Mr. Wickham entered the room, looked around, and headed straight to her chair. The way his beautiful face lit up at her jokes, and the way he would reach for her hand, forgetting himself in company, then remember just in time, bringing smiles of complicity to their faces, a blush from Elizabeth and the pounding of her heart.

  Sometimes she was certain she heard his heart beating with equal force, cutting through the commotion of the laughing cardplayers and the deaf old people conducting their shouted conversations. Then her breath would catch as if her bodice was laced too tightly—which it never was, from her being so slender—and she would flush and feel as hot as if she sat near the fire on an unseasonably warm autumn day. Her lower body would clench and secrete moisture, shuddering with a will of its own. She would shift in her chair to relieve the feeling, trying all the while to be unobtrusive, not to let anyone, not even him—especially not him—know how greatly she was affected by his presence.

  No, she could not talk of these improper urges, the seeds of which had been planted by seeing Mr. Darcy embracing Mr. Bingley, then brought to full flower by learning of Mr. Wickham’s own endurance of the same abuse. How did one manage? She could not be the only unmarried young woman who had wrestled with such ungovernable passions, and yet had somehow prevailed over them. Some virtuous spinsters must have known these same desires and had not succumbed. Surely not all of the women who knew such feelings were the fallen ones, the lost ones.

  But how?

  FITZ DIRECTED THE driver of the hackney to leave him off a couple of streets from his destination. Best not to announce the direction. Not that it was exactly a secret after fifty years. Everyone knew of the Brotherhood of Philander, but no one, apart from the members themselves, knew any particulars.

  The man at the door bowed Fitz inside, remarking with correct but unmistakable enthusiasm that it was a pleasure to see him again after so long an absence, and informing him as he took Fitz’s hat and gloves that most of the members were attending a “sporting event.” At Fitz’s look of disgust, he assured him it was nothing improper. “Ought to be back soon, sir, if you care to wait.”

  Even as Fitz settled himself in the large parlor and incautiously pulled the heavy curtains aside to watch the last remains of sunset disperse over Hyde Park, he saw the distinctive group approaching the back entrance. In another minute they came tramping through the garden, laughing and shouting and comporting themselves like rambunctious schoolboys let out for a run.

  Sir Frederick Verney, Baronet, beefy and well built, the picture of solid country virtue, led the way, accompanied by the darkly glamorous Andrew Carrington, unusually tall and slim, his allure only accentuated by his swarthy complexion, aquiline nose, and saturnine expression. Lord David Pierce, small and red-haired, who compensated by dressing with the understated elegance of Beau Brummell, and his dear friend, George Witherspoon, a dazzling beauty with a Roman profile and wavy golden hair, followed arm in arm. The Honorable Sylvester Monkton, pretending not to know the others yet reveling in the notoriety, minced along in a typical tailored confection of wasp-waisted coat and pale mauve pantaloons. The physician, Reginald Stevens, looking out of place in his more serviceable garments, and noticeably unhappy, trailed at the end of the procession.

  “Who’s that?” Verney said, stepping into the parlor, hat in hand.

  “Darcy!” Fitz was greeted warmly if distractedly by the others.

  “Should have stopped by earlier,” Pierce said. “Carrington has treated us to an exhibition of his skill.”

  Fitz shook his head. Carrington was carrying his brace of dueling pistols, Stevens had his sinister black satchel; it indeed looked as though the men had returned from an affair of honor, although it was a decent hour of the evening, not dawn. What had Fitz hoped for when he joined this odd fraternity five years ago? He was the same age as most of them, a year or two younger, actually, but they held fast to their immaturity, as if by behaving like boys half their age they might somehow stave off the body’s inevitable decline. All Fitz wanted today was to sit and have a quiet brandy or two, perhaps a rubber of whist, and pour out his troubles. Maybe, if things worked out especially well, a game of piquet with Verney. Those two-handed contests always seemed to reach a happy conclusion…“Not really in the mood for target shooting,” he said.

  “Don’t be such an old dowager,” Verney said. “Carrington and I had a capital wager—I said he couldn’t shoot the hat off my head at fifty paces at twilight.”

  Fitz scowled and rolled his eyes. “How did you expect to collect your debt with a gaping hole in your head? Although, for you, might not make that great a difference.”

  “An academic question, as it turns out,” Carrington said in his drawling,
supercilious manner.

  Verney displayed his high-crowned hat with the neat bullet hole an inch or two from the top, the edges slightly charred. “Finest bit of shooting we ever saw.”

  “I notice Stevens accompanied you just the same,” Fitz said.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Stevens said. “It was damned lucky we weren’t all taken up by the authorities, shooting off pistols in the park, in daylight.” His face brightened, his frown smoothing out into his usual bland expression. “But you know, Darcy, just because I have a professional calling doesn’t mean I can’t take an interest in a wager as well as the next man.”

  “We were about to settle up,” Verney said. He had already untied his cravat and shrugged out of his coat. “But we can wait to hear your news, if you don’t mind, Andrew.” He looked to Carrington for consent.

  Carrington shrugged. “Fine with me, Fred. Every delay is simply interest accruing to my account.”

  Verney appeared unconcerned. “Works both ways, you know.”

  “Well, Darcy,” Monkton said, when all except Stevens had disposed themselves in the chairs and sofas, drinks in hand. While the physician’s services paid for his lodging at the Brotherhood, he also maintained an outside practice for the good of his reputation and the badly needed income. “It’s been an age since we had the pleasure of your company.”

  “You in town for the winter?” Pierce asked.

  “Where’s your nice friend?” Witherspoon asked. Angelic in appearance, and with a corresponding dullness of wit, he had the gentle manners to match, and had been most comfortable with Charles’s undemanding presence. Today Fitz was struck by the vague resemblance to Wickham—like a rough portrait drawn by an unskilled artist who could limn the physiognomy but capture nothing of the spirit.

  “Yes indeed, where is he?” Monkton asked in his insinuating way. “Thought you had given us all up, married his sister at last. What was his name? Bingle? Dinghy?”

  “Bingley,” Fitz said. “Charles Bingley. No, I have not married. And it’s Charles who’s been talking of matrimony, although fortunately I was able to nip that in the bud.”

  “Mustn’t look so down in the mouth,” Monkton said. “Be glad the affair lasted as long as it did. It’s not as if he were one of us, after all.”

  “D’ye know, Monkton,” Fitz said, “you’ve become rather high in the instep all of a sudden. The fact that Charles’s father made his fortune in trade is no reason to assume the son is any less a gentleman than I am. He’s certainly more a gentleman than you’ll ever be.”

  “Don’t play the numbskull with me,” Monkton said. “You know perfectly well what I mean. Your Charles was never a genuine sodomite.”

  “Nor am I,” Fitz said. “Yet my money and name are good enough for membership in this exclusive company.”

  “It’s lucky for you I have a strong stomach,” Monkton said, “because that is the most nauseating swill I’ve been subjected to in some time, and I would hate to ruin my new waistcoat by spewing all over it.”

  “Looks as if you already have,” Fitz said, pointing at the intricate pattern embroidered in pale green and jonquil silk.

  Monkton’s somewhat protuberant eyes stood out even farther at the invitation to battle. “Oh, it’s easy for you strapping, tall men to profess the virtues of austerity in dress. We lesser figures must supplement nature’s deficiencies with artifice. Let’s just say, Darcy, that no man joins the Brotherhood of Philander for the conversation.”

  “I did,” Fitz said. “The prospect of enlightened conversation with men like myself, of superior education and from good families, is rare in our degenerate society, unless one is prepared to indulge in gambling or some other unsavory vice.”

  “Such as eating beefsteaks,” Carrington said with a feigned shudder. “Although, have to say, quite fond of a well-marbled cut of beef, myself.” He winked at Verney.

  “Indeed,” Verney said, oblivious to any double meaning.

  “What about the Dilettantis?” Pierce said. “Sounds your sort of thing. Roman antiquities and so on.”

  “Perhaps it used to be,” Fitz said. “Yet from what I hear, even by Horry Walpole’s day it had become just another gathering of drunkards.”

  “Whereas sodomy, by contrast, is quite acceptable,” Monkton said. “We do agree on that, at any rate.”

  “Not all love between men is sodomy,” Fitz said, “any more than all love between a man and a woman is fornication.”

  “I only wish magistrates and judges shared your opinion,” Carrington said.

  “I imagine the liberal ones do,” Fitz said. “It’s unlikely that men of breeding have anything to fear from outdated laws that were intended more to suppress heresy or insurrection.”

  “Oh, for the love of Apollo!” Monkton exclaimed. “Tell that to those poor sods from the White Swan!”

  Fitz frowned and shook his head. “That is an altogether different matter, regrettable though it was. Those men had no exposure to the ideas of classical learning. Their congregation was formed expressly for the practice of unnatural vice. But for the superior intellect there are other considerations besides one’s prick—hard as that may be for you to comprehend.”

  “Oh, it’s hard for me, all right,” Monkton said.

  Fitz felt his temper rising and spoke softly in counteraction. “I warn you, Monkton, I do not put up with deliberate insults, from you or anyone, even here.” He caught the amused gaze of the others, apparently eager to witness the duel they had missed earlier; the entire exchange struck him as so ridiculous he was forced almost into good humor. “I’ll go so far as to admit that, unfortunately for me, Charles Bingley seems to have lost his taste for conversation.”

  “I don’t remember conversation being one of his accomplishments,” Pierce said. “Or do you mean something else?”

  “You know damned well what he means,” Carrington said.

  “Then why the devil doesn’t he just say it?” Verney said.

  “Some of us,” Pierce said, “have a natural propriety of speech, regardless of our surroundings.”

  “And some of us,” Carrington said, “have a debt of honor to collect.”

  Verney and Carrington rose to go upstairs. “Care for a game of piquet, Darcy, when I come down?” Verney said over his shoulder. “This shouldn’t take above half an hour.”

  “I thank you for the low estimate,” Carrington said. “A pleasure to see you, Darcy, but what with all this lost time to be made good, Verney and I may actually be engaged a bit longer than that.”

  “I only meant,” Verney said, “that the others had a stake in the wager too, and will be demanding their shares.”

  “But not on the same terms,” Carrington murmured, bowing his good-byes and shutting the door behind him.

  “I always had very pleasant conversations with Mr. Bingley,” Witherspoon said. “But I never thought he was one of us either.”

  “He’s not,” Fitz said. “He’s a respectable, innocent young man, somewhat confused at the moment by his lack of experience with females.”

  “If Witherspoon’s artless remark proves anything,” Monkton said, “it’s that it’s absurd to pay the annual equivalent of keeping a king’s mistress—assuming anyone in our royal family had better taste in women than a German swineherd—to join the Brotherhood of Philander, only to talk like a maiden aunt telling of her niece’s being debauched by a footman. But I am sorry to hear your bad news, Darcy.”

  “And I’m sorry to hear of your family misfortune,” Darcy replied.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why, the constant assaults on their virtue the footmen endure in your sister’s household. Suppose she resembles you in that respect.”

  “Kiss my arse,” Monkton said, but smiling. “In fact, I’d be more than willing to return the favor, Darcy. It’s been damned tedious here, all the same old faces.”

  “Since when do you look at faces?” Fitz said.

  “Oh, you know what I mea
n.”

  “Then why don’t you just say it?” Fitz said. “Why pay these exorbitant dues only to talk like a prissy Miss Thing?” He screwed his face up and flapped his wrist in Monkton’s direction.

  “Gentlemen,” Pierce said. “This room is a parlor, meaning it is intended for genuine conversation, the exchange of words. There are plenty of rooms upstairs to accommodate discussions of a more physical nature.” He turned to Witherspoon and cocked his eyebrow. “George, my dear, I am experiencing an urgent and growing need to emulate Carrington and Verney’s example. Are you suffering anything similar?”

  “Oh, Davey,” Witherspoon said, “you know I can never follow all those complicated turns of phrase. But if you mean would I like to go upstairs with you, of course I would.”

  The two men stood and embraced, sharing a deep kiss. Witherspoon allowed Pierce to unbutton the flap of his pantaloons, then gasped with pleasure as the lean little redhead snaked a hand inside.

  Fitz looked away in embarrassment, noting that, however improper, the knowledge that two men were enjoying themselves upstairs and two more were about to follow only made his own situation that much more desperate. He eyed Monkton’s slender form in its tight coat. One didn’t have to actually like a man to engage in sport, after all. “Now that you mention it, Monkton, I might appreciate a more intimate conversation.”

  “Ooh, lovely,” Monkton said. “Funny how we go for months with nothing but stale gossip, then have all our excitement in the space of an hour.”

  Fitz began to have his doubts, however, as they undressed in Monkton’s room and the man’s sartorial peculiarities came to light. “Damn it, Sylly,” he said, “if I wanted something in petticoats I could go to Madame Amélie’s.”

  “Or simply ask Bingley’s sister to bend over, as I recall,” Monkton said. He showed off the erection blooming beneath his drawers. “I assure you, you won’t find this on any woman.”