Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (28 page)

“I fancy my husband would be the one to answer that question,” Elizabeth told her.

Lady Millhouse found this not only a reasonable response, but a perfectly good excuse to leave the little enclave of prattlers. She abruptly took hold of Elizabeth’s hand and set out to find good Mr. Darcy and inquire. They ventured not far before spying him talking amongst a group of gentlemen. Elizabeth would never have dared walk the distance of the room to join them. But Lady Millhouse’s grip upon her was tenacious and she had little choice but to follow in her wake as she parted the crowd.

Darcy did not seem confounded that Lady Millhouse suddenly appeared in the midst of the coterie of men, nor that his wife was in tow.

“Darcy,” Lady Millhouse said, forgoing Elizabeth’s arm for his, “you have not told your sweet wife here when we will next have a hunt at Pemberley? Shame upon you. We must remedy this situation at once.”

“We will within the month. I will send my cards around directly, Lady Millhouse.”

As he spoke, he bore an expression of amusement that astonished Elizabeth. Lady Millhouse obviously had a position of friendship with Darcy that did not require the level of obsequious decorum of others. Quite probably, the lady was unlikely to offer it. This liberty was certainly not due to her station. Elizabeth surmised it something more significant. Indeed, Lady Millhouse enthusiastically took the reins of the conversation in a pertinacious detailing of their most recent ride to covert. Darcy seemed amused at this as well. But as the story became increasingly lengthy and convoluted, Elizabeth let her attention wander to the doings of the other guests.

The son of Mr. Howgrave’s housekeeper passed by. Surreptitiously, Elizabeth watched him cross the floor. Darcy, who she had thought was in rapt attention to Mrs. Millhouse’s recitation glanced at, then affixed a rancorous glare upon young Howgrave as he stopped before Georgiana. He spoke to her but a moment, then moved away. Upon his retreat, Darcy apparently quitted him as well.

Forthwith of the overture to the next promenade, Howgrave returned to Georgiana, apparently having bespoken the next dance. Obviously, Darcy had not quite let the young man out of his eye. For by the time Howgrave returned to claim his dance, Darcy had stridden halfway across the floor toward them.

Lady Millhouse stopped mid-sentence at the distraction. She looked at Elizabeth quizzically. Then they both watched Darcy as he advanced upon the couple. He spoke to his sister, took her hand, and walked her onto the dance floor, leaving young Howgrave standing rather flatfooted. The cut was not unapparent to the guests nearest, and even from a distance, Elizabeth could see the young man’s face redden. That the young man’s history was known to Lady Millhouse was betrayed when she spoke, not of him, but of Darcy, for there was the drama.

“Because he has never forgiven himself any fault, he can forgive no one else’s,” she sighed.

The remark was bestowed with affectionate understanding from someone who knew Darcy well. That the observation rode with such accuracy upon him made it all the more unsettling for his wife to hear. She had little time to ponder it, for just then Lord Millhouse took her attention, perhaps at his wife’s silent instruction, and asked Elizabeth to dance. Of this she was most grateful, happy to have reason to move about. The air had suddenly become a little stale where she stood.

After a rowdy gallop across the dance floor with the blustery Lord Millhouse, Elizabeth excused herself to catch her breath in a corner of the room. From her vantage she could gaze upon her husband, who had bade Jane to dance again. It was a pleasant inevitability to know Bingley would seek her out in polite return; still she endeavoured to hide herself. This, only partly because she chose not to dance, but foremost because she did not want to have to beg off from sweet-tempered Bingley. Her earlier unease forgotten, she wanted to savour the sight of her husband from afar.

It was obvious the ladies of Derbyshire thought likewise. For of the female gazes that followed him (and there were many), all did not merely betoken respectful admiration of rank. Indeed, a few looks were positively unchaste. Elizabeth did not fault their acumen, for they were more sensible than she had been. It was she who, upon first meeting him, had concluded that a man of such beauty and wealth must, of
course, harbour some ill-trait of character. She laughed at her own prejudice. For now that he was her Darcy, she knew him to be quite perfect.

The theatrical whisper of one who wanted to be heard broke her solitude. A woman’s voice rose from the other side of a fan leaf palm. Elizabeth peered between the leaves and spied two women, one whose years had abused the better part of four decades, the other younger and a bit squat.

“Why, ’tis so good to have our Mr. Darcy back in Derbyshire, for he has been sorely missed.”

Elizabeth recognised neither of them. That they knew who she was, and where she was, was of little doubt.

“Yes, manhood has suffered in his absence. Sport is never so attractive without him in the county. He has such strength of leg, he can stay a-mount long after lesser men fade.”

They tittered behind their fans. The younger doxy closed hers and tapped her friend with it upon the shoulder whilst applying further euphemistic grandiloquence.

“He has a most impressive blade and knows quite well how to wield it!”

Taken with their own wit, they tittered again not unlike two exceedingly rude magpies. Elizabeth’s face burned with indignation. How to respond? The Mistress of Pemberley should not acknowledge such defamatory utterances, she reminded herself. She would sacrifice her spirit to propriety and suffer, as those two vilifying…trollops undoubtedly knew she must. This most considered and correct decision made, she immediately cast it aside. She did not walk away but took one step that brought her purposely under the women’s immediate gazes, which, if they were not quite at a level of alarm, at least spoke high alert.

Elizabeth saw she had chosen correctly. Clearly, the women did not expect confrontation from a naïve country lass. As she looked at first one and then the other, she summarily determined they both had more hair than sense. And, obviously, they had more sense than integrity.

Hence, it bedevilled Elizabeth not one dash to quietly, but quite deliberately, say, “I could not help but overhear your kind words about Mr. Darcy. You shall, no doubt, agree I am most fortunate to have so magnificent a lover for a husband.”

She smiled brilliantly, turned, and walked away. That the two women’s countenances held at first confusion then confounded incredulity, was not known to her. But as she strode off, she pictured it, and found considerable pleasure in the imagining alone.

Not surprising of such a grand evening, it was quite late when the last of the guests had betaken themselves home, allowing Elizabeth and Darcy wearily to ascend the stairs. They entered their bedchamber together, finally alone, but still dressed from the evening. Falling in fatigue back across their bed, she listened as he told her how well the evening had gone and how many remarks were made to him upon the beauty of his wife’s countenance and amiability of her nature.

“I would think it unlikely for any of your guests to offer that they found your new wife held much queerness of temper and little pretension to beauty,” she reminded him.

“Of course not. But one would have to have a great understanding of, say, Mr. Collins’s ability to flatter to invent such compliments.”

She laughed. “Yes, your guests will say the music was superb, the decorations outstanding. The only criticism one shall offer is that nothing scandalous occurred. No
one fell drunkenly into the punch bowl; no young man’s face was slapped. For that is the only true way to gauge an evening’s success.” (That his wife spoke without caution to the two female guests might have met the criteria of scandalous, but Elizabeth discounted it by reason of an audience of only two.)

“You were charming and beautiful tonight, Lizzy. I would not have cared were you neither, but imagine what pride I hold that you were both.”

Their dressing rooms were forgone for the immediacy of their bed. They simply dropped their clothes where they stood and climbed beneath the bedclothes. There had been an initial spoon, but when his lack of dedication was announced by a soft snore, Elizabeth did not have the heart to awaken him. She drew his arm about her and snuggled against his chest.

It occurred to her that it was the first time since they married that they had not ended their day with amorous union. They had, of course, already made love twice that evening before the ball (well, they had made love the first time; she was uncertain exactly how to label the second, it possibly just an anointment). It was unreasonably avaricious to want him again, especially if only in defence of her own disorder.

For, as much as she did not like to admit it to herself, she was unsettled when she remembered the two loose-lipped hildings who spoke so crudely. Although they had spoken as if they had first-person knowledge, Elizabeth could not imagine Darcy cavorting with such vulgar pieces of work. True, he was eight years her senior. It was possible (alright, even probable) that he had been with other women. She supposed as well that was one to cavort it would have to be in less than virtuous company.

But it was easier to accept that in Hertfordshire, where he was newly in society. Derbyshire was another matter entirely. As she considered that he had spent at least a dozen years in his county as an eligible young man, every female face under age fifty that she had greeted that night revisited her. Suddenly, they were not just amiable guests, they were all former lovers.

“He knows how to use his blade.”

That was what the woman had said. Yes, Elizabeth thought, he does know how to use his blade.

Providentially, he drew her closer and said quite clearly, “I love you, Lizzy.”

Even in his sleep he knew what she needed from him. At that particular moment, no carnal act could possibly have allowed her to fall into so peaceful a slumber.

T
heir having unfurled the drapes to admire the moonlight the past evening allowed the morning sun to awaken Mr. Darcy prematurely.

For a man basking in the glow of unprecedented self-approbation, he did not suffer the abuse of nature without indignation. However, this
lèse-majesté
was mitigated by a single slash of sunlight which cast a milky glow upon his wife’s bare back. He propped himself up on one elbow and gazed upon her form at some length.

Hours spent in restful sleep had not undone his self-satisfaction with the sublime success of the ball nor his wife’s part in that success. Both had been triumphs. It was clear that all of Derbyshire had fallen under the spell of his wife’s considerable charm. Those who dared to fault him for selecting a bride of questionable connexions had been silenced unequivocally. With Elizabeth now his wife, the pride he harboured as the Darcy heir, the master of an illustrious estate, and his station in general had ripened into unadulterated omnipotence. It was a most ambrosial sensation. One he wanted to share.

Drawing his fingers lightly down her spine, he tempted her awake. She responded to this intrusion by the Master of Pemberley by intolerantly drawing the covers over her shoulders. Undaunted, he loosened the sheet and trailed his fingers down her back again. She turned over, blinking in the bright morning light, and espying him looking down at her, smiled sleepily. At the sight of her so fetchingly in the altogether, his morning pride flowered into outright arousal.

He had seen her, of course, but gained no true inspection. In the pristine morning light, it was not an inquisition of her configuration he sought (for he had, upon a few occasions long past, perused a womanly portal). He wanted to memorise his Elizabeth. When he closed his eyes, he wanted to be able to bring every pore of her skin to mind, let her scent invade his nostrils so no distance could ever take her truly from him.

She acquiesced to his investigation a bit self-consciously, dovetailing her knees in futile protection of her modesty. He stroked her thighs at length with the backs of his fingers, thus convincing them to relinquish their sentry. Eventually, she lay back, eyes closed, entrusting herself unto him.

This presented him with a struggling conscience. Although he had kissed her womanhood before, it was only fleetingly. He longed not only to fill his nostrils with her scent; he wanted to saturate his mouth with her taste. Thusly, he would bring her to an ecstasy she had hitherto not experienced. However, would such a lascivious letch scandalise her? In the afterglow of a truly magnificent societal victory, he believed the time to test those waters was at hand. He dove in—so to speak.

She might have been a bit startled, but she betokened no alarm. In time, however, a sound escaped her throat that was quite unmelodious. Had she not entwined her fingers so fiercely into his hair, he might have heard her moan. As it was, he did not. Nevertheless, when the arching of her back announced that she was upon the precipice of an ecstasy yet unexplored, his loins would not let her experience it alone. Hence, this union was enjoyed with such unconditional vigour, it may well have endangered the groundsels supporting the house.