Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (32 page)

Elizabeth was confounded. Charles Bingley was devoted to Jane. He held her hand constantly, kissed her incessantly, and showered her with every manner of compliment. Certainly, Bingley’s affection was unquestioned. It does not last all that long? She and Darcy had whiled away hours whilst in such pursuits. Perhaps this was simply a matter of imperfection of technique. It must be addressed. Here, however, was where overlapping loyalties became a confusing issue. Elizabeth did not want to offer confidences of her own husband’s love-making prowess, but was tempted to by reason of affording Jane connubial bliss. Gathering from what Jane said, Charles Bingley seemed utterly, well…staid. Or, at least unlearned.

Compromise of loyalty was found in the third person.

With a scholarly voice, Elizabeth began, “’Tis said, that if the husband takes time and caresses his wife properly, she should find the same pleasure as he, Jane. She should be brought the most…”

“Who said that, Lizzy?” Jane interrupted.

Exasperated, Elizabeth abandoned third person for bluntness. “I said it, Jane.”

There were few euphemisms at her disposal and she despaired of having to become quite frank, but did.

“When Mr. Bingley has his—his ‘activity’ should excite you to great passion.”

Jane looked at her as if she was certain her sister had run utterly mad.

“Lizzy, pray, whatever are you talking about?”

If bluntness was absolutely necessary, Elizabeth believed she could be blunt.

“I am talking about…that tingling and pulsing that you feel down there when your husband rubs your insides with his member. It fairly makes your eyeballs roll up into your head.”

There. That should leave no room for misunderstanding. Absence of experience, however, did not allow Jane to appreciate the clarification and she blushed with embarrassment. Thereupon in reflection, she regained her composure enough to lower her voice and bid reassurance.

“I cannot say that I have ever felt that way. ’Tis truly possible?”

Elizabeth shook her head far more emphatically than was actually necessary.

“Yes, ’tis quite possible—every time, Jane! One can find indescribable bliss. Good heavens, yes!”

Jane shook her head as if not daring entry of such unimaginable thoughts.

“Lizzy, ’tis man’s province to be served in such a manner. It is an act of generation, is it not? This is for procreation. Men must be inspirited to emit their seed. It falls to wives to have babies, not invite rapture.”

“If a man is allowed pleasure whilst procreating, cannot therefore a woman?”

“But Lizzy, everyone speaks of it as a duty.”

“You know as well as I many amongst our society did not marry for love. To them, perhaps, it is a duty. If I had no feeling for my husband beyond admiration of his character, I should think I would agree. As it is, I love him compleatly, just as you do Mr. Bingley.”

Gripping the mattress, Jane sat very still for a few moments, as if pondering that possibility. Thereupon, she turned back to Elizabeth and lowered her voice to an even more confidential tone.

“’Tis true, I admire Charles. However, I believe I love him in all ways, for I would not be happy if we did not share affection. Sometimes after he has…been obliged, I feel that I should like him to hold me longer, kiss me more. Sometimes ’tis difficult to sleep after he has returned to his bed.”

He returned to “his” bed? No wonder the lack of spontaneity. That was passion by appointment.

“Tell him of your discontent! For as a loving husband, he should want to please you. Tell him, Jane!”

“Tell him he must…titillate me? I could never say such a thing to him, Lizzy!” Jane gasped. “He might think me unhappy.”

“You are discontented. He loves you, he should want to know.”

Jane’s horrified confoundment bid Elizabeth to abandon the notion of enlightening Bingley. She took an alternate route, by way of Jane’s initiative.

“If you dare not speak of it, perchance it is the simple matter of situation…”

They had been married near a month, Elizabeth reasoned. Thus, if Bingley was too dim to figure this out, Jane must for him. However, Jane was not moved to forward this reasoning. Indeed, there was not a flicker of understanding.

Determined as she was for Jane to see the light, Elizabeth struggled with the notion that if Jane could just situate herself atop her husband, this manoeuvre would keep Bingley from escape long enough for Jane to…. Such a suggestion would surely
scandalise them both. The sisters stood upon the precipice of absolute and irredeemable indecorousness, and Elizabeth was not quite ready to take the leap alone. Fortunately, she did not have the opportunity.

Jane announced with finality, “I could never injure Charles with criticism of his love. I am quite happy as I am.”

Thusly, Jane dismissed the entire possibility of connubial achievement. Conversation moved on to the weather.

That night before sleep encroached, Elizabeth lay in a disgusted heap pondering her sister’s marital impasse. Next to her, but beneath the bedcloth, her husband stretched out his full length and waggled his feet as if in invitation for her to join him. Rather, she enlisted his reluctant participation in a conversation of which he wanted no part.

“Jane and Bingley do not both share the same pleasure from physical connexion,” Elizabeth said incredulously of Jane’s dilemma. “This is intolerable. I encouraged her to confide in Mr. Bingley, for certainly he would want to know. But she worried it might cause him grief. She is too good.”

Hitherto, Darcy lay quite passively, endeavouring, with great conviction, to believe he was not part of this particularly mortifying discussion. He pondered with great abhorrence the understanding that ladies even spoke of such matters to each other. Only when Elizabeth bade his opinion did he venture a comment.

“If your sister does not think herself unhappy, then perhaps you should not attempt to convince her otherwise.”

That was not the desired response. Elizabeth took another course.

“You and Mr. Bingley are the very closest of friends, Darcy. Moreover, very close friends are almost as brothers. Perhaps you could suggest to Mr. Bingley that he…”

“No,” he held up his hand. “Absolutely not.”

“But why? Certainly, he would benefit from your expertise. How could you deny him your good advice when it is possible to help?”

“No.”

“I believe you should not have to come right out with it. You could wait until an opportune time. Whilst breeding the mares, perhaps. Then with all due nonchalance…”

Aghast, he said, “I cannot begin to imagine how you think that conversation would ensue. Absolutely not.”

She rolled onto her stomach and rested her chin petulantly in her hand.

“Well,
I
cannot say anything to Mr. Bingley…”

Darcy half-rose with a look of abject horror upon his face. Would she actually consider such a gambit?

“I said I could not!” she replied defensively to his unspoken reproach.

With an exaggerated sigh of relief, he dropped his head back upon the pillow. She, however, continued to ponder the problem for a few minutes longer. That was, until she realised all this talk of Jane’s rapture—and her husband’s nakedness underneath the sheet—was making her reflect quite intently upon her own. Recognising her expression, he drew her beneath him.

“I can ensure the happiness of only one woman, Lizzy. Let it be you.”

At last, the evening found an unequivocal meeting of the minds.

That afternoon’s coze left Jane quite as discomfited as her sister. Rarely did exchanging confidences with Lizzy leave her thus. Had anyone but Elizabeth—sensible, dependable Elizabeth—intimated that Jane’s connubial necessities with Charles were left wanting, she would have been affronted to the core. Lydia’s rantings about copulation could be dismissed as just that. But not Elizabeth. It must be true.

Jane, who would venture any lengths to spare others blame, worried. She worried it was she who was the culpable party in not allowing her husband to rouse her passion.

Such fretting led her to recollect her wedding-night. It was not a memory she liked to invoke, as it had not been the event to which some poets alluded. It was unthinkable to disappoint poets. It was undeniable, however, that when Charles Bingley came to her the first night of their marriage, angels did not sing.

Having inadvertently preceded him to the bed, she patiently awaited for some time. As it happened, so much time passed before he presented himself that she had begun to wonder if she had retired to the correct room. Her wait had not been unproductive, for she had busied herself. She readjusted the covers. Fluffed the pillows. Spread her hair just so. Tied and retied the satin bow at the neck of her gown. Fortuitously, Mary, her new lady-maid, left the door open leading to Bingley’s dressing room. Hence, Jane was relieved of the possibility that he would knock upon the door and she would have to arise to answer it, thereby undoing all the adjusting of bed covers, hair, and bow.

Was she not uneasy enough, Mary was an intimidating woman, suffering not fools gladly, and her mistress’ wishes with no great humour. (All of the Bingleys’ female servants were called either Mary or Anne regardless of had their parents, with all due contemplation, named them Beatrice, Elinor, or Phoebe. In the Bingleys’ service, you were Mary or Anne. It was, of course, not discourtesy, simply expedience, for it did relieve the good ladies of the house the ghastly chore of learning the names of their all and sundry servants.) Even Jane knew it impolitic to be hectored by your own lady-maid and promised herself she would stand more firmly in the future. In the future, when she was not so otherwise anxious.

After the third retying of the bow upon her night-dress, Bingley finally appeared. He wore a night-shirt buttoned to the neck and a look of excited apprehension. Jane thought that top button looked uncomfortable for sleeping, but she did not want to initiate any comment that could be remotely construed as critical. His face managed a nervous smile, but she no more than caught sight of his bare feet before he hastily doused the candles and scrambled beneath the covers.

There in the dark, they lay side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, not unlike had they been upon the settee in the parlour.

For every day of their engagement, Bingley had vowed his undying love, declared she was the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld, and lovingly kissed her hand. The darkness, however, apparently found him mute as well as paralysed. After some
time had passed without the barest hint of movement, Jane finally reached over and placed her arm across his chest. A gesture that appeared to be in reassurance that he was, indeed, still there. Evidently, that broke the stalemate, thus unleashing from Bingley a torrent of affection. He gratefully kissed her cheeks and repeated every manner of accolade he had previously bestowed upon her.

Once the floodgates of love had opened, so flowed his fervour. He covered Jane’s lips, her chin, her forehead, and both cheeks with quick little kisses (sometimes quantity overrides technique). Foreplay culminated, he bade her favours.

“May I raise your gown?”

Blushing in the dark, Jane allowed that she found that acceptable. That he raised her hem no higher than her knees did introduce more manoeuvring and less finesse in consummating their marriage than Bingley would have hoped of himself. He desired not to frighten the demure Jane with his ardency. That wish, coupled with the fact that the only practise he had experienced of a sexual nature was no more than some groping of a nubile young lass in a hayloft, left him keenly interested in the possibilities, but no less enlightened about the act. Moreover, it lent their first encounter less than a compleat success.