Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (7 page)

The single advantage Wickham held over Darcy was by reason of age. He regaled Darcy with tales of scullery, chamber, and serving maids at Pemberley from whom he had been able to obtain favours biblical in nature. Already a practised cynic when it came to what tales Wickham told, Darcy’s newly aroused libido, nonetheless, instructed him to listen more keenly than independent reasoning would have thought prudent.

Even as persevering a Lothario as was Wickham, there was further gall at Darcy’s unwitting hand to be endured.

Young Master Darcy’s burgeoning masculinity graced his countenance with unusual fondness, bestowing a handsomeness that perhaps did not exceed Wickham’s, but certainly rivalled it. Hence, unbeknownst to him, Wickham’s tide-pool of romantic opportunity was being eroded by defection. (Hampering Wickham too was a complexion that had a tendency to inflame under stress. The more his skin pustulated, the greater his vexation. Altogether a nasty turn of luck.) Because Wickham spent so very much of his time admiring his costume and feathering his bangs, he was blind to the understanding that one unaware of his own beauty always exacts more interest than he who preens. And whilst Wickham picked at his skin and patted his hair, Darcy looked in a mirror only to make certain he had no unsightly food stuck betwixt his teeth.

The stage was set for a battle as old as time.

For a time, the various intended prey of Wickham’s foul designs admired Darcy’s lack of self-regard from a discreet distance. However, one Abigail Christie, chambermaid, soon put herself into the young master’s path. A year less than twenty, she possessed fine skin, a retroussé profile and pretty auburn hair. If her countenance suggested innocence, however, it was deceiving. A weakness for male attention had compromised her virtue more times than the vicar wagged his finger. Upon occasion she lifted her skirts to Wickham, but even she knew he had little to offer beyond his over-promoted position (and she immediately recognised his own sceptre of love was not half so inflated as his opinion of it). Still, a bum-tickle with the son of a steward was a considerable step up from a bit of hay beneath the under-gardener.

As a veteran of amorous rites, she considered herself quite the doyenne upon the appraisal of male pudenda. When she heard house gossip that Master Darcy’s
virilia
was exceedingly well favoured by nature, her interest was…piqued.

It was difficult for Darcy not to have taken notice of Abigail over her half-year’s employment. Wickham belaboured the various attributes of any of the female servants remotely close to child-bearing years (that being over twelve and under fifty; Wickham was nothing if not democratic in his lechery). Darcy’s curt opinion, however, initially saw Abigail a bit too snub-nosed and thick-waisted. He began to reassess his position after experiencing a few unusually close brushes with her body.

That these encounters with her invariably happened in an otherwise spacious environment was quite myopically overlooked.

’Tis noted that it was more by her own design than caprice of fate that she found many chores in the bedchamber of young Mr. Darcy, frequently dawdling about her tasks in order to linger near. To an objective viewer of these doings, it would not have been a surprise when Abigail deposited herself in his room one quiet mid-afternoon. Darcy, however, was taken quite unawares when he bechanced her there and his expression betrayed this. With dispatch, his surprise was usurped and converted forthwith into excited apprehension. Clearly, she had not come into his room merely to change the bedding.

Again, she walked near him and stood idly twirling a copper ringlet that had escaped her cap. Shifting nervously from one foot to the other, he reddened, then frowned in a vain attempt to appear unruffled. His colour certainly did not abate when she, with an audacity he had yet to experience, asked if he had ever touched a woman. At that, he dropped his eyes to the floor, not wanting to admit he had not. That reaction, of course, announced the very thing he hoped to hide. When she took his hand and placed it upon her bosom, the size of her waist was little impediment to her desirability.

Abigail’s inexpert genesis of this seduction would have warned a more experienced lover that, however practised she was in the basics of amour, she lacked finesse. The youthful Darcy was oblivious to such nuances, however, and her clumsy seeking of his manhood easily provoked its attention. That garnered, Abigail simply laid back upon the bed and drew up her dress (this being a wordless and universal sign of invitation). And, as a lad of considerable vigour and no little heat, he needed neither encouragement nor
instruction (yea, some instincts are, indeed, stronger than others). He mounted her, spent (far too quickly he was certain), and, undeniably ignorant of the protocol under such circumstances, rolled away.

She rose, smoothed down her dress, adjusted her cap, and kissed him full upon the mouth.

“Will Aye find you here to-morrow?”

He nodded emphatically. She did, then, and for several days thence, Darcy not tardy once.

This embarkation into the rites of amour was not only inspiriting, but quite illuminating. Betimes, even off-putting. Upon the culmination of his second coupling with his newly designated paramour, said lover rather vocally reached achievement. Wickham had, in his many oratories, explained to Darcy there was a great deal of thrashing about whilst undergoing this act. However, Abigail’s crescendo was of a magnitude to persuade him she had seizured in some manner. Hence, he was quite horrified he might have to explain her demise. To his considerable gratitude, her recovery was prompt. That his uppermost concern was not her possible death, but the scandal it would invite, should have warned him he was not actually in the throes of deep, abiding love.

Nonetheless, with their next assignation, she asked him if he loved her. He said, yes, he believed he did. (As this declaration was proffered post-insertion, pre-emission, one supposes the true depth of his adolescent affection must be taken with a grain of salt. His loins ached, and if he believed it was for her alone, Abigail was not one to argue the point.)

Nary a word of any of this did Darcy tell Wickham, but he thought of little else. And though Darcy was himself discreet, Abigail was not. Word spread post-haste (with more philanthropy than precision) of the young master’s virility. From the objectivity of time, had Darcy been privy later to those whispered comments, he would undoubtedly have allowed that virility in that specific instance was possibly confused with youthful enthusiasm.

Beyond her undying, virginal devotion, the one thing Abigail had not offered to Darcy was that she had been sharing her favours with Wickham. But, once eliciting a profession of love from young Darcy, Abigail refused to lay with Wickham. He was not amused, even a little. Wickham called her several names that were not complimentary. She spat out some rather harsh character complaints herself.

“Muck slattern!”

“Deknackered dung heap!”

Trading unpleasantries with Abigail did nothing to appease Wickham’s insulted ego. To be spurned for the younger, wealthier Darcy was gristle he refused to swallow. With the air of a true Samaritan (and no little haste), he went directly to Darcy’s father and told him of the exact nature of his son’s latest avocation.

Darcy ranked his father’s good opinion far higher than any other, and when called to answer for such carnal indiscretion, he was mortified to his very bones.

In his first formal discussion of manly honour and integrity, Mr. Darcy told his son that his position was one of such import that he must never be ruled by anything other than the highest of motives and the worthiest of principles (trysting with
servant girls, obviously, was neither). He told him he must never exploit his circumstance nor use it selfishly (trysting with servant girls was both). It was not revealed, nor did he ask, how his father learnt of his improprieties. Darcy never suspected George Wickham, for his conscience could not be entirely convinced divine judgement had not exposed him.

If there was any divine intervention, it was visited at that time only upon Wickham. For there was a hasty realignment of the female servants at Pemberley. Wickham was extremely vexed to see that all the newly-assigned chambermaids were great with girth and age (averaging ten stone in weight and two score ten in years). In his humiliation, Darcy noticed neither this nor that Abigail disappeared from Pemberley compleatly.

This episode unquestionably altered Darcy’s life, introducing a lifelong pattern of stern self-control. As he grew older, his natural reserve became a buffer, leading some to believe he felt himself above their company. If his manner came to be led in pride and conceit, it was borne of a perpetual stream of obsequious deference from men and women alike. In adulthood, he was known as a man of clever intellect and superior understanding. His manners were impeccable, if somewhat haughty.

Darcy was not vain, but he was proud, expecting perfection of himself, and would not brook less from anyone else.

His reserve was already firmly in place when he and Wickham left for Cambridge. But once there, he found concealed in his belongings a piece of paper bearing a London street address written in his father’s hand. He came to learn Harcourt was a house of good Mayfair address, known to most men of means. It was a place they could discreetly pass company with a woman possessed of both beauty and refinement. This lady required no commitment beyond a few hours of one’s time. A major rite of passage would have been for his father to escort him to such a place for his introduction to manhood. As that horse was already out of the barn, so to speak, his father chose to guide his son thusly.

With the single lecture his father had given him still ringing in his ears, Darcy had every good intention of taking his studies quite seriously and he set the address aside. Even with the caterwauling Wickham underfoot in constant search of his next conquest, Darcy strove to seek the moral high ground. So often did he rebuff Wickham, who constantly prevailed upon him to join in his rounds of drinking and wenching, Wickham took to calling him the “Archbishop.”

The sobriquets with which Wickham gifted him mattered little to Darcy, for in actuality, his libido was not necessarily inconsolable. He was merely less vocal about the women with whom he joined in physical congress. And, upon occasion, congress he did. But each of these rendezvous was, to his mind at least, unsatisfactory. If he disparaged Wickham’s bent for vulgar establishments and round-heeled women, Darcy could not say with utmost conviction his road was an improvement. For each instance of intimacy he consummated gifted him, not with satisfaction, but with new restricting axioms with which to lead his life.

There had been a rather titillating, if unexpected, experience when he was just eighteen with the infamous (he belatedly learnt) Twisnodde twins in their coach one night. But he had been so consumed with guilt for such debauchery, he was visited for months with the terror that he had left either or both of them with child. (For due to circumstance of drink, he could never absolutely swear whether he had had them
both, or one or the other twice.) He vowed (first axiom) he would be most cautious within whose garden he spilled his seed; and (second axiom) never, ever drink more than one glass of wine per evening.

As he grew older, he occasioned affairs with women of station and allowed himself a passing interlude with a noted actress. He found her a disappointment and (third axiom) kept to his own social level thereafter. His understanding of honour demanded he never take a virgin, nor lie with a woman married or promised (four and five). Ultimately, though, he began to recognise an all too familiar expression upon the countenances of those with whom he intended intrigue. Just before carnal egress commenced, an expression of excited apprehension appeared. That, of course, announced that word of the generosity of his lovemaking (and that with which God endowed him, upon its behalf) had preceded him. He abhorred transgression of his privacy, and, in time, this abhorrence overtook any pleasure he might have had with his liaisons. His sixth axiom was instated: He would avail himself of no women of his social circle.

Of course, eliminating virgins, wives, the affianced, the forward, ladies of lesser rank, and those in his social circle from the reservoir of possible feminine gratification left little alternative. Finding no favour in self-gratification, he saw the irony that the two strongest needs he held—that of passion and that of privacy—were so perversely conflicting.

It would have been customary for a man of his position to take a mistress, but he did not seek a woman to dress his arm. His warm constitution sought only release, not company. Believing it a profound failing not to keep one’s physical needs under the same good regulation as one’s emotions, he strove to harness them both.

After a period of abstention marked by a profoundly ill-temper and a great deal of fencing, he decided, as a matter of expediency (seventh and final axiom), he would visit a lady at Harcourt. There he could chamber with diligence and privacy, safe in the knowledge that commerce exacted no threat of entanglement.