Page 51 of The Blackmail of Mr. Darcy
Mrs. Bennet was very pleased and surprisingly calm in gaining such a tribute from her new son.
Chapter 29
Elizabeth
Elizabeth spent her brief engagement period attempting to shield her beloved Mr. Darcy from her mother’s desires to show him off in the most vulgar way. She had to use every bit of her skills with people to keep her mother reasonably happy while also keeping her reined in.
Mr. Darcy, luckily, was too happy to take umbrage over the family’s clamorous nattering and her mother’s vulgar boasts. Georgiana, too, was increasingly happy. She enjoyed the company of so many girls and young women; Charlotte and Maria Lucas came to Longbourn nearly every day to help out with wedding planning, so there were eight young ladies altogether.
The presence of Georgiana turned out to be Elizabeth’s greatest tool in reining in Bennet excess. Mrs. Bennet could not be convinced of Mr. Darcy’s reticence, since he was of an age and status that he had learnt to use his confidence in other aspects of life as a mask when he found himself uneasy in large groups of people. But Mrs. Bennet could clearly see Georgiana’s shyness. The young girl retreated to blushing silence still when faced with strangers or too many social engagements. For Georgiana’s sake,Mrs. Bennet pruned down the visits and the hosting to a more reasonable scale.
During this period, Mr. Bingley’s face continued to heal, and soon his effervescent personality was again the first thing people saw when he entered a room. He seemed content to accompany Jane on every walk and to sit near her, chatting quietly with her, in every parlour, sitting room, and drawing room in Meryton—without once discussing the future of their relationship, without asking for a courtship nor approaching Mr. Bennet to explain his intentions.
Elizabeth was not sure if she was happy or unhappy that Mr. Bingley did not formalise his apparent courting. He had been so resolute with Miss Bingley of late that Elizabeth was inclined to feel better about him. But she told herself firmly that it mattered not at all how she felt about Mr. Bingley—what mattered was what Jane felt.
Halfway through their engagement period, Will told Elizabeth news his friend had told him: every legal document had been drawn up and signed to confine Miss Bingley to York Retreat, and to ensure that income from her dowry paid the fees for her housing and treatments. Elizabeth and Jane were at Netherfield visiting when several burly men and a no-nonsense sort of woman arrived to carry Miss Bingley off to her new home. Mr. Bingley seemed much more relaxed after that, but still made no moves to clarify his relationship with Jane.
Elizabeth asked Jane how she felt about all of this, and Jane just laughed and said, “We are busy enough with one wedding; we need not even think about the possibility of another until this one has been accomplished!”
Soon enough, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s wedding was, as Jane had put it, accomplished. Elizabeth was delighted that her favourite aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, were able to travel fromLondon to attend, and she knew that Mr. Darcy was pleased that his Fitzwilliam relatives came from London as well.
The ceremony was short, the wedding breakfast was long, and even Elizabeth, who almost always smiled and loved to laugh, began to feel her cheeks hurt from so many smiles. Her gaze found Mr. Darcy’s, and when his eyebrows raised in a silent question, and she nodded in response, she found herself whisked off by her groom, only pausing for one more fervent hug with Georgiana, who would be staying with the Fitzwilliams in London. The newlyweds waved as their families, friends, and neighbours raised up cheers, well-wishes, and farewells.
As planned, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth travelled alone to London that afternoon, arriving just as the skies darkened to night. She hesitated before Darcy House, which rose four stories above the street, but he whispered, “Welcome to your new home—well, one of your new homes—Mrs. Darcy,” giving her the confidence to square her shoulders and mount the stairs with her hand on his arm.
In the foyer, she met the butler and the housekeeper, and she greeted an impressive line of servants with her warmest words and smile. She sensed immediate approval, especially from Mrs. Robertson, the housekeeper. Such easy approval quite surprised her; she had assumed that she would have to fight for the regard of the household, being an unknown country upstart.
Mr. Darcy conferred with Mrs. Robertson regarding his written arrangements and turned back to Elizabeth after being assured of their readiness. “Allow me to show you to your room,” he said with his smile wide enough to display his dimples.
Elizabeth noticed that Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Robertson exchanged pleased smiles, that many of the footmen displayed startled expressions and that most of the maids looked dumbfounded—and possibly smitten—apparently at the sight of that grin and those dimples.
She imagined that the approval that she sensed from the staff had been won because the servants were happy to see their master happy.
But every thought of footmen and maids fled as Mr. Darcy proudly showed her the master and mistress rooms. They were large, with each bed chamber accompanied by a large dressing room, a bathing room with a perfectly enormous copper tub, and even a water closet. Between the master and mistress bed chambers was a large, elegant sitting room. There was quite a lot of food and many bottles of wine arranged on the largest table in the sitting room, and Elizabeth asked William, “Do you suppose we have a large enough stockpile of food to outlast a siege?”
He had been holding Elizabeth’s hand, his fingers interlaced with hers, during their tour of the adjoined rooms, and he now pulled her closer to him, kissing her hand before releasing it as he tenderly embraced her. His baritone voice rumbled in her ear: “I have not been envisioning a siege so much as a welcome incursion, multiple forays into territories previously unexplored, and hopefully a bombardment of pleasing proportions.”
She shivered with desire. His tender hold transformed into ardent caresses and kisses and—and?—
She whispered into his ear, “Please, Will, help me out of this gown.”
A frenzy of hurried fingers that fumbled with unfamiliar tasks, with releasing many small buttons and the lacing of stays, ensued. But when William had uncovered her down to her chemise, his movements slowed, and he began to pepper her shoulders with small kisses. He was still fully dressed when he finally moved to lift her chemise over her head and then gently turned her to face him.
“God, Lizzy, you are so beautiful,” he whispered.
She was amazed how affected she was by his first use of the so-familiar nickname. But she also giggled a bit at the inequalityof their current states. She was nude, other than her stockings and slippers, and he looked very much like a gentleman on a call, from his impeccable cravat down to his shiny boots.
“You are still looking so very proper, Mr. Darcy,” she teased.
He grinned and began to remove his garments. She perched on a settee to remove her shoes and stockings.
When he had removed everything but his breeches, he scooped up Elizabeth and carried her into the master bed chamber and onto his enormous four-poster bed. She had squealed when he picked her up, but she instantly began exploring his bare neck with her mouth and her fingers. She took just as much pleasure exploring his broad shoulders and muscled chest and….
William became much more distracting when his explorations arrived at her breasts and then, soon after, her nether regions, and their mutual facility with language fled. Even William’s eventual revelation of his manhood, which was so rigid and large that Elizabeth briefly lost hope of surviving the marriage bed, could not resuscitate her ability to form words, even in her mind.
But the bonds between them grew, nevertheless, and after many hours of nibbling on one another and on a slice of ham here and a marzipan sculpture there, many hours of tasting one another and several different wines, many hours of giving and taking and lovemaking—they finally slept, curled together in Elizabeth’s bed, since William’s was much stained.
It was an auspicious beginning, and after several awakenings and additional joinings, Elizabeth and William recovered their ability to speak, and they whispered and chuckled together about the mess their servants would have to deal with and their relative soreness. They revelled in their ability to talk about anything, and they eventually abandoned the topic that had keptthem busy for such an extended period of time, and they began to plot their course for the future.
