Bingley turned on me. “Do you know what I think it is, Darcy? I think you simply don’t approve of the behavior.”
“Well, of course I don’t,” I said. “Of course I find it all troubling and disturbing and I should rather not think of it, but that is besides the point.”
“It is rather the entire point,” he said. “You are prejudiced against James and me, and you will not allow us to be happy.”
“I don’t see why either of you have to get married at all,” I said.
“Should we not have heirs, then?”
“Well, no, perhaps you should not,” I said. I sighed. “Look, at the very least, the woman in question should know what she is getting into. Watching her fawn over your lover like that? Your own sister? What sort of blackguard are you?”
“So, I’m a blackguard now?”
“You’ve always been… careless,” I said. “Even before I knew anything about your preferences between the sheets, I have seen that. Everything is done in a hurry and you change your mind on a whim and you do not seem to give any thought to the lingering consequences.”
“And you, apparently, are so very, very priggish that you don’t want the servants knowing you’re tupping your own wife, from what I hear. Not wishing to be seen coming out of her bedchamber? Is that it?”
I felt my face heat up. Curse my wife for telling her brother everything. Curse her brother for sharing everything with Bingley. “That is none of your affair.”
“Well, you are commenting on things that are none of your affair. If my sister wishes to marry James, then she shall.”
“It is not that I do not think the servants—” I sighed. Maybe it was. Maybe it was embarrassing to have to keep in my mind thatI was their master and that I had to give them their orders and that they must respect me and then for them to have to know what activities I was engaging in with my wife. I did not like to think about that in the presence of the servants and I assumed they did not wish to think of my doing that either. It only seemed proper to minimize advertising the fact to everyone.
Especially now, here, at Lady Susannah’s, it was all the worse.
“Oh, I am sorry,” he said. “You have always been this way, and I suppose I have often found it funny, the way you are so fastidious, so particular, so insistent on things being done a certain way—”
“Look, it’s about doing the right thing,” I said. “It is not the right thing to deceive your sister. If she chooses to marry a man who will never desire her, that’s her own affair. But it should not be some horrible surprise. What are you going to do, anyway? Are you going to surrender Mr. Bennet to your sister for her wedding night?”
He turned red. “You go too far,” he said.
It was an odd thing that I could go too far and yet be considered so very buttoned-up and repressed by this man, was it not?
That night, there was a knock at my bedchamber door as I was drifting off. I got up, throwing a banyan on over my nightclothes and found my wife waiting for me at the door.
“You didn’t come to me,” she said, and she sounded devastated.
I let her in. “You’re not speaking to me.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean I don’t wish you to come to me,” she protested.
I was not sure if I wanted more of whatever had passed between us the night before. There had been a passion to it that I had found pleasing, but there was something about it that also made me feel uneasy. If she was angry with me, and that anger was fueling our coupling, it was not the best way to couple or to argue. It made us feel close, because we were physically close, our bodies joined, but nothing between us was resolved.
She launched herself at me, her lips on mine.
I tried to protest, but I did not do very well at it, I suppose. She was all softness in my grasp, her mouth a wet and sweet revelation against my own, and she unmade me, this woman. I did not know how to resist her.
So I did not.
We panted against each other, and I said, “You are angry with me,” and she groaned, “So angry, so very, very angry.” And the anger—wasit anger?—made it all seem sort of heightened and forceful and there was an edge to it and we both seemed to explode like lit fuses and I…
Eventually, we lay all tangled and sweaty on my bed, and I panted at the ceiling and wondered if I would survive being married to her, and thought that if I did not, it might be a quite wondrous way to die, so perhaps I did not mind.
“Answer me something,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“I know you would not think that Mr. Bingley is a worthy husband for your sister in any case. She has a fortune, and she could aim much higher, and she should, I am sure,” she said.
