Title: Summer's End
Author: dominiquesdh
Theme: Alternate Universe – Historical drama - Romance (free variation based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. This fanfic is a sequel of Twelve days in Augustwhich took its liberty with P&P at book III chapter II)
Cautionspoiler alarm: If you haven't read yet the first book please stop reading here since the summary will probably spoil quite a lot of the story's plot. So be so kind as to look first at the first book under: .net/s/4454840/1/Twelve_days_in_August or here.
Summary: We read the year 1801. On August the first, French troops came ashore in Brighton. Nobody was able to stop them and at the middle of the month of August the whole of England's Counties were under French rule. Meanwhile, Geoffroy d'Arcy, commander in chief of the invading troops did meet a certain Jane Bennet in Rosings… This encounter had consequences since Sunday the sixteenth August 1801 Jane Bennet became Jane d'Arcy… Summer's End begins the day following the wedding at an unknown –if late– hour…
(Cast: all traditional characters of Jane Austen's P&P, a few new ones, including d'Arcy and a few historic figures such as George, Prince of Wales and Napoleon, at that time Premier Consul de la République Française...)
Disclaimer : The characters I serve here are Jane Austen's even if after two centuries they legally belong to all of us. Only those few I created are mine and I hope they'll bring something interesting to the story.
Remarks:
My story is based on Jane Auten's book for the story and the 2005 movie for the visuals.
Previews :
A (different) version of this fanfic already exists partially in French and in the next weeks it will be my mission to end the French version. My French reader got book one first and you will have the privilege to get the whole book two first.
I'm no English native speaker and from time to time some failures (let's hope tiny ones) will slip into my texts and escape the vigilance of my beta reader. Please let us know if there's a better way to say it in English…
As in book one, I'll use US spelling.
This second part is now completed. All 60 chapters plus Epilogue are written and are being edited at this very moment and the story, having found its own life, is already asking to be extended. It was very kind of all of you to read my first story and it was even kinder for those of you who encouraged me with their comments. It helps a lot to have a feed back to pull you into going on. As said it was quite an adventure and I loved it. I hope this second part will please you as did the first. Let me know your opinion!
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BOOK TWO: SUMMER'S END
PART ONE: HONEYMOON AT PEMBERLEY
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Chapter one: Pemberley Wedding's Wake
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Derbyshire, Pemberley, Monday the seventeenth August.
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She inhaled his fragrance and basked in the sensation of being with him in their bed her head lying on his back and his gentle snoring rocking her...
She let her hand glide from his buttocks to his hair and soon her lips were painting a picture of love everywhere on his back.
Soon she could hear him grumble.
A smile blossomed on her face while she went on with her light kisses.
She felt his head turning toward her.
"Have you no mercy, madam for a poor exhausted man?"
She looked him in the eyes.
"Why should I, dear husband? Wasn't it you who proposed to marry my sister and me? If I'm quite satisfied with the part belonging to me, I'm not inclined to waste that other part which was to be my sister's due..."
He moved and she found herself lying on him, his strong arms closing around her.
His eyes were sparkling.
"You do know that my marriage will be a nightmare if each of my words comes back to haunt me, don't you?"
She smirked at him.
"Not each of them, my dear husband. Only those uttered by the braggart or the fool in you! "
Her hands became more insistent and soon found the object of her interest.
"I'll soon see if this morning it was the braggart or the fool speaking..."
He lifted her to let their lips touch.
"And what will be the difference?"
She kissed him back.
"I could surely forgive the fool," whispered she, "the braggart, I'm not sure..."
He finally received her forgiveness!
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Late in the afternoon she woke up to his light snoring.
She breathed happily just before standing up and opening the window. The air was stale inside and she was quite satisfied to breathe the fresh air of Pemberley's park.
"What a wonderful view..."
She turned at his words and looked in his eyes.
He was lying prone and there was no sign that he was awake.
But for his last words.
"Sorry if I woke you," said she. "I needed fresh air..."
"I felt you standing up," answered he. "I was going to catch you when your derrière caught my eyes. I could only look and drool! God help me, but naked you're even more beautiful than dressed... I do believe I could look at your marvelous body until the end of time..."
She smiled at the compliment.
"I fear the passing of the years would change a few things, there..."
He shook his head.
"I know I will always remember you as you are now... I have just been granted the most beautiful sight on earth, how could I ever forget it?"
She laughed at him and shook her head, disbelief in her eyes.
"You spent quite a few hours discovering it yesterday, by now you should know it by heart..."
He went on looking at her, his eyes roaming every part of her body.
"I do only begin to discover it and I'll need many more years to know it by heart. But even then it won't be the same. What I see now has nothing to do with lust or passion. I look at perfection and I'm overwhelmed. I just can't believe my eyes..."
She came slowly toward the bed and seeing him looking at her she flushed...
His eyes were so intense, showed such admiration that she could feel her skin tingle under his gaze...
He raised his hand and she took it.
He gently pulled her to his side.
"Viens, mon amour, I feel myself ready to honor you once more..."
"We should..." tried she but he hushed her with a kiss.
"Hush, I'm not yet convinced that you're at my side. I need more proof... Urgently!"
She kissed him back and smiled while his lips began their exploration. Last night, after having goaded him into another round of love making, she had discovered that she could lead the dance. But she had also understood that there was bliss in inactivity. Now she felt like letting him do what had to be done...
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"Satisfied?"
She frowned.
He had asked that question quite a few times these last hours.
"Would I whimper and groan as loud as I did if I were not? Why do you need my verbal confirmation to believe that I am satisfied with what we did together when my most inner feelings were exposed in sound and gesture?"
He smiled and kissed her with a renewed passion.
"I always forget that perfection of yours, mon amour, I just can't believe how lucky I am..."
That was another of those remarks that came back very often. She shook her head lightly while he was brushing the lightest kisses on her face.
"I'm not perfect, my husband, of that I'm quite sure..."
He looked at her and his fingers flew along the curves of her body.
"I have a Christian name, mon amour. Nobody has used it for more than twenty-five years. I would be honored if my wife would agree to use it..."
She agreed; she had heard it.
"I know and I'd be glad to use it. How do you prefer me to pronounce it? Geoffroy or Geoffrey?"
He smiled.
"As you wish, it's not important. It's you and only you who will have to bear that burden of my past. For all the others I will be d'Arcy or, hopefully, Papa... Perhaps the English version would be easier since being slightly different it could be seen as a new beginning..."
"Geoffrey it will be then!"
She raised her hands behind his neck and pulled him toward her. He didn't resist.
"I love you, Geoffrey..." whispered she after another lengthy kiss.
He nodded and kissed her back.
"There's no word to express the feelings I have for you..." confessed he. "I'm so glad you accepted my suit... You are the nearest to perfection I have encountered while I'm so imperfect and clumsy and rough. I still can't fathom why you love me..."
She smiled.
He was not speaking empty words. She saw in his eyes that the wonder he was expressing was his genuine feeling.
They spent the next minutes cuddling with each other, but Jane never forgot the term burden he used to speak about his name.
When they were lying in each other's arms she decided it was perhaps time to know her husband better.
"Why should your name be a burden for me?"
First he didn't react and simply stayed completely still.
Then he sighed.
"Mine was not a happy youth..." said he finally. "I'm the second son of a man I despised and loathed and hated... Would he still have been alive when I came back I would have killed him slowly using all the arts I learned in China from the Son of Heaven's best torturers..."
A little smile appeared on his lips.
"The Republic did it for me and that's a crime I don't have to bear for the rest of my life." He chuckled. "But sometimes I regret not having been there in time to do it. I had imagined it for so long. I learned the skills of a torturer thinking only of him. Thinking how he would cry and shout and yell while I was cutting him in very tiny pieces... It was quite a disappointment to learn that he was killed so cleanly..."
Jane tried to understand.
"You were named after him?"
He shook his head.
"No I was named after my mother's father. My brother, being the eldest was named after my father's father and me, being the second and my mother being an only child, I was named after her father..."
Jane frowned...
What was it with his grandfather that shook him so?
"My father killed his father in law in order to get my mother's estates... And all my youth he boasted about it saying that, one day, I would get the same treatment..."
She saw a tear coming out of the corner of his eye...
"He scared me to death... I hated myself for it but I couldn't fight against it, he just scared me..."
She took him into her arms and cradled him there.
It didn't seem to matter to him so lost was he in his memories.
"My father was a pig and a rapist," said he. "He respected nothing and nobody. His only goal in life was to amass more money and estates and to get under every woman's skirt he could get his hands on." He shook his head. "What made him more proud than anything else was the fact that he had begotten his first bastard at the age of thirteen... He was still boasting about it the day I slipped out of the house to go to England..."
She took his head in her hands and kissed him.
"Did you love nobody?"
"I loved my little sister... She was a dream of a girl. Kind and sunny. I don't believe I ever saw her crying..."
"And I loved my mother," he did finally admit. "But I also despised her for the weakness she showed before my father. She knew he had killed her father and never said a word. Never uttered the slightest accusation..."
Jane could well imagine Geoffrey's mother scared to death by her murderous husband. What could she have done? Kill him in his sleep. And then what? Would her eldest son have supported her?
"How was your brother?"
D'Arcy chuckled once more.
"He was the mirror image of my father. Big, ugly and stinking! At twenty half his teeth had fallen out of his rotting mouth. He was as big as an ogre ad as dumb as an ox. I'm not sure he ever opened a book in his life and I'm sure he could write nothing more than his name. But then he didn't need to write. He was the son, the one who could do nothing wrong... I do really believe he spent my whole youth coercing and hitting me..."
Jane could only sigh. No wonder Geoffrey had wished to kill his father. No wonder he despised everybody.
She thought of his home. With a mother who could do nothing but fear what her murderous husband would do next, a son who was her husband's alter ego, and two younger children who were probably half scared to death most of the day.
She smiled...
First because of the happy home her parents had provided her and her sisters, then because of him... With such a background he could have become quite a monster himself. If she could be any judge, he had done very well indeed!
He was no longer scared by anything and he had found enough inner strength to overcome the failings of his blood in order to become a very decent human being.
Well at least in her eyes he was a very decent human being.
She was not sure the rest of the inhabitants of England were feeling quite the same about him, but then there she was, at his side and very ready to be England's last defender against France's greed.
She looked at him and saw in his eyes that his past was still present.
They had to speak about it. He was relaxed and happy. Now was as good a time as ever!
She had already received a few hints about what had happened to Geoffrey's family but she felt it was time for him to come out and speak about that part of his past...
"What happened to the rest of your family?"
He inhaled deeply and focused his eyes on her.
"Except for my sister they all died... I checked while in France. She is my only living relative. Every body else is dead. Most of them killed by the Revolution, my mother died here in England..."
"Where is your sister?"
"In Scotland where she lives with her family... My reports say she seems happy..."
"Your reports? Why only look at reports? I'm sure she would be happy to see you..."
He shook his head.
"It won't be a good idea... I was abroad when she and my mother needed me most; she's probably holding a grudge against me..."
She climbed a little nearer to his face.
He is afraid... She could feel it... She could even see it in his eyes... He was afraid of what would happen when they saw each other again!
"You would be dead had you been in France! Now you're alive and able to help her. I'm sure she will just be happy to have her brother back."
She pulled him to her side and cradled herself in his arms.
"Why don't we take a carriage and do go to Scotland?"
He shook his head.
"I can't... I will have to wait until the end of the negotiation with the Scots. If everything goes as I wish it, it will be possible. For now..."
"You could invite her... I'm sure she would come. And I'd like to know her! We Bennets are rather fond of sisters, you know?"
He smiled at her.
"I know, but I'm not sure... I don't know if I could overcome her reproaches..."
Jane frowned. It was as she feared. Mighty d'Arcy was scared of what would happen.
He feared being rejected...
She kissed him.
"Geoffrey, you're no longer alone... Whatever happens, I'm with you, the Bennets are with you... the Darcys and the Fitzwilliams are with you..."
That brought a frown.
Why?
Until now he had always spoken of the Darcys and the Fitzwilliams as family...
"You still consider your families here as family, don't you?"
"Yes, of course, but it's a very distant family... Darcy and I have clearly common ancestors but they are very remote. Our last common family member was probably one of my father's female ancestors who went to England to marry a Pemberley Darcy. I believe it was more than five hundred years in the past..."
Jane took a deep breath and summoned all her courage.
"What do you think of Fitzwilliam?"
He looked at her and his eyes began to sparkle.
"I like him... He is as I believe a Gentleman should be. He is the epitome of correct upbringing. I can't imagine anybody more suited to incorporate the stiff, arrogant and haughty English aristocrat..."
She shot him a dark glance.
"You said you liked him.."
"But I do... really! He's just the little brother I always wished to have for as an older brother. It's just that the circumstances are not very favorable for us to become friends. Brothers we are thanks to you and your sister, but that will be all for quite a long time to come."
A smile appeared on his lips.
"And he finds such pride at opposing me. I would and could not deprive him of that last privilege."
"Couldn't you just come along peacefully?"
"We could and, some day, we will, but as I see it we won't for quite a few years. He has to prove to everybody that he is not my lackey. And I do believe he has chosen the best way to show that! As for now, everybody knows that his allegiance is not to me. He is family and as such we must show that we are of the same ilk and that should help us not to fight against each other. But that will not mean that he will work with me... I just hope that he won't be sucked into a rebellion against us. It's always possible, you know! For some people, it would be a sort of victory to have us fight one against the other..."
She looked at her husband and frowned.
"And it pleases you to taunt him..."
He answered with a guilty smile.
"I confess that I like it when he becomes upset. His shoulders are straightening, his fists..."
"Stop it! I've seen it... You're quite ungentlemanly in that matter..."
He caught her and pulled her against him.
"There's only one person in the whole universe for whom I want to be a gentleman," whispered he in her ear. "And I hold her in my arms..."
He inhaled deeply.
"There are a few others I respect enough not to be my normal amoral and ruthless self with, but then they are not very numerous and probably concentrated here in Pemberley and in a few army camps in England..."
He felt her smile.
"How do you cope with Papa?"
"Don't be afraid, I like him quite a lot. Having seen what a nightmare a father can become, I do like his interpretation of one. And he's the only man I ever encountered who was never afraid of me..."
He cradled her in his arms and let his head lie on her shoulder
"That's quite an accomplishment, I must say. Most men feel instinctively the ruthless killer I'm deep within and they know instantly that I'm not a man to be trifled with. Even Napoleon was frightened of me the first time we met... And that's a man who fears nothing but his own ambition..."
Jane was tempted to ask him questions about the man Great Britain believed until recently to be her nemesis. But that would have to wait. He needed her support not her curiosity. And she was quite satisfied with what he just confessed about her family...
"How was your first encounter with Papa?"
He laughed.
"He smelled your perfume on me and gave me a tongue lashing... It was quite extraordinary, indeed! I was there looking down at him but it was me who felt the smaller of the two. It was as if I was, for a small time period, again a young pup who'd just made a great blunder. But even while admonishing me, he showed a willingness not to force you into anything. And that was a gift I greatly appreciate. I wanted you willing and secure in of your choice, not forced by traditions and social constraints."
His grasp tightened and his lips fumbled with the skin of her neck. She purred her pleasure.
After a few minutes of pure bliss he looked up into her eyes.
"He gave you the freedom to decide for yourself... Not many fathers would have resisted the pull of wealth and power and ambition. He did... I'm even sure it never crossed his mind. He was just upset by my conduct, not blinded by the happy circumstances of how he would be able to force us into matrimony. I'm really quite satisfied with my father-in-law..."
He stopped her next question with a kiss on her lips.
"And to stop your inquiry right here, please know that I'm also quite satisfied with the rest of the Bennet family. Even your sister Mary, with all her stiffness and insufferable piety, has that inner strength that gives her the power to remain a decent human being... So yes, I'm happy and no I have nothing to reproach any of your relatives..."
His smiling eyes searched her face.
"Are you reassured, now?"
She nodded and kissed him back.
He accepted her gift and answer and soon they were lost in each other's pleasure.
