"All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. [She] was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater."
― Émile Zola, Nana
"I love you… I love you… I love you…"
She was stood all alone in the Park, her arms outstretched towards him, her face streaked with tears, her eyes beseaching.
He tried to go to her, he considered comforting her, but just as he took a tentative step towards her, he saw her face transform from its vulnerable expression of love to a stony facede of despise.
The girl was a woman now, suddenly atop a horse. A whip in her hand, she lashed it harshly across his face.
Next to her, the phantom of the little girl was falling, shrinking, disintegrating into thin air. "I love you…" He voice was small and plaintiff, as she was slowly dying.
Before the girl's phantom had a chance to fully disappear, the woman urged the horse with her whip, and the steed trampled on the last wisps of the girl's incorporeal form.
"Only a monster would hurt an innocent."
He felt cold terror grip him at the woman's words, at her accusing gaze. And then he was struck with an incongruous realization.
"You have the same eyes."
She only laughed in response, with a laughter so hollow and bitter that it gripped his heart with its chill. The disembodied girl's soft, melodious chuckle melted with the woman's joyless laughter, and he thought it the most divinely tortuous combination.
Darcy awoke from the nightmare in cold sweat, and rose from his bed, pacing the length of his bedchamber in the faint moonlight. He was clearly going insane.
The past months had been maddening. Ever since he first beheld Isabella Caraggio in the Opera house five months prior, he had felt drawn to her. He knew what she was; her arrival with Lord Sarry had been a widely publicized event. She was well educated and stately and beautiful, and a new favorite among the gentlemen at his club. It was an entirely acceptable thing for the men of his acquaintance to keep mistresses and pursue coutesans. Yet his sense of decorum and propriety had always rebelled against the notion. And now he rebelled against the attraction he was developing for the fiesty Italian.
It was not her beauty, although she was certainly beautiful, that attracted him to her. It was her impeccable grace and comportment and the fact that she never sought to win favor with him. She had spurned him as much as he had spurned her at Montegue's dinner. And while he felt justified in his rudeness towards her, who was she to treat him so? The way she had called him a naughty boy, after so scandalously speaking about her relationship with his cousin right in the open, disturbed him. And confused him. And kept coming back to his mind.
He was faintly aware of the type of relations his new cousin had with this woman. Lord Sarry's escapades were much more widely discussed, but the Duke of Montegue's preference for strict mistresses was also common knowledge. Darcy found the idea of taking on a kept woman for discipline at once disgusting and intriguing.
He soon learned that she was well versed in the arts and literature, and had unorthodox but compelling views on social mores and politics. She spoke eloquently. She comported herself with dignity. She had the most intelligent pair of fine eyes that he was pleased to note shone with a special fire whenever she looked at him.
She had cut him. The place on his right thigh where her riding crop had landed as she spurred her steed away from him in Hyde Park still burned with the ghost a peculiarly pleasant sensation.
Altogether, he was going mad, and allowed this madness to take him as far as her drawing room during the previous evening. He had told himself that he was only going out of curiosity, to see what it was that kept all these worthy men enthralled at her house. When he saw her stockinged feet rest on his cousin's lap and felt the strange urge to beg to join in caressing them, he realized that it was not safe to remain there a moment longer.
Alas, he was no more safe at his home than at hers. What was the meaning of his dream? He had dreamt sporadically of Elizabeth Bennet's heart-wrenching pleas for years. When he had first learned of the poor girl's death, he felt a flicker of guilt but had extinguished it immediately. He was not responsible for her, he had told himself. She had been stupid and careless, and he had done what he must to avoid entrapment into marriage.
Yet his subconscious did not agree. I did not have to expose her so callously. At first, the nightmares had occurred almost weekly, then monthly. He hated them and resented them and kept telling himself that he had not done wrong. Perhaps he had not handled the situation in the best manner, but he had been provoked, had he not?
After a year, Georgiana's elopement and subsequent death from an illness she had caught in George Wickham's poor care on the way to Scotland had effectively distracted him from the memories of Elizabeth Bennet and the guilt that he kept telling himself was not his to feel.
He had too much tragedy in his life to mourn a young lady so wholly unconnected to him.
For the past three years, the nightmares were only occasional. Sometimes, he would see her young, scared, tear-streaked face in his other nightmares. His troubled dreams of his sister, in particular, were prone to morphing into those of the young girl. Poor dying Georgiana under Wickham's vile power would transform into poor dying Miss Bennet under his own, and he would be angry at his mind for forming that connection when he would wake.
But now, now another subconscious connection had been formed. Having seen it in his dream, he could not shake the recollection in real life. They did have the same eyes.
Is that why I find Isabella's fine, intelligent eyes so captivating? Because they remind me of the girl who, through her love and her death, has left such an indelible mark on my conscience?
He did not know, but after this disturbing dream, he felt an even stronger urge to unravel the mystery that was Isabella Caraggio. Against his duty, reason, upbringing, against his better judgment, he began calling on her and attending her soirees.
He mostly stood in the background, observing her interactions with the other men. She was imperious towards all of her lovers, but some were treated with more authority than others. The Earl of Palsy and Baron Duffenger were always respectful and deferential towards her, but received mostly cordial treatment in return. Lord Sarry and the Duke of Montegue were much more likely to be at the receiving end of her humiliating commands and verbal chastisement. Surprisingly, it was these latter gentleman whom, in his fevered lustful mind, he envied the most.
She was refined and educated, and well versed in the ways of the English gentry. Her knowledge of not only French and Italian literature, but his native writers was impressive. She had the most delightful Italian accent in her speech, but once, when he came to call on her and before he was announced, he overheard her order her footman in the cleanest English, in a voice that, without the Italian tint, sounded eerily familiar.
He wondered; he guessed; he yearned to know. And with it, he felt himself develop an increasing fascination with this woman. He was not merely curious anymore. He was bordering on obsessed.
He brought her pearls and rubies and sapphires, and she received him with cordial indifference. He stopped short of asking to become her patron, persisting in fooling himself that curiosity was his main aim in attending her evenings of entertainment. Watching the other men fight for her favors and knowing that at the end of each night, some lucky gentleman went to bed her, simultaneously roused his interest and made him feel sick.
Having finished his midday meal at the club, Darcy rose and bade his companions adieu.
"Where are you off to, Darcy? I was hoping we might go for a ride together." Charles Bingley was a jovial, amiable, bright young man, and one of Darcy's closest friends.
"What a question, Bingley! Haven't you heard? Twice a week on the dot, at this time, Darcy gets his taste of the delightful Isabella Caraggio."
Darcy saw Charles frown and shoot him a quizzical look. Damn you, Montegue. You don't need to publicize this to my friends!
"Truly, Darcy? How come you have never introduced me to your favorite?"
"She is not my favorite. It is nothing."
"Nothing, eh, Darce?" It appeared that Montegue was not finished mortifying him. "Tell me, has she whipped your naughty bottom yet? Or do you, like myself, prefer to serve her in other ways?"
Charles Bingley's eyes at this point were as wide as saucers. Damn damn damn.
"I beg that you cease at once, Montegue. I find this sort of talk…" Intriguing? Entrancing? Arousing? "Disgusting."
"Ah, so you are not so much into the lovely Isabella's domination? Do you prefer to simply allow her to pleasure you, like good old Duffenger?"
"Enough!" Darcy roared, suppressing the stirring of desire that threatened to emerge. He scowled at Montegue's laughing face. "If you must know, I have not the slightest intention of engaging in any such amoral activities with Signorina Caraggio."
If possible, Montegue only laughed harder. "You have met the lady at the same time as I, seven months ago. If I am not mistaken, for the the past three of those months you have been attending her social gatherings and calling on her quite religiously. And don't think that I haven't noticed the little 'trinkets' you bring. Are you trying to tell me that you gift her with rubies and do not demand any favors in return?"
"Precisely. I am merely curious." With that, Darcy hastily excused himself.
On the way to the courtesan's house, he tried desperately to convince himself of the truth of his words. It was, of course – it had to be! – mere curiosity that was driving him. Curiosity about a courtesan who could debate literature better than most of the men of his acquaintance. Curiosity about a pair of fine eyes so reminiscent of the girl he had once ruined. Curiosity about a woman who could stir in him desire like nothing he had ever felt before. Curiosity and nothing more.
Try as he might, he could not rid himself of the mental image of Montegue's laughing face and Bingley's perturbed one, and of the sense that he was fatally deceiving himself.
What on earth am I doing? Is morbid curiosity worth this degradation?
He had determined to see her for the very last time. The butler informed him that she was occupied with a caller in the sitting room, and took him to wait in her study. With nothing better to occupy his time, instead of giving way to painful imaginings of her private activities with the other caller, he perused the items on her desk. There was a well-worn copy of an original Italian edition of Machiavelli's Il Principe. There was a beautiful bejeweled paperweight, most likely a present from one of her admirers. There was an unsent letter.
No, this cannot be.
The handwriting was painfully familiar. It had been four years, but the gentle curves of her letters had haunted him almost as much as her pained expression and her broken "I love you."
He read the note, once, twice. It was nothing of interest; a letter to Lord Drenson, a former lover from the tone of her note. But it was signed, in that same delicate hand that he remembered so well, with "Your little Lizzy."
Lizzy. Elizabeth.
His head was pounding from the fantastical realization. He did not even hear her enter.
"Mr. Darcy, I apologize for keeping you waiting."
He did not turn at the sound of her voice, afraid to face her, terrified of looking into those familiar green eyes.
"I knew a girl once, and I am afraid I hurt her." She did not respond, nor did she make any more steps towards him from what he could hear. "Her name was Elizabeth Bennet."
With bated breath, he waited for the moment of truth. Can it be?
"She knew a man once, who most certainly did hurt her," she at last responded in an ice cold tone. "But it matters not, for she is no more."
He turned towards her and plunged into the depth of her fine, lovely, hurting, burning, furious eyes.
He read in those eyes her story. Within a moment, the past years flashed before his eyes. Lord Drenson's departure for the continent had been of some notoriety. It was a well-known fact that he had connections with the finest courtesans on the continent. The coincidence of his departure with Elizabeth Bennet's disappearance – her presumed death – had escaped Darcy's notice, and likely everyone else's, at the time. And now she was back, so different and yet the same. The same green eyes, the same courageous and heedless temper, the same strong will.
"You had other options," he murmured, trying to convince himself more than her.
"Did I?"
"Well, surely, a less drastic course of action would have sufficed. To run away to the continent to pursue training as a courtesan… why, what a fantastical notion!"
"Indeed, a fantastical notion of a silly naïve little girl."
He heard the bitterness in her tone and lowered his head. "Forgive me."
"What would you have had me do, Mr. Darcy? My father's suggestion was to leave my fate to the one man who had hurt me. To implore him to do the honorable thing to save me, to cover up the scandal with a forced marriage. I could never consent to that. No, anything was better than to leave my fate in that man's hands. Yet to remain alive and well and unmarried would have allowed my sisters to partake in my ruin. And so I chose the only path available to me outside of hurting my family and being tied to a cold-hearted man. I do not regret it. Anything but to be your wife, Mr. Darcy."
There was so much venom in her voice that it hurt. But he could scarcely fault her. He wondered inwardly what his response would have been had the Bennets approached him with such a request. Would he have married her? Most probably not.
After a long silence, Elizabeth stood and went to look at the time.
"It is almost four o'clock, Mr. Darcy. I am expecting a caller in an hour, and I need to prepare. If you will excuse me." She left the drawing room with a short command to the butler to see him out.
As his carriage rode away from her fashionable home, he wondered who her caller would be that afternoon. Was it the Earl of Palsy or Baron Duffenger? Or perhaps Lord Sarry? He envied whoever it was. He envied them all.
Over the following fortnight, he sent her flowers in the mornings and little trinkets in the evenings, but he did not call on her again. During the day, he thought and analyzed and deliberated. At night, his nightmares had worsened.
His life had been full of tragedy. The mysterious fire that had taken his parents. Georgiana's elopement and death. These events had tormented him, gnawed at him, hardened him. But nothing tore at him as much as seeing the damage he had done to this woman. Those other tragedies had other culprits – the unknown arsonist, Wickham. The tragedy of Lizzy Bennet was entirely and irrevocably his own fault.
It frightened him, sometimes, to see how much damage he had done. The transformation from the sweet and innocent Lizzy into the cold and hard Isabella was remarkable. He lusted after Isabella Caraggio, hopelessly, desperately. But knowing that deep inside was Lizzy Bennet, the same lovely girl whom he had broken, made him yearn for her in a more deep and soulful way. He wanted to fix her. He wanted to make it all up to her. He wanted to atone. He wanted to be permitted to love her.
He loved her.
The realization struck unexpectedly on his early morning ride through Hyde Park, and heedlessly, he rushed to Mayfair.
Ignoring the butler's protests and every demand of propriety, he ran straight into the house when he arrived. Excited, nervous, he was bursting with his newfound knowledge and could not wait to share it with her, to throw himself at her feet and to seek absolution.
He found her right in the sitting room, reclining semi-nude on the settee, her hand languidly stroking the long blond curls of the man kneeling between her legs, his head buried in her precious core.
Embarrassed, Darcy halted mid-stem. Unperturbed, Elizabeth raised an elegant eyebrow.
"Mr. Darcy," she greeted coolly. He saw her lucky lover's head still its ministrations upon the interruption. Her hold on the hair tightened, and she pressed the head back to her core, signaling that it need not cease in its task. The head eagerly resumed the up and down motions. Despite himself, Darcy found the sight of another man pleasuring her to be oddly arousing.
Having assured the continuation of her pleasure, Elizabeth then turned back to her unwelcome visitor.
"Has no one ever taught you to wait to be announced before entering a lady's sitting room, Mr. Darcy?"
"I – I b-beg your pardon, Signorina." He managed to grind out, his breath audibly ragged from the building excitement. She was using her free hand to caress her exposed breasts, her head reclining in pleasure.
"Tsk, what a bad boy. For a grown man of eight-and-twenty, Mr. Darcy, you behave rather too much like an undisciplined youth. I wager you were not punished nearly enough as a child."
"I – I s-suppose n-not, S-signorina." Blast it! She was pinching the dark pink rosebud on her left breast and licking her lips. How was he supposed to retain any dignity in the face of such a sumptuous sight?
"Perhaps it is nothing that a good thrashing would not be able to fix," She mused. "How would you like that, Mr. Darcy? I would command you to drop your breeches and bend over with your bare buttocks on display, then whip those naughty buttocks red, and then allow you to thank me for disciplining you by licking the soles of my feet." She illustrated her titillating description with an elegantly raised right foot, drawing languid circles in the air with those perfect little toes that he so admired and longed to kiss.
He was attempting to gather enough control to respond, when her grip on the other man's hair tightened, she pressed that other face deeper to herself, and threw back her head in an erotic display of ecstasy. Her body convulsed briefly, her chest rose sumptuously, her perfect lips let out a perfect moan, and he was gone. He soiled himself inside his breeches while watching her explode with pleasure from another man's tongue, and he could not even feel mortification. He was in heaven.
She took several moments to compose herself. Once composed, however, she was back to her regal coolness.
"Thank you, Johnny. Please return to your regular duties." As the man rose from between her legs, Darcy was surprised to note his attire. He had expected it to be a gentleman, one of Isabella's wealthy clients. Instead, the man he so envied was nothing more than her footman.
With a wide satisfied grin, Johnny bowed and obediently left the room.
"You seem surprised, Mr. Darcy. You needn't be. I have excellent boys on my staff, all handpicked for their gorgeous figures and perfect obedience. They are often much better trained at giving me pleasure than the more refined paying visitors of my bed."
He nodded, but did not respond. Then, recalling why he had come, he blurted out: "I love you."
She swept a curious gaze over him, from his flushed face down to where a humiliating wet patch was beginning to seap through his breeches. She ignored what he had said.
"Now, shall we speak about your behavior, Mr. Darcy? Or, more aptly, your misbehavior." He was silent. She raised her eyebrows, then condescended to continue: "Tell me, did you like the punishment I described? Would you enjoy being made to offer your bare behind for my whipping, and then to thank me on your knees, with your lips against my feet and your punished rear raised up in the air?"
He gulped. "I do not know, Signorina."
"Don't you?"
"I have never been in that position before. I am not sure how it would feel. But I do… that is, I would… what I mean to say is that it does sound… oddly appealing. I know not why."
"Oh, I know why. It is because you are a very naughty boy, Mr. Darcy. And naughty boys like to be punished for their misbehavior."
She stood up, not bothering to close the loose robe she was wearing. He swallowed hard at the sight of those precious little curls of hair covering her sex. She came all the way up to him, and murmured sensually, her hot breath caressing his ear:
"I will go and get dressed now. I will be back in a half hour. I want you, Mister, to remove all clothing below your waist, and to stand right in that corner, with your nose facing the wall. During my absence, you are to recall exactly what misbehaviors you have committed today, and how many licks of the riding crop you think you deserve for each one. I expect a thorough account when I return."
Without awaiting his response, she quit the room.
He was unable to disobey her. As he unfastened his breeches, he realized that she had left the sitting room door ajar. He caught the knowing eye of the butler stood in the corridor, and blushed but continued removing his clothing. It was humiliating, to be sure, to be put on display in front of her servants, but was it truly much worse than the situation in which he already found himself? He had rushed to her notorious house in broad daylight, after having paid court to her for almost four months. He had spilled his seed fully dressed while watching her receive her pleasure from a footman. Johnny already knew the full extend of his humiliation. What did it matter if the butler learned the same?
Folding his soiled breeches and drawers neatly on the table, he went to stand as instructed with his nose pressed against the corner. The coolness of the air around his exposed privates felt soothing, especially in their current sticky condition.
True to her word, she took a half hour to return. Ample time in which he mentally catalogued his misdemeanors and became progressively more excited to experience the punishment session she had promised. He surely deserved anything she was willing to dole out, and he looked forward to the feeling of belonging he would attain from receiving her correction. For once, during his discipline, he would have her full attention. The thought was exhilarating.
"Good boy," she remarked when she entered the room. "It is reassuring to see that you can at least follow simple commands. Come kneel before me and tell me why you need to be punished."
She was sat on the same settee where she had so recently achieved her release. He knelt humbly before her.
"I have been a very bad boy, Signorina, and I need to be punished." He began uncertainly, but grew increasingly confident, spurred on by the erotic audacity of his own words. "My first offense this morning was to enter unannounced, against the council of your excellent butler. I believe I require at least ten licks of the crop for that. Then I failed to excuse myself upon finding you in a delicate position at my arrival. That should be another ten licks, Signorina. Lastly, I was a terribly naughty boy and I soiled my pants. I believe I deserve at least twenty licks of the riding crop on my punished backside for gaining my release without your permission, madam."
She regarded him from under furrowed brows, her brilliant green eyes probing, searching, evaluating. She remained silent, deep in thought, until her apparent reverie was interrupted by the butler.
"As you had requested, madam, I have come to inform you that it is nearly noon. I believe Lord Sarry is to arrive in a quarter hour."
"Thank you, Jenson," she answered, and stood up. Uncertain, Darcy followed her with his eyes.
"Signorina?"
"I am afraid I do not have enough time to administer your punishment, Mr. Darcy. Nor, to be frank, do I have the inclination. You are much too far gone to be corrected with pleasurable discipline, and regardless, I typically do not bestow such treatment without adequate compensation."
Eagerly, he offered: "I would be delighted to provide any compensation you might require, madam! I may be a very bad boy, but I am sure that repeated and consistent chastisement would be of great help to me. Perhaps I could come thrice weekly?"
She let out a harsh laugh. "I have no doubt that you could come much more often than that, judging from your performance this morning. But I do not intend to take any new clients at the moment."
Terrified, he crawled closer to where she now stood, so regal and magnificent. "Please, Elizabeth! I will pay double, triple your usual price!"
Her narrowed eyes regarded him with scorn. "I have no wish for your business, Mr. Darcy, at any price. And if you wish to retain any admission to social visits at my home, I would suggest that you refrain from addressing me by names that are not my own. I am Signorina Isabella Caraggio. Now, if you will excuse me, I must prepare to receive my visitor. Feel free to show yourself out whenever you wish; and I would suggest that you put your dirty drawers back on quickly, unless you intend for his Lordship to become acquainted with those private parts of yours."
Hurt, confused, humiliated, he watched her quickly exit the room. He collected himself enough to put his drawers and breeches back on, wincing at the discomfort of his now dried seed on his clothes. Then he hurriedly left her house before anyone had the chance to witness the full extent of his pain.
She had rejected him.
It hurt. Other men were allowed to submit to her discipline and give her pleasure. Yet she would not permit him the same service, no matter the price he was willing to pay. He wanted to say that it was unfair. Yet, in good conscience, he could not. For those other men had never hurt or rejected her. And he had.
So, her secret is out aaaaaand he cracks. But does Lizzy still want her revenge? I envision eight chapters in total for this story, by the way, so we are roughly halfway.