One week husbandly satisfactions and patriotic frustrations...
Chapter eleven: Pemberley age and worries
Derbyshire, Pemberley, Monday the twenty third August. Early morning.
"What happened?"
She saw him coming out from under the curtains.
"Nothing! I thought I heard a strange voice speaking to me," said he while coming back to the bed. "But there's nobody anywhere near us. It must have been a dream…"
She opened her arms and he soon was at her side.
"Sorry to have awakened you, I've tried to be silent…"
"No need to be sorry, dear. It wasn't the noise that awakened me, but the void at my side."
She smiled at him.
"It seems to me that I'm quite in need of your nightly presence… And it's only been a week that I have had the pleasure of sleeping at your side…"
"I tried it twice before, remember?"
"Of course I remember and I'll never ever forget those two nights. Those were the nights you won me over. How could a girl resist a man who climbs trees and walls just to murmur love words in her ears…"
"I would have flown to be with you."
He chuckled.
"My armies have been lucky that I always prepare my campaigns with lots of advance details because these last two weeks I was a very inefficient warlord. My thoughts were always floating around your hair, your eyes, your…" he coughed. "…Charms! I couldn't get them out of my mind."
He laughed at himself.
"Even when I rehearsed my campaign plans with my officers there was always a pair of blue eyes looking at me and disturbing me. I don't know how I happened not to blunder this last phase of the campaign…"
She smiled at him and stroked his lips with a kiss.
"So I could have saved my country? What a shame that your single-mindedness engages only after some time… It would have been the best thing in the world to have you at my side and a free England as a bonus…"
He kissed her back.
"I wouldn't be here if I had failed…"
"Probably not, but that wouldn't have prevented my being with you…"
"I would be a prisoner somewhere…"
"I would have come to get you, monsieur d'Arcy. I would have freed you or I would have married you… But one thing is clear in my mind we would be together…"
He turned to her and she saw his sparkling eyes.
"And how would you have freed me?"
"With the help of my sisters it would have been easy. Lizzy and Papa to think of the battle plan, Lydia and Kitty to lure the guards, Mary to bore to death the remains of the garrison and Mama to cover with her screeches the sawing noise. We Bennets can be quite a dangerous lot when we have made a decision…"
He laughed at the plan. Depending on the jail it could have worked…
"And you would have done nothing, dear?"
She shook her head vehemently.
"I would have been of no use, that's for sure. I would have been so worried! Worried for you, for the rest of the family, for everything that could have failed! I would have spent every minute of your captivity crying and cursing myself for not having let you love me when I could have had you…"
He smiled at her words and came nearer. Soon they were kissing and soon she got what she wanted.
After a while they found themselves in each other's arms…
"When I'm within your arms, I feel young and healthy… I feel as if we really had years to spend together…"
She sighed inwardly and took great precautions not to let her distress be felt.
He had that idée fixe with his age that could upset him and break his joy in an instant.
"We have years to spend together. My husband is strong, handsome and powerful and I'm not going to accept his childish fears about his age…"
He sighed.
"They are not fears, dear. They are ugly realities. I'm twenty years your senior. I'll die years before you, leaving you alone with our family…"
She was on top of him even before he could finish.
"Monsieur d'Arcy what is it with you that you are unable to look at the bright side of life without immediately searching the darker regions that exist somewhere in your mindscape?"
His smile was back because he loved it when she climbed on top of him. It was so marvelous to look at her while sitting on him her arms akimbo…
Did she know that that particular move had extraordinary results with her naked breasts?
He looked at her eyes and decided that she knew. She was deliberately luring him in another direction. And she was probably feeling the results of her victory somewhere near her derrière.
"It comes with great age, Madame d'Arcy! It's called experience…"
She shook her head and that movement had an even greater effect on her bosom.
Yes, definitely she knew exactly what she was doing. And she was doing it quite efficiently.
"I wouldn't call it experience, Monsieur d'Arcy, I would call it pessimism…"
She bent over to let her nose touch his –and her breast stroke his chest– and whispered to get his attention.
"You're not an old man, monsieur mon mari. You're young and healthy and you know more about what I need than anybody else. I won't let you abandon me before I'm really satisfied with you and, believe me, thatwill take decades!"
"I already lost two of those decades…"
She hit him –lightly– on the head.
"Nonsense! Two decades ago I was a marvelous and healthy toddler you wouldn't even have touched without a pressing invitation from Mama. And if forced to hold me you would have falsely uttered your appreciation and lied about how beautiful I was –while praying to all Gods that it would not last longer than a few seconds–… And as soon as possible you would have given me back to Mama and looked for a way to flee to a place where somebody spoke a language you could understand…"
She growled forebodingly.
"And one decade ago you would have encountered a twelve year old girl who was very upset by the changes she was experiencing in her body and was not in the least interested in men and even less in grown men."
She looked him straight in the eyes.
"No, we met at just the right moment! I just came out of a rather difficult love deception and I was ready to make another try at a relationship. And the way you introduced yourself was quite impressive. If you wanted to make an impact on me you couldn't have done better…"
He smiled at his own silliness.
"Of course I wanted to make an impression. I wanted you to witness my extraordinary capacities as a warrior. I wanted to show you that I was still able to protect the woman I loved…"
She winked at him.
"The woman you loved?"
"Indeed. I didn't know it then but I'm sure now. One look at you was enough to bind my heart to yours in a second. Had I not had the experience of those four decades I would have been a forlorn puppy looking up at you and oblivious to anything else…"
"And those rascals would have gotten what they wanted…"
She shook her head.
"No, really, we met at the best time possible. Not too soon and not too late. Each afternoon, I look at you and your training sessions and what I see is a grown burly man who's, most of the time, able to outsmart every one of his opponents! And when said opponent gets lucky I see that he's still able to defeat a much bulkier and heavier man than himself." Her smile became more tender. "I like what I see and I love the man I observe…"
He pulled her to his side and soon they kissed and loved each other.
"Do you use what you see for your own training?"
Her eyes shot open and he felt her tense. He immediately pulled her to him and stroked her face with kisses.
"Don't try to lie to me; I know perfectly well what you're doing with Maureen and your sister in the house's attic…"
"You know?"
"I know! Remember I take great satisfaction in knowing as much as possible of what's happening around me…"
"And you said nothing?"
"What should I have said? That I agree and that I'm satisfied? That I disagree and that I'm upset?"
He turned toward her.
"Which answer would you have preferred?"
She shook her head.
"I don't know. The first, probably. But then doing it behind your back was giving me a sense of awareness I never felt before."
"You were too serious a girl and a lady, Madame mon épouse. You should have done those things much more often. And I must say that I rather liked looking at you and your sister while training with Maureen."
She bit him but with restraint.
"I didn't know you were a peeping Tom…"
He snorted.
"Nothing so vulgar as that! As the Master I need to know how my followers do when they teach my secret techniques. I swear I'm only looking at you to see if my technique is fairly taught. I don't even see yours and your sister's revealed charms. It's onl…"
He caught her hand just before she could strike him.
"You… You…"
He smothered her indignation under a passionate kiss.
"And I'm very proud of my wife's various talents. I would never have believed that you could convince your sister to participate."
She laughed at his proud smile.
"I didn't convince her at all. I couldn't stop her once I spoke of my training. She wanted to know it and I believe she's much better than I."
He shook his head.
"No she's not. She's just much more straightforward than you and since you're always trying not to hurt her you fight differently. Your style is more defensive and hers more offensive. But by choosing the defensive you are much better at learning the right moves. You don't have to rush anything. You take your time. Elizabeth, on the other hand, wants to master the offensive with a will of her own. You, you look more at a way to maintain your opponent out of reach. Both ways are correct. It is a choice you must make at a moment in your training. But it means that she will mostly attack and that you will more than often wait for your opponent's movement."
He sighed while stroking her cheek.
"I prefer your way myself. It's always the easiest way to chop an opponent down without hurting him badly. I do believe your sister would be even better with another fighting technique I mastered. But I taught Maureen only the best defensive techniques. I must admit that I don't trust her as much as I trust you."
She looked at him with hopeful eyes.
"You could teach us…"
He shook his head with passion.
"No, dear, I couldn't. It's already hard enough to look at you training and not jump you. Would you be wrestling with me I know exactly what would happen! And even if I'm probably able to not rape your sister, I know I'm unable to hold you in my arms without having very precise ideas of what else we should do…"
"You just said that you were only looking at us with the eye of a Master… You lied to me!"
He denied vehemently.
"No I didn't! Or I should say I try very hard. But if it's rather easy with the others…With you it's impossible! I must confess that I'm even a little jealous of your sister and of Maureen when they have you in their arms…"
She kissed him for his charming compliment.
"No reason to be jealous of Maureen, she hurts me whenever she can… There's no love between us…"
He agreed.
"But she's no longer as efficient as at the beginning." He kissed her brow. "You're much less blue and brown than a few days earlier. It means that you've got the right moves at your disposal. Not that she likes you more. And it's much better if you stay on unfriendly terms. I want her to protect you and I don't want you to forget that she is your bodyguard by beginning to think of her as a friend. It's very difficult to send friends to be killed. An ex mistress of one's husband is much easier…"
She frowned at him.
"You loved her once! How can you be so cold while speaking of her possible death?"
"We shared some feelings. I now know what it means to love. So I'm sure that it was never love between us. She used me and I used her and we both did find some new sanity in our relationship. It was a healing process, not the passion I feel for you. I have no doubt that she would hurt me if necessary and I would do the same…"
He took her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly.
"You, I could never harm in any way. That's the simple and definite truth. You're more important to me than anything else on this earth, myself included… So, no, I'm not going to teach you! Maureen knows enough to be a good teacher for a few more weeks and after that we'll see. In the future I'll perhaps be able to look at one of your nipples without going immediately into a mating frenzy!"
She chuckled at his affirmation.
"I don't know what to hope, dear. I love knowing that I have that effect on you but I'm not sure it's a good thing. I don't want you to lose your mind over me…"
He smiled at her.
"It's not as difficult as it once was. I'm able to look at you without losing my self control. It's only when I see those very precious parts of yourself that I'm the only one allowed to see that I am overcome. It should be possible to rule myself most of the time…"
She pulled him against her and this time they went peacefully to sleep.
She was combing her hair when he came out of their bathroom.
"Does Darcy know?"
She had no problems guessing the topic of that question.
"Yes and no…"
"Oh, oh," said he. "I suspect a very tiny 'yes' and a rather huge 'no', am I wrong?"
She sighed.
"He knows that Lizzy and I are learning with Maureen."
"Learning? What does he believe she's teaching?"
"We're not sure," was the answer. "We were not very precise in our explanations. Some foreign dancing technique. I'm not sure we uttered the word 'chinese'. Probably not! Since it's something indoor she does with me, he's not really worried. He has, just now, other more important problems on his mind. We are not sure how he would react if he knew the truth. And Lizzy rather likes our training sessions. Probably more than I do…"
He looked at her but couldn't see her eyes to verify whether or not she was disguising the truth. Probably not! He could only smile a very satisfied and proud little smile. She was like that hiswife. Much too honest for a husband like him.
"Well since I want you to go on with your training, I'll have to ask Fitzwilliam about his consent for adding his wife to these training sessions. I'm sure I'll find a way to get it… As you know I'm quite the manipulator…"
She looked at him.
"That's what you like pretending, yes…"
He winked at his wife.
"I'm a great pretender, am I not?"
She could only nod…