Mr. Bennet's POV

Chapter 28: He Would Never Have Approved, But I Do Not Need His Approval Anymore.

My father died when Mrs. Bennet's belly was full of the child that would be my first by blood, the one I hoped would be my heir, would allow me to convince my father to rewrite his will. While my child cavorted in her womb (at night it was my habit to slip into Mrs. Bennet's bed, lift her nightgown and watch and feel the surface of her abdomen as my child swept limbs across it, try to feel a foot, an elbow), my father grew weaker. There came a time when he struggled to eat even the softest of foods and I had to request broths for him, tip tiny sips into his mouth, watch much of it dribble down his chin. It was clear how the story would end if not clear how long it would be drawn out.

In these days, I spent hours at his side, a book at hand to pass the time. He spent much of the day either napping or in a daze, but at odd moments he would return to himself and we might have a brief exchange. Sometimes he seemed to be fully present, to know about his declining state and worry about his legacy. During these times he told me, "I hope I shall live long enough to see your son born, to know that Longbourn will remain in Bennet hands."

At other times he seemed to be reliving events of the past and though he still called me Thomas, it was his long-dead brother he saw and not his son. And of course at times it took far longer to determine whether he saw me or his brother. I would just have to let his words play out and listen for clues.

I remember one afternoon he startled out of some dream and stared at me with suspicious eyes. "Thomas, what is it that you think you are doing?" He said nothing further, just glared at me.

Before being interrupted, I had been thinking on Mrs. Roberts. I had not had my men break her door down and evict her and her daughter by force. Instead, two days after our first encounter I had knocked at her door and when (despite hearing her footsteps inside), she did not come to the door I shouted through it, "I will not make you leave yet. When the month is over you may have another two months, but that is as far as my charity will extend."

I do not know what response I expected to have from her, but utter silence was not it. As I rode away, I regretted having no glimpse of her. I wondered why I was doing this if I would not receive her gratitude. I knew it was right to be forbearing given the circumstances; she had lost everything. It should have been enough to feel I was fulfilling my Christian duty in tending to the poor.

At that time I was doing my best to make my marriage more successful and had no thought of taking a mistress. There had been a softening of our marriage, a tentative respect and friendship which sprang from me acknowledging I had read her letter and that her points had some merit. We had begun to talk more honestly, to say what we needed from one another.

Perhaps two weeks into the process when I came into her room at night Fanny asked, "May we talk first?"

I nodded.

Fanny told me, "I still need to mourn for my father, yet you do not so much as even wear an arm band for him. It is not right that you ignore my pain. I know you are not the cause of it, did not care for him, for what he did, but I loved him, love him still."

I told her, "I am sorry. I know you loved him and he, you. I know he wanted to protect you, just as I would want to protect Jane. He was wrong, but I think he believed that eventually our marriage would be one of felicity."

"He told me I was wrong when I did not treat you as a husband should be treated. He told me but at the time I did not want to listen. I should have listened; I am so sorry."

I was not sure if she was apologizing to me or to her dead father. I had this urge to protect her then. I gently placed one arm around her. She leaned into my shoulder, then suddenly she was crying, sobbing and I was stroking her back and patting it as I might do for Jane.

"I miss him so much," she told me, "I thought that there was more time, that he would live many years, like your father."

Unbidden, I shared, "I think it shall not be long before I lose my father as well. He keeps weakening; it is an ebbing tide, inevitable."

She told me, "I do not wish to have that in common with you, for us to have both lost our fathers."

We embraced each other then. I am not sure if we acted at the same time or one of us acted first, but we clung to each other. She began to cry. My eyes were dry, perhaps because my father was not yet gone, but I felt a deep sadness come over me nevertheless. Yet there was something so nice about holding my wife, that we could derive comfort from one another.

She only wept for a little while and then she released me a little so that she could look up at me. Fanny told me, "I have tried to do better with you. I want him to be proud of me, but it is hard to trust, to feel what my sister says she feels for Mr. Phillips. I wish I felt the desire she has for her husband, but I cannot seem to forget myself in the moment. What that horrible man did, though it only took a few minutes, casts a large shadow."

"I know. I wish it did not, that I could free you from that."

We then climbed into bed. We turned toward one another, but I made no attempt at relations that night. Instead I held her and she held me, and sometimes I kissed her forehead, her cheek, as I might kiss Jane. It was the most intimate night we had together, the first time we shared a bed the whole night.

The following night I had a suggestion for Fanny to try. I asked her, "Would you be willing drink a bit of brandy? I think it might relax you, help you not think about anything but how good your body can feel."

She nodded and willingly drank perhaps three fingers worth in the glass. I wondered what she would be like having consumed strong spirits. Would she be giggly, silly? Would she be more welcoming of my attentions? I hoped so. However, I never had a chance to find out that night as within a couple of minutes of tossing back the glass her eyes got wide and she dashed off from the bed and vomited into an empty vase.

Thus instead of the evening I had hoped for, I was busy laying a cool cloth upon her head and doing anything I could think of to see to her comfort. Later, when she was feeling a bit better, a thoughtful look crossed her face. She told me, "My dear Mr. Bennet, it occurs to me that perhaps, just perhaps, I was sickened not so much from the strong drink, but because I may be with child. My stomach has seemed sour of late. Do you remember when I tended to you after you fell from the carriage when I became sick and blamed it on seeing your blood?"

I nodded, "Was it not the blood that made you sick?"

"No, I typically have a strong stomach. I believe it was because I was with child."

Again I stayed with her that night. This time she lay upon her side turned away from me and I wrapped an arm around her middle, gently stroking the slight curve of her belly that might hold my child.

By the time the extension of time I had granted Mrs. Roberts was about to be up, there was no question that Fanny was with child. Her belly was rounded and we had both felt the little flutterings. However, that was as much intimacy as I had of her body. Unlike with Jane, Fanny continued to feel sick and the smallest motion would set it off. I was hopeful that this change in her symptoms meant she was expecting my son. I had not been so cruel as to impose on her when she was in such a state, though she gave me what pleasure as she could with her hands while keeping the rest of her body as still as possible.

She took no joy in it, though, it felt as if my needs were a chore, simply a duty to her. Still, it was more pleasant for it to be her doing it than myself.

A few days before the three months were up I knocked on Mrs. Roberts's door again. This time after a few moments she opened it and walked outside to me. She was dressed properly, most of her hair was concealed beneath a bonnet, black gloves upon her hands. The skin of her face and neck looked so pale compared with the black surrounding it. Her eyes were reddened, her nose a bit as well, and I wondered if she had been crying.

This time Mrs. Roberts was not defiant. Instead she seemed broken. "I expect you will follow through and evict me at the end of the month. You have been more than generous, but still, I beseech thee, can we not stay a little longer?"

I would have preferred the fiery woman of before. This version of her was too close to Fanny, the Fanny who cried for her father.

Although my heart was softened by Mrs. Roberts's plight and the change it had wrought in her, I rhetorically asked her, "What is the use of giving you another month? Will you suddenly have the funds to pay after that time if you have not before?"

She was silent, so I added, "It is not kindness to have you linger here indefinitely. Will you not take employment with my household? I know that is not what you want, but you will have a home, good meals."

It occurred to me then that I did not even know how she was feeding herself and her daughter and affording the other essentials of life, so I asked. "Can you even afford to feed your daughter now?"

She turned to me then, straightened herself up and I saw a hint of the defiant woman of before. "We have gotten by thus far. I am not an idle woman and have found work enough to keep our bellies full."

She could not have known it then, but when I heard her phrase "work enough to keep our bellies full" I thought of the phrase "belly full" which often referred to a woman great with child. While I did not suspect of her that she was working upon her back, I wondered if she would ever accept such employment. If she did, I most certainly would have to evict her post-haste. We did not put up with that sort of nonsense at Longbourn; my father would never allow it.

But then another thought rose up within me, an unbidden thought. What if it was I who employed her in such a manner? Once thought, it could not be un-thought.

I thought of my father's strictures against me ever keeping a mistress. I knew it was my duty to sow my seed in my wife's fertile valley, to get her with child, to preserve Longbourn for the Bennets. However, I had done my duty. It was impossible to plant another seed in my wife at such a time and while my body's bare physical needs were being attended to, Fanny's movements were stiff and mechanical. Too, my father would soon be gone and it would be up to me to make the rules.

"Just getting by is not living, though, is it?" Although I asked this question of her, I could have been asking it of myself as well. My existence with Fanny was not wholly unpleasant, just rather dull.

"What need have I for anything else? I simply wish to raise my daughter, to let her have the security of remaining in our home."

"You cannot remain indefinitely upon my charity," I told her, "I cannot afford it. If you wish to remain, we must come to some other arrangement."

There, I had given a hint, just a hint to my desire. I expected her to either deliberately not understand me or to be disgusted, but instead she only looked thoughtful.

"Should you wish to keep me?" Her eyes stared into mine. I remember thinking they resembled nothing so much as the eyes of a cat, when has arched its back, hoping to intimidate whatever it is facing, ready to fight or flee in an instant.

"Perhaps." I was not yet ready to commit, even though I was already picturing pulling off her bonnet, running my hands through her hair, lifting her skirt to caress her thighs, to touch her secret place, unbuttoning her dress to release her breasts and having my way with her. I wondered if her nether hair matched the hair upon her head and what color her nipples were.

I answered her question with a question. "Do you wish to be kept?"

"How well would you keep me and what would you expect? Though I am old for it now, I may still conceive and I have no wish to bear another child, to have suspicions that may arise confirmed by such a state and be ejected from all polite society. I would not place such a stain upon my Emma."

"You may stay for now; I must consider matters further."

I did not wait for her to reply. I simply mounted my horse and left.

My father took a worse turn that night. He raved without seeming to know me, either as myself or his brother. He kept saying, "Stop, stop, stop, stop." He shivered and shook, but he threw off the covers I tried to drape around him with a strength and vitality that was not in keeping with his frail body.

Then suddenly he arched his back and then collapsed back down. I was relieved that he had quieted, but then I noticed that he was entirely still and silent. Too still and silent, with his eyelids neither open nor closed. No more breath did he draw. I sat there most of the night, too shocked to leave, too astonished to believe what was before my eyes.

As I sat in my vigil, my mind kept returning to Mrs. Roberts. Was my father's raving a message for me? I considered whether perhaps in that moment he was a conduit from the other world. I had not yet committed the sin of adultery. I could yet turn away, send her away. It was clear to me that if I wished to remain faithful to my wife that I could not employ Mrs. Roberts in any capacity, could not subject myself to that temptation.

When the night had almost passed away, I left and entered my wife's room. Never more was the door barred to me. She was curled on her side. I thought about waking her, of sharing with her that my father had died. I expected she would comfort me. She was not unfeeling and she knew the loss of a father. Instead I merely slipped in beside her, took comfort in her warmth and the swell of her belly. I told myself that I did not need to make any decisions now.

As I slept I dreamed a vivid dream. When I woke up, I played it back in my mind. I was beside my pregnant wife, urging her to take pity on me and stroke my turgid member. She told me, "I am so tired, do I not have enough to do in conceiving and raising your children?" Then lined up in front of our bed was a whole line of little girls that stretched out through the door, going on and on. "Can you not leave me be and find your satisfaction in another?"

The dream then shifted me entering Mrs. Roberts's cottage, seeing her splayed out upon her bed, her thighs open to me, her womanly parts wet and glistening, ready for me. She told me, "I can give you what your wife will not. I need you, I want you, please give it to me."

I did not act on the dream while I mourned for my father. I avoided riding anywhere near Mrs. Roberts's cottage, acted as if was not a part of the estate.

When the baby came, she was not my heir, but I felt I saw something of both myself and Fanny in baby Elizabeth. As much as I had wanted my heir, I could not help but delight that I now had a true child.

Once the midwife said Mrs. Bennet was fit once more, I entered her chamber more determined than ever to succeed. I both wanted my heir and to do whatever I could to give her pleasure in the process. I kissed her with passion, caressed and squeezed her. She remained stiff and uncomfortable. I asked, "Is there anything I can do to give you pleasure? I do not wish this to be unpleasant for you."

She gave a little sigh, then said, "I know you are trying your best. I do not know how to feel what you wish me to feel, what apparently comes most naturally to my sister. Just go ahead and get it over with."

If it had not been so long since I had been with her, I have a feeling my pego would have withered, but as it was, I was glad enough to plunge into her, to cast my seed within her with only a few strokes. She seemed relieved that I finished quickly. My timing was good as only moments later Elizabeth (who slept in a basket near our bed) awoke and demanded to be fed.

Although I tried repeatedly to give Fanny pleasure, it seemed a lost cause. Nevertheless, I was diligent in exercising my marital duties. My faithfulness was rewarded as her courses never resumed.

When we were certain Fanny was indeed with child again, though she had much less sickness than with Elizabeth, she asked if I could refrain. Fanny said she was very tired between nursing Elizabeth and being with child. I understood, I really did, but my urges were stronger than ever. It was then that I went to see Mrs. Roberts and finalized my arrangement with her.

Besides allowing Mrs. Roberts to remain in the cottage, I arranged to send her some money by post supposedly from her uncle in London. She opened the letter in front of the biggest gossiper that could be arranged and praised her good fortune. She then paid off many small loans, ordered clothes made for herself and her daughter. Other women rejoiced with her (or so I heard).

Fanny did not question why I rarely made any more demands of her, perhaps only every two weeks or so. I felt quite content. I had a proper wife and mother for my children and a temptress that happily fulfilled all my deepest desires. I had more of a fondness for Fanny now, that I was not expecting her to satisfy my every need. Sometimes I even came to her bed only to sleep beside her.

I told myself and even believed Fanny knew that I had found a wife in watercolors but had no wish to discuss the matter. I had heard that wives preferred to pretend that such women did not exist.

After each daughter, when Fanny was again fit to proceed, I was most diligent in saving my seed for my wife. I believed it was just a matter of time until one of the babies would be a son. Once her pregnancy was confirmed, I let her be and returned to my mistress. It seemed a good arrangement for all involved.

Perhaps three months after Lydia was born, I learned that my lover had conceived a child. I then hatched a desperate plan, but knew it might only work if Fanny could be persuaded to play her part.