Page 50 of A Quiet Affection

And damn Fitzwilliam. Damn priggish self-righteousness.

Following this day, Wickham dearly wished to hurt Fitzwilliam, but he did not know of any means by which he could do so. At this time his chief notion was that he would seduce Fitzwilliam’s wife whenever he married.

As for Wickham’s own marriage, he found that he liked it greatly. When they walked about any town, every male eye turned towards Jane.

It was a thrill.

Having her in bed, being in bed at last with a true gentle-bred maiden was an experience with spiritual significance to Wickham. And she was exquisite in her beauty.

Yet, over the first weeks of his marriage, he noticed that it seemed there was something missing. He was used to talking his way into the beds of women by inflaming their passions, and he was also used to buying his way into the beds of courtesans.There was a difference, subtle, but clear, between how a woman would act in bed with a man who she wished to rut with, and when a woman tolerated the man because she must.

There was something about Jane that was far more like the woman who must than the woman who desired him.

This difference did not precisely concern him. It did not matter if she enjoyed his touch or not. She belonged to him, and every man who he met would see that he was a gentleman who could possess a woman who looked like this.

Within a few hours of when he arrived at the dower house to settle, Wickham found an opportunity to excuse himself from conversation with Mr. Darcy and the rest of the family, and he found Submit Jones so that he could take his pleasure with her.

Chapter Fifteen

For the first weeks of her sojourn with Mr. and Mrs. Wickham, Elizabeth found little about which she could complain.

The servants were from the staff of Pemberley, and they all knew what was necessary to make it easy for Elizabeth to manage.

Her new bedroom was pleasant, modern, and warm. There were ample comfortable seats in the moderately sized drawing room, and a good pianoforte that Mr. Darcy had installed for her use. Though it was not nearly so big as the grand piece in Pemberley’s much larger drawing room, it was a precise, finely made instrument to practice upon.

She busied herself memorizing the layout of the rooms and corridors, and where each item in the drawing room was, how far out the legs of the armchairs stuck, which direction to the upstairs rooms, and how to open the closets where the chamber pots were hidden. All of the ordinary matters of accustoming herself to a new space as a blind woman.

In matters of daily life, there was no great difference from what had been Elizabeth’s life before.

As soon as they dressed in the morning, they walked from the woods in which the dower house was hidden across the park to the main house. She was always supported by Jane’s arm or by Wickham’s. Once they were across, they ate the usual breakfast with Mr. Darcy and Fitzwilliam, with Wickham’s father also sitting with them on most days.

The remainder of the day was spent in company. Mr. Darcy’s voice had become too weak for him to read aloud to the party, but Fitzwilliam made an exemplary alternative, and when heneeded a break, Wickham’s reading voice was also excellent and varied.

The soft glow that Elizabeth perceived during the day, and that was the only remainder of her sight, was long gone when they went home each day, having been replaced hours before by the dimmer candles and fires that she could not perceive at all while wearing the ribbon over her eyes.

Fitzwilliam was sometimes absent; he called upon other gentlemen, and once or twice dined with a neighboring family. Mr. Darcy sent him out to inspect fields or to speak with the tenants whenever there was a difficulty.

But as diligent as those gentlemen were, most tasks were, as they always had been, managed by Mr. Wickham, by the understeward, and by other men in the employ of Mr. Darcy.

Elizabeth would have had no cause to repine her new life in the dower house if not for two considerations. First, Wickham had become too attentive to her, too friendly, and too gallant in his eagerness to do everything for the sister of his lovely wife.

And second, he had chosen Submit Jones, the maid who Elizabeth had heard him with years before, to be his housekeeper.

They spent so little time in the dower house that Elizabeth had not realized that this was the arrangement until nearly a week had passed.

Yet, as soon as Elizabeth knew, she knew that this could not be by chance.

It was a good position for the maid. A large addition to her consequence and salary. Perhaps the girl had blackmailed Wickham with threatening to tell Jane. But Elizabeth did notthink that she was the sort to do so. Or perhaps Wickham was simply fond of her.

It did not matter. Even if he did not currently use her as his mistress, making a woman who he had seduced before his housekeeper showed an utter disrespect for Jane and her position.

In thinking this, Elizabeth did not forget to blame herself, more severely than she ever had before.

As for Wickham, he had discovered that the blind, scarred little girl he’d sneered at for years was now a woman considered by his friends to be an attractive object.

George Wickham’s mind was so constituted that if he had found a woman to be beautiful, whose appearance was generally considered to be ugly, then he would have despised her and despised that thing in himself which liked the look of the girl.

A few days after Wickham had returned to Pemberley, when several of Wickham’s friends were hosted for dinner by the newly married couple, Mr. Clarke had seen Elizabeth walking back from the big house with Jane, and he had exclaimed upon the beauty of the woman. All the rest of the party had agreed, and there had been a discussion where his friends agreed that while the scars were unfortunate, they had faded sufficiently that Miss Bennet could be safely named as a pretty girl, though without doubt she would have been a true beauty had she not been injured in such a way.