Page 21 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)

“No?” He was curious.

“It was… disgusting,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “With all the… stickiness.”

He cleared his throat. “Mmm. I can perhaps see that.”

“Is that part changeable? Can that be made different?” She put her hands back on her hips.

He smiled slowly. “Perhaps, yes.”

She dropped her hands, taking a step back.

“Well, you see, I was not going to take the chance of getting you with child, so I would have insisted we use a French letter.”

“A what?”

He turned very red, but he explained it quite plainly, though he made sort of vulgar gestures with his own body.

She blinked several times. “So, it catches the spend. So, it doesn’t get on me at all .”

“No,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

“Good,” he repeated, eyeing her. “What does that mean? Are you agreeing to this?”

“I…” She looked around the room, as if the answer to this question was going to pop out to her from the scenery there, and obviously, she was left with nothing except the sight of a few paintings and the painted walls.

She focused on him again. “W-well, I don’t know.

Do you wish me to agree to marry Mr. Darcy right now? ”

“No, I suppose I shall leave that up to you.”

“And what if I hate it anyway? Even if you work so very hard to make sure that I don’t?”

“You won’t,” he said, and he was smiling again, a wicked smile.

The arrogance! “You can’t be sure of that.”

“Elizabeth, let me be plain. I shan’t leave you to him to sort out. My cousin is… not experienced with women. I am. I can be sure of that.”

She let out a breath, because she wasn’t sure how she felt about what he’d just said.

Something about the colonel having spread the legs of numerous women made him seem sort of ruggedly handsome, more appealing in some way.

But it also made him seem less appealing, because she wouldn’t mean anything to him.

She’d simply be another of his conquests.

Even so, maybe there was something to this idea, to submitting herself to someone skilled.

“I rather imagine Wickham had a number of women before me, also,” she said. “Experience didn’t seem to help him.”

“Mr. Wickham took advantage of women for his own pleasure. The act shouldn’t be done that way.

It should be about mutual enjoyment,” said the colonel.

“Mr. Wickham plied himself on young women who were like you. They didn’t understand their own pleasure.

I learned everything I know from widows who were quite well-versed in their own desires and who were insistent that I learn to satisfy them.

I assure you, it will be different.” He was still smiling that smile of his, that wicked smile.

She felt… strange. There was thickness gathering in her body somewhere, pressure and heat that wanted… something. “All right,” she found herself breathing, an impulsive acquiescence that she should likely take back immediately.

The colonel coughed.

She looked up at him.

He laughed. “I don’t think I thought you’d… not so easily, anyway.”

“Yes, I was thinking I must take it back,” and her voice was breathy.

“Don’t,” he said. “What is the harm? You are already ruined. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

“And you wish to… to plunder me, don’t you?”

“No, no, I don’t.” He closed the distance between them and slid a hand over her cheek, cupping her jaw.

“No, it won’t be about that, not at all.

I don’t gain something from it. You don’t lose something.

I was trying to explain this before. After it’s over, we are both whole, both the same, neither of us altered.

It’s a moment, though, a good moment, and then…

it’s over. That’s all. I wish to give it to you. You deserve it, that goodness.”

She looked up at him, searching his eyes with her own.

He kissed her.

She shut her eyes and let him.

The colonel’s tongue swept against her lips and she opened them, feeling trepidation, remembering the way the kiss with Wickham had seemed nice and then everything had gone so quickly after that.

But the colonel didn’t push for more and more.

His tongue barely touched hers, and then he broke the kiss and ran his fingers over her brow and looked into her eyes, his expression tender.

“You deserve everything good, Elizabeth. And after it is over, you may decide to marry my cousin or you may decide not to marry anyone. It will be up to you. This will not force your hand. However, this may give you the chance to decide to marry him before you’ve resigned yourself to being alone forever. ”

“Yes, Jane said maybe I shouldn’t go and live alone in that house like a spinster,” Elizabeth whispered.

“You’d want it eventually,” said the colonel. “Eventually, the horror of what happened to you with Wickham would fade, and you’d want to try it. But by then, it might have been years and he might have married someone else and—”

“So, this is all for my benefit then?” There was irony seeping into her tone.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “For your benefit, I swear it. Not for mine. Any pleasure or satisfaction I get from this will be secondary. This is for you, Elizabeth. I shall simply worship you and pleasure you and tease you to the heights itself. I promise you.”

This time, she put her mouth on his and kissed him, and he deepened the kiss obligingly, and the sensations of his tongue sliding against her own swirled through her like something warm and urgent and delectable, and she liked it.

He broke the kiss again. “Not now, of course.”

“Oh,” she said, letting out a breath. “Of course.”

“You deserve it somewhere safe, no worry of discovery, no worry about your making too much noise, that sort of thing. And I should like to have hours and hours to devote to it, for it oughtn’t be rushed.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling a little. “With Wickham, it was so very quick. It isn’t always?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “The quickness, that’s perhaps part of the problem. Women need time to be roused, and too quick can make it brutal, dry, painful.”

She furrowed her brow, a bit confused. Dry?

“You said it didn’t hurt,” he said. “And I suppose you didn’t bleed.”

“Bleed,” she said, thinking that through, because… because… it was all still so very confusing. She had thought there was much more to it than whatever Wickham had done to her, and—

“You would remember that,” he said. “No worries on that score, however. Women don’t always, you see, and it means nothing. It’s only something you were spared, you see?” He shook his head. “You won’t wish to think of him, anyway. Let us leave aside that subject.”

She actually wanted to ask the colonel a number of questions, suddenly. She wished to ask him to clarify things, to explain exactly what had happened and for him to explain exactly how it was that she would have gotten with child from it being on her hand, but he was still talking.

“The problem is when and where, isn’t it?” The colonel let go of her and stepped back, stroking his own chin. “I had thought I was going to find you all alone in that house—”

“I can be,” she said. “It is Jane, you see, Jane that is the one who is with me constantly. We must only distract Jane.”

He considered. “All right. I have no idea how to go about that.”

“I might have an idea,” she said, “but it will require your undoing Mr. Darcy’s ‘triumph.’”

He raised his eyebrows. “I have no idea what you are talking of.”

“When you told me, at Rosings, that Mr. Darcy separated Bingley from a lady for whom there were strong objections?”

“I believe I said that I thought it was Mr. Bingley, but—”

“It was Jane,” said Elizabeth. “The lady? Whose family would get word of it and who I said you could depend upon my not mentioning it? It was my sister that he separated from Mr. Bingley.”

“No wonder you denied his proposal,” said the colonel softly. “Dear God.”

“He has never even apologized,” she muttered. “He only said that he had been kinder to Bingley than he had been to himself. I don’t think he even likes having feelings for me, you know?”

The colonel only regarded her with wide eyes, scratching the back of his head.

She threw up her hands. “Oh, well, fine. I suppose you don’t like having feelings for me either.”

“Like is the wrong word,” he said. “Nothing about all of this has been entirely pleasant, it is true. There have been pleasant aspects. Kissing you was very pleasant. Taking you to bed is going to be exceedingly pleasant. But, also, it’s horrible .”

She backed away from him, spreading her hands. “Let’s call it all off.”

“You think if Bingley knows your sister is in London, he’ll call upon her? You think his attachment is sustained, even now?”

She shifted on her feet. “You don’t think so?

” She was remembering some conversation she’d had once with Bingley at Netherfield, wherein he said that everything he did was in a hurry, and if he decided to quit Netherfield, for instance, he should do it in five minutes.

It had given her the impression that he changed his mind quickly and never looked back once he had done so.

“I can’t be certain,” said the colonel. “But if so, you think Jane would be sufficiently distracted, enough to give you leave to be at your house alone?”

“Perhaps not at night,” she said. “But for a long afternoon, I think, yes. Could it…?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding, and giving her that wicked look again. “It very easily could be conducted over a long afternoon, Elizabeth.”

“Well, then.”

“Well, then, I suppose I am off to seek out Mr. Bingley,” said the colonel.