Page 7 of Under Such Circumstances (Desperately Seeking Elizabeth #1)

THE RAIN WAS gentle as Elizabeth watched Mr. Darcy and Mr. Collins yell to each other across the gully.

“Why don’t you go and get some more ropes?” said Mr. Darcy. “Then you can drag us up that side of the gully there?”

“Well, I’m wondering about the rain,” called Mr. Collins. “Will the mud make it too slippery?”

“It’s not muddy yet,” said Mr. Darcy, “we’ll just climb right up. Send someone for ropes and they can be back in a quarter hour, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Oh, longer than that. It takes a quarter hour to walk back to the parsonage, at least,” said Mr. Collins.

“Well, then, if someone would be off now, it would mean we’d have rope all the sooner!” cried Mr. Darcy.

Elizabeth felt rather strange, as if she was sort of floating outside of her body. She was glad of the distraction of the men yelling about ropes so that she didn’t have to speculate on why she was feeling so strange.

Suddenly, there was a crack of thunder, very loud.

“I think Miss Bennet and I could go to that old shack,” spoke up Mr. Wickham. “If we leave now, we can make it before the worst of the rain. Once it clears, she and I can come back here and maybe you’ll have the bridge repaired.”

Mr. Darcy turned on Mr. Wickham and let out an incredulous laugh. “You can’t go off with her alone. The fact you’d suggest such a thing!”

She felt cold all over. Her fingers felt numb. She squared her shoulders.

“Well,” said Wickham, “it’s going to start storming rather badly here very soon, and I’d fancy being under a roof myself. You come, too, I suppose, Fitzie. Then she won’t be alone with me.”

“We just need some ropes,” said Mr. Darcy.

Another loud crack of thunder. Then a bright flash of lightning. The rain abruptly intensified, wind howling down through the gully with surprising violence.

Elizabeth hugged herself and couldn’t stop herself from shivering, but she wasn’t sure why that was. Was it truly from the rain?

Mr. Darcy noticed, however. He looked at Mr. Collins and then at Wickham and then at her. He kept his gaze on her as he called, “Mr. Collins, we’re going to seek shelter. This storm will be brief, though, I think. When it clears, we shall meet back here with rope.”

“Yes, very good,” said Mr. Collins, already starting to retreat.

Mr. Darcy sighed heavily. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “Come now, Miss Bennet,” he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle for someone who must hate her now. She couldn’t help but look up at him gratefully.

Wickham stalked over to her and glared at his jacket.

He put a hand on the small of Elizabeth’s back, through Mr. Darcy’s jacket and began to push her ahead of him, his body between hers and Mr. Darcy’s.

“Well, I hope you’re not being chivalrous in the hopes of renewing any pursuit of my fiancée here, Mr. Darcy. ”

“Your what?” said Mr. Darcy. They were walking now, making their way through the rain.

“Your what?” echoed Elizabeth, feeling rather dull, because, well, she was ruined. He’d somehow ruined her, quite that easily, even though she didn’t even understand exactly what had happened.

Her knowledge of such things was frustratingly vague, she had to admit, though she’d seen horses mating at least once, and had also once been attacked by a dog at a house she was visiting, an uncouth little fluffy thing that mounted her ankle.

She supposed, the way the dog had thrust its hindquarters onto her with vigor, it was somewhat similar to whatever it was that Mr. Wickham had done, but…

She thought it involved taking off their clothes. She had been rather certain of that.

At any rate, she didn’t know what she was going to do because she had already vowed never to touch Mr. Wickham ever again, and looking at him, thinking about the way she’d stroked his stiff…

male thing in his trousers… there was some word for it.

A filthy word. She knew it, but she didn’t think she’d ever actually thought it, let alone said it aloud.

Prick.

The only other word she’d ever heard for it was when she was at Lucas Lodge, and the Lucases did not send their babes off to be nursed, because they could ill afford such things, and so Mrs. Lucas and Charlotte and the other Lucas girls were the ones changing all the diapers, and there had been a tiny male baby Lucas once, and Elizabeth had heard his small male part called a doodleberry, but she didn’t know if that was a widespread word used for the member.

She liked it better, really, than that other word, which sounded so… aggressive. What was a prick supposed to prick, anyway? It was sort of shaped like a needle, in a way…

Anyway, thinking about Mr. Wickham’s doodleberry, she was full of fresh revulsion. She could not bear to be subjected to touching it again and again. It was, well, foul, especially whatever stickiness had come out of it.

She looked up at Mr. Darcy, as the three of them made their way through the woods in the rain, realizing he had one, too. Proper, perfect Mr. Darcy had one of those utterly disgusting members in his trousers. She didn’t even know how to process that, she found. It was utterly incongruous.

Mr. Darcy was talking. “You are attempting to marry Miss Bennet, Wickham? I haven’t any notion why. But I see your leg is very much not broken, so I suspect you pretended to be hurt just to be alone with her.”

Elizabeth went still. He had done it on purpose?

“No, that is not the way at all,” said Mr. Wickham. “My leg did seem very hurt, but then I put some weight upon it—”

“There is no way to mistake a broken leg for what appears to be absolutely no injury at all,” said Mr. Darcy.

They were walking on a trail now, and it had forced them to walk single file.

She was following Mr. Wickham, who was leading the way, and Mr. Darcy was bringing up the rear, so she heard his voice at her back.

“Also, you are forgetting that I just fell off that bridge into that gully, and it would be quite difficult to break one’s leg in that fall.

It looks far worse than it actually is.”

Mr. Wickham turned to shoot him a nasty look. “I tell you, I was in a great deal of pain.”

“Which all conveniently faded the minute you and Miss Bennet were alone,” said Mr. Darcy. “What did you do to her?”

Elizabeth started to shake.

Wickham sounded quite pleased with himself. “She’s mine now. No other man would want something I’ve staked my claim on in such a way.”

Mr. Darcy’s voice was very quiet. “You couldn’t have been alone for longer than half an hour. You can’t have…” He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.

She turned back to look at him.

“What happened?” he said.

She shook him off, feeling like she might start crying.

Mr. Darcy went around her on the path and slammed a hand into the back of Wickham’s head.

“Ouch!” cried Wickham, turning round to face him.

The rain was coming down in sheets now, and they were all soaked. Mr. Darcy had rain dripping off his nose, off his chin. Wickham shoved a lock of his own wet hair out of his face.

“You blackguard,” said Mr. Darcy. “If you forced yourself on her, it’s a hanging offense—”

“She was quite willing,” said Mr. Wickham.

Mr. Darcy punched Mr. Wickham.

Well, he tried.

Mr. Wickham ducked at the last second and barreled into Mr. Darcy’s chest, driving himself head first into the other man.

They both stumbled backwards into the trunk of a tree.

Mr. Darcy was wheezing because Wickham had thrust his head forcefully into his chest, and he flailed against the tree trunk for a moment as Wickham straightened.

Wickham, expression venomous, punched Darcy.

Darcy’s nose exploded in a gush of red that mingled with the rain on his face. He grunted.

He punched Wickham back, two punches in the middle of his stomach.

And then Elizabeth rushed forward and said, “Stop it. You have to stop it.”

Darcy looked at her, distracted.

And Wickham used that moment to hit Darcy in the face again.

Darcy let out another grunt and he went after Wickham, who danced away, saying, “You remember how this went when we were boys, don’t you, Fitzie?”

“Yes, I remember you always wished me to play at being your whipping boy,” growled Darcy, seizing Wickham from behind, wrapping an arm around his neck.

Wickham drove his elbow into Darcy.

Darcy gasped and loosened his grip.

Wickham freed himself and hit Darcy in the face again.

“Stop it!” cried Elizabeth, who was beginning to realize that Mr. Wickham was probably going to beat Mr. Darcy because he was…

well, look at him. He slept every night in a tent in the militia, and Mr. Darcy slept in a cushy bed in an estate.

Mr. Wickham was the son of a servant, and Mr. Darcy owned estates.

If it came down to brute strength, she wasn’t sure that Mr. Darcy had a real hope of besting the other man. “Stop it right now!”

Both men turned to her, their faces wet with rain (and with blood in Darcy’s case.) They stopped.

“Well?” said Mr. Darcy. “Were you willing, Miss Bennet?”

“Stop interrogating my future wife,” said Mr. Wickham, slinging an arm around her, and pulling her in against his chest.

She could not breathe, but she went very still against him, and she didn’t fight.

“Tell him, Miss Bennet, tell him you liked it.”

She heard her voice, thin and blank, like it was someone else’s voice. “I liked it.”

Wickham kept his body draped suffocatingly over hers, and he pulled her down the path. “There, you see? She’s mine now. She didn’t want you, anyway.”

Behind them, Mr. Darcy huffed, and then he didn’t say anything else at all.

They all trooped through the rain until they came to a ramshackle building. It had moss growing on the roof, and the little porch on the front was collapsed in places.