Darcy & Elizabeth (27 page)

Basking in Love's Tepid Arms

So it was, for whatever quirk of fate that intervened, George Wickham had been allowed admittance into the elite circle and selective boudoir of Mademoiselle Césarine Thierry. That this coterie was becoming less and less exclusive with each passing day, Wickham was quite unwitting.

This misconception was a blunder, but an understandable one for an
étranger
to those swells who inhabited the Parisian demimonde. Had Wickham been more familiar with the actors in this little theatre, he would have known that, while he would one day inherit, du Mautort was living in Paris on a stipend not much larger than Wickham's army pay. When it came to the elite of this terrain, du Mautort was merely a hanger-on and was more lovestruck than Wickham. Still, the one truth Wickham knew was that a courtesan had an infinite number of aspirants from whom to pick. If his Césarine thought his own company was acceptable, it could only fall to his undeniably superior mien and unrivalled handsomeness.

Yet Wickham knew that her time was not his exclusively. He may have managed to feign an elevation in station, but he had not the wherewithal to produce the funds to support it. Through considerable cunning he did manage to concoct an elaborate scheme involving a forged letter of credit and a fictitious bank account. He used this subterfuge to influence Viscount du Mautort to advance him five hundred francs. (This was the whole of du Mautort's monthly budget and put the poor man in quite a pinch, but so desperate was he to abide within Wickham's—and therefore Césarine's—good graces, he somehow ferreted it out of his own paltry purse.) As Wickham's conscience was already severely burdened by previous indiscretions both morally and criminally reprehensible, this arrant fraudulence was insignificant by half.

If he thought of it, he did so only briefly, for
Général
Wickham was in the throes of pure adoration. He had fallen hopelessly in love with a woman who was as handsome, graceful, alluring, winning, sociable, and cunning as himself. Moreover, she had succeeded in supporting herself quite admirably solely by the employment of her charms. She was the best parts of all things he regarded. (That she, as he, was shallow, narcissistic, dishonest, and promiscuous, somehow went if not undetected, at least unacknowledged.)

Césarine did not invite him to her boudoir the night of their initial meeting. She remained aloof, but managed an expression upon her countenance to suggest that she, in spite of herself, just might be susceptible to his charms. With exaggerated nonchalance, she told him that she would not oppose a visit should he come round the next day.

“If I am not otherwise occupied,” said she.

As one who had employed the manoeuvre himself more than once, Wickham certainly should have recognised a game of cat-and-mouse as the artifice that it was. Regrettably, he was far too deeply enthralled to catch his breath, much less suspect her of such a hoary gambit as that. Hence, he was upon her doorstep before the stroke of noon bearing an enormous bouquet of lavender, foxglove, and white Dutch hyacinths. (Finding a flower shop stocked with these embargoed bulbs had proved more difficult than inducing the proprietor to extend him a line of credit.) The flowers had been an extravagance, but seldom was Wickham mean with funds if he was endeavouring to impress a lady—particularly if the funds were not produced from his own pocket.

As Mademoiselle Thierry did not arise before two, Wickham sat playing an unrewarding game of mental twiddle-thumbs whilst his perspiring hands rendered his costly assortment of flowers progressively more wilted until nigh four o'clock.

When finally she did appear, Wickham judged it well worth the wait. For not her maid, but Césarine herself threw open the door to greet him. She was wearing little more than a dressing-gown, albeit of expensive fur-lined red brocade festooned with plumage from some unrecognizable but suitably exotic bird. (She was also wearing the ruby and diamond necklace from the other evening—it was an adornment that she was seldom without.) Wickham, who prided himself on being informed in such matters, was clearly quite taken with her fashionably seductive
ensemble
. He stumbled a bit when he entered the room, his face crimsoning as if he were a virginal schoolboy. (This was highly vexing to Wickham; the appearance of sophistication was imperative.) With a graceful wave of her hand she bid him take a seat. He found himself, however, seated on a tuffet so tiny that his legs protruded like some flannelled grasshopper. From his disadvantaged position, he thought to offer up his floral tribute. With elaborate condescension, she took it from his hand and airily tossed the twenty quid of flowers on a side table in a limp heap.

As swiftly as she appeared, she quit the room. She exited through another door, trilling flirtatiously over her shoulder that she would return forthwith. He noted several urns of flowers all more impressive than his and he winced at how paltry his offering was by comparison. (From his ridiculous attitude, he was still too beguiled to discern just how keenly he was being manipulated—had he looked more closely he would have seen that although they bore all the signs of being from other suitors, they were of similar flowers and arrangement.) He refused to be thwarted. A fit of pique at such humiliation provoked him to move from his perch on the tiny stool to a more commodious armchair. If he was to be spurned, he refused to weather it with his knees foremost.

Indeed, when in time she did return, it was to the sight of Wickham, cigar in hand, puffing away in the most audacious manner. In that all good company knew it exceedingly ill-mannered to smoke in a lady's presence, Césarine scowled. When he deliberately blew a cloud and thereupon tapped some nonexistent ashes into a vase of flowers next to his chair, she thought better of her disapproval.

She turned her chin just enough to display what she fancied was her best side and simpered, “
Très vilain, mon ami
.”

There unkenneled between Mademoiselle Thierry and
le Général
Wickham an affair of absolute love and utter devotion. This union was sheltered by the compleat and impervious non-existence of forthrightness upon any matter. Their match was superb—if one did not take into account that it was built on dishonesty and was fed by lies. In the recesses of his mind, the authentic self he seldom addressed, even Wickham knew disaster loomed.

Wickham recalled a quote from his time at Cambridge where Plato was in agreement.

“Everything that deceives may be said to enchant,” wrote the old philosopher of some long-lost love.

Wickham agreed wholeheartedly. And enchanted he was as Césarine addressed him as
tu
and expelled erotic susurrations against his ear. Later, in recollection, he believed himself to have been merely bewitched. But it would take the passing of several frosts to come to that understanding.

***

True to the wiles of any accomplished seductress, Césarine did not allow herself to be lured into Wickham's grasp with any haste. It took more than a fortnight of cavorting upon a tufted sofa in her powdering room before he was granted leave to stay the night. It took even longer for her to allow him leave to keep a toilette bag in her apartments.

Césarine's rooms were at once grand and exotic—a giant urn of ostrich feathers stood in one corner and a bidet was partially hidden in another. The mystique of her accommodations was enhanced by a blue velvet curtain which shielded a door leading to a side street for those guests whose desire for discretion was absolute. Whilst he sat in awe and wonder of the sights and scents that permeated her chambers, Wickham reminded himself that he grew up in more impressive, if decidedly less uninhibited, circumstances at Pemberley House. He took great delight in detailing that mansion and its accoutrements as his own. He employed the name of Pemberley often (but that of Darcy not at all).

Whilst he mused, he was impressed by the attention that his paramour paid to his reverie. Eventually, however, she ceased to nod at appropriate intervals and flung a slipper at him. Her moods changed by the hour, it was one of her most charming quirks.

Oftentimes she banished one and all from her chambers and dedicated herself to an elaborate eye-mask meant to blot out any vestiges of daylight that seeped beneath the heavy drapes. When she did arise, it was seldom before noon. From thence until six she submitted to the daily ministrations not only of her
corsetière
, but her
couturier
, her
coiffeur
, and her
cordonnier
, nattering with them all for hours on end. When he was finally admitted to her chambers, she spent the better part of two hours unrepentantly answering
billets-doux
from past, present, and future lovers.

Of this particular wile Wickham was not so forgiving. He suffered all such abuse sprawled upon a purgatorial chaise longue, cooling his heels and glowering. His displeasure at being denied his way with her was of no interest to Césarine. Indeed, she did not even dismiss Marie-Therese Lambert whose main purpose, it would seem, was to whisper the latest gossip in Césarine's ear. Whilst Césarine primped, Marie-Therese was as often as not in repose upon Césarine's bed partaking from a box of expensive chocolates. That the morsels she so daintily dropped in her mouth were bought by Wickham's fast-depleting pocket did not grieve Marie-Therese's conscience. Indeed, she took each one with such relish, it was remarkably obscene.

Wickham could not account for the intimacy of her connection with Césarine. He had been privy to the silly camaraderie of the ladies, but this, this was of another ilk altogether. It was of a sort that had initially made Wickham curiously uneasy. Unfortunately, in time he came to lose that disquiet and to view her as a usurper of Césarine's time of no greater evil than her
manucuriste
, her
couturier
, her
coiffeur
… He saw her as but another fawning minion whose sole purpose was to keep his lover diverted.

Césarine employed every gambit at her disposal to have Wickham veritably panting for her company. It was apparent even to him that she was abusing his affections, but when more evenings brought further excuses to keep him from her bed, he still did as she bid. She took his arm and had him escort her and her ruby-encrusted neck to her chosen entertainments—
opera bouffes
that involved farces so unsophisticated that even his
amour-propre
was injured. When Wickham realised that his urbane Césarine had a soft spot for low comedy and could explode with raucous laughter at the least provocation, he thought it endearing. He thought it endearing even whilst trying to find their seats through the agency of his walking stick sweeping to and fro through the riff-raff to clear their passage. At long last his indulgence was repaid. She gifted him with a night of passion he had heretofore not experienced. Indeed, his little flower knew things—secret things—that kept him at a crescendo for what seemed an eternity. He was so spent after these ministrations that he lay in a perspiring heap unable to respond whilst she entreated him to please her again. These pleasures were repeated night after night so rapturously, that being unceremoniously evicted from her bed before sunrise was endured without complaint.

Or at least initially he complained, but that begat a row of such vociferousness that it surpassed the worst of those with Lydia. (Indeed, she hit him across the face with a riding crop and threatened to poison his cat—had he a cat he would have been truly alarmed.) But unlike Lydia, her revenge for his insolence included taking in other lovers and bedding them right under his nose.

In the end, he slunk from her room without a fuss and counted himself lucky to survive with his manhood unimperiled.

They settled into what would pass for a sensible little affair, punctuated by occasional ménage á trios with various female friends. Strangely, Marie-Therese was never one of them. (He supposed Marie-Therese's boat did not float in those waters, but it was only a conjecture.) Wickham had long thought of himself as quite the roué, but never, in all his many escapades, had he made “the beast” with more than two backs. His favoured position had always been
figura veneris primi
—this only partly because from the superior position he was most sated but because it also favoured a quick escape should a jealous husband or vengeful father chance upon him mid-coitus. Upon the threesome occasions, Wickham found himself allotting a far greater amount of time to looking than to putting, and despite the essential licentiousness of it all, demurred this next time round.

Césarine teased him mercilessly for being a puritanical Englishman. Of the many insults that had been hurled at him, he thought that one quite the most ludicrous. He, Wickham, puritanical? Why, was that not the exact opprobrium he had once heaped on Darcy? It was Darcy who was the prig. He, Wickham, was the consummate Lothario—game for anything…except, well, this.

“Pray, did not your own Voltaire say ‘once a philosopher, twice a pervert'?” sniffed Wickham.

“Voltaire,” intoned Césarine, “was an impotent old agnostic.”

“And you would be of that information, because…?” Wickham retorted sarcastically.

“
Mon ami
,” she answered.

“Your friend?”

“
Oui
.”

“Pray, how would your friend know anything of Voltaire—he died before you were born.”

“
Oui, le marquise de Pompadour
,” she said with finality, effectively ending the conversation and dismissing him.

“Whatever do you mean?” Wickham enquired helplessly.

As he said it, he simultaneously began to gather up his hat and gloves for the onslaught of perfume bottles, shoes, and errant pets that he knew would be flung in his direction, thus announcing his temporary banishment from her sight. It was another of her maddeningly alluring quirks. She would make either an absurd non sequitur or statement fraught with expectancy and leave him hanging precipitously for the rest of the story. Unfortunately, his refusal to submit to her particular choice of boudoir games meant she would find someone forthwith to take his place. That vexed him no end. But he dared not provoke her. Their past riotous frays incited by passing flirtations had nearly cost them a visit by the gendarmes.