The 2nd Rule: Particular Sexual Predilections

Chapter Eight – For Better or For Worse

And we’re back with Juliette Clisson – Mr. Darcy’s former lover and guillotine escapee. We get several pages of tedious description of her backstory before moving on to tedious description of how she’s getting older and all of the things she does to try and put off aging. However, she’s fully aware that she won’t be able to cash in on her looks forever and so she needs to find a man to get married to to ensure her future.

Naturally, she has some suitors, so Juliette narrows them down to three. The first is unremarkable.

The second struck a fine figure, but he had a fondness for buggering his footmen. She did not object on moral grounds, but was loath to weather the tittering (page 30).

The last guy is a pretty ordinary chap, but he earned a knighthood due to heroics during the war, and now he’s going to try to use that to get a seat in Parliament. Also…his neighbors are the Darcys.

And Juliette Clisson is all over that shit like ugly on Rosie O’Donnell.

Chapter Nine – In Wickham’s Wake

Sally and Daisy take off after shooting Wickham in the balls, loaded with five thousand pounds apiece. However, Sally feels guilty about keeping all that money, so she decides to go find the Darcys, since it was originally the Darcys’ money.

Chapter Ten – Old News

We get two pages of the backstory of everything that’s happened between Elizabeth and Juliette. As you may or may not recall, Juliette and Darcy’s paths have crossed several times, and Elizabeth saw them once, and naturally she assumed that Darcy, the man who worships the ground she walks on, was cheating on her and behaved as such. However, now she’s moved on and knows that everything is fine.

Well, maybe.

Chapter Eleven – The Cost of Fame

Unfortunately for Juliette Clisson, after she got married to Howgrave, she discovered that Howgrave and the Bingleys were switching estates, so she won’t actually be living five miles from Pemberley.

Juliette is pissed, but decides to make the best of it, because what other choice does she have? She immediately throws herself into campaigning for her husband wholeheartedly and uses every talent she has to woo the unwashed masses and make them love her husband. How, precisely, does she do this? Simple: she offers to kiss anyone who promises to support her husband.

The tactic was outrageously successful. It also further scandalised society. Notwithstanding a few fisticuffs and free-for-alls in vying for her favours, she excited nothing less than boisterous approval. Hence, any indignation was handily overruled (page 39).

Hmm. In the year 1818. In England. I can certainly see people being scandalized that Howgrave’s wife was whoring herself out to buy votes, and I can also see it torpedoing Howgrave’s candidacy, but I can’t see it being the overwhelming success that it is. Of course, Howgrave wins the election, and so Juliette turns her mind to the next step: getting knocked up.

Juliette’s fertility was a tenet of their marriage contract (page 39).

This is problematic because she’s passed the most fertile years of her life. And she has another problem:

Regrettably, her husband had particular sexual predilections. By virtue of this disposition, she had to resort to measures to sate him that were not conducive to conception (page 40).

We’ll find out all about those in the next chapter, but I have to ask: if Juliette wants to get knocked up, and Sir Howgrave wants her to get knocked up…predilections aside, you’d think they’d both have normal vaginal sex on a pretty regular basis to try and get pregnant, whether he’s fond of that or not.

Chapter Twelve – Fictional Freddy

Howgrave likes spanking. A lot:

He lashed his wife’s bare buttocks only as a means to satisfy his carnal urges (page 41).

We get some backstory. Howgrave was actually a bastard, but his parents made sure he went to school as a backup plan in case his father couldn’t plant a boy inside his wife, and he wasn’t able to. And so he was pulled in as the son and heir so they wouldn’t lose the estate to a cousin.

Anyway, his hard life and the fact that he was looked down on his entire life has spurred Howgrave to make the most of himself and he won’t settle for anything less than being the Prime Minister.

Also, he doesn’t like Darcy.

Chapter Thirteen – At Your Service

Howgrave makes friends with a chap named Alistair. Also, Smeads is still around.

Chapter Fourteen – The Breeching

We’re at the ball the Darcys are throwing. Elizabeth is self-conscious because she feels fat, because hey, she’s popped out a few kids and her figure isn’t nearly as trim as it used to be. She frets about this. After awhile, the door opens and Darcy walks in, resplendent in his shirtsleeves.

His gaze was penetrating (page 51).

If you know what I mean.

There was certainly no ambiguity in his gaze (page 51).

If you know what I mean.

His expression was copulatory (page 51)

If you – oh Jesus Christ, seriously, Berdoll? Technically, that’s a real word…but really?

Darcy crosses the room and they’re about to get down to business when he realizes she’s wearing lady-breeches. A Google image search just gets me pictures of girls in riding breeches, which is not unwelcome, but I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

Naturally, Darcy doesn’t like them. Because it’s immodest and typically only worn by whores. But Elizabeth flirts with him and eventually he sorta kinda relents and then ends up tearing them while getting them off in order to…well, you know:

Her thighs were then engirdled in soft gauze leggings as they engirdled him. Breathless, she felt her body sink as if melting, her trembling calves useless in want. Fluttering from her heart to her lips came forth the words of that affirmation.

“Yes. Yes. Yes, oh yes! To be sure!” (page 54)

Linda Berdoll is the master of the sex scene.

Chapter Fifteen – Conspirators and Concubines

Juliette and Howgrave are having kinky sex.

However eagre he was for her to keep his wick well-lit, his manhood began to fail him once again. Thus, she doubled her efforts, engaging two candlesticks, a pair of tongs, and a pretty Rambouillet ewe (page 55).

I’m not certain of the precise mechanics of using candlesticks, tongs, and a sheep to spice up your sex life, but I am certain that I don’t want to know.

However, spanking livens things up. At first, Juliette just spanks Howgrave, but eventually he starts returning the favor. Still, this is a problem:

Upon those occasions when she could bring him to achievement, more and more frequently he cast his seed across her blistered buttocks and not inside the increasingly-arid terrain of her womanhood (page 56).

Once more – Howgrave wants a kid as well. I’m assuming he understands the basic principle behind conception. If beating her ass with a whip is what it takes, so be it, but you’d think he’d still be able to jam himself inside before he orgasmed. Kind of a reverse pullout method.

Anyway, Juliette decides she needs to find someone else to plant a bun in her oven. But she can’t find anyone suitable, so she starts gambling a lot, and then drinking a lot, and then dosing herself with laudanum, and is basically spiraling downwards until Howgrave informs her that the Darcys are throwing a ball and they’re invited. And Juliette remembers Darcy. And she still goes moist for him. And she suddenly realizes that Darcy would be a perfect candidate to father her child.

Hoo boy. This is going to lead to all sorts of wacky hijinks.

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