Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“ Y ou expect me to believe they stole almost three thousand pounds? The entire value of the living!” Darcy’s incredulity could not have been more marked. Wickham had always been full of excuses—nothing was ever his fault.
“I know better than to expect anything from you. But it is the truth, nonetheless,” Wickham said as he downed the last of his mutton. The Fox most of them knew him by now, even giving him a nod or a salutation as they passed. He listened to his erstwhile enemy with the pursed lips and half-closed eyes of deep-seated suspicion.
“I had no reason not to trust them. I had asked around and been told they were an established Liverpool law firm. Been churning out barristers for generations, they said. How was I to know they would shutter the windows as soon as my money was in their hands? As I said, they required their fees up front, and I had every reason to think that things were looking up for me. Besides, having that kind of blunt was too much of a temptation. I did not trust myself to stay away from the card tables. So, like the veriest fool, I happily gave over their entire fee in one lump, determined to turn over a new leaf.”
“And did you report these men to the magistrate?”
“I told the local magistrate, but I could hardly hire Bow Street to track them down. Best he could tell, the men who ran the firm were in Bath for the summer, and these grifters moved into the building and advertised their apprenticeship in hopes of luring in idiots like me. They bilked me out of almost my last farthing. It was a good thing I had paid ahead on my room and board, else I would have been on the streets.”
“And when that ran out, you returned to request the living again,” Darcy stated, putting the pieces together. Darcy was not sure if he believed Wickham, but if he was telling the truth, it painted his old friend in a very different light. The timeline fit—if Wickham had been in Liverpool, he could easily have lived from his inheritance of one thousand pounds for the two years between Darcy’s father’s death and when the living became available. That would have been three years ago now that Wickham chose to receive the lump sum of three thousand pounds in lieu of the living. Darcy had always assumed Wickham had gambled it all away; could it be that it really had been stolen?
“Not just that, Darcy. I had been humbled—humiliated, really. I was surviving on scraps. I could not make my own living. I could not afford to drink and gamble and carouse and, after a few months without those things, I found I had lost my taste for it. That’s why you found me in a boxing ring instead of a gaming hell; I cannot stand those places anymore.”
“George Wickham swearing off booze and women? Will wonders never cease?” Darcy scoffed.
“You think you know me so well. You know nothing about me. You have never cared a whit for anything beyond the tip of your raised nose. Do you even remember when I started drinking?” Wickham’s eyes shone with resentment and, what else was it? Hurt?
“Cambridge, was it not?” Darcy guessed, recalling that Wickham had begun university by applying himself to his studies and ended it a drunken wastrel.
“Aye, Cambridge. Right after my father died. Losing him shattered me, but did my oldest friend even care? No. You clapped me on the back, said you were sorry, then lectured me about morals and economy and how good I had it,” Wickham spat, his wounds evidently still festering.
“All you were worried about was brandy and loose women. Of course I was not going to keep paying off your creditors so you could indulge in your base vices!”
“My father was dead, and I had no one to turn to. I came to you for comfort. I needed a friend. You gave me nothing. Nothing . So, I lost myself in drink at the Golden Goose, and I found solace with Sissy Farmer. One woman, Darcy. One,” he stated, holding up his finger to make his point. “Besides, my father had promised to pay those debts, had told me to get myself what I needed to further my studies, but by the time they came due, he was gone. Though his fortune was not large, the money from it was a long time in coming. But you did not care to hear my ‘excuses’ as you called them—all you saw was a servant’s son being educated beyond his station who should be grateful for every crumb dropped to him from the great Darcy table!”
“You are right. I did not know that,” Darcy admitted after a time, a lump in his throat revealing to him the truth of the man’s words. He did not even remember when Old Wickham had passed; did he really take note when it had happened? Or had he been so concerned with his own success—or worse, with how Wickham’s behaviour would affect how others viewed him—that he had disregarded the man’s needs? Discounted his pain? Blamed him for being ill-bred?
Darcy himself had indulged in several bottles of brandy in the weeks after his own father had died. Darcy had had no one to turn to for comfort, as Georgiana had relied upon him for solace, and Fitzwilliam was on the Continent. Wickham should have been able to depend upon Darcy for sympathy in his grief, and instead, he had been given one jaw-me-dead after another over what, to Darcy, amounted to mere coins. What an utter arse he had been!
No wonder Wickham hated him.
“And when I came to you to request the living, you would not even hear me. You did not even let me tell you how I had given up all those habits, how I was even then pursuing my ordination. I had read the Bible from cover to cover for God’s sake!”
“And for the sake of the living, I am sure,” Darcy said lightly.
“Yes, that, too,” Wickham breathed in an almost chuckle. “I was not fit to be a clergyman when the living came open. We both knew that. But I had worked to deserve it, as I knew you would need to be convinced of my having turned around before considering me for the position again.”
“And I turned you away so coldly.” Darcy said it more to himself than to Wickham. He had assumed that Wickham would always be what he always was, but he could now see that Wickham had not always been a drunkard or a rake. He had been a friend to Darcy after Lady Anne had left, had been a diligent student up until his father had died, and even now, at his lowest point, he was not drowning himself in drink. Darcy had assumed so much about the man based on his station in life. Again.
“That you did,” Wickham said.
“No wonder you were so bitter towards me in Meryton,” Darcy said, shaking his head at how blind he had been to the effects of his own pride.
“I was angry, Darcy. After you had done so much to ruin my prospects, you had the audacity to behave towards me as if you were somehow the victim! It riled me to heights of anger I had never known, not even on the day you so summarily dismissed my request for the living. So, I lied about the living. I would like to say I am sorry for it, but as yet, I cannot feel any regret whatsoever for causing you even a modicum of the distress you have caused me.”
At that, the memory of what Wickham had almost done to Georgiana came crashing upon Darcy. He had been so engrossed in memories of their university days and the blatant wrongs he had perpetrated against Wickham that he had not thought about the man’s later sins against his family. It was with high colour and a quiet roar that Darcy next spoke.
“You claim that I was not your intended victim when you tried to seduce my sister?”
Wickham’s head whipped up from his plate, his expression perplexed, horrified.
“Can you deny that you were in Ramsgate last summer? That you ‘crossed paths’ with Georgiana several times with the sole intent of convincing her to elope with you, thus securing her fortune and avenging yourself on me?”
“Georgiana?” Wickham cried. “Did she accuse me of such a thing? I have only ever been kind to Georgiana; she is like a sister to me! I would never!”
“To this day, she still thinks your visits were that of an old family friend. But come now, Wickham, we both know that the only reason you would join a poor company of militiamen is because you failed to secure the hand of an heiress first.” Darcy’s pity, along with any thought of mercy, had disappeared with the image of his dearest sister being duped by Wickham’s charms.
“I was in Ramsgate to charm a young lady, a lady with a fine dowry, it is true, but not Georgiana. Why, I was there a fortnight before I even knew of her presence. Miss Edith Barlow of Hampstead was my chosen bride, a woman of one-and-twenty; things did not pan out in that quarter—she had the face of a mule and the temperament of a badger—but I would never have stooped to courting a fifteen-year-old. How could you believe it of me?”
Wickham’s voice and visage held genuine astonishment at Darcy’s accusation, along with indignation that Darcy should truly think so ill of him. And Darcy had met Miss Barlow; Wickham’s description was pinpoint accurate. Still, Fitzwilliam had seen him, witnessed his overtures, had he not?
“And you are to be believed over my cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam? He saw you, Wickham. He was the one who foiled your little plan, was he not?”
Wickham grimaced at the mention of the colonel’s name. Fitzwilliam had never approved of Wickham’s being Old Darcy’s favourite, and had made no secret of it. Wickham, in return, felt no love towards Fitzwilliam.
“Whatever your cousin told you, I am telling you now that I only visited Georgiana as an old friend. Her companion, Mrs Younge, whom you will remember put me up in Liverpool, was present both times. Ask her, she will vouch for me! With God as my witness, I never had any designs on Georgiana.”
Darcy listened with his jaw clenched, unwilling to acquit the man before him of the crimes Fitzwilliam had lain at his feet, but unable to cling to his own conviction of their veracity. Perhaps Fitzwilliam had misread Wickham’s intentions, heard Wickham was after an heiress and assumed it was Georgiana. His cousin was exceptionally attached to Georgiana, devoted to her safety and wellbeing; mayhap he saw something that was simply not there.
To Darcy’s surprise, he found himself believing his childhood friend.