Chapter 9 #2
“Mr Wickham, is it not? Mr Denny is not in his room,” Mrs Brown stated.
“Please excuse my clumsiness.” Wickham took her hand and bowed over it.
His action had the desired effect he hoped for; the lady tittered like a schoolgirl.
“I am well aware that my good friend is on duty. It was Lieutenant Denny who sent me here to retrieve something he forgot. Do not allow me to delay you, Mrs Brown.”
“Did he give his key to you?” Mrs Brown enquired.
He had not planned for this snag in his quest to gain more coin.
Wickham had been hoping that Denny did not lock his door.
“Even though I am still in pain from when I was beset upon by those brigands, I will walk back to the encampment and ask Denny for his key; he must have forgotten to give it to me.” He put on his best kicked puppy look.
“I know you two are friends, so it will not hurt if I allow you to use a spare key,” Mrs Brown offered.
“I would not want to put you out…” Wickham looked down.
“It is no trouble. Wait here while I retrieve the key. When you leave, please lock the door and place the key in the drawer of the small table in the hall, opposite his chamber.” With that, Mrs Brown was off. She returned in a few minutes and presented the key to the lieutenant.
Seeing that he would be away in the next hour or so, Wickham cared not that she had seen him. By the time she said anything, he would be long gone.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
No matter how mortifying it would be, Paulette Jackson decided that she needed to follow the Bennet sisters’ advice and speak to her mother and father.
She informed them carefully that she had something difficult to tell them, and begged her parents to hear her out before they reacted.
Then she told them all, including falling for his lie when Lieutenant Wickham swore that he would marry her, and the meeting with the Misses Bennet.
She only omitted the part about Miss Lydia being another of the miscreant’s possible victims.
During her telling, her father had barely controlled his fury. As soon as she was done, he jumped up, his huge muscles rippling with the anger he felt. “I will bloody kill ‘im,” he vowed before storming out of his house. He stopped at his forge to grab one of his heavy hammers.
Mrs Jackson hugged her only daughter to herself. “What will we do if you begin to increase, my darling girl?” the anguished mother wailed.
“I was so very foolish; I am so sorry, Mama.” Paulette sobbed as the tears fell.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Denny’s purse was exactly where Wickham expected to find it.
He did not even bother to push the bed back against the wall and left the key in the lock.
He stood in the hall and did not hear any sounds of anyone close to him.
He could hear a maid humming as she was cleaning a chamber two doors away from Denny’s, but she was in the room with the door partially closed.
Wickham made his way down the stairs as quickly as he could without attracting unwanted attention. He walked through the alleyway and back to the town’s main street.
He decided that the best choice was a horse borrowed from the regiment.
He did not want to wait for the post, knowing that the first possible one would not be until the next morning.
His plan was to go to Karen Younge’s boarding house on Edward Street.
There he would use the money he liberated from Denny to gamble, and as he believed that his luck was due to change, he was sure he would win and win big.
His way forward decided, Wickham began a jaunty walk towards the encampment. He passed the house Colonel Forster and the young fluff he had married were using. It was also the one where the regimental offices were. He was about to turn into the encampment when he heard some approaching horses.
He saw Sir William first and was about to give him a wave when he froze.
Just behind the knight were none other than Darcy and Fitzwilliam!
There was no one who frightened Wickham more than Richard Fitzwilliam.
It seemed that Darcy was no longer willing to restrain his cousin as he had after Ramsgate.
Before he thought either cousin had seen him, Wickham broke into a run towards the area where the horses were kept. He saw a private about to unsaddle a horse.
“Leave the saddle. I have urgent business for Colonel Forster, and I do not have time for you to saddle a different mount,” Wickham commanded with as much authority as he could muster while fighting the abject terror welling up in his chest. If he was not careful, he would cast up his accounts.
Even though it was irregular, the private handed the reins to the officer. Who was he to argue with a lieutenant?
Although he would need to leave his belongings in his quarters, Wickham could not care about them at this moment. All he knew was that he needed to escape. He vaulted onto the gelding’s back and pointed him towards the street.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Fitzwilliam was about to follow Sir William and Darcy into the regimental offices when he heard a commotion made by a galloping horse. ‘What irresponsible man would gallop here?’ he thought, as the horse shot out of the encampment with a terrified Wicky on its back.
“STOP THAT MAN!” Fitzwilliam yelled.
Wickham heard Fitzwilliam’s words, but he was confident he would be out of the town in seconds. He just had to pass the blacksmith’s, and he would be free. Hopefully, Fitzwilliam and Darcy had not been able to give chase yet.
Peter Jackson just stepped out of his shop when he heard a man shouting.
He looked up and saw the despoiler of his Paulette looking back towards where another officer was mounting his own horse.
Jackson did not think; he pulled his arm holding the hammer back and threw it towards the man who had stolen his one and only daughter’s innocence.
Seeing Fitzwilliam mount and Darcy about to do so, Wickham knew he needed to urge the nag to greater speed. He turned forward just in time to see a missile flying towards him. It was too late to evade the item, which was tumbling end over end.
As his hammer hit the seducer in the chest and knocked him clear off his horse, Jackson felt a measure of satisfaction.
The hammer hit Wickham to the right of the centre of his chest, smashing some ribs. The last thing he felt in the mortal world was the intense pain of his neck breaking as he fell to the unforgiving ground below the mount.
Although he had been confident that he and Darcy would have eventually caught up to Wickham, Fitzwilliam was not sorry that the chase had ended prematurely.
He could see the fury written all over the blacksmith’s countenance as he stood over Wickham’s body, almost daring him to move.
It was obvious the man was the father of one of Wicky’s victims.
The cousins dismounted and approached the still form on the ground. As soon as Fitzwilliam saw the way Wicky’s head was folded under his body, he knew. “He’s gone, William,” he stated and shook his head at the same time. “What a waste of a human being.”
“If ‘e be dead, will I ‘ang?” Jackson asked dispassionately.
“No, you will not. On my command, you were stopping a fugitive who was attempting to escape. We owe you thanks, not punishment,” Fitzwilliam assured the smithy.
Just then Sir William, Colonel Forster, and some of his officers arrived.
Denny was one of them. He was about to demand an explanation until he saw something protruding half out of the body’s jacket pocket.
“Bloody hell! That is my purse!” Denny exclaimed as he stepped forward and pulled the item clear of the dead man’s pocket.
“My initials ‘JRD’ are engraved on the front of the purse.”
“Denny speaks true, Colonel,” Captain Carter, the adjutant, confirmed. “I saw it on the lieutenant’s person before Wickham joined us.” He looked at the colonel in the uniform of the regulars. “My goodness, are you not Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
“Indeed, I am, Captain. Do we know one another?” Fitzwilliam enquired.
“I was trained by you when I was at the Dragoons training grounds. I was a second lieutenant. I suffered an accident in which my leg was broken severely, so I was not allowed to remain in the Regulars,” Carter related.
“We need to retire to my office so we can sort out what happened here,” Forster demanded.
An hour later, a chagrined Forster agreed that Jackson was free to go and had only acted to stop an escaping man. He now understood why his men had been denied any more credit.
Darcy became rather popular when he pledged to make all the merchants whole and also any men who loaned money to Wickham.
He was not willing to cover the late dissipated man’s debts of honour.
When it was stated unequivocally that the body would not be allowed to be buried in Meryton’s cemetery, Darcy decided that he would convey the body back to Derbyshire so Wickham would be laid to rest next to his parents.
Given it was spring, he needed to depart as soon as the mortal remains were placed in a coffin.
He charged Fitzwilliam to make his farewells and pass his regrets to the Bennet sisters for his need to depart right away. After the interment of the seducer’s remains in Derbyshire, Darcy intended to travel to London so he could deal with Miss Bingley once and for all.