Chapter 3 #4
Anne sank into the chair. “What did he say?”
“That the story was too polished. Too rehearsed.” Elizabeth sat on the bench. “He noticed the bandaged hand. He wondered aloud what sort of wife runs from her husband in winter, and what sort of husband she might be running from.”
Anne pressed her hand to her mouth.
“He suspects something is wrong,” Jane said gently. “But he does not know what.”
Mary's voice was quiet but firm. “He told us that if we encounter a young woman matching the description, we are to tell him. Not Mr. Wickham.”
Anne looked from one sister to another, comprehension dawning on her face.
“You are disobeying him,” she whispered. “By keeping me here. By not telling him.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said simply.
“But he is your father. If he discovers—”
“He will be terribly angry,” Mary said. “With all of us.”
Kitty’s hands trembled. “Perhaps we should tell him. He already suspects Mr. Wickham. Perhaps he would help.”
“Or perhaps he would think himself obliged to send for the magistrate,” Lydia said quietly. “To determine the legalities. Which would mean exposure, questions.”
“Papa would not do that,” Jane protested.
“Would he not?” Elizabeth asked. “He is suspicious of Mr. Wickham, yes. But Anne is a stranger. We have no proof of what happened beyond her word and her injuries. Papa might well decide the proper course is to involve the law.”
“Then Anne would be questioned,” Mary said slowly. “Her name would become known. The whole matter would become public.”
Anne had gone white. “I cannot. I cannot face that. Not yet.”
Jane looked torn. “But to deceive Papa—”
“We are already deceiving him,” Elizabeth said bluntly. “We have been since the moment we found her. The question is not whether we deceive him, but how long we continue to do so.”
Jane flinched at the word deceive.
“Until we know more,” Lydia said. “Until we understand what papers Mr. Wickham truly has, what the law would say. Until we can find a way to make Anne safe.”
“Without Papa knowing,” Kitty said.
“Yes.”
They looked at each other. The weight of what they were choosing settled over them.
“We are agreed, then?” Elizabeth asked. “We tell Papa nothing. Not yet.”
Jane hesitated, then nodded. “Not yet.”
One by one, the others nodded as well.
Anne's eyes filled with tears. “I am sorry. I am so sorry to put you all in this position—”
“You did not put us here,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Mr. Wickham did. We are choosing to keep you safe despite Papa's orders because we believe it is right.”
There was a long pause.
“He described you and your clothing,” Elizabeth said finally, changing the subject. “A blue velvet pelisse. That is what Mr. Wickham told Papa you were wearing.”
Anne's face drained of what little colour remained. “He knows. If anyone found it—”
“It is hidden,” Jane said. “We put it in the trunk in the schoolroom this afternoon, with the summer things. No one will find it there.”
“No.” Anne's voice was flat, final. “No, I do not want it hidden. I do not want it to exist at all. It has to be burnt.”
Mary frowned. “But Anne, it is your property—”
“I do not want it.” Anne looked at each of them. “I do not want it as a reminder of what happened. I want it gone. Completely.”
“Then we shall burn it,” Elizabeth said.
“I shall do it,” Lydia said. “I can take it to the barn after the house is dark. The grooms bank the fire at night, but it will still be hot enough.”
“Are you certain?” Jane asked.
Lydia nodded. “I will wrap it in sacking. No one will see.”
Anne's hands were shaking. “Thank you. All of you. I know burning good fabric is wasteful, but I cannot—”
“We understand,” Elizabeth said.
They left her then, slipping back through the schoolroom in darkness. In the passage, Lydia whispered that she would wait until midnight, when even the servants were asleep.
The house was silent when Lydia crept down the back stairs. The pelisse was bundled in old sacking, heavy in her arms. She crossed the yard to the barn, her breath misting in the cold air.
The fire in the grooms' stove had burnt down to coals, but they were still hot. She unwrapped the pelisse and stood looking at it for a long moment.
It was ruined—mud-stained, torn, the blue velvet destroyed.
But she could still see what it had been.
The fabric was fine quality, the stitching delicate work, the lace at the collar skilfully applied.
Someone had made this with great skill. Someone had dressed Anne in it with pride.
Mr. Wickham had destroyed it as thoroughly as he had tried to destroy its wearer.
She could almost see Anne in it, elegant and whole, before Mr. Wickham had unmade everything.
Lydia thrust it into the coals. The velvet caught quickly, curling and blackening. The smell was acrid. She stared until there was nothing left but ash, then scattered the coals to hide any trace.
When she returned to the house, her eyes were red from more than smoke. Elizabeth was waiting in the passage with a candle. She did not ask. She simply pulled Lydia against her shoulder, and Lydia buried her face there, finally allowing herself to cry.
Prudent Retreat
The coach ride from Hertfordshire had been an agony of jolts and rattling wheels, every bump sending a fresh spike of fire up Wickham’s right arm.
The frozen slush had rendered the road a collection of frozen muddy ruts.
He sat now on a grease-stained chair in Mrs. Younge’s parlour, cradling the limb against his chest. The room smelt of boiled cabbage and damp wool, a wretched contrast to the lavender-scented drawing-rooms to which he had once thought himself entitled.
Wickham had not quitted Meryton in triumph.
The first glow of success, the easy vanity of having borne Miss Darcy away, soon gave place to a more pressing consideration—that of his purse.
Georgiana’s little stock of pin-money, which had once appeared to him an inexhaustible resource, was quickly scattered in post-chaises, inn-bills, and those lesser expenses by which a man of fashion persuades himself he is only maintaining appearances.
When that was gone, there remained nothing but her clothes.
He began by disposing of them with what he termed prudence.
A gown here, a shawl there, a trinket parted with under some careless account of a lady’s change of taste.
At a linen-draper’s, he laid a gown of fine muslin upon the counter, speaking of a sister who had altered her mind.
The man’s hand lingered on the fabric. His eye travelled from the work to Wickham himself, and back again.
“These are uncommon goods to come without a lady’s maid, sir,” he said at last.
Wickham laughed, and said something easy of his sister’s caprice, but the look with which the draper followed him to the door betrayed more doubt than belief. At another shop a pawnbroker shook his head outright.
“Too fine for such a story,” the man muttered, pushing the parcel back. “I should like to know whose things they are, before I take them. A man may be ruined for less than receiving stolen goods, sir, and I have no mind to answer before a magistrate on your account.”
Ladies grew curious. Doors that had opened readily enough to his smile were now held upon the chain whilst accounts were mentioned. Questions were asked—whose clothes were these? where was the lady now?—and, for all his laughing evasions, they were not silenced.
A man who had studied neighbourhoods might have managed it better.
Wickham, trusting as ever to his address, only laughed and shuffled, and so roused the suspicions he meant to allay.
Presently he heard that enquiries were abroad concerning him.
A serjeant passing through the town spoke, over a pot of ale, of a gentleman seeking news of a certain George Wickham.
No name was given, but the description of a tall officer lately come down from town was enough.
Wickham thought of Colonel Fitzwilliam, and the comfortable assurance with which he had once fancied himself forgotten by that quarter deserted him in an instant.
The tradesmen of Meryton learnt, almost in the same hour, that he had removed to other lodgings. In the morning he was entirely gone, leaving more than one bill unpaid, more than one landlord out of humour, and a very pretty story to be told, and improved upon, in every parlour of the town.
His hand was a ruin. The puncture marks where the little hell-cat had sunk her teeth into him were no longer merely red.
They wept a thin, foul fluid. The flesh about his knuckles had swollen tight and shiny, stretching the skin till it seemed ready to burst. Heat beat from the wound, keeping cruel time with the fever that set his teeth on edge.
“You have brought me nothing,” Mrs. Younge said. She stood by the empty hearth, her arms folded, her expression shifting between disgust and anger. “No girl. No settlement. Not even the fare to pay your way here.”
Wickham attempted his practised smile, though his lips were cracked and dry. “A temporary reverse, my dear. She will reappear. I was obliged to make a prudent retreat.”
“‘A prudent retreat?’” She gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “You ran away, George. You squandered the girl’s pin-money on post-chaises and brandy and then spent the last of it getting your useless person here to my door.”
“I could not remain at the inn,” he said, forcing his voice into the smooth, conciliatory tone that had soothed many an angry tradesman.
“The landlord pressed for payment I did not possess. Before he could send me into the street, I was compelled to leave. It was a matter of necessity rather than choice.”
The words were barely out before he shivered, the violence of the chill spoiling his air of nonchalance. The room was cold, yet sweat ran unpleasantly between his shoulders.
“I find I am in need of a surgeon,” he murmured, looking down at the angry, swelling hand. “This bite—she must have venom in her veins. When I am mended, we shall consider our next steps.”
Mrs. Younge came nearer, bending over the throbbing limb with a cool, practised eye. She neither offered a bandage nor wasted a word of comfort.
“It looks like mortification,” she observed. “My uncle died of a dog-bite that had much the same appearance. It took him a week to rot.”
“You are very much mistaken if you imagine me dying of this,” Wickham said, with a laugh that caught and turned to a cough. “I shall recover. When I do, I shall visit Darcy. He will pay to keep this quiet. He always does. You know how generous he can be when his pride is engaged.”
“He will not pay a dead man.” Mrs. Younge crossed to the door, her skirts swishing over the grimy boards.
“Nor shall I lodge one. You had best find the funds to call an apothecary. You may have the attic room to-night, since you look scarcely able to stand. But if you do not find ten guineas by to-morrow, I shall turn you out.”
“My dear Sarah, there is no need for such severity,” he said, leaning forward in a wheedling tone. “We are old friends—partners, one might say.”
“I conduct a business, Mr. Wickham, not a charitable establishment for ruined fortune-hunters.” She opened the door. “I will send up a basin of water. Do not bleed on the sheets.”
The door closed on him with a firm click.
Wickham stared at the peeling wallpaper. He had held thirty thousand pounds within his grasp—a life of ease, and a pretty revenge upon the Darcys, almost secured. Now there remained to him only a few shillings in his pocket, and a fire raging in his blood.
He looked down once more at his hand. A thin red streak had shown itself upon his wrist, and crept slowly, inexorably, up his forearm towards his heart.
He shut his eyes, and for the first time in many years, George Wickham was afraid.