Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
The Knife
The room stank.
Wickham was vaguely aware of it when he surfaced from the fever—an odour of rot and sour sweat, of old poultices and spirits.
His hand burnt and throbbed and crawled, as though a nest of hot coals had been packed beneath the bandages and left to eat their way upward.
When he shifted, the pain flared so sharply that he bit back a cry.
“Lie still,” a voice said somewhere above him. Greene, no doubt, with his knives and his talk of amputation. “You will only increase the inflammation.”
Amputation. They had been at him about that for days.
Cut off his hand—his right hand, the hand that had held the cards and the dice, the hand that had written a hundred pretty phrases to a hundred foolish girls.
Cut it off, and what then? No cards, no billiards, no sword, no seat worth naming on a horse.
A one-handed seducer—what woman would look twice?
He would sooner die whole than live maimed.
He had said as much, more than once. He could not remember now whether he had spoken the words aloud.
He drifted. Faces swam up and dissolved in the heat: Georgiana’s, pale and eager and so easily led.
Mrs. Younge counting her fees. Darcy’s cold, contemptuous stare when the game had gone against him.
It had all seemed so simple, when the blood was up and the prospect of thirty thousand pounds, or even five, lay within reach.
Take the girl, take the settlement, take what was owing.
It had never occurred to him, then, that he might end like this, sweating and shivering in a hired room in Holborn, with his hand turning black under a surgeon’s bandages.
Greene’s words came back to him in scraps.
“Mortification…poison in the blood…nothing for it but the knife.” If he delayed, the poison would reach his heart.
If he submitted, he might live. Might. Half the poor devils they cut did not survive the cutting.
Why should he trust a man with a saw more than his own luck at last?
A groan escaped him. Someone—Mrs. Younge, perhaps—murmured soothingly and offered a spoon to his lips. The liquid tasted of laudanum and bitterness. He swallowed and the edges of the room began to blur again.
He had not thought of hell in years. Curates and chaplains had thundered of it often enough when he was a boy—fire that was never quenched, the worm that dieth not—but such things had always belonged to other men’s deaths, not to his.
Now, in the close, foul air, with his heart beating too fast and a chill creeping up from his feet, the old phrases returned unbidden.
Eternal fire. Gnashing of teeth. The rich man lifting up his eyes, being in torments.
It was absurd. He had done nothing worse than other men, nothing that half the gentlemen in the ton would not have done if they had had his opportunities. Cards, women, a little lying where it was necessary—who did not lie, when truth was inconvenient? He had only taken what he could get.
The pain surged again, and with it a wave of terror so strong that he clutched at the sheet with his sound hand.
He did not want to die.
He did not want the knife. He did not want the fire. He wanted another hand of cards, another willing girl, another chance.
“Mr. Wickham,” Greene’s voice said, very distant now, “you must decide. Whilst there is still time.”
He opened his mouth, whether to curse or to consent he could not have said. No sound came. The room tilted. The candlelight stretched and ran together. Somewhere, someone was praying—he could not tell if it was for him, or against him.
Then even the stench and the pain receded, and there was only the beating of his own heart, fast and frantic, as if trying to outrun the darkness that was closing in.
Christmas Day
Longbourn on Christmas Day was as busy as Elizabeth had ever seen it.
The house smelt of roasting goose and spice and evergreens, the warmth of the great kitchen fire reaching even to the front hall whenever a door stood open.
Mrs. Bennet had declared that there should not be “a single family dinner” for the Gardiners’ stay, and she had kept her word: the Phillipses had been invited for cards on Monday, the Lucases for supper on Tuesday, and now the gentlemen from Netherfield were expected to swell the numbers at a Christmas feast.
The arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner brought with it London parcels done up in brown paper and twine, town gossip, and an air of quiet good sense that seemed, to Elizabeth, as necessary as the Yule log.
Her uncle was neatly but plainly dressed, his coat faintly scented of city smoke and starch, his manners unassuming yet attentive.
Her aunt moved through the house with an ease that soothed even Mrs. Bennet’s agitation, her cool gloved hand resting for a moment on a shoulder here, a whispered word of counsel there.
On Christmas morning the party from Longbourn filled almost an entire pew at the little parish church.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet sat with their daughters, Georgiana between Elizabeth and Jane, and Mrs. Gardiner was seated just beyond her.
The air outside was sharp and still. Within doors, it steamed faintly as cloaks were shaken out and the mingled scents of wet wool, damp leather, and the fir branches twined about the pillars rose from the crowded pews.
Elizabeth could feel Georgiana’s gloved fingers tremble once against her own, and gave them a slight, reassuring pressure before they both knelt.
Darcy, who had come from Netherfield with Bingley and Mr. Hurst, had leisure during the walk back to observe how Mrs. Gardiner placed herself at Georgiana’s side, speaking with a gentle propriety that neither overwhelmed her with effusion nor kept a stiff, overawed distance.
Frost still clung in white tracery to the hedges.
Their breath smoked in the cold air. The crunch of their steps on the frozen lane made an odd accompaniment to the easy flow of Mrs. Gardiner’s conversation.
“Miss Darcy,” she said, inclining her head with a smile, “I hope the walk is not too much for you. My nieces have written so often of your kindness that I am glad to see you bear the country air so well.”
Georgiana, who had drawn a little closer to Elizabeth when they first quitted the church, relaxed at the familiar assurance. “They have been all goodness to me, ma'am,” she said. “I am exceedingly obliged to your family.”
“We are obliged to you,” Mr. Gardiner added, with an open, friendly smile that reminded Darcy of Bingley without the younger man's volatility.
“You have given my nieces a very entertaining subject for their letters to me. They speak of your music with particular enthusiasm. I hope we shall hear it this evening, if you are equal to the exertion.”
“Indeed, my dear Miss Darcy, we shall be quite delighted,” cried Mrs. Bennet from just ahead, turning so quickly that the feather in her bonnet brushed against Darcy’s sleeve. “Pray, let there be as much music as you please.”
Mrs. Annesley’s slight smile, caught only by Georgiana, confirmed the permission without presuming to grant it.
Darcy, walking a little apart where he could watch both his sister and the easy turn of Elizabeth’s head as she spoke to Jane, and the ease with which Georgiana was drawn into the Gardiners’ circle.
There was no vulgar curiosity, no awkward flattery—only a quiet, matter-of-fact kindness that asked nothing more of Georgiana than she was able to give.
Elizabeth, catching his eye across the shifting group, tilted her head slightly, a curl of dark hair escaping from beneath her bonnet with the movement, as if to say, You see?
He inclined his in return, a warmth quite distinct from the cold air spreading through his chest. I see.
The Christmas dinner itself was noisy and cheerful—goose and plum pudding sending up a rich steam that misted the lower panes of the parlour windows, a pair of bottles from Darcy’s own cellar and some sweetmeats he had sent over that morning, crackers from a shop in Town that Mr. Gardiner had thought the younger girls would enjoy, Mrs. Bennet in alt at finding her table so well filled.
Knives and glasses rang against china, the fire crackled in the grate, and the room grew warm enough that a few candles began to gutter in their sconces, sending little trails of wax down onto the brass.
Yet through the bustle, Darcy noted how naturally Georgiana was protected: Jane at one side, Mrs. Gardiner at the other, Mr. Bennet gently steering the conversation away from anything that might distress her, and Bingley, from his place by Jane, keeping the table in good humour with questions and exclamations that never once touched on Town gossip or other awkward subjects.
Darcy, almost without intending it, followed Mr. Bennet’s example—turning the talk, whenever it edged towards subjects that might discompose his sister, to safer topics of books, shooting, and the curiosities of Christmas customs in different counties.
When he was not attending to Georgiana’s plate or replying to Mr. Gardiner, he caught the quick, pleased glances that passed between Bingley and Jane, and the way Bingley’s voice always softened a little when he addressed her.
After the table was cleared and the younger girls clamoured for music, it was Mary who stepped forward, hands folded with a composure that looked almost stately in the candlelight.
“If Miss Darcy is not too fatigued,” she said, “perhaps we might attempt the duet we have been practising together. I should be happy to accompany her, if the company will bear with us.”
Georgiana looked at Mrs. Annesley, then her brother. Receiving two encouraging nods, she rose.
“Thank you, Miss Mary. I should like that very much.”