Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Although he needed far more sleep, Darcy’s mind was too occupied, and he awoke with plenty of time to dress and wait in the innyard for his misguided sister. When he went downstairs, he asked a maid to wake up “Mrs Gardiner” but was told she was already waiting for him.
While his nerves were frayed at confronting his sister, he was also nervous to see Elizabeth.
He felt a strange tension between them he did not understand.
They spoke so straightforwardly, so effortlessly with one another, but argued nearly just as often.
He supposed he was grateful they also compromised easily and worked well with one another.
He was fortunate to have a partner in this disaster.
Even if such a partner embarrassed him by seeing him in his shirtsleeves and appearing in her dressing gown, with her hair down and looking far too pretty for having spent two days in a mail coach. He ought not to notice such things when his mind was preoccupied with family concerns.
He saw her bag by her feet and placed his with it. They were both right in thinking they needed to be ready to leave as soon as Georgiana agreed to return with them.
“I do not think they will be long,” Elizabeth said after an hour of his pacing before her. “Wherever they stopped last night, Wickham will be eager to cross the border.”
He agreed. “Will you wait here alongside the building, out of sight of the yard?”
Her face hardened, and he prepared himself for an argument. He was growing accustomed to that look of frustration and gathering energy in the way her eyes flashed and her lips pursed. “I want to help. She will believe me when I mention Wickham tricking Lydia.”
“You are right, but it would be best if Wickham did not see you. Only come out if it seems necessary. I leave you to judge when or if it is best.” Elizabeth opened her mouth, and he interrupted her. “Please, I do not know why she did this, but…let me fix this.”
He would not refuse her help, but he would resolve this alone if he could.
This was his duty, and while he and Elizabeth were tied together in this misfortune, he wanted to manage it on his own.
Georgiana was his sister, his ward—and this disaster was his responsibility.
Elizabeth sighed and nodded, holding back whatever opinions she had before moving into the shadow of the inn.
That afternoon, a post-chaise entered the yard and Darcy recognised Georgiana through the window. With a steadying breath, he let the coach pass him and then came around the back of it. He waited until they were out of the coach and had moved away so they could not climb back in and dash off.
Wickham alighted and then handed down Georgiana. Darcy was sorely tempted to throw Wickham to the ground, but that would make him the villain and make Wickham appear the sympathetic lover.
“Let go of my sister,” he said in a low voice.
Georgiana gave a cry of surprise. “How did you know?”
Wickham blanched, but put a consoling arm around her. “All is well, my dear,” he murmured while giving Darcy a glare over her head. “We need someone to unite us,” he called to the ostler, who waved and went into the inn.
“The hell you do.”
Georgiana whimpered at his tone, and Wickham said to her gently, “We talked of this, my dear. In case he caught up with us, you know just what to say.” To Darcy, he said in a strident tone, “I am not sure how you beat us here, but your sister has agreed to make me the happiest of men.”
Georgiana inhaled deeply. “Fitzwilliam, I am determined to have him. Please, be happy for me.”
How many times had she practised this on the way north? “He is a reckless, selfish man, and you have been duped.”
Wickham rubbed her shoulder consolingly. “He hates how lowly born I am, that my father worked for his.”
“No, I hate that you lie, are addicted to the dice and the bottle, and have no profession,” he snapped. “Georgiana, come home.”
Her lips trembled, and she looked at Wickham for reassurance. “I told you he would say hateful things about me,” he said, clamping a hand onto her shoulder. “But we must not despise him for it, because it comes from his love for you.”
Darcy’s patience shattered. “You are a silver-tongued serpent!” He reached forward and tugged on his sister’s arm. “We are going home.”
Georgiana pulled away with a shriek, clutching at Wickham, who shifted her behind him. Seeing her turn to Wickham twisted his heart.
“Ho, there!” the blacksmith called, and some grooms and postilions stepped forward. One held a hay rake and another a shovel. “Ma’am, are you here of your own free will?”
She nodded emphatically and drew closer to Wickham, who smirked at him as he held her.
There was no way he could forcibly carry her off without fighting both Wickham and the men in the yard.
A brawl would draw in Elizabeth as well; his sister and her could both be hurt.
Dragging Georgiana away by force was not an option, and one look at Wickham confirmed he knew it too.
“You are all alone here, Darcy. You have no chance to force her away with you.”
“I will merely run away if you force me home,” she added. “I will escape at the first opportunity. Wickham and I were always meant to be together.”
“Always meant to—you are a child!” he cried. “What do you know about life and love?”
Her pleading expression fell, and anger filled her eyes. “I am fifteen! Wickham and Mrs Younge don’t think I am a child. I am old enough to marry, and Wickham has always loved me. And I know my father approved of him; he would have been happy for us!”
How could an overprotective brother compare to the memory of a beloved, departed father?
“If you want to marry,” he choked out, “you should be married decently, at the parish church with your friends around you. Not tacked together by a blacksmith. Come home and be married properly if he is truly your choice. If Wickham had any respect for you, he would want a sanctioned union for you.”
He saw her considering, but Wickham shook his head, still keeping an arm around her.
“He means to trick you. Once he gets you home, he will lock you up at Pemberley and never let me see you. And what of your reputation? We have been alone together for days.” To him he said, in a far less gentle tone, “I know what your family name means to you, Darcy. How can she return home as a single lady?”
“Because everyone in Ramsgate believes she left with me, not with you,” Elizabeth said, marching around the stable wall.
“Lizzy!” Georgiana broke from Wickham to put her arms around Elizabeth, who clutched her. Elizabeth locked eyes with him, and Darcy thought she looked as though she would take her away had she been able to carry her in her arms.
If he was not so impatient to recover his sister, he might have laughed at the look of absolute confusion on Wickham’s face when he recognised Elizabeth.
“Why are you here?” he murmured in a tone of total perplexity.
Elizabeth directed her answer to Georgiana.
“Because Wickham told Lydia he would run away with her.” Georgiana’s mouth fell open.
“They planned to elope after the assembly, but it was all a ploy to distract your brother, distract everyone, so Wickham could elope with you instead. You were thought to be engaged for the day, and everyone would think he had fled with my sister. He played a cruel trick on Lydia, and I came to retrieve her. The scheme to protect her good name will still protect yours. You can still come home.”
Wickham looked at Elizabeth in bewilderment. Hopefully, Wickham’s thoughts would be on his own concerns and he would not consider the implications for Elizabeth’s reputation.
He recollected himself, and scoffing and shaking his head, as though he had never heard such nonsense, said, “I never loved Lydia, and if she fancied a dance meant I would marry her, then she is a fool.” He held out a hand, and Georgiana moved from Elizabeth’s side to take it.
“You are the only one for me, the only one I love.”
“You love her fortune,” Darcy said.
“No, he loves me,” said Georgiana with rising determination. “And thank goodness I have that fortune because you denied him the living my father wanted him to have.” She shook her head in disappointment. “Fitzwilliam, how could you?”
Darcy laughed contemptuously, and then carefully explained the truth. He told her he had proof, but it was plain Georgiana was wretchedly blind to any criticism of her supposed lover. Wickham had interspersed lies with truth, and along with professions of adoration, had completely enthralled her.
“You are wrong,” she insisted, as only a stubborn girl who knew nothing of the world could. “He wanted the Kympton living, just as my father intended.”
“Tell her the rest,” Elizabeth said wearily. “Reasoning has not worked, and that detail might appeal to her emotions, which are sadly, deeply engaged by him.”
Darcy had hoped to appeal to Georgiana’s rationality, her sense of family honour, but Elizabeth was right. Maybe knowing her husband would be unfaithful, that he used women carelessly, that he would give her the pox would convince Georgiana to leave him.
“Not only does he drink and game to excess, but he is known in every brothel in London and by half of the girls on the street as well. Not only that, but he will bed any willing woman with empty promises, be it a na?ve noblewoman or a dairy maid.”
His little sister looked at him in disgust. “What a terrible lie to spread about a man who was once your friend.”
“Friend?” he repeated, distracted. Inmates of the same house, sharing the same amusements, did not make him friends with the spiteful, selfish man now or when they were children.
“Georgiana, Wickham has spent the last five years whoring, drinking, and gaming. He wasted the three thousand pounds I gave him. He will not provide for you. Is that the man you want for a husband?”
Georgiana’s jaw dropped, and Wickham affected a careless laugh.