Chapter 21 #3
She gave a quizzical look, and Wickham put an arm around her and said, “She has not paid me a shilling so far, which is why I will move forward with exposing Mrs Darcy unless you pay me for my silence.”
“Well, she gave me a little over five pounds…”
“And where is that?” Darcy asked her, glaring at Wickham.
“George said we must save it to pay for better lodgings. We will need it to move from here.” She looked around her in despair.
That money was surely gone to a prostitute downstairs the day he got it. “Mrs Darcy paid your husband fifty pounds for his silence. Where has that gone?”
His sister gaped at him, but Wickham said, “We need more than a rich woman’s pin money to live on.
If you do not pay me thirty thousand pounds, I will prove your wife’s infidelity.
Can your family pride withstand that?” He laughed, enjoying the thought of it.
“It will disgrace your entire family, degenerate your good standing, and lose the influence of Pemberley House for generations.”
Georgiana paled then whispered, “You will not truly tell the world she is an adulteress, will you? Lizzy has done nothing wrong.”
The look on Wickham’s face answered. “We will do what we must, my dear. Darcy can afford for me to be silent.”
“I will pay you nothing for your silence.”
Georgiana’s shoulders fell. “Are you happy here with him, living like this?” Darcy asked her. His sister, he regretted to say, looked like a slattern, unkempt and fatigued. Their lodgings, indeed their very rooms, were an abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety.
“If we had my fortune,” she implored, “George would not have to live so near to temptation and, and he would love me better,” she added, turning sad eyes to her husband.
Wickham averted his gaze, but Darcy did not see an ounce of shame in his looks.
“Then, if we had more money and could live anywhere else, he would be faithful, attentive—”
“I am not giving that man thirty thousand pounds to waste.”
“We don’t even need thirty thousand,” she cried. “We just need enough to be gone from here.”
“Georgiana!” Wickham cried, his mouth twisting in revulsion.
“We do not need that much,” she insisted.
“Remember when you said you would have me even after Fitzwilliam refused to give us the money?” She searched his face for some sign of affection, or perhaps a smile, but was disappointed.
Turning to Darcy, she said, blubbering, “I only want enough to move from these terrible rooms. It is in a fine street, but he is always gone. There are card games into the small hours. It is noisy, with lodgers coming and going at all hours too.”
“Your husband is keeping you in near squalor in a brothel because he has no employment and he wastes any money that comes his way on cards and women. Those other lodgers are prostitutes with their customers. He keeps you near his preferred vices of drink, cards, and women.”
He thought he had to convince her, but Darcy saw in her face that his sister knew.
She raised a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes.
“He loves me. He wrote me such sweet letters. He married me, so I know he would prefer me above all else if he were not so easily enticed. We just need to get away from this temptation.”
Darcy noticed her hands and gestured to see them. She came nearer and held them out and he saw the reddish-brown rash on her palms. He exhaled deeply. “You have a secret malady.”
She looked at her hands and brought one to her neck, where Darcy could now see the rash under her hair. “No, it is nothing. George said he had the same, and it went away.”
“Yes, that happens with the pox,” he said sadly.
“You have passed the first phase of illness and are into the next. You will appear to get better, but it is a disease that remains hidden, although you could pass it on to a child if it survives. But the both of you have the pox, and someday, years from now, abscesses and ulcers will disfigure you both and might even affect your mind.”
“His lies know no bounds, my dear,” Wickham said, drawing her back to his side. “What a cruel and coarse thing to say. It is Gretna Green all over again. He repeats the same lies, hoping to turn you from my affections.”
“The prostitutes Mrs Younge employs do that,” Darcy said.
Wickham shot him a malicious look that his sister could not see. To her, he said, “We need that thirty thousand pounds so we can live far from any vice to lure me from your side.”
“I will not pay you,” he repeated.
“You would never risk your good name.”
“You can test that assumption at your convenience,” he said warningly. Wickham searched his eyes, wondering if he was lying. “I am here for my wife’s items, and then I hope to never see either of you again. If you go forward with your threat, you will suffer the consequences.”
Georgiana’s lip quivered, but Wickham laughed. “Me? If I have a criminal conversation with your wife, there are no consequences for me. The public punishment of disgrace is not equal between the sexes. I am merely a rogue, but she is shamed forever, and you are a laughingstock.”
Desperation had driven an emptiness into Wickham’s eyes. “What has happened to your humanity?” Darcy asked with genuine curiosity. “Did you truly lose all the good principles your father instilled in you?”
Wickham ignored him. “When Mrs Darcy was paying me, I lowered my fee in deference to her small income. But now that you are paying, I want thirty thousand.”
“I told you, I am not paying for your silence. Either give me my wife’s belongings, or go public and end all our marriages.”
“All our marriages?” he repeated. “No, Darcy, just yours, and your good name along with it.”
“If you show your alleged proof that my wife committed adultery with you, that is proof Georgiana can use to divorce you for being unfaithful to her.”
“Divorce me?” He laughed. “She is a woman. It is impossible.”
“Not in Scotland.” They both blinked at him. “You stole my sister away to marry her in Scotland, where, in matrimonial causes, the sexes are in a position of equality. A woman can sue for divorce in cases of adultery and desertion.”
They gaped at him. Wickham’s stunned expression was so amusing Darcy had to hold back a laugh, but Georgiana looked pensive. “She can sue you for divorce, and with the supposed proof of your own infidelity, she will win.”
In truth, it would be easier if they lived in Scotland and if the adultery happened there, but Wickham was too distracted by anger, and stupid, to think of that.
“Georgiana would never divorce me,” he stammered.
“Are you very sure of that? You keep her in a brothel and gave her the pox. If you spread your lies, all the world will think Mrs Darcy committed adultery with you, and Georgiana’s attorneys, that I will hire, will use that in the commissary courts in Scotland to end your union.”
“Maybe that is preferable,” he spat, and Georgiana gasped. “She has no fortune now, after all. We can all end these disastrous unions begun in Ramsgate.”
Darcy would never do that, but Wickham did not need to know. “You will be an even poorer man if you do. With adultery, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce, and, after the divorce, to marry another—as if the offending party were dead.”
“Then we can both seek our fortunes elsewhere!”
“Are you certain that is true in Scotland?” he said calmly. As Wickham grew more enraged, the calmer he had to remain. “Georgiana would be free to remarry, whilst you would remain bound to the failed marriage until freed by the death of your innocent spouse.”
Wickham’s mouth fell open, and Darcy finished with, “It will also be as if you died, and therefore your widow is entitled to part of your moveable property, and your income and land, if you had any. Even so, that one thousand pounds my father left you will get much smaller if Georgiana gets a third of it.”
Wickham strode toward him, and Darcy raised his walking stick, but Georgiana rushed in front of her husband and put a hand on his chest. “Stop, both of you. I do not want Lizzy and Fitzwilliam shamed and disappointed, but I do not want a divorce, either.”
“See, she would never speak against me,” Wickham taunted, “let alone divorce me.”
“Let her speak for herself. He is unfaithful,” he reminded her. “He is a spendthrift. He has given you the pox. And Elizabeth and her sisters would be disgraced forever.”
“I…” Darcy’s throat caught as he waited to hear what she said.
“I do not want to destroy Lizzy’s respectability.
Or make Fitzwilliam unhappy. I love them both.
” She settled her shoulders and said to Wickham, “And as much as I love you, if you expose Lizzy, I will use the proof to petition for a divorce. You promised you would never actually go through with it. And you said you loved me above all others, that you would take me with no money at all, remember?” she pleaded with watery eyes.
“Then prove it and end this. Fitzwilliam will never give us the thirty thousand, but I chose you instead of the money.”
Her romantic feelings blinded Georgiana, but Wickham plainly did not care that she chose him over money because he would have thrown her over for a handful of coins.
He watched as Wickham weighed his options, then he turned to Darcy with hate in his eyes and said, “If I end with nothing either way, I may as well ruin you.”
Georgiana cried in earnest, but Darcy had suspected this might happen. Wickham always acted with short-sighted selfishness. He said evenly, “Go ahead. I will support your abandoned bride whilst the courts settle matters.”
An alertness came into Wickham’s eyes, and Darcy hated him even more. “It is not money to stay quiet,” he reminded him. “Go ahead with your threat. Georgiana, as you await your divorce proceedings, would you prefer to be kept in a better situation?”