22. A Letter from Georgiana #2
“Bring her home.”
He bowed his head.
Elizabeth’s hand touched his sleeve for one brief instant. “And hurry back.”
He could not answer.
Wickham was already at the door, calling for his hat, asking Hill whether Mr. Bennet’s groom could saddle any horse fit for speed. Mr. Bennet issued orders with unexpected authority. Mrs. Bennet had begun to weep. Lydia stood very still, both hands pressed together before her.
Darcy followed Wickham into the hall.
For the first time in years, he did not look at George Wickham and see the sins of the past.
He saw a man who might help him save his sister.
Darcy and Wickham rode from Longbourn within a quarter hour.
It ought to have taken longer. Horses had to be saddled, messages sent, orders given, trunks considered and rejected, routes debated.
Instead, the whole household seemed to move under the force of one command: Miss Darcy must be found.
Mr. Bennet sent a note to Mr. Philips. Wickham gave Lydia one last look that nearly undid her composure.
Elizabeth stood upon the steps with Jane beside her, her face pale and resolute, and Darcy had to force himself not to look back once they had passed the gate.
Wickham rode hard, but not recklessly. That steadied Darcy more than he wished to admit.
They took the road toward London first. Until they knew otherwise, London must be the center from which every inquiry began.
Colonel Fitzwilliam would already have received Mrs. Annesley’s message, but Darcy could not rely upon another man’s pursuit, not when every delay might cost Georgiana everything.
For several miles, neither spoke.
The horses’ hooves struck the road in a rhythm too loud for conversation. Wind tore at Darcy’s coat. The countryside blurred at the edges: hedges, fields, narrow lanes, a startled flock of geese, a cart pulled aside by a farmer who stared after them with open curiosity.
At last Wickham said, “You believed I had gone to Ramsgate for her fortune.”
Darcy’s hands stiffened around the reins. “Yes.”
“And for revenge?”
The question came without accusation, which made it worse.
Darcy stared ahead. “Perhaps.”
Wickham made a sound that might have been a bitter laugh, though it quickly disappeared into the wind. “I earned the suspicion, I suppose.”
“No.”
Wickham turned his head sharply.
Darcy forced the admission out. “You earned some suspicion. Not that.”
A long pause followed.
“Thank you,” Wickham said, though there was no satisfaction in it.
Darcy swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “Tell me what you know.”
“Of Miss Darcy’s elopement? Nothing.”
“Of the man who might use your name.”
Wickham frowned. “That is another matter.”
They slowed where the road narrowed beside a wooded rise. Wickham shifted in the saddle, as if the conversation sat more heavily than the pace.
“I have told Miss Elizabeth some of it,” he said. “Not all. I was a poor creature when we were young, Darcy. Worse than poor. You know that better than most.”
“I know what I saw.”
“You saw enough.” Wickham’s gaze remained upon the road. “I let masters think you cold when you refused to pay my debts. I let companions think your pride had injured me when the fault was mine. Once, at school, I gave your name to a tradesman for a bill I had no means of settling.”
Darcy looked at him.
Wickham’s jaw worked before he continued. “You paid it. Your father never knew, I think.”
“He did.”
Wickham flinched.
“He paid it,” Darcy said. “He told me afterward.”
“Ah.”
The word held old shame.
“I told myself it was nothing. A boy’s foolishness. A debt that would have been paid eventually. One lie among many little lies. I was very skilled at making sins smaller when they were mine.”
Darcy had no answer to that.
The road opened again, and they urged the horses faster. After some time Wickham spoke once more.
“I would never have used your sister so.”
Darcy’s chest constricted.
“I know that now.”
“No.” Wickham’s voice roughened. “I need you to know it. Yes, I was selfish, vain, idle, dishonest with money, careless of the people who trusted me. I will own every part of it. But Georgiana was a child when I last saw her. A shy little girl who followed you with her eyes as if you were the pattern by which every good thing was measured. Whatever I became, I was not that.”
The words struck too deep.
Darcy remembered Georgiana at ten, hiding behind his father’s chair when visitors came; Georgiana at twelve, grave over her music; Georgiana at fifteen, frightened of society and eager to please. He had imagined Wickham smiling at her, persuading her, arranging trunks.
He had built the scene so completely that it had become memory without ever having happened.
“I believed I was protecting her,” Darcy said.
“I know.”
“And I failed to ask the one question that mattered.”
“Yes.”
No consolation. No flattery. Darcy deserved neither.
“I am sorry.” The apology did not restore in a moment all that years of resentment had destroyed.
Darcy knew better than to suppose it could.
Yet he trusted Wickham in the present crisis, and for the first time since their boyhood, the prospect of repairing what lay between them no longer appeared impossible.
They rode on.
By the time they stopped to change horses at an inn along the London road, both men were mud-spattered and stiff.
Wickham went inside to inquire after fresh mounts while Darcy sent a hurried note to Richard at Darcy House, urging that inquiries begin at coaching inns, posting houses, churches willing to perform irregular marriages, and any lodging house where a gentleman traveling with a young lady might seek privacy.
When Wickham returned, his face looked grim.
“What is it?” Darcy demanded.
“The landlord remembers a gentleman asking after the northern road yesterday morning.”
Darcy’s pulse thudded.
“With a young lady?”
“No. Alone. But he asked whether a post-chaise might be hired privately and whether a lady could be collected farther along the road.” Wickham hesitated. “He paid well for discretion.”
“Description?”
“Fair. Fashionable. Spoke with easy manners. The landlord could not recall his name, if he gave one.”
Darcy closed his eyes briefly. “That tells us little.”
“It tells us we are not chasing shadows.”
They mounted again.
As the afternoon wore on, Wickham’s earlier confession resumed between them.
“You said a man used your name,” Darcy said.
“Yes.”
“The same man?”
“I cannot prove it.”
“But you suspect him.”
“I do.”
“Who is he?”
Wickham gave no reply.
Darcy looked over. “If he has my sister—”
“I know.” Wickham shook his head. “I know. Believe me, I am not withholding from vanity. I am trying to be certain before I place a name before you. The man I mean had a gift for making innocence look guilty and guilt look like an unfortunate accident. If I name him wrongly, we lose time.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
“There is one man whose name must be considered,” Wickham said. “I did not speak it when the Ramsgate account first appeared because suspicion is not proof, and I would not accuse another man merely because he once wronged me. But Miss Darcy’s disappearance alters the matter.”
Darcy’s expression hardened. “Who?”
“George Wycombe. He has used my name before, particularly when debts or women were involved. The similarity has served him too well. I cannot swear he is the man you saw in Ramsgate, but if Georgiana believed herself attached to George Wickham while corresponding with another, Wycombe is the first person I would seek.”
Wickham nodded once. “We became acquainted after I left Cambridge. He was amusing, well connected enough to open doors, and careless in precisely the way I admired then. Our surnames were similar enough that mistakes occurred. At first it was a joke. A bill addressed to him came to me; an invitation meant for me went to him. He found it vastly entertaining.”
“And then?”
“Then debts came in my name that were not mine. Small at first. Wine. Cards. Lodging. A tailor who insisted I had ordered a waistcoat I had never seen. When I confronted him, he laughed and said I had profited often enough from confusion and ought not resent the world for returning the favor.”
Darcy’s stomach clenched.
“The bill from Ramsgate.”
“Yes. That is why it troubled me. I did not know the inn, but the manner of it had the same smell. Precise enough to alarm, absurd enough to deny. A false debt is easy to dismiss if no one cares. A false debt connected to a scandal becomes evidence.”
“What is his name?”
Wickham’s gaze fixed on the road ahead. “He went by Wycombe. W-y-c-o-m-b-e.”
Darcy pulled his horse to a halt.
“Wycombe?” he repeated after Wickham spelled it out.
“Yes.”
The syllable rang through him with sickening force.
Georgiana in Ramsgate.
“Who?”
“W-w—”
Wycombe.
Not Wickham.
Wycombe.
Darcy’s hands went numb around the reins.
Wickham saw the change. “What?”
“My sister began the name,” Darcy said, each word difficult. “She said the first sound. I supplied yours.”
Wickham went still in the saddle. “Dear God.”
“She nodded.”
“Or could not deny you.”
Darcy could not bear the mercy of that phrasing.
“No. She let me believe it. She was ashamed and frightened, and I was so certain that I gave her no room to say otherwise.”
Wickham swore, then muttered an apology no lady was present to require.
“Wycombe,” Darcy repeated.
“If it is the same man, he would know enough of me to use the resemblance. He knew I had old connections to the Darcy family. He knew I had been meant for the church and had taken money instead. He knew I was no favorite of yours.”
“How would he know Georgiana?”
“I do not know.” Wickham’s face darkened. “Unless someone introduced them.”
“Mrs. Younge.”
The name came like a verdict.
“Her companion?” Wickham asked.