Chapter Thirty #2
Hugh rubbed both hands over his face, as if to rub away weariness.
“Be direct, Fitzwilliam. Do you think I missed seeing the sidelong glances from men like Standley, or I did not hear the general’s jobations about learning my new place at Pemberley?
Yes, that I resented you for Pemberley is widely known, and…
well, it was true. I did not think you deserved it, and made no secret of it.
You think someone seeks to destroy you, and I quite see I have not acted in my own best interest. I tell you it was not me, but I do not know what you think and believe. ”
“I believe it would have been better for all our family if our father had brought me back to Pemberley when he remarried, and fostered a real connection to my stepmother. Then, perhaps, there would not be such a gulf between us.”
“I… I am sorry for it, Fitzwilliam.” A church gargoyle would envy the face Hugh pulled. “I was not, when you came back. But I did not know you then. I know you better now.”
Darcy nodded. “We did not know each other, Hugh. Our father conceded too quickly and easily to my uncle’s request to keep me at Ashbourne. It was not to anyone’s advantage, in the end. But the truth is, that gulf came between us, was noted, and put to use.”
Darcy bit down a sigh and turned his attention to George.
“You and I are a different case. You were my almost-brother, all our childhood. When Hugh was learning to walk and too young to join our games, it was you who ran all over Pemberley with me. It was only later, at Cambridge, that I came to doubt you.”
“You said you would not dwell on that time of our lives, but accept I had changed! Reformed.”
“I did accept it. I was glad to have my almost-brother restored to me. Indeed, I thought you the one person at Pemberley, other than John here, whom I could count as my friend.”
“I have always been your friend.”
“I wonder.” Darcy poked at the package of mafeisan lying on the tabletop between them.
“Perhaps. Before Nathaniel Wickham lost Waulkmill, and deprived you of the estate you expected to one day own. Before… well, you have another reason, a pressing, personal reason for wanting your own establishment, do you not?”
“Lizzy,” Hugh said, quietly as a breath.
George held up both hands, palms turned towards them, to ward them both off this time.
“I will speak of it no more, but we understand each other on that head, I think.”
George visibly pulled in two or three deep breaths. “Are you, in all seriousness, accusing me of plotting to remove you? How, in God’s name, can I gain by your death?”
“You cannot, if it is only my death. But given the terms of the entail, your father’s debility, and the ease with which you could resume the Darcy name, then perhaps you could gain everything if Hugh is implicated in my untimely end.
That is where those whispers and warnings come into play, is it not?
You have steadily blackened Hugh in my eyes since the night I arrived.
All those hints about his ungovernable temper and violent tendencies—which, Hugh, you did little to refute by your behaviour. ”
“Yes,” Hugh said in the same unnaturally quiet voice.
“If Hugh had to stand his trial for murder, the jury might consider his hostility, his jealousy over Pemberley, even—forgive me, Hugh—his blaming me for bringing Bingley here to win Miss Jane Bennet’s preference…
all would bear out the notion that my brother would happily remove me from the scene to take my place. ”
“Oh, what bloody nonsense!” George burst out. “Are we all to be bit players in your Cheltenham tragedy?”
“You cannot think it more melodramatic than I do, George. Yet all the many hints and whispers to me and to Reid spread the seeds of this deception wide.”
George put both hands on the table and thrust back his chair. “Idiocy!”
Reid moved to block the door before George reached his feet. Reid stood silent. Watchful. Expressionless.
George froze where he stood, half erect, his weight braced by his hands on the tabletop.
He traded stares with Reid, made a gargoyle-grimace to rival Hugh’s, his earlier pallor giving way to a ruddiness redder than a cockerel’s comb.
He straightened slowly. “Fitzwilliam, you are a madman. You said yourself, I was with Tom Wilkinson on Saturday. I did not even go to Hardwick.”
“Where was Jim Denny at all the relevant times, though? You were very angry with him on Saturday, you said. But not about any mismanagement of your father, because Mrs Taylor said your father was as quiet as a lamb all day. Her exact words not thirty minutes since.” Darcy glanced at the chair George had vacated, and invited him back to it with a wave and a nod.
“Were you angry with him about his poor shooting, that he endangered Elizabeth? I do wonder how you were able to mark him without hurting your hands, but I suppose you still wore your riding gloves.”
George sneered. He was good at it. He threw himself back into the chair, folding his arm over his chest.
“George,” Hugh said, in a wondering tone. “George. Truly? But you are family…”
He got a glare for his pains.
Darcy was not the only one, then, to feel the sting of betrayal.
“I do wonder, though, if I were meant to die in the fire. It seemed early in the campaign to blacken Hugh’s reputation.
No one would think him responsible for fratricide, since not enough work had been done to paint him in treachery’s colours and hold that image up to public view.
You were already on your way downstairs before I had the opportunity to summon help with the fire gong.
I remember that quite clearly. Did Denny, then, set the fire?
He could move about Pemberley freely at night, and in his old footman’s uniform, no one would notice him.
Was it your role to run down and save me, and use the opportunity to cast suspicion on Hugh while firmly establishing yourself as friend and saviour?
And on Saturday, what were Denny’s orders?
To take any chance, and if his shot went home, well, then.
If it did not, yet another incident to blacken Hugh. ”
“You are insane.” Perhaps Reid’s cold stare had taken all the indignation out of him, because now George spoke as if by rote, without passion or feeling.
“So you say. Repeatedly. But whatever the plan, one indisputable fact is that there was none of the Chinese powder in Pemberley itself. Mrs Darcy had given all my father’s remaining supply to you, for your father’s comfort.
Hugh could not easily lay his hands on it, but you and Denny had a ready supply.
” Darcy bit down on another long breath to help keep himself controlled. “Let us bring this to an end.”
George let out a noise more huffed-out air than joyous humour. “Mrs Radcliffe could not devise a more unlikely plot! Take this moonshine to the magistrate if you dare! You cannot prove one word of it.”
“We will see about that!” Hugh said, sharp as the crack of the bullet that had snapped through the air above Darcy’s head.
Darcy allowed a small grimace. “No, Hugh. To have him arrested would merely provide the gossips with a nine-days wonder. The scandal would be insupportable.”
“He should be brought to justice!”
“That can take many forms.”
Still sneering, George said, “I should like to see old Lackenby arrest me. Indeed I should! You have not one shred of evidence. Do you suppose I would be convicted?”
“And do you suppose Denny would not speak out if he thinks it would spare him the rope or Van Dieman’s Land? Can you buy his silence? And even if you did, the scandal would ruin you.”
“And you along with me!”
“Oh, I think the Darcy name would survive any gossip, though we might have an uncomfortable year or two. The Wickhams and Dennys do not have that much grace.” Darcy sat back. “Now we must be clear on what is to happen. You will leave Pemberley, of course.”
The sneer wavered. “Leave Pemberley?”
“You can hardly think I will allow you to remain. Think yourself lucky. On Saturday, on that hillside, those moments when I feared her dead, I would have tied the rope around your neck myself. I am calmer now, but I want you out of Pemberley before the week’s end. Denny, too.”
“But my father—”
“We will continue to care for your father. He may remain at Sparrowhill.”
Hugh snorted. “That is all very well, Fitzwilliam, and I quite see we cannot keep such a venomous snake in our bosoms, but if he leaves Pemberley, there will be a deal of talk. The Wickhams have been here these last forty years, at least.”
“I am making arrangements to send him to India.”
“India! By God, I will not—”
Darcy spoke over George’s protest. “Everyone knows the Wickham family fortune was lost by Nathaniel. We will put it about that my sojourn in Bengal has inspired George to seek to recoup those losses there, and, to show our family’s support for this brave venture, I was able to arrange his passage through Bingley’s contacts in the East India Company.
George could not, of course, make his fortune as readily here in England, as he could in the East. He goes with our blessing, knowing we will care for his father.
Denny goes with him. A thin story, but we can make it hold water, I think, if we ourselves are united. ”
“Mad,” said George, faintly. “I refuse.”
“Then I will send for General Lackenby and we will see what Denny has to say. The choice is yours.”
“You have grown very hard.”
“You did not see her thrown from the gig. It would harden any man.” Darcy sat back fully, half stretching his arms and turning his head from side to side once or twice, to try to ease the stiffness. “Do you go East, George?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Darcy managed to force his mouth up at the corners. It might approximate a smile, though it did not feel like one. “None at all.”