Chapter 8
When the carriage was gone to Yorkshire, Darcy turned, striding towards the mistress’s bedchamber. When he had arrived therein, he closed the door, locked it, and began his search.
Silently but quickly, he rifled through drawers, peered into reticules, and opened books that looked like journals. He found only one thing, a note begging her to meet him, signed ‘GW’. It said nearly nothing, yet it destroyed him completely.
You know how I feel about you, how I burn for you.
I spend my days longing for you, and my nights are filled with dreams too fervent to commit to paper—indeed they consume the paper into ash just as you have consumed me.
Your words in your last letter assuring me that your feelings have not changed have given me hope…
Come to me on Thursday, I beg you.
GW
What Thursday had it been? Had she met him as requested?
Likely she had; she was always out ‘making calls’, or so it was said.
He sagged onto the bed, holding the note, and prayed for the release of tears.
Instead, resentment afflicted him; angry, violent resentment that took his breath away and made him wish to destroy things.
It was this anger that greeted the letters she sent him over the next weeks, letters he consigned to the fire without so much as a glance.
For many days—he knew not how long, maybe days, a week, or even two—he stayed in his bedchamber.
Sometimes he wept, sometimes he paced about angrily, but mostly he just sat and stared at the wall.
It ended when Georgiana, timorously brave, sent word via Fields that she insisted on speaking to him.
Fields helped him dress, at least combing his hair and donning a clean dressing gown that did not reek of brandy.
She was pale and fearful, awaiting him in her sitting room. “Brother, you look very well.”
“Do not tell falsehoods, dearest, it does not suit you.” He attempted a smile as he sat. “You wished to see me?”
She nodded. “I wished…I mean, I do not know what is happening right now. Are we going to Pemberley?”
“As you wish.”
She stared at him a moment. “Not as I wish, but…to join Elizabeth?”
Hearing her name made him wince. “Elizabeth…um, Elizabeth did not go to Pemberley. We can go, however, if you would like. Let us go. I think a change of scene and society could help us both.”
“But…where is she? Did she go to her family?”
“Um, no. Not her family.”
Georgiana sat staring at him, clearly troubled, and he realised he must confide in her, loath as he was to do so.
He swallowed, and with no little difficulty, said plainly, “It would seem that the tales you heard about town were…not incorrect. Um…my wife, it seems, is not faithful.”
Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “But I…surely my account—”
“No.” Darcy shook his head firmly. “No, it was not your account alone that…that…”
Not sure how to say it, he reached into his pocket for the note, handing it to her. She took it gingerly, opening it, and she immediately gasped, dropping it.
Alas, the unhappy tale was not yet done. “Furthermore, I suspect…she may be with child.”
“Your child?” Georgiana asked, brief delight immediately giving way to horrified comprehension. “Oh. Oh, I see.”
“It could be my child, if even there is a child,” he acknowledged reluctantly.
“Though it is unlikely. My plan is that we should have this time apart to see…well, clearly it would be best if she were not with child. That is my hope. Where we go from there, I cannot say. She does not love me. She married me under a falsehood, and the question will be whether she will give him up, whether I want her to devote herself to me, whether I can trust—” His voice cracked under the strain of the dire possibilities.
He wanted to be loved. He wanted her faithfulness to come from her delight in him, not to be forced upon her—but it was too late for that, was it not?
His emotion threatened to overwhelm him, so he asked his sister to leave, and she did at once, closing the door gently behind her.
Georgiana walked slowly down the hall towards her bedchamber.
Her gasp at seeing the letter in Darcy’s hand had been sincere, though its cause was likely misunderstood by her brother.
The note he had waved about, the request for a liaison, could very well have been her own, although it was her habit, at George’s insistence, to always destroy any written word that passed between them.
Why had Elizabeth come to be in possession of a note from George? Were they truly lovers? But no—she was nearly certain that was her note. But why? How had it come to be in Elizabeth’s possession?
One thing was certain. She could not admit the truth to anyone.
June 1812
The worst part of Elizabeth’s defection—and Darcy had ample time in the first month she was gone to weigh it all carefully—was his return to the lesser Darcy he had been before her.
He knew he was dull. He knew he was haughty.
But with her, he had been different. He had been liked, welcomed even, and for more than his money and his status.
She had made him feel livelier, more interesting, a better version of himself.
Without her, he was back to being the old man he had been so happy to cast off.
Lady Matlock had put about a story, a stupid one, about Elizabeth falling with consumption and needing to be sent off to some place in Brussels.
Or was it Berlin? Perhaps Boston. What did it signify, for it was all lies.
Darcy thought for sure the truth would come out, but somehow it did not.
Letters filled with well-wishes and earnest distress poured into Darcy House, much to his shock.
How had she even known so many people? He had been among the ton since his earliest days, and even he did not know half so many.
An adulteress, he reminded himself grimly, tossing the notes into the fire. She is not worthy of any of them.
There was a chair in Darcy’s study in which he slept very well, and it was in this chair that he often succumbed to the scant hours of restless slumber he could manage in this post-Elizabeth life.
He knew not how long he lay there when, at once, he bolted upright, seeing the door to his study creak open very slowly.
Shaking the vestiges of sleep from his head, he sat up. “Who is there?” he called out, only to see a gentleman enter in a rush, pouncing upon him, clearly foxed and clearly his cousin.
“Darcy!” Saye crowed. “Get up, we have a present for you.”
Darcy shoved him off. “What present?”
“Come, Darcy.” Fitzwilliam entered, less drunk than his brother. “Wickham is down on Marylebone street.”
“Wickham!” At once Darcy was fully alert. “Where is my pistol?”
“Easy, easy!” Saye crooned, wrapping his arm around Darcy’s shoulder. “We need a plan is what we need, and I say we go in there right when he’s bare arsed and near completing and just pummel the truth—”
Disregarding Saye, Darcy asked Fitzwilliam, “Where has he been all this time?”
“Evidently, there is yet another story involving yet another heiress…a Miss King? Packed off to an uncle in Liverpool. Wickham went after her, trying to keep her interests, but the uncle was too smart for that, and now Wickham is back in town.”
“Poor Wickham.” Saye belched. “Being a rake is a tricky business when all the ladies keep disappearing.”
Darcy was busily doing up his boots, which he had removed to sleep. “Forgive me if I do not feel sympathy for him.”
Before long, the three men were in Saye’s carriage, headed for the brothel where Wickham had been spotted. “Who spotted him?” Darcy asked. “I cannot think you two would stoop to such an establishment as Wickham could afford.”
Fitzwilliam gave his brother a look, and Saye grimaced, clearly not wishing to speak the truth, but Darcy guessed it before either brother could speak. “I see… Wickham has fuller pockets of late, is that it?”
“He looks like he’s eating well, I shall grant you that,” said Fitzwilliam. “But perhaps the family of this Miss King has lined his purse.”
“I have lined his purse.” The now-familiar anger burned in Darcy’s gut. “Elizabeth’s pin money bought Wickham a whore tonight.”
“You do not know that,” Saye said, consolingly. “Elizabeth has been away a month. Wickham likely gambled her pin money away weeks ago.”
Darcy sighed.
“Did you ever examine her accounts?” The lamp from outside the carriage cast shadows over Fitzwilliam’s face. “How much has she given him?”
“Well…yes, I did look at her account books.”
“And?” Saye asked.
“I could not find anything missing,” Darcy admitted. “The bills from the modistes came to me directly, and otherwise…otherwise she has scarcely spent a farthing. Books, that is all she has bought.”
There was a short silence while they all considered that.
“Perhaps her own money—” Saye began, but his brother interrupted him.
“She had nothing, only a share of her mother’s fortune after her mother’s death.”
“But Wickham would surely not bother with her if—”
“Speak of the devil himself,” Fitzwilliam growled, his attention drawn outside the window.
They saw Wickham, his hair askew and countenance satisfied, strolling down the street. Darcy pounded the roof of the carriage, which was brought to an immediate halt.
He flung the door open, jumping down and running before he had any thought of what he was doing.
Wickham turned at the sound of his steps, his face creasing into that ridiculous, genial smile just as Darcy set upon him, slamming into him with the full force of his weight and falling atop him as they tumbled to the ground.
Raising his fist, he pounded Wickham in his face, his gut, his ribs.
Wickham cried out, but passers-by were waved away by Saye and Fitzwilliam, who had exited the carriage after Darcy.
“Think that’s enough?” Fitzwilliam asked his brother.
“A few more,” Saye advised, while Darcy continued to punish his wife’s seducer.