Chapter Four #2
“Oh, God, Wickham,” said Darcy dismissively, getting to his feet.
Wickham stood up too. “I wish to speak to you properly.”
“You don’t understand anything,” said Darcy tightly.
“If you won’t speak to me, perhaps I shall simply demand satisfaction,” said Wickham. “Name your friends.”
“You’re not serious,” said Darcy, shaking his head. He sighed.
“Wait, is he challenging you to a duel, Darcy?” said Bingley. “I thought this was the son of your steward.”
Darcy gestured with his head. “With me, Mr. Wickham.” He walked across the room, opening the door.
Wickham seethed. “I shan’t be turned out!” he cried.
“No, I shan’t turn you out,” said Darcy, opening the door. “Come with me. We shall talk elsewhere, just the two of us.”
Bingley leaned forward, eager. “What happened between the two of you?”
Wickham’s face twitched.
“Wickham,” said Darcy from the door. “With me.”
Wickham swept out after him.
Darcy took him to his bedchamber of all places, but perhaps that was the other place where the two of them spoke. Below stairs, in the places where a master speaks to a servant, and here, in his bedchamber, when neither of them were dressed.
Wickham bowed his head, feeling half of his bluster taken away, feeling only the pain and the emptiness in the wake of it. He was so alone, that was the thing.
He’d been kept from his blood kin as a boy, and the Darcy family had replaced his ties with his actual father and mother.
Now, they were all dead, his parents, Darcy’s parents, and all that was left was Darcy, and they were brothers but not, lovers but not, enemies but not.
Keep away, that was all Fitzwilliam Darcy said to him anymore. Keep away from me.
“You’re angry with me,” said Darcy. “But you knew. I told you, after the ball here, the one you were invited to and didn’t come to.”
“You didn’t want me here,” said Wickham. “You made that plain.”
Darcy sighed heavily. “I danced with her, and I told you that I felt—”
“No,” said Wickham, though maybe he did remember this.
“And once you knew that I wanted her, you took her off in the woods and ruined her,” said Darcy.
Wickham looked at him.
“Oh, deny it, then?”
“I didn’t ruin her,” said Wickham.
“But you knew you couldn’t marry her when you did it,” said Darcy. “And you knew I wanted her. So, you had to do that, you had to mark her, claim her, have her first.” He let out a breath.
“It wasn’t about you,” muttered Wickham.
“Oh, bollocks it wasn’t,” said Darcy.
It was quiet, and Wickham wasn’t sure what he wanted to say now. He wanted to find his anger again, to rage at Darcy for taking this woman from him, but he now saw the way it was, that he started the game between them and Darcy had just continued to play it. “So, this is why you are marrying her.”
“No,” said Darcy.
“You want me there on the wedding night?”
Darcy’s lips parted. His tongue darted out to run over his upper teeth, and his breath was noisy. “Could you get away?”
Wickham turned away.
“Well,” said Darcy, “we should speak to her first. I don’t know where she is on it. She’s not like the women we usually dally with, and she may not welcome it. I told her that she may refuse, but I think she does want you, and I, of course, I want to see you with her, and she—”
Wickham turned back, and he was alight with this now. His voice was soft. “She’s a virgin. We would do that together.”
“You can’t, obviously, that will have to be me,” said Darcy. “But I thought, perhaps, after she’s with child—”
“You want this prolonged? Not just once or twice with her?”
“I always did,” said Darcy. “That’s what you don’t understand. I trusted you, George. I never meant to make you feel betrayed.”
“Very prolonged, then. It would be you and me, and this woman, for… how long?”
“I don’t know, as long as we wish it.” He raised his dark, expressive eyes and looked into Wickham’s own eyes. “Forever, George.”
Wickham froze, unable to move or speak or react to that.
It was very quiet, then.
Darcy tugged at his cravat, looking nervous.
“Fitz,” Wickham finally said, and his voice wasn’t steady, “I thought you wanted to take her from me. I thought you wanted to punish me. I thought…”
“No,” said Darcy, shaking his head. “No, I don’t wish to punish you, George, I never did.”
“Still, you couldn’t let me have her. You couldn’t let me marry her, couldn’t give me the money to do that.”
“It would have been monstrous for me to come to you and ask for her then. It’s different this way. I can give her advantages. I can care for her family. I can—”
“Yes, of course. So, it’s all about her,” muttered Wickham.
“I don’t know,” said Darcy. “Have you spoken to her since she has come home? She likes you better than she likes me, you know. I need you to… smooth it over, convince her of it, make her see that it will be good for her, that we shall make sure it is good for her?” He tugged at his cravat again, and he looked a bit bashful, as if he was still the adolescent boy who had come to Wickham for advice about women.
And then Wickham had asked the girl he was seeing, that scullery maid, what had her name been? Deborah? She had been so eager to help, so eager to throw herself at Darcy, telling him that she could win the master’s favor, But for us, Georgie, of course, only for us.
He thought Darcy would be scandalized by it, that he would deny such a thing, but he accepted it, and then he looked at him in this way, with those dark eyes. Stay. Watch. And later, Join in.
And God help him, when it came to Fitzwilliam Darcy, he never thought clearly.
“What are you even asking me, Fitz? To assist you in deflowering your wife?”
“No!” A pause. “Well.” Darcy shrugged. “Yes, but more than that. I want it to be… both of us. I want her to belong to both of us. I want us to… she will be yours, too. You could not get her for yourself, so I got her for you.”
“I could have gotten her for myself, but you wouldn’t give me any money,” said Wickham.
“You say it’s not about money, but it’s always about money, George.”
“And the money is nothing to you,” said Wickham, “so I don’t see why you clutch it the way you do.”
“You want her, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes,” said Wickham. “I shall do it, obviously. What do I do except your bidding, in the end?”