Chapter Sixteen
ELIZABETH FELT BETTER enough to dress for dinner, and she was in the midst of that when there was a knock on the door.
She stayed where she was while her maid went over to answer the door.
It was Wickham.
“Give us a moment alone?” said Wickham to the maid.
The maid turned to Elizabeth for confirmation, and Elizabeth nodded. The maid left; Wickham shut the door.
He crossed the room and fell to his knees in front of her, reaching up for her hands.
“George, what is the meaning of this?” she said, putting her hands in his.
“I think it best if I go now,” he said. “I do not wish to, and you have no idea how impossibly difficult this is for me. It is not what I usually would do, you see? I do not think things through, but I have thought this through, and this is the time to go.”
“Go?” she said. “Why?”
“You sent him to me. What good did you think talking would do amongst us?” He was bitter.
She was astonished. “No. I know that you have things to settle amongst yourselves, but that is no reason to flee.”
“You are bleeding,” said Wickham. “I have no claim on you. You are his wife. It would be much worse if I stayed, if there was a chance I could father a child on you. I should be quite trapped in that case, and we all know that.” His eyes were shining.
“I love you, Lizzy. I have never loved a woman the way I love you, and I love him, and I think he loves me, too, but it’s not enough. ”
“Why?”
“I have wronged him,” said Wickham. “Too many wrongs, all stacked on each other, over the years. He has wronged me, too, I suppose, but—for me—all of that is tied up in the fact that I cannot bear it, living a life where he lords it all over me, and I am here, under him. Where I am given leave to you, because you belong to him? I simply… I shall chafe at it, ere long. I shall go eventually, anyway, but I should rather it not be when we have…” He reached up, lifting on his knees, and traced the outline of her jaw. “It is better that we end it now.”
She reached out and started on the buttons of his trousers.
He gasped, not stopping her. “What are you doing?”
“You tried to leave before, and then you had me, and you stayed,” she said. “So, we shall do that again, and—”
He stopped her hands. “No.”
She fought to get at him.
His hands tightened on hers and he was strong.
She let out a squeak.
He let go. “Am I hurting you?”
“George…” She reached for him again.
He stopped her again. “Lizzy, please. You cannot touch me there if I do not wish you to.”
She put her hands in her lap, but she felt a shard in her, a thought that she did not have strong hands, that she could not simply squeeze if she did not wish a man’s touch, that men were just given advantages, were they not, advantages that she could never have.
He could leave.
She could not. As a woman, she must be tied to some man or other, because she had no other way to feed and clothe and shelter herself, not without access to some man’s income. Maybe if she was a widow or an heiress or…
It mattered not.
She looked up at him. “I do not wish you to go. I wish you to stay. I wish you to go back to him, and I do not care if you must get down on your knees like this with him and beg him for the chance to be allowed to stay. I do not care if you must lower yourself, George. Does anyone ask me if I mind having everything lorded over me?”
He drew back, surprised. “W-well, you…”
“Oh, could it not be the same, George?”
“You enjoy the way he and I—”
“Yes, and you like it when he watches you fuck me,” she spat at him.
“We can be aroused by these things and not truly approve of them. Perhaps we are aroused by them precisely because they are so uncomfortable otherwise. Perhaps things are more tolerable when one is getting some kind of sexual pleasure, but when one is not…”
He got to his feet and looked down on her. “Perhaps.”
“I do not wish you to go.”
“I do not wish to go, but I think it is best.”
“Perhaps I do not wish to only be his,” she said. “Perhaps what I have wanted since the beginning to have you both. Perhaps if I cannot have you both, I shall…”
But had she not just got done illustrating to herself how entirely helpless she was?
“Shall what?” he said.
“Throw myself at someone else, perhaps?” she said. “Colonel Fitzwilliam might be amenable. I have an idea that he might, anyway.”
Wickham’s eyes widened. “You would not.”
“Perhaps if I cannot have you, I shall have a replacement.”
Wickham slowly shook his head. “The idea of another man at you, Lizzy, it is disgusting.”
She let out a guffaw. “That’s quite rich coming from you, George.”
“I mean it. You belong to us, to me and Fitz, and to no one else, and if another man dared, I can assure you, Fitz and I would hunt him down and tear him to bits.”
“Tear his cousin to bits?”
“I should do it.” It was a growl.
“And here it is,” she said, leaning back in her chair, lifting her chin.
“It’s all very well and good when George Wickham wants agency, but when someone else wants to rise above her assigned role in the world, when she wants to behave as if she is not simply a woman, when she wants to have whatever she wants, we see exactly how much he cares about such things.
It is only selfishness, George, not any true idea of equality. ”
He shook his head at her. “You wish me to hate you? Is that it?”
“Have we never quarreled?” She raised her eyebrows. “Did you think that if we spent a lifetime together we would never quarrel? You are leaving me, you blackguard. It hurts. Obviously, I wish to hurt you back.”
“It is not the way to make me stay,” he said.
“What is?”
“I cannot stay.” It was agonized.
She reached for him.
He bent down and took her face in both of his hands. His voice was a whisper. “I cannot stay.”
“Please,” she breathed.
He kissed her. When he broke away, his eyes were wet and gleaming.
“Please,” she said again.
He straightened. He turned. Woodenly, he walked out of her bedchamber.
DARCY ADJUSTED HIS cravat in the looking glass in the hallway. He was on his way down to dinner.
Wickham came barreling up the hallway.
“You,” said Darcy. “I thought you were leaving.”
“I said my goodbyes to her,” he said. “And you should know, she threatened…” He squared his shoulders. “Look to your cousin, to Richard Fitzwilliam. She said she had some indication she could… that he would…”
Darcy drew back.
“She has a taste for two men, that is all I am saying,” said Wickham.
“He’s my cousin,” said Darcy, making a face. “I should never… he and I…” He shook himself.
“Well, you may wish to speak to her about it. But she is no longer my problem. You have married that witch of a woman, and you can deal with her appetites.”
Darcy drew back. “You cultivated those appetites, George, so I hardly think—”
“That is all,” said Wickham. “I am leaving.”
“Well, then,” said Darcy, glaring at him.
Wickham sneered and then turned on his heel and left.
Darcy sagged into the wall next to the looking glass, feeling wrung out.
Perhaps he should have tried harder, should have argued with Wickham to stay, but it was all so exhausting, truly, and that conversation they’d had made it nearly impossible.
The things he’d brought up, the depths of the man’s sins against him?
Perhaps it would all be easier if he were simply gone.
Darcy took several deep breaths and then he made his way to the dining room.
But a servant there came directly from his wife, saying she had said she was in no mood for dinner, and that she had a headache, and this meant Darcy would be eating all alone, so he canceled dinner on the spot, asked for food to be brought up to their bedchambers and went to check on Elizabeth.
She was sitting in a chair near her dressing table, her hair half up. She was trying to pull the pins out of her hair herself, swearing as she did so.
He moved in to help her. “You have an interest in Colonel Fitzwilliam, I hear,” he said.
She looked up at him, eyes wide. “Damn you, Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
“Oh? What have I done?” He moved in and began to deftly take pins from her hair. “How would you react if I told you that I was thinking about debauching Caroline Bingley?”
She gasped. “You—you—”
“I think she’d let me,” he said, shrugging. “‘How do you contrive to write so evenly?’” he mimicked lightly.
“That is… that…” She fumed.
“Is it that way, Lizzy, do you simply like it if it is two men? If so, let me see what I can do, but not him.”
She let out another gasp. She stood up, furious, and rounded on him. “What is wrong with you?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, am I angering you?”
“He left us. Our George left us, and you are just going on about replacing him, with what? A footman or something?”
“Are there any footmen you find handsome?” he said, and there was a barb in his voice now.
“Monstrous,” she said and sat back down.
“He did leave us, Lizzy. Our George left, and you tell him that he’s quite replaceable, and you pick my cousin, my cousin, Lizzy, who—” Darcy broke off. “He did tend to look at you in a certain—oh, Lord, did Richard ever—”
“It was one stupid comment once,” she muttered. “I don’t even think he is handsome.”
“No one would,” said Darcy, shaking his head.
“I was only trying to hurt George. I told him as much. I said he was hurting me by leaving and I wished to hurt him back. I said it, and he left anyway, and what did you say to him?”
“Elizabeth, do you understand that he attempted to elope with my fifteen-year-old sister?”
“I do understand that,” she said. “You understood that, too, when you told him to thoroughly ruin me for you.”
“Oh, that’s not what I did.”
“What did you do? How did it work?” She was angry.
He sighed heavily. “Lizzy, you do know this. You know that he came to me asking for funds to marry you, and I said no. You know he took it into his own head to ruin you, that I never asked him to do that. You know I did not know until you told me.”
“Did I tell you, in fact? Or did you guess it, and I confirmed your guess,” she said.
“It hardly matters.”
“It does matter, because you were expecting it. You knew it was a possibility, and you were ever so pleased about it.”
“Do you regret this, then? Our marriage? Everything we have done?”
She was silent.
He removed another pin. “Very well. I shall leave you, then.” He set the pin down on her dressing table. “I have asked them to bring dinner up to you. It should be along shortly.”
She tilted her head back to look at him. “Fitz… I am sorry. I am only out of sorts.”
“I shall miss him, too, you know,” he said.