TWENTY-FOUR
Netherfield
Darcy
T he day had been good.
Darcy sat at the table with the thought quietly a moment, the fire warming gradually through the cold he had carried back from the common. The scent of damp grass still lingered faintly upon his coat.
Ordinary things, he thought. Things which, for a very long while, had ceased feeling ordinary altogether.
He had spoken of Clara without feeling himself break apart beneath it. He had exhausted himself more than he ought and found he did not particularly mind. For several hours he had simply been a man outdoors, in company worth having.
The guilt arrived predictably upon the heels of the thought. He allowed it to come and allowed it to pass. He had learned, after relentless consideration, that resisting it served considerably less purpose than permitting it to move through him and settle of its own accord.
What remained afterwards was Elizabeth Bennet.
The sound of her laughter returned to him first. Then the image of her walking beside him across the common with her gloves gathered loosely in one hand and a sunflower stem turning absently between her fingers as she spoke.
Nothing in her manner had altered around him all afternoon. Not after his chair became caught briefly upon uneven ground. Not after Clara’s name. Not even after Wickham.
Especially after Wickham.
That particular thought proved considerably more difficult to dismiss.
The moment Elizabeth spoke the name, Darcy had known the matter would require more of him than a conversation with Bingley and a warning quietly delivered to Colonel Forster. Because Wickham had lied. Not about the living. Not about the money. Those lies were old and familiar.
The lie concerning Clara was new.
Darcy stared absently into the fire.
For the first five months following the accident Darcy had been, by any honest accounting, scarcely himself. Grief and pain had combined into something which rendered him barely functional. Marsh had guided him through it with steady competence.
Yet even through those months — even at his worst — the question had never wholly left him.
The linchpin.
A carriage nearly new, purchased specifically for the wedding journey from one of the finest makers in London, inspected before departure, exhibiting no sign whatsoever of weakness or wear.
Yet the linchpin had failed with such suddenness and completeness that the coachman — a capable man of twenty years’ experience — had never been able to account for it satisfactorily.
Not wear. Not age. Not damage from the road.
He had looked upon the wreckage afterwards and admitted, with visible confusion, that he could not explain it.
Darcy always had been able to explain it. He had merely lacked proof.
Richard had told him, more than once and with considerable patience, that the grieving mind reaches for reason because reason is easier to endure than chance. That accidents occur. That carriages fail. That time and chance happeneth to all.
Eventually Darcy had accepted that he would never know. He remained at Pemberley and permitted the question to grow quiet, if not entirely silent.
Until now.
Wickham was in Meryton. And according to Elizabeth, Wickham had represented himself as having learned of Darcy’s wedding only through old acquaintance — as though the engagement itself had been entirely unknown to him.
Wickham had been at Pemberley when Darcy proposed to Clara.
He had known. The wedding had been delayed several months by the wretched business of attempting to persuade Lady Catherine to accept Clara, an effort Darcy had ultimately been obliged to abandon altogether after her refusal.
But Wickham had known the marriage was coming.
The claim that he had not was simply not credible.
In all the stories Wickham had circulated concerning him over the years, Clara remained conspicuously absent. A man who embroidered every other grievance had never once mentioned her. Not her name. Not her death. Not the accident.
Until Elizabeth.
And even then, not directly — merely as something heard secondhand long afterwards through distant acquaintance.
Now Darcy’s suspicion from two years earlier had returned, settling once more at the top of his mind. Then, he could not conceive who might wish him harm. Now, at last, the suspicion possessed a face.
He had better not.
The thought arrived cold and certain. If Wickham had possessed any connection whatsoever to what occurred upon that road outside Harrogate — whether by arrangement, or mere prior knowledge deliberately withheld — then his conduct regarding Georgiana constituted the least of what Darcy had to reckon with him for.
Darcy did not permit himself to pursue the thought to its conclusion. Not yet. He possessed nothing beyond instinct, a conspicuous absence, and a story that failed to align.
That was not proof. It was not even evidence.
It was merely the grieving mind reaching once more for reason, exactly as Richard had warned him against.
But Richard had not heard what Elizabeth told him today. And if there existed even the smallest measure of truth within the suspicion, Richard was precisely the person Darcy required.
Darcy opened the drawer of the writing table for paper and ink, dipped the pen, and began to write.
Netherfield Park, Hertfordshire 13th November 1811
My dear Richard,
I trust you will forgive the length of this letter before you have reached the end of it. I write in considerably better health than my previous correspondence may have suggested, which I mention only so that you do not read what follows with unnecessary alarm.
I learned this morning that George Wickham is presently serving as an officer with the militia regiment quartered near Meryton.
I have already asked Bingley to inform a Colonel Forster, who commands the regiment, discreetly of Wickham’s character and history, though I must ask that you say nothing of this to Georgiana.
I have no wish to disturb her peace unnecessarily with his name.
I have always considered the failure of the linchpin which led to Clara’s death too sudden and too complete for a conveyance so nearly new, and the coachman was never able to account for it satisfactorily.
I must now ask something of you which I recognise as a considerable imposition, and I do so knowing perfectly well that you have advised me, more than once and with great patience, to let the matter of suspected foul play regarding the accident rest. I have not been able to do so.
I do not believe I ever shall entirely, though I have attempted to make my peace with the uncertainty as best I can.
Today I received information — from a source I trust entirely — that Wickham has represented himself as having learned of my marriage only through distant acquaintance, long afterwards, as though the engagement had been entirely unknown to him.
You and I both know this to be false. Wickham remained connected to my household when I proposed to Clara.
He knew. The claim that he did not is either a fabrication of his usual sort, or something considerably more deliberate.
Hearing this new lie of Wickham’s today has caused me to reexamine my suspicions.
I cannot dismiss them.
Because of this, what I ask of you is the following.
I would ask — if it can be managed without too great an inconvenience — that you go to Pemberley as soon as you are able and look among the portraits and miniatures in the gallery for a likeness of Wickham.
Several were taken during his years there as my father’s ward.
Take one with you, or have a copy made if the original cannot conveniently be removed.
Then make discreet enquiries at the principal inns, clubs, and public houses in or near Harrogate as to whether anyone recalls a face resembling his.
I know it has been a considerable time, yet the circumstances of the wedding and the accident were remarked upon sufficiently at the time that they may still be remembered.
I must know whether Wickham was anywhere near Harrogate between the 12th and 14th of September, 1809.
I do not say Wickham was there. I say only that I can no longer feel certain he was not.
I know I ask a great deal. Two years is a considerable time for any face to remain in memory.
Yet if there exists anyone in that neighbourhood who recalls a stranger answering Wickham’s description, then I believe we ought to know of it.
Because now, I realise he possessed both motive in the unjust grievances he has long nourished against me and sufficient connection to Derbyshire to learn when the wedding was to take place, should he have wished to perpetrate such evil.
Though I pray I am merely allowing suspicion to carry me beyond reason.
If I am wrong, then I am wrong, and I shall endeavour to accept it as you have long encouraged me to do.
If I am not, then I would know that also, and we shall know how to proceed.
I shall, of course, cover whatever expense you incur in the course of this enquiry, and would consider it a favour I shall never forget.
My regards to your father. Write when you are able.
Your affectionate cousin, F. Darcy
He set down the pen and reached for the sand, dusting the letter with the careful patience the task required before folding and sealing it.
Marsh would take it in the morning.
He sat a moment longer with the sealed letter in his hands, his gaze resting upon Richard’s name written across it in his own hand.
He was not wrong.
He did not know by what means he knew it. He simply did, with the same certainty he had carried for two years without ever being able properly to name it, that he was not wrong.
He set the letter upon the table and let his gaze return to the fire.
Tomorrow he would deal with whatever tomorrow brought.
Tonight, he allowed himself, for a little while longer, to think instead of the common ground, the cold air, Elizabeth Bennet’s smile when she listened to him, and the brightness that came so readily into her face when she spoke.
The familiar guilt returned again, but Darcy found it surprisingly easier to let it pass through him.
It was, all things considered, a very great deal preferable to thinking about Wickham.