Eight #2
Lydia blinked, her eyes focusing. She stared at Elizabeth as though she had materialised from the air.
“Lizzy.” Her voice was thin, far away, as if returning from a great distance. “When did you arrive?”
“Five minutes ago, dearest. I have been speaking to you. Are you well?”
“Have you?” Lydia frowned. She glanced at the window, then back at Elizabeth, and the confusion on her face was genuine. She had not heard. She had not been pretending. She had simply not been there.
“I am tired, Lizzy. That is all.”
“Tired from what?”
The question was out before Elizabeth could soften it, blunt and unanswerable.
Tired from what? Lydia rarely left the room.
She ate when food was brought to her. She slept, or did not sleep, and the distinction was increasingly difficult to determine.
She read nothing, mended nothing, wrote nothing.
She existed in this small, dim space, growing thinner by the week.
Elizabeth could see it, but she could not stop it, and the helplessness was a cold hand around her throat.
Lydia did not answer. She turned back to the window.
Elizabeth stayed another hour. She talked about Anne, about Muffin, about the weather, about anything that might anchor her sister to the room.
Lydia responded in fragments, half-sentences that trailed into silence, her gaze drifting back to the window between each one.
When Elizabeth left, she kissed Lydia’s forehead.
Her skin was cool, and she did not react to the kiss.
Elizabeth had walked downstairs and told her mother, carefully, that Lydia seemed more withdrawn than usual. Mrs Bennet’s face had tightened, but she had said nothing.
Lydia was disappearing. Not dramatically, not with the noise and spectacle that had marked her ruin, but quietly, incrementally. She was fading the way ink faded on old paper, and one day Elizabeth would knock on that door and there would be nothing left to answer.
She sat up and threw the covers back. She could not wait for soon. Soon was a luxury Lydia might not have.
She pulled on her shoes and checked her dress—she had not undressed, had not even attempted the pretence of sleep. She was still in the grey cotton she had worn to dinner, creased but decent. She took the candle from the night table, lit it, and opened her door.
The corridor was dark and silent. The house had settled into its midnight quiet, the hush of a large home holding its breath.
She moved quickly, her footsteps soft on the carpet, heading for the stairs.
The library was below, and Mr Darcy’s study adjoined it.
Perhaps there was a light under his door, and he was still awake, and perhaps—
She heard footsteps.
Not from below. From ahead, from the family corridor, measured and slow. Elizabeth pressed herself against the wall, into the shadow between two sconces. A servant, she thought. One of the footmen making rounds, or Barton on some nocturnal errand. She would wait for them to pass.
The figure came around the corner.
Mr Darcy was in his shirtsleeves, his coat hanging from one finger, draped over his shoulder.
His hair was disordered, the careful arrangement of the morning long since abandoned.
He walked with his eyes cast down, his jaw set, his expression so serious and so private that Elizabeth felt she had intruded on something simply by witnessing it.
He did not see her. He was passing within five feet of her, his mind clearly elsewhere. He would have continued past and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor if she had let him go.
But Lydia’s face was behind her eyes and she stepped out of the shadow.
“Mr Darcy.”
He startled so violently that his coat slid from his shoulder and hit the floor.
His head snapped up and his eyes found her in the candlelight.
For one unguarded second his face held an expression she could not interpret—shock, yes, but beneath it something raw and unfinished, as though she had interrupted a thought he was not prepared to share.
He recovered quickly. He bent and retrieved his coat and straightened.
“Miss Bennet.” His voice was rough and he cleared his throat. “You gave me a fright.”
“Forgive me. I did not mean to startle you.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes.” She held the candle. Her hand did not shake, though the rest of her wanted to. “I need to hear what you know, Mr Darcy. Tonight. It cannot wait.”
His eyes searched her face. Whatever he found there made his jaw tighten.
“Not here.” He glanced down the corridor to the servants’ stairs, to the dozen ears that might or might not be sleeping behind closed doors. “Follow me.”
He led her to the end of the family corridor. He stopped before a door she had never entered, turned the handle, and stepped inside. He lit a lamp from her candle, and the room came into view.
It was a drawing room. Masculine, orderly, and unmistakably his.
It was dark wood, deep green upholstery, a writing desk by the window, books stacked on the side table in the disorder indicating he read widely and shelved nothing.
A decanter of brandy stood on a tray beside two glasses.
The fire had burned low but the embers still glowed, casting the room in amber.
To the left, a door stood ajar. Through it, Elizabeth could see the edge of a massive bed, its curtains half-drawn, and the white linen.
She averted her eyes. She fixed them on the writing desk, on the books, on anything that was not a bed.
Mr Darcy set his coat over the back of a chair. He stood by the door, very still, and when he spoke his voice was careful and deliberate.
“I am aware that this is improper, Miss Bennet. If you would prefer, we can speak tomorrow. In the garden, away from the household.”
“Tomorrow is too long.” She entered the room. Her skirts brushed the doorframe as she passed him, and the space between them narrowed to inches.
He closed the door behind her.
“Sit, please.” He gestured to the settee by the fireplace. She sat at one end while he moved to the decanter.
“May I offer you a drink, Miss Bennet?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think I shall need one?”
He paused, the decanter in his hand. He met her eyes, and the honesty in his expression was so plain it startled her.
“Yes, Miss Bennet. I think you shall.”
He poured two glasses. He handed her one and sat at the opposite end of the settee, as far from her as the furniture allowed. The cushion between them was a continent. He turned the glass in his hands and took a sip.
“You said you have information.” Elizabeth’s voice was calm, but her grip on the glass was not. “Tell me.”
He drew a breath and set the glass down on the side table. He rested his hands on his thighs. She recognised the posture—it was the same one he had used at the tea shop on Conduit Street, palms flat, steadying himself before delivering something heavy.
“Wickham is dead.”
Elizabeth stared at him, the glass trembling in her hand.
“He has been dead for years, Miss Bennet. He died roughly four months after he abandoned your sister. In London. He was drunk, crossing the street at night, and a carriage trampled him. He died in the road.” He paused, his throat working. “It was a squalid end, entirely in keeping with the man.”
Elizabeth could not speak. The room was tilting, very slightly, as though the floor had shifted beneath the settee.
Wickham had not disappeared, not fled, not living some comfortable life elsewhere while her family starved in Somers Town.
Dead. In a gutter, drunk, run down by horses, and nobody had told them.
“How—” Her voice cracked. She started again. “How do you know this?”
“I have had reports on Wickham’s movements since he left Hertfordshire.
They were irregular and often delayed, but I maintained them.
By the time I learned of your sister’s ruin, it was already too late.
And by the time my man tracked him to London, he was already dead.
” He paused to meet her eyes. “I did not know your family’s direction.
After your father’s death and the loss of Longbourn, I had no means of reaching you.
The information has sat with me for years, Miss Bennet.
I should have found a way. I apologise.”
She could barely hear him. The brandy was in her hand, untouched. Her mind had seized on one fact and would not release it.
Four months after he had destroyed Lydia, destroyed her family, and shattered her father’s health, he had stumbled drunk into a London street and been trampled by a carriage.
He had not suffered, he had not paid for his crimes.
He had simply ceased to exist, stupidly, pointlessly, the way a candle guttered when no one was watching.
“He was not merely a fortune hunter, Miss Bennet. He was a man of considerable depravity. Debts in every county he went to. Women ruined before your sister, though none of gentle birth, which is why nothing was spoken of publicly. He was a liar, a cheat, and a predator. He operated with impunity because he was charming and handsome, and men of better character—” His voice hardened.
“Men such as myself failed to expose him when exposure might have prevented the harm.”
“No.” The word came out low, fierce. “No, no, no. This cannot be true.”
“I am so sorry, Miss Bennet.”
“I had sworn—” Her breath caught and she pressed her hand to her mouth.
The glass in her other hand was shaking badly and she set it down before she dropped it.
“I had sworn to kill him with my bare hands when I saw him next. I had promised myself. I would find him and I would make him answer for what he did to us. To Lydia. To my father. To all of us.” Her voice broke.
“And now you tell me he is dead? He destroyed us all and went and died? He is gone and there is no one to hold to account, no one to rage at, no one to—”
She could not finish. The tears came, sudden and furious, not the quiet weeping of grief but the hot, blinding tears of rage.
Seven years of swallowed fury, bitten tongues and the slow, grinding work of survival.
She had been hating a ghost. She had been carrying the weight of a vengeance she could never deliver, against a man who was already beyond her reach.
The injustice of it was so vast and so absurd that it broke her open.
“I am so sorry, Elizabeth,” he repeated.
She did not hear the name. She heard the voice and she felt his hand close around hers, warm and steady. The warmth undid her further.
She stood. She could not stay seated, she needed to move, to leave, to be anywhere that was not this room with its amber light, its brandy, and this man who kept dismantling everything she thought she knew.
She took a step towards the door and her shoe caught the edge of the rug.
She stumbled, blind with tears, and his arms were around her before she reached the floor.
He caught her and held her. His arms closed around her shoulders, firm and careful, one hand at the back of her head.
She was pressed against his chest, and she could hear his heart hammering beneath her ear, while she wept.
She wept the way she had not wept since her father died—ugly, wrenching, gasping sobs that shook her entire body and soaked his waistcoat.
She could not stop, and he did not let go.
He said nothing. He did not shush her, did not murmur platitudes, did not tell her it would be all right.
He held her tight and let her rage. His hand cradled her head and his chin rested against her hair.
She could smell cedar soap, brandy, and warmth.
She hated herself for noticing, but she could not stop it.
Minutes passed until the sobs slowed and the trembling eased. Her breathing settled into something ragged but regular, and the storm inside her chest quieted to a dull, heavy ache. She became aware, gradually, of where she was.
She was in Mr Darcy’s arms, in his chambers, at one o’clock in the morning, her face pressed against his chest. His heart was still beating too fast beneath her cheek. His hand was still in her hair.
She pulled back and her eyes focused on his waistcoat.
The cream silk was crumpled and dark with moisture, her tears soaked through the fabric, the careful tailoring ruined. She stared at it in horror.
“Oh my God. I am so sorry, Mr Darcy.”
She did not wait for his response. She turned and fled, her footsteps too loud on the carpet, but she did not care. She reached her room and shut the door behind her. She pressed her back against it and stood there, her face wet, her chest heaving, the scent of cedar soap still on her skin.
She slid down the door until she sat on the floor, and she pressed her forehead to her knees, still shaking violently.