Chapter Four
Darcy’s dreams were vivid, mixed with the pain in his chest, and memories of the look on Wickham’s face as he fell. When he was lightly shaken awake, for a time he had no sense of where, or even what, he was.
Mrs. Wickham’s hair glowed softly in the dim candlelight. “I must change your bandages once more.”
There was no one else in the room.
She undid the knot for the bandage and pulled him slightly up so that she could remove the bandage out from under his back. The young woman was startlingly strong.
The roll of bandages that she removed from his chest was infused with a dark substance that Darcy could not see clearly due to the dim light.
She said, “I will be using vinegar again this time.”
There was a sharp pain when the astringent liquid was pressed onto the wound.
Every other sensation was crowded away by the pain.
Darcy had readied himself for the sensation this time.
He did not hiss in pain, and Darcy thought there was little sign of discomfort in his expression.
He struggled to keep his breathing slow and even.
“You know,” Mrs. Wickham said conversationally as she wrapped the long piece of linen around him several times, “It is quite like the habits of a savage to think that not showing any sign of pain is a valorous thing.”
Each time she pulled the line of linen under him, she had to press her hand against his naked side and chest in a quite intimate manner.
Her hand was cold on his fevered skin.
“You mean to say that I am a savage,” Darcy said, “and that this is of a piece with murdering your husband.”
“No matter what those who oppose the practice say, a fair duel is not the same as murder—it was a fair duel? All snug. Now remain this way, and I shall feed you the broth. And if you eat it all, I will be magnanimous and permit you a few dry crackers to accompany the broth.”
Darcy laughed and then hissed with pain from how his ribs bent.
“No, no. No laughing—you are not permitted to laugh.” Her smile made things better.
“You must be the favorite of all your patients.”
She laughed. “I make an effort.”
They smiled at each other. Then Darcy said, “You ought to despise me.”
“You despise yourself sufficiently for both of us.”
“I do not only despise myself,” Darcy replied, darkly. “Though it is contrary to my principles, and what I think I owe religion, I also have a deep satisfaction in knowing that I killed a man for a cause that every gentleman will agree was just. Yet, I did wrong.”
“Am I now your confessor?” Mrs. Wickham asked as she gave him a spoonful of broth. It had an ample seasoning of salt. “But even if you delight a little in the memory and consequences, you far more strongly wish that it had never happened.”
“At the least you should not help me.”
“What else would I do? Mr. Darcy, you have a quite odd notion of the whole situation. I assure you that there is one man upon whom I place the blame for my husband’s death, and it is not you.”
“You blame my father for not having seen to it that his godson was educated better?”
Mrs. Wickham stared at Darcy for half a minute, and then she burst into full-throated laughter. She pressed her hand against her mouth, and continued to giggle saying, “Oh, I must be quiet, I would not wake the children.”
“I did not mean to joke,” Darcy said, unable to keep from smiling also. There was something about this woman that exuded cheerfulness, despite the way that she had clearly been deeply shaken by the news of her husband’s death. “But I can see the absurdity.”
She half snickered. “I do believe I have put more blame on myself than on you over the past hours, even though I had not seen him for the best part of two years.”
“How could you blame yourself!”
“I was, as Mrs. Younge reminded me, the shrew who drove him away, and who taught him that he was worth nothing if he had no money.”
She fed him another spoonful of the broth. Darcy had already begun to despise the thin flavor. “How did you meet Mrs. Younge?”
“She was present at the lodgings that your sister directed me to, I believe crying about Mr. Wickham’s passing—Mr. Darcy, you are quite determined to take blame upon yourself.
But if we go in the direction of blaming those who influenced persons who would later make terrible errors, we should then place all the blame at the feet of Adam and Eve. They will bear up under it, I wager.”
“My father,” Darcy said quietly. “On the day he died, among the last things he said, he told me to take care of Wickham.”
“Poor man,” Mrs. Wickham said. “He had every advantage, and many virtues, yet his weaknesses were such as to destroy the whole.”
“How did you come to marry Mr. Wickham?” Darcy asked.
It did not surprise Darcy that this woman had entranced Mr. Wickham sufficiently to have him marry her. From the age of the children, it must not have been long after he had given Wickham three thousand pounds in exchange for Wickham renouncing his right to the living at Kympton.
“He had a friend who’d taken a position as the law clerk to my uncle, Mr. Phillips.
At this time Wickham was flush with money.
He’d just received a substantial inheritance, I believe, from your father.
He said he meant to study the law, and he spent as though he had a far greater income than he could claim.
I met him at a card party which my aunt held. ..”
Mrs. Wickham fell silent.
Darcy waited for her to continue.
“I have often wished to reach back in time and shake that young girl. Maybe throttle her. Not quite sixteen yet. Too young to be in society. I thought I was entirely clever. I believe the same age as your sister?”
“Yes, but she has only recently reached fifteen.”
“Even younger.” Mrs. Wickham sighed. “The rot was always in his character, but I like to believe that he was not yet so vicious, so unprincipled, so wrong when we married. But the rot was there.”
“He led a dissolute life in university,” Mr. Darcy replied. “I hid it from my father so that it would not pain him to know about the misdeeds of his favorite during his illness.”
“It is impossible now to say that you have been kinder to him than he deserved, but perhaps then you were—an animal magnetism existed between us. I liked his look. Many women do, but he also liked mine. He talked so easily. And while there was not a great deal of substance to what he said, there always was a great deal of charm.”
“Mr. Wickham could always make my father laugh and smile, even as he was dying.”
“That to a point!” Mrs. Wickham exclaimed. “He made me laugh. And I have always dearly loved to laugh. He made my heart race. He made me wish to kiss him. I thought that was all that was required in a partner.”
“What happened then?”
“He asked me to marry him. I had of course expected that. I was in love, and I perceived that he was in love. And he knew, I think, that under no circumstances would I have permitted him any significant liberties without the bond of holy matrimony—I did not. Even on the road to Scotland,” Mrs. Wickham smiled wistfully, “I insisted he sleep on the floor.”
“You were wiser in this than my sister,” Darcy somberly replied. “I found them together in the bed. Upstairs. I wonder if Georgiana is sleeping in it now. I wonder how she thinks about it.”
“And so, it is clear why you challenged him. But you had no thought of letting him marry her?” When Darcy did not reply immediately, she added, “You thought then that he was a widower.”
Darcy remembered that horrible moment. Mrs. Younge trying to keep him from looking for Georgiana. He’d sensed something was deeply wrong from the way that the servants behaved. Up the stairs to the bedrooms. The sound of the bed being shaken and a man’s groans of release.
He’d hurled the door open.
And there was Mr. Wickham, smiling, snarling insults, and eagerly ready to fight.
“It was something he said. He made it impossible for me to seek such a solution. Now that I know that you are alive, I understand his despair about the matter better.”
“He would have eventually been arrested for bigamy if he made the attempt. But what did he say? I see it weighs on you.”
“The words were most intemperate. I could not speak them aloud to a woman.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I can be your confessor if you need one. We are not papists who can find a priest at need.”
The soothing voice, and the cold feel of her hand on his arm, sent a spark of something into his stomach.
Why not speak? He could not stop himself from doing as she had asked.
Darcy began to speak, almost in a fugue state, as he relived those terrible moments.
“Georgiana, she wrapped the sheets around herself, and with some embarrassment mixed with joy said, ‘Fitzwilliam, we are to be married. I know this was wrong, but we are to be married.’ But then Mr. Wickham said, ‘shut up you stupid slut, we can’t marry.’ I did not speak immediately—my brain was in a twirl.
Georgiana stared at Wickham. Now there was horror in her look.
He then said with his best Eton drawl, ‘Well dear old fellow, I’ve rutted with your sister, what shall you do?
’ And that reminded me of my role and my duties. ”
“He wanted the duel.”
“I thought...I planned to delope. To just shoot into the ground or air. That is what I told myself I would do during the night. But even then, part of me wanted to kill him…I swear, I had not decided to actually shoot him. Not until I felt the blow in my chest. I’d found a man to be my second, a casual acquaintance.
I think that he did not believe we would make a serious attempt to murder each other.
After he’d helped me into our lodgings, he fled the city, hoping to avoid any chance that his name would be mixed up with a fatal duel. ”
“A coward,” Mrs. Wickham said scornfully.