Chapter Seven #2
“No,” Darcy forced himself to sit up. He groaned. “Put that away, Richard. Mrs. Wickham, thank you, and I would appreciate it if you gave us some privacy. But as I told you last night, you may stay here however long you wish.”
“Yes, Elizabeth, please stay,” Georgiana said.
“You certainly have no say in this matter,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “And whatever preferences you express will be taken a good cause to adopt the opposite course.”
Mrs. Wickham smiled at Colonel Fitzwilliam. “You do not seem to trust me.”
Her eyes were dancing, and now that Colonel Fitzwilliam had made Darcy think about her beauty, he was unable to keep himself from noticing how the dancing light in her eyes made her look even prettier.
“You are the widow of the worst scoundrel it has ever been my dishonor to be connected with, excepting of course the gentlemen who run the war department. Of course I am suspicious.”
“And you are the cousin of the man who shot my husband to death, and yet I do not worry about you trying to shoot me, even though I believe you wholly competent to do so.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam stared at her. “I shall speak bluntly. I do not apologize for this. Your husband seduced my charge, destroyed her reputation, stole her virtue, and then shot my dearest friend. And now I find you here, insinuating yourself into the family circle, pretending to make yourself of use, placing your children around, speaking with Miss Darcy on intimate terms, and taking advantage of my cousin’s clear disquiet about the honorable action of shooting that rabid cur who was your husband.
Not only do I distrust you, only a stupid man would trust you in these circumstances. I want you gone.”
“I see. I certainly shall not force myself into a place where my presence is unwelcome.” Elizabeth clenched her jaw. She did not smile. That smile was now gone. She looked at Mr. Darcy and bowed her head. “It seems, that we are not such friends as you made a pretense of last night.”
“Do you need any fee for the services you have already provided?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked.
Elizabeth glared at him.
Colonel Fitzwilliam clapped his free hand twice against the side of his leg. “Settled.” He grinned at Mrs. Wickham and returned the bank note to his billfold, and the billfold to his pocket. “I have been delighted to make your acquaintance, and I shall be even more delighted to not continue it.”
“No.” Darcy ignored the pain and pushed himself up. “Stop this, Richard. Stop.”
Jove, his chest hurt.
He pushed again and felt sweat pouring down his neck. He felt dizzy.
So much pain.
“No, no!” Darcy exclaimed again.
Both Mrs. Wickham and Colonel Fitzwilliam came to him to press him back into the sofa.
An odd panic took him, like that sensation after he saw that he had really done it, and that Wickham was really shot through, and really dead.
He did not want her to leave.
“Mrs. Wickham, I have already begged you to stay. Please, I still beg you to remain. My cousin merely wishes to protect me, but I do not agree with him and—”
“Darcy, stop being a fool,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said.
Mrs. Wickham shook her head. “I will not remain where I am not welcome.” She then frowned and pressed her hand against her mouth. “Lord. Lord. Do you know when the stagecoach to London shall leave?”
“No need to wait. I’ll happily give you the money to go by post. That is, give you some of Darcy’s money,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “As I know you must know, he has a great deal.”
“Mrs. Wickham, please sit down,” Darcy said. “I beg you to sit down. Do look at me—”
The woman did sit and look at him. Her dark eyes were hard.
She was angry, and he thought anxious. There was something which made him feel sad, like underneath her confidence and her constant motion, she had a pathetic need to be protected. He saw it in the firm way she sat, with the chin just slightly trembling.
It was impossible for him to speak for half a moment. The way her eyes looked was too much. Speak, he needed to speak. If he did not speak, she would simply leave.
Everything would be wrong forever. He would have killed Mr. Wickham, and there would be nothing he could ever, ever do to make it better.
He could not let his cousin throw Elizabeth out.
“I beg you to stay, Mrs. Wickham, and—”
“I do not want pity. I do not want charity. I will not accept it.”
“It is not pity; it is not anything. I promised my father, on the day he died, that I would care for George, for Wickham. It would shame me if you left. I would have every reason to despise myself. I cannot let you be driven away from my residence in righteous high dudgeon. Not when I once made such a promise to my father, and when I have now killed the man I said I would care for. I beg you to remain. For however long you wish to stay in Ramsgate.”
Her hard expression softened as he spoke.
He finished, “I must do something. I must do something to find some atonement.”
“Mr. Darcy, I do not exist to give you atonement. Your crime is your own.” She pulled in a deep breath and then let it out. “I’ll go somewhere. Settle upon a new scheme. There is not much value in delaying.”
“Do you mean to determine the course of your future life while walking to the post station?” Darcy replied aghast.
“More or less.” Mrs. Wickham smiled thinly as she rose. “So goodbye Mr. Darcy, and—”
“I beg you. I beg you from the bottom of my heart—let me make small amends for the crime I committed.”
She hesitated. He somehow knew she desperately did not want to leave right now, taking her children onto the unknown road. He couldn’t let her, even though he could not stop her if she was determined.
This woman deserved better.
“You can have a place where you’ll belong.
I see it in you. You are a woman who does what you believe to be right, but you do not want to leave yet, and I do not wish for you to leave.
I like George hanging around and bothering me for stories of the duel, your presence has helped Georgiana, and you spoke truly that I need a professional nurse while I recover.
I trust you in that role—Georgiana, would you wish for Mrs. Wickham to remain for longer? ”
“Yes, very much so,” Georgiana said.
Darcy kept his eyes on Mrs. Wickham’s soft, heart shaped face. “It would not be pity or charity, just—I beg you.”
“Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Wickham replied seriously, “I do not think that you are of a sound mind.”
“No. Not since I first came to Ramsgate. The past cannot be changed. Please, please remain, until I have recovered.”
He tried to urge her with his eyes to trust him.
Mrs. Wickham sighed. She pressed her hands against her face.
“I am hardly in a position to refuse an offer of free lodgings. And I will ask for enough money when the time comes to get to London, or Hertfordshire, or wherever I decide to go by post rather than stage. And, Mr. Darcy, if you wish me to in fact remain and to have ‘a place where I’ll belong’—as if I could ever belong!
—convince your cousin to reserve his speculations about my character and ill intentions for when I am not present. ”
“I apologize, madam,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said stiffly, “but you ought to not have married a man with such a character if you did not wish for your own character to be mistrusted.”
“Fitzwilliam,” Darcy sharply said to his cousin. “Enough.”
The officer laughed lightly. “That was not a speculation upon her character, but rather an explanation for why such speculations occur.”
Mrs. Wickham looked rather amused by this defense.
She looked at Georgiana and smiled at Darcy’s sister.
“I dare say only a young fool who believed him to have a good character, and a good heart, and to be a worthy man would decide to marry such a man as Mr. Wickham. I also believe that such silly young girls can grow, and that they should not hate themselves, or consider themselves as having been more mistaken and stupid than they are in fact. I at least hope,” Mrs. Wickham turned back to Colonel Fitzwilliam, “for the sake of your charge, that you can believe that such a mistake can sometimes be made out of naivete without reflecting a really bad character of the person making it.”
“I already know Georgiana. I do not know you.”
“Ah, and you simply assume that I am proof that marrying a Wickham means that one has a Wickham-like character. And you are quite right. As you deduced from my appearance, I spent my last ten-pound note on an expensive courtesan, even though I had a child at home and a wife heavy with another. I too drink to excess and I gambled ninety of my last hundred pounds away at cards before patronizing that courtesan. Oh, yes, of course, I cannot forget. I too frequently scheme to entrap young girls in bigamous marriages.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam raised his eyebrows. He smiled in a way that told Darcy that he was in fact amused. “I would beg you to inform my cousin about your proclivities; he seems to think you to be much better than that.”
Mrs. Wickham laughed. “Yes, but to inform him of my true character would hardly help me succeed in my wicked and dissolute schemes. But enough—it is time to change the bandage, and if I am not to be sent off, I shall do so forthwith.”