Chapter Nineteen
Darcy paced the main room of the small cottage they’d found for Wickham, not looking at Richard, who leaned against the wall alongside the bedroom door.
Today was Wickham’s first day of lucidity, after days of fevered ramblings, but his skin stood out a stark white, except for the rings of purple around his eyes, and he seemed almost too weak to breathe.
When they’d arrived that afternoon, Darcy had been hopeful, for at least sense shone in Wickham’s gaze, but Mr. Jones, the local apothecary who had been caring for Wickham alongside Darcy, Patrick, and members of Richard’s troop, appeared quite grim.
He’d ushered Darcy and Richard from the room.
Finally, the door opened and Mr. Jones stepped through, drying his hands on a clean white cloth. Darcy came back across the room, his steps rapid, and Richard straightened from his slouch.
“Well?” Darcy demanded, reaching the small, balding gentleman.
“I have lanced the wound again, and bled him, but his body does not rally. The infection has too firm a hold. Maybe if we had removed the leg when you first brought me here…” Jones trailed off with an apologetic grimace.
Darcy answered with a scowl. Both the apothecary and Richard had been for removing Wickham’s leg, saying it would save his life, but even in his fever-induced confusion, Wickham had pleaded with them not to.
Darcy had sided with him. George Wickham was not a man who would ever recover from losing a limb.
And Wickham was hale. Never sick a day in his life. Darcy had truly thought he would rally. Be ill and weak for a time, but then rebound to his usual irritating self.
“He is asking for you,” Jones added, looking at Darcy.
Darcy nodded. Pulling his shoulders back, he adopted a neutral expression, then took a deep breath to gird against what he would find inside. Another breath, and he moved past Jones and into the room.
The sharp tang of blood, almost a relief compared to the more repugnant undercurrents of decay and stale sweat, slammed into Darcy, but he did not pause.
He went to the bed, where Wickham lay in a wan rectangle of afternoon light.
Darcy wished they could open the window, offer some relief from the rancid odors, but Mr. Jones had cautioned against any chill.
To further stave that off, a fire roared in the grate, baking the room.
Darcy settled into the chair drawn up beside the bed. Wickham lay flat and somehow small beneath fresh white sheets that Richard’s men changed daily. An untouched cup of tea rested on a small table beside the bed, and Wickham’s eyes remained closed.
“George?” Darcy asked softly, not wanting to wake him if he’d found the blessed relief of sleep.
“Fitz.”
Darcy cleared his throat. Wickham knew he hated that nickname. “You asked to see me.”
“My coat.” A shaky hand rose, gesturing vaguely before dropping back to the covers as if Wickham could manage no more movement than that. “In my coat.”
Reaching into his own, Darcy pulled free a folded page. A document stating Georgiana and Wickham’s union, signed and witnessed, and folded about a small key. “This?” Patrick had found the items when laundering Wickham’s garments. Garments he was unlikely to ever don again.
Wickham pried an eye open to take in the somewhat crumpled page. Dropping the lid back closed, he nodded. “The key is to a box at a bank in Edinburgh.” Voice weak, he rattled off an address. “The only other copy is there. Once both are burned, my union with Georgie will never have happened.”
Shock slammed into Darcy, gripping his chest. Wickham knew he was about to die. He’d given up. “Will you not require at least one copy in order to keep extorting money from me?”
Wickham smiled faintly. “My days of tormenting you are done.”
“Do not be absurd. I will never be rid of you.” A hard lump formed in Darcy’s throat.
All the times he’d railed against Wickham, the times he’d hated him… Had they all come to this? His childhood best friend dying before him?
Memories welled, dredged up by sorrow. Wickham daring him to cross a stream on a fallen log.
Wickham stealing sweets from Pemberley’s kitchen and persuading Darcy to eat some even though stealing was wrong.
Long summer days spent climbing, running, exploring.
Hours of chatter, of Wickham’s dreams and imaginings filling the empty spaces in Darcy’s life.
The life of an active boy with a sickly mother, an always busy father, and, eventually, a doted upon sister who was too little and young to come play.
He gripped Wickham’s shoulder. “You have to fight this. You must—”
“I am sorry about the bounty.” Wickham’s quiet murmur cut off Darcy’s frantic words.
“I did not mean for that. I…I found myself barred from most establishments. My own doing, I imagine. I thought that to have a Darcy’s money would see me treated like a Darcy, but I forgot about the Darcy manners.
The hauteur and restraint.” He shook his head, his eyes still closed but his expression rueful.
“I am certain a word or two would see you allowed back in.” Sorrow choked the words. Darcy cleared his throat. “You could behave better. You have always been able to.” Wickham had certainly charmed Darcy’s father, and Georgiana, and many others.
His eyes flicked open, the whites an unhealthy yellow. “Let me say my piece, Darcy. Let me seek your absolution.”
Swallowing, Darcy nodded.
Blue irises locked on him, Wickham continued, “I forgot I was no longer in the company of gentlemen, when I spoke of…when I offered the ten thousand pounds. I was so in debt, and to men who have no scruples, and I could see only one way out. So I offered them your money. The money I would have if they killed you.”
Darcy swallowed again, the bile in his throat a harsh mix of anger and misery.
“No scruples,” Wickham repeated on a sigh, his eyes drifting closed once more, and Darcy did not know if he meant his own, or those of the men whose company he’d kept. “And some of them thought, if Wickham has ten thousand pounds, why trouble finding and killing Mr. Darcy?”
His eyes narrowing, fresh anger sparking even through his sorrow, Darcy asked, “How did you get shot? I know you told Miss Elizabeth that you were abducted and shot trying to escape, but somehow I doubt the truth of that.”
“Miss Elizabeth?” A line marred Wickham’s brow, then cleared. “That lovely creature who found me? I thought perhaps she was a dream.”
Darcy tensed. He did not want to hear Wickham’s ramblings about Elizabeth.
A blue eye slit open, studying Darcy. “You are in love with her.”
His words hit Darcy like a blow. “I beg your pardon?”
“I know you, Fitz.”
Darcy bit back a growl of, ‘Do not call me that,’ taking in the slight, smug smile that pulled at Wickham’s chalky mouth. The man was mad. He would torment Darcy to the last. Was he even dying, or simply seeking more things to hold over Darcy’s head?
No, Wickham was not long for this world. Darcy did not need to be a doctor to see that, but despite Wickham’s state, suspicion filled Darcy. He had neither seen nor spoken to Elizabeth in days. Not since the morning she brought him to Wickham.
He’d ridden out the following day, and every other since, but had not found her waiting.
He and Georgiana had called on Longbourn, but while they’d seen her sisters, mother, and Mr. Collins, they’d been informed that Elizabeth was indisposed.
Bingley reported having seen her once in Meryton, walking with her sisters, but with the hours Darcy and Richard were spending in this cottage, where they went in secret, Darcy hadn’t the time to linger in Meryton hoping to encounter her. “What did you say to her?”
“So you do love her.”
Darcy met that with stony silence.
“Nothing. I said nothing. On my honor. What little I have.”
Darcy sat back, realized he had no means by which to threaten or bribe information from Wickham any longer, and reiterated, “How were you shot, then?”
“As part of their torture.” Wickham coughed, the sound weak, his chest hardly moving. “They sought the ten thousand pounds.”
“Why did you not simply tell them you would not have the funds until I died?” Darcy could not keep anger from his voice.
The slightest shake of Wickham’s head met that. “That would have set their sights on you.”
Darcy sat back, surprised. “You had already done so.”
“Yes, but so long as they thought I had the money, not you, you would be safe once I was dead.”
Scrubbing a hand over his forehead, Darcy attempted to decipher which of Wickham’s words were the truth. “And you are in Hertfordshire because?”
Wickham was silent for a long time, each breath slow and shallow. Darcy struggled not to hold his own, waiting for the next inhalation to come.
“Is Georgiana here?”
Flinching back from the question, Darcy blurted, “No.”
“I can always tell when you are lying.”
Darcy clamped his mouth closed.
“Please. Let me see her.”
“No.”
Wickham’s lids twitched, and Darcy realized he struggled for the strength to open them. They pried up to narrow slits. “Do you believe she will thank you for not letting her see me?”
“I believe that she is finally coming out from under the cloud of misery in which you left her.” His words growing more strident, Darcy continued, “I believe that she is only sixteen, and even if you did marry her, she is my ward, my younger sister, and that even if she hates me for it, I must keep her safe from you.”
White fingers plucked at the blanket. “What danger am I to her now?”
“I do not know, and I will not learn.”
“I want only to tell her that I am sorry.”
“A message I can easily pass along.”
They locked gazes, then Wickham’s lids dropped back closed. His breath left him in a long sigh, and he seemed to shrink even further, flat and unmoving under the blanket.
Darcy’s heart shuddered. He leaned forward.