Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
elizabeth
It was later.
I sat with Charlotte, Maria, and Lydia on a couch in the sitting room in Rosings.
In the opposite corner, the cook and a handful of other servants, ones that Wickham had deemed “useful,” sat on the floor. All of them appeared terrified.
Everyone had cried a lot today. There had been tears and sobs and some wails, until Mr. Wickham had thrust the barrel of a gun in our faces and said that we would be quiet or he would make us quiet.
I didn’t know what to do.
I was thinking through the rest of the day, of course, but I thought my best chance of besting Wickham was after the day reset and we all lived it through again.
I considered getting myself shot on purpose.
If I were shot, I would end up waking in my room at the parsonage, which would mean that I would wake somewhere alone. This could be to my advantage.
Mr. Wickham could, of course, be there when I woke. But that would mean he could not take care of Will first or Colonel Fitzwilliam first. He had indicated he usually shot the colonel before the colonel woke up.
Well.
No.
It wouldn’t mean that, would it?
Wickham would have from midnight on to see to both of them. He could shoot everyone in their beds if he liked.
I wondered why he didn’t usually do that? I cocked my head and surveyed him. Should I ask?
I would. But I would first think this through. All right, so he could easily kill everyone and still be there when I woke up.
So, I must not allow myself to get shot. It was not an advantage for me to wake up there, not at all.
I needed, however, to get to Will, to get us free of this. If we could be elsewhere when the reset happened, somewhere other than where Wickham was, we would have the advantage.
How was I going to do that?
I chewed on my lower lip. “Mr. Wickham?”
He was reading a book on the other side of the room. “You know, Elizabeth, I believe I’ve indicated, on a number of occasions, my interest in peace and quiet.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t just shoot everyone at midnight.”
“And yet, you keep jabbering, don’t you?”
“It just seems to me that you could do that and then go back to sleep and have the whole morning to yourself.”
“Perhaps I tried that and some footman got away to bring neighbors and then I was hauled off and tied up and kept in someone’s barn until they could summon someone to take me off to the gaol, which would have been on Friday, had Friday ever dawned,” he said. “And perhaps, I got to that footman first the next time, but a different footman got away. And perhaps I determined that it was best after the dawn, because everyone was busy, and they didn’t hear the noise and wake and go running for help immediately.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. “I see.”
“Further questions?” He raised his eyebrows.
“If you were tied up in a barn, and you couldn’t get free all day, did it matter that everything reset? I assume the ropes would have stayed with you? How did you get free?”
“Well,” he said, “the next morning, no one understood why I was there and they took quite kindly to my explanation that I’d been set upon by ruffians, and they freed me.”
“Of course,” I said with a shrug. “So, that’s what happens, if we summon someone. They tie you up and throw you in a barn?”
“You must think I’m particularly stupid, Miss Bennet.” He shut the book, picked up a gun, and started across the room. “Which of your little group were you thinking of sending for help?” He pointed the gun at Lydia. “Lydie-loo here?”
I sneered at him. “You’re disgusting, you know that?”
He laughed in my face.
“You know what?” I lifted my chin. “Do it. She’ll wake up at home, safe and sound, and you won’t be able to touch her anymore.”
He gave me an irritated look and moved the gun to Maria. “Could shoot this one.”
I narrowed my eyes. I was thinking that he didn’t usually shoot Mr. Collins at the breakfast table, did he? I was thinking that he had claimed that he usually waited until the party came to Rosings to report that I was missing and then he shot them here. I was thinking that the servants at the rectory had seen their master killed and then that Charlotte and Maria had gone up to Rosings for help but had never returned.
I was thinking… maybe there was no need to send for help.
Maybe we simply waited.
fitzwilliam
I woke, gasping.
First thing I did was jump out of bed and sprint through the hallways in search of my cousin Richard. Together, we would put a stop to this nonsense.
I was yelling his name as I rounded a bend.
And Wickham was already there, sputtering and swearing and saying I was nothing but trouble.
Then, he shot me again.
All right, really, I was about done with being shot to death!
I woke with a gasp in my bedroom at Rosings again. I sat up straight, clutching the place where I’d been wounded this time.
Elizabeth was standing in the doorway.
I ran to her. “Lizzy!”
“We haven’t a moment to lose,” she said. “He is in a barn on the neighboring estate of Ridgeton. He has told me that he has little trouble talking his way out of the fact they’ve bound him there, so he will get free and come here, undoubtedly. I don’t know if he’ll shoot people today, not when he hasn’t got everything all ready like he usually does. He won’t have all of his guns, for instance. I don’t even know where he got all those guns.”
I pulled her into my arms. “God in heaven, you’re alive. I am so glad to see you.”
She smiled at me, clutching my face with both of her hands. She kissed me, hard, and then pulled free, twining our fingers and tugging on me. “Please, let us make haste, Will.”
“I need trousers at least!” I exclaimed, pulling free enough to find a pair in the wardrobe and stepping into them. “So, he did not shoot you first thing yesterday, I take it.”
“No, he has some awful interest in me,” she muttered.
“Monstrous,” I breathed, buttoning up the falls of my trousers. “And I was dead, and you were alone—”
“It’s all right,” she said, pulling me out of the room. “He had everything quite predictably handled through trial and error, but then you and I showed up and it changed everything, so simply my presence was enough to disrupt his plan.”
“But what is his plan?”
“He’s…” She squeezed my hand as we went down the steps in Rosings together. “He’s lost his mind. I don’t know. He seems to relish the violence or else he simply feels nothing about it, I cannot say. He says that living the same day over and over again has made him into a madman—”
“Obviously,” I murmured, moving close to her as we continued across the floor of Rosings towards the front door. “Obviously, it would have done so. It made both of us lose ourselves, but he is already a terrible sort of person. It tipped him right over the very edge, clearly.”
“Yes, we left him—”
“We cannot be with him,” I said.
“Well, what are we to do?” she said.
“Kill him,” I said. “I have been wishing to do it, after all.”
“Well, if we kill him, he will awaken in Meryton, with the regiment,” she said. “And he will be quite close to my family, to my sister Lydia, who he has already… many times… debauched.”
I stopped, swallowing. “Oh, Lord, Elizabeth. I’m ever so sorry.”
“She does not remember it, and she is not here anymore.”
“Here?”
“Oh, it’s all so very complicated,” she said.
I shook my head, rooted to the spot. “What if he went for Georgiana?”
“I can’t think he would not,” she said, pulling on me.
I went with her, moving again. We went through the front door and we were outdoors. We started down the steps on the front of the building.
“Now that he knows he can antagonize us, he will be quite happy to do so,” she said. “It is now going to be our responsibility to keep him from harming anyone, I think.”
I blinked, thinking that through. “Wait, forever?”
“I don’t know,” she said, as we got to the bottom of the steps. “I don’t know , Fitzwilliam.”
“Go back to what you were saying,” I said. “You say your sister was here?”
“Yes, he brought her somehow.”
“How?” I said.
“Well, I suppose it’s like with horses,” she said. “If you were touching a horse during the reset, you could keep it.”
“So, you could do the same with a person,” I said, nodding. “Of course.”
“She did not remember it, but he had kept her here with him for days and days,” I said. “He taunted me with the things he’d done to her.”
I stopped again, pulling her against me. “Oh, Elizabeth, how horrid!”
She struggled free. “Yes, it is, but it’s more about him than her, I suppose. She has awakened this morning with no memory of any of it, no matter what it is he’s done to her.”
“I knew Wickham was a very bad man,” I said. “But really, shooting everyone every morning? It’s…”
“I know,” she said. “But we must go.” She pulled on me.
I looked into the distance. “Well, Elizabeth, you know that it will take us likely twenty minutes to walk all the way to the Ridgeton barn. Is it the barn or the stables, mind you?”
“The barn,” she said. “And I needed to be sure you were all right, so I waited for you. Obviously, I could have gone to the barn myself, in the wee hours, and… and… well, I don’t know. As I say, if we shoot him, he is out of our reach.”
I sighed heavily.
From behind us, a voice called out, “Ho there, where do you think you’re off to, Darcy?”
I turned around.
Richard Fitzwilliam, still in his nightclothes, was standing on the steps.
Elizabeth considered. “Perhaps we should simply make a stand? If we are prepared for him, we can stop him.”
“Prepared,” I said, thinking that through.
“Yes, we’ll simply barricade the entire household into one room and when he arrives—” She broke off. “But if we kill him, he is out of our reach.”
Richard was striding across the grass towards us. “I heard the two of you, as you were leaving, chattering on about something that sounded mad, and I could not make heads or tails of it. And then, here you are, not even dressed, Will, and here she is, and she doesn’t look much better—”
“I am dressed!” said Elizabeth stoutly.
“But you two are together in the morning going god-knows-where, and it’s all very scandalous,” said the colonel.
Elizabeth groaned. “The propriety!”
“Right,” I said. “The damnable propriety.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it is easier when they are all dead,” she muttered.
Richard furrowed his brow. “What?”
“Come along, Richard,” I said. “We’re going to seek Wickham in the barn at Ridgeton.”
“Wickham? What in the blazes is Wickham doing here?” said Richard. “Shouldn’t we put on clothes first?”
“I’m wearing trousers!” I said.
Richard sighed. “All right, can you wait for me if I go to get trousers, too?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “But if you have a gun, colonel, bring that. Catch us up!” She yanked on my hand again.
We set out towards Ridgeton.
By and by, Richard joined us, completely dressed, tying his cravat. “I don’t suppose you’re going to explain what this is about.”
“Well, you see,” I said, “quite some time ago, I began to live Thursday, April ninth, over and over again.”
“Now, see here, it is April ninth, though it is the first time it has ever been so,” he said.
“For you, it is,” I said.
He fixed me with an odd stare.
“Anyway, no, I’m not going to explain what this is about,” I said brightly. “How about that?”
“What is Miss Bennet doing here?” he said. “Why are the two of you together and alone and you without a shirt or waistcoat or jacket?”
“We’re married,” put in Elizabeth, giving me a soft smile.
Oh, that was lovely. I wanted to kiss her again. I just smiled at her instead, a particularly silly and affected smile.
“What do you mean, you’re married?” The colonel was horrified. “How could you have gotten married? When could you have gotten married? Anyway, you can’t marry her. She’s socially beneath you and entirely the wrong sort of wife for you.”
I laughed, twining my fingers with Elizabeth’s. “She is my perfect match, in fact. Strong in all the places I’m weak, excited in all the places I’m timid, steadfast when I am unsure, and I also think it’s really adorable that she’s frightened of horses.”
“I am not frightened of horses,” she informed the colonel. “He’s just making that up.”
I threw back my head and laughed.
She moved close as we walked, bumping her shoulder against mine. “Have I told you I loved you, Will Darcy?”
“I love you ,” I said. “Most ardently.”
And perhaps we shouldn’t have been doing that, because we weren’t paying attention when Mr. Wickham popped out from behind a shrubbery. This meant that when he leaped on Colonel Fitzwilliam, we were making eyes at each other.
So, then, Richard and Wickham were grappling in the grass over the colonel’s gun.
I tried to get into the fray to assist, but Wickham threw me off and wrenched the gun away from the colonel. He staggered backwards, pointing the weapon at him, pulling back the hammer to cock it. “Don’t move, colonel.”
Richard raised his hands slowly. “You’ve got one shot there, Wickham. You could take me out but what will that—”
Bang .
Richard’s head jerked back.
I tackled Wickham.
He tossed the gun aside and then we went over and over in the grass.
I punched him in the face.
He kneed me in the side.
I was over him, squeezing his neck as Elizabeth told me that we must keep him alive or he would be away from us.
Then he was over me, digging his fingers into hollow soft parts of my flesh.
I punched him again.
She leaped on his back and wrapped an arm around his neck.
Together, we subdued him.
We used the colonel’s jacket to tie Wickham’s hands behind his back.
“You didn’t have to shoot Colonel Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth said to him, furious.
“He’s not even really dead,” said Wickham. “Must we have this conversation again?”
“Shut up,” said Elizabeth. She rounded on me. “We need to keep him someplace secure, someplace he can’t get out of, someplace where we can be close by and keep an eye on him.”
I thought this through. “There’s the dowager house. No one lives there, and I daresay we could find somewhere to lock him up.”
“The dowager house,” she said softly. “I wonder we did not think of this before.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Think of it for…?”
“Well, you had your plan of how we would live together in some house on the grounds of Pemberley, and all along, there’s been this dowager house, close by, whereby we might be close enough to assure everyone we are not dead or in any danger, and yet, we could be together.”
“Permanently?” I said. “Settled permanently near my aunt?”
She shrugged. “Yes, I suppose that’s…”
Wickham laughed, grinning at me. “I’m going to get free, Fitzwilliam. Then I’m going to find you, tie you up, and I’m going to have her in front of you.”
I punched him again.
He laughed.
Elizabeth yanked on me. “I think he’s trying to get you to kill him, Will. He wishes to be free of us.”
“Well,” I said, “if we shoot him now, we could easily be to Meryton by morning when he wakes.”
“We could,” she said, “but there is no dowager house on any of my relatives’ property.”
elizabeth
We tied him with leather straps in a room on the second floor of the dowager house, locked the door and then set about seeing what we could do to make the house hospitable.
I tried to spin some sort of idea of what we might do for the long run to Fitzwilliam, telling him that we could live here, and be married, as much as we could manage, anyway. We would simply need to send a letter each day, telling everyone that we had eloped or something and that they must not worry about us.
But even as we were saying this, we were seated outside the door which Wickham was locked behind.
“We’ll have to be seeing to him all the time,” said Will quietly. “And I don’t know, Elizabeth, but keeping him locked in here alone, indefinitely, it doesn’t sound entirely humane.”
I grimaced.
“I think,” he said, “that we must go back to Meryton, and we must kill him every morning before he kills anyone else. We can find somewhere there to stay, even if it’s a room in an inn or something. We shall make it work.”
“But what about everyone here, spending each and every day worrying about us?” I said.
“Yes, what about that?” called Wickham from within.
“We should have gagged him,” seethed Will.
“I am only saying,” I said, “we are not innocent here. We have stolen so much coin and so much food and carriages and horses and—”
“Well, no, we have not.” Will shoved his hands into his pockets. “We have not, because the next morning, all is restored, and it is as if nothing has been taken.”
“Yes, and I’m not really killing anyone,” said Wickham, laughing. “So, you must let me out, and let me do as I please.”
“Hmm,” said Will, furrowing his brow.
I stood up. “You’re not listening to that argument, are you?”
“Well, he sort of has a point.” My husband shrugged.
“Yes, but that is not all he does every day,” I said. “It is not only murder. He is ravishing my sister daily, and if we leave him to his devices back in Meryton, he’ll resume that. Lord knows how many other women he might be doing the same thing to.”
My husband rubbed his chin.
I gaped at him. “No, you are not—”
“If no one remembers, I am only saying—”
“What if it were Georgiana?” I demanded.
His shoulders sagged and he flinched. “Oh, God, what is wrong with me?” He rubbed his forehead. “That makes no sense, you know, that somehow murder seems better than rape? It’s what drove me to hesitate, you see.”
“Well…” I considered. “I suppose it is very quick, the way he’s killing them?”
“True,” said Will. He smirked. “Though I wager he’s quick regardless.”
“Bloody hell,” growled Wickham.
“None of that,” I said, glaring at my husband.
“Sorry.” Will was chagrined. He cleared his throat. “All right, well, we can’t leave him to his own devices, and that is all there is to it.”
“We cannot,” I said.
Suddenly, there was a knocking downstairs, on the front door of the dowager house.
“Who even knows anyone is here?” said my husband, pounding down the stairs.
I followed behind him.
“Ah, Mr. Darcy, you are here,” said the servant at the door. “Someone said they thought they watched you bringing someone into the dowager house, someone who was tied up, and I thought it must be nonsense, but everyone is looking for you everywhere—”
“I’m not to be disturbed,” said my husband, making to shut the door on the servant.
“It’s only that it’s Colonel Fitzwilliam, sir,” cried the servant.
Will sighed heavily, glancing back at me. “They found the body.”
“They found the body,” I said.
“Is that Miss Bennet?” said the servant, peering in. “Because I heard from servants at the parsonage that you were also missing, and—”
“Go back to Rosings and claim you could not find me,” said Mr. Darcy, cutting in. “Here, I’ll give you some coin for your trouble and for the lie—”
“No, Will,” I said. “I think you must go to see your family.”
“It doesn’t matter, Lizzy. We must hold steady here until the morrow when everything resets,” he said. “If we keep Wickham here, everything is tidier.”
“They are all quite beside themselves!” I said. “They are reeling from the death of the colonel—”
“Who is not actually dead.”
“Well, they don’t know that,” I said. “Look, we cannot have it both ways. Either these are real people who are really suffering or they are not. And if they are not, we can do anything we like to them, and—”
“If we can do that, what becomes of us?” he finished with a sigh, turning back to the servant in the doorway, who was ever so confused. Will shook his head at the man, still speaking to me. “What does that do to us, over time, my sweetling, if we have no compassion for any others?”
“What is it already doing to us?” I said with a sigh. “How many awful things have we done to everyone who is not us?”
“Oh, it’s not so dire, my love,” he said.
“But you will go and comfort your family,” I said.
“I shall go,” he agreed. He gestured to the servant. “Out of the way, there. I am coming along with you.”
Then, I was left with Wickham.
I did not sit outside his door. Instead, I went downstairs so that I was in view of the staircase he must come down if he somehow managed to get out of the room. I did not think he would do such a thing, of course. I had to admit to myself, however, that I could not spend my entire life sitting outside Wickham’s room. Neither could I live a life wherein I imprisoned this man forever and ever, I supposed.
It might be kinder to kill him each morning.
I did not know.
I found it hard to feel compassion for him when he had been so awful to Lydia, when he had taunted me, when he was so very horrid.
Eventually, he began banging on the door.
I went up to him to speak to him. “I’m not letting you out,” I told him.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“Well, I don’t think you’re going to starve,” I said. “You will reset at midnight just as you were.”
“You have to feed me, Elizabeth,” he said, incensed. “You’re the one going on about human decency and compassion and about causing others to suffer.”
“I suppose,” I said. “We shall find some way to feed you, Mr. Wickham. But right now, my husband is gone up to Rosings, and I am not opening the door on you. You might hurt me, I think.”
He scoffed.
“I’m sorry, but I shall not be moved in this,” I said and made to go back down the stairs, away from him.
“He’s not your husband,” he said.
This stopped me. It shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have argued with him about it. “He is, though. We have a closer bond than I wager many couples have. We have been through quite a lot together.”
“Did you have a ceremony?”
“Well… not exactly, I suppose, but it would have been inconvenient, and anyway, I was only resisting marrying him out of this silly idea that it would limit me in some way. It would not, of course, and I suppose I kept thinking that this, this life, living Thursday over and over, that this was somehow freedom.” I sighed. “But it is only a prison, and I see that now.”
“So, what did you do, just declare yourselves married, then?”
“No,” I said, too quickly.
He laughed on the other side of the door, an ugly laugh. “Oh, I see. I see what you did to mark the occasion. You’re quite a hussy, in the end, aren’t you, Lizzy? Just like your sister.”
I slammed my palm into the door, wanting to swear at him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Wickham,” I said instead, in a furious voice.
I hurried down the stairs and away from him.