Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Wickham apparently found a glimmer of hope. “I did not kill him! He was alive when I left him, and when I returned, there was only one body where there had been two.”
The room erupted in commotion. Fitzwilliam, Harris, and Lord Matlock were all speaking, telling Wickham to be silent and Elizabeth to discount his nonsense. For Darcy, a cold finger of dread traced his spine as an inner voice whispered, I knew it. I knew such felicity could not last.
Elizabeth’s eyes never left Wickham’s countenance. She spoke in a voice that was calm and exquisitely controlled. “Put him back in the chair. I shall hear him.”
Lord Matlock tried to intervene. “Elizabeth, my dear, this man is a criminal, we cannot—”
Elizabeth gave Lord Matlock a brief glance, her eyes nearly shooting fire. “Since the day this all began, I have done everything I was told to do, and I have caused no problem to anyone. Now I demand my compensation for that obedience in the form of hearing the tale of my husband’s killer.”
Abashed, Lord Matlock fell silent as did the others in the room.
“Sit him down,” Elizabeth ordered sharply.
Samuel and Jervis were not gentle, shoving Wickham back into a chair like a foot shoved into a boot that was too small. Through his restraints, Wickham did his best to become comfortable, shifting himself awkwardly about.
“Speak, Mr Wickham.”
“He was not dead when I left.”
Elizabeth advanced on him until her feet nearly touched Wickham’s shoes. There was an air of fragile determination to her. She looked so very small, yet Darcy knew rage was rising within her.
“The details, Mr Wickham. Where you stood, where he stood, how close you were when you shot him, the way he looked when he fell, and why you believe he might not have died. Tell me this instant, and spare me nothing.” Her voice was frightening in its quiet ferocity, and Darcy dared not attempt to dissuade her.
“Ah, well…” Wickham swallowed nervously, looking at Harris who glanced away refusing to either support or deny him. Realising there was nothing left to lose, Wickham began to speak.
“We had determined a likely place ahead of time—”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Mr Francis Warren and I.”
There was a brief pause. “Go on.”
A bead of sweat rolled down Wickham’s face, and he moved again, tugging at the restraints on his arms. “There was a copse of trees to conceal me, and I dug a ditch, hidden within the road’s heavy ruts, to cause the carriage wheel to break.
It did as we expected, and the coachman and outriders alighted to see to it.
The coachman, along with one of the outriders, went off directly for assistance.
The other man remained behind—as guard, I suppose. ”
“Where was Mr Francis Warren at this time?”
“After supplying me with a double-barrelled pistol, he met his brother’s party in Crewe, and they travelled together from there.
When the accident happened, he remained in the carriage as planned with his brother and his lordship’s valet.
” Wickham paused, waiting to see whether more questions would be posed.
When there were none, he continued to speak.
“I shot the outrider first. I was within close range, and there was no doubt he died quickly. The three men then came out of the carriage with their own pistols drawn. Sir Francis dealt with the valet, and Lord Courtenay was my…my job.”
“How did you do it?”
Wickham looked uncertain, surely unnerved by the way Elizabeth’s eyes bored into him.
Harris spoke quickly, “Madam, these sorts of things can be distressing for a lady. We would not wish—”
Elizabeth acted as if she had not heard him. “Where exactly did you shoot him? In the head? The chest? How many shots did you fire, and how many met their mark?”
“One.” Wickham licked his lips. “I had but one shot left after the outrider. I fired at his chest. He fell and…there was a great deal of blood.”
“Was he conscious?”
Wickham did not answer her, his eyes lowered to his boots.
“Mr Wickham?” Through sheer force of will, Elizabeth compelled Wickham to meet her eyes. “Was he conscious?”
Wickham was visibly struggling within himself. Softly, he admitted, “He was.”
“Did he say anything?”
Wickham was silent, locked into Elizabeth’s frightening, hard gaze.
“What did he say?”
“He begged me to help him—otherwise, to finish what I had begun.”
Darcy could scarcely breathe as he fixed on Elizabeth’s eyes.
He had never seen them so cold and inscrutable.
Nor had he seen her as dispassionate as she was at this moment.
There was a tension in the air, like the gathering of a storm before the first crack of thunder.
Those gathered waited with bated breath to see what would transpire.
Her voice quiet and steady, Elizabeth asked, “What did you do after that?”
Wickham’s breath came faster and harder.
Elizabeth leant over him. “What did you do after that?”
Wickham’s eyes remained locked on hers. His voice small, he admitted, “I left.”
She darted forward, her fist connecting firmly with George Wickham’s face.
She split his lip and broke his nose with a crunch that was audible to the room, and he was covered in blood almost instantly.
Elizabeth shouted, “Coward! How could you leave him there to suffer!” She slapped him hard, imprinting her hand upon his cheek and causing his head to jerk violently to the side.
Then she burst into tears and ran from the room with Darcy hard on her heels.
Elizabeth cried until there was nothing left in her.
It was a heaving, torturous sort of cry, with her sobs ripping from her chest, her nose running, her eyes aching, and her stomach boiling with nausea that eventually culminated in her losing her dinner to the chamber pot.
When she could form coherent thoughts, she thought it was dear of Darcy to stay with her, cradling her gently on the floor and wetting handkerchiefs in cool water to wipe her face and relieve her aching eyes.
Once her tears subsided, she remained pressed into his shoulder for some time, inhaling his soothing scent and listening to the beat of his heart until she was able to sit up and try to put herself to rights. Darcy still did not speak, running his hand gently over her hair.
Finally, he asked, “Where did you learn to punch like that?” She had managed to do it with scarcely any damage to her hand, as was usually the case.
Somehow, she laughed, her voice hoarse. “Jervis made me learn when he started to watch over me, and he showed me the best places on a man where a lady can inflict the most damage with the least harm to herself. As Mr Wickham was seated, the place under his nose was my best target, and I did not strike him with my knuckles but rather the lower part of my palm.”
“I am all astonishment.”
“I can fire a pistol fairly well too, but with a blade, I have no chance.”
“Yes, well, it takes a good bit of strength in one’s arms and chest to run someone through.” He drew her into him again, careful to put her face somewhere other than the spots already soaked with her tears. “I am deeply sorry,” he murmured.
She felt dangerously close to more tears. “It has been awful imagining him shot down in cold blood. I have often wondered about his last moments: whether he suffered and his thoughts as he knew he was dying. To know that he lay there in agony for an untold amount of time pains me.”
She raised her face to look into Darcy’s eyes. “Why would Wickham do that? Why would he not finish what he had been commissioned to do?”
“For exactly the reason you said,” Darcy replied, still gently caressing her hair. “He is a coward. He shot the others in the back of their heads and Henry as he ran. When Henry had fallen, and Wickham needed to look him in the eye and do it in cold blood, it was a different matter entirely.”
Elizabeth inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. “I wish I did not know but…I had to.”
Darcy nodded, understanding her need. A few moments passed as Elizabeth just rested within his arms. At last, Darcy said, “It is nearly one in the morning. Perhaps I should have Mrs Hobbs bring you a sleeping draught?”
Elizabeth agreed. In a short time, both were ready for slumber, and the sleeping draught had been drunk. He climbed into her bed, pulling her into his arms while she succumbed to sleep, knowing well that slumber would not come easily to him.
Wickham’s words echoed through his mind. He was alive when I left him…one body where there had been two.
Could Henry have survived? Could he be out there now, thinking longingly of his wife?
He looked down at her beloved face, her eyelashes so dark against her cheek, which remained flushed from crying, and he had but one thought in his mind.
Henry’s wife.
He awoke in the night, finding himself alone in the bed. She was sitting on the floor by the fireplace, her shoulders shaking with the effort of silencing her anguish.
He rose, taking a blanket and going to her. Sitting behind her, he pulled her into his embrace, wrapping them both in the blanket. She did not speak for a moment, and he felt his shoulder become wet with her tears.
Finally, she said, “What if…?”
He kissed her head, glad that the darkness hid his wince. There was no need for her to finish her question; he knew exactly what she meant.
Her face was hidden by the glimmering firelight that cast looming shadows on the walls. She whispered—as if speaking it aloud would make it that much more likely—“What happens if he is alive?”
“He is not.” He sounded more certain than he was.
“How can you say so?”
He shrugged. “I do not know, only that—he cannot be alive. Not after such a long time.”
“The thought of losing you terrifies me.”
“You will never lose me. You own my heart.”
Her tears began again. “But what if—?”