Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Colonel Fitzwilliam accompanied Darcy to the gaol to meet with Wickham. When he appeared, Darcy inhaled sharply, shocked by his bruised and bloodied face.
Fitzwilliam chuckled. “Darcy, remind me never to anger your wife.”
Wickham scowled. “What do you want? You kept me all night with your questions, Fitzwilliam. What more would you have me say?”
“The truth perhaps?” Darcy asked, taking a seat on a hard, rough-hewn wooden bench. “Your story was far too mutable from the recounting I heard.”
Wickham shrugged and seated himself on a similar bench. “I shall hang, Darcy. High treason is my charge, and nothing you can say or do will alter it.”
“Lie down with dogs and you wake with fleas. Take that lesson with you into the afterlife.” Fitzwilliam was still far too amused by the entire situation, and Darcy sent him a censuring frown.
“If you did not kill the earl, there might be a means by which your sentence could be altered.”
“To what? Years spent in this miserable place? I think I might rather hang.”
“Transportation,” Darcy replied, and saw the brief glimmer of hope enter Wickham’s eyes before he quickly looked away.
“Impossible. A peer is dead, and the gun is in my hand.”
“Unless that peer is found alive.”
Wickham said nothing, but a muscle in his eye twitched.
“If he is dead, truly dead, then you are no worse than you are now; but I am willing to fund the search for him.”
“Why?” Wickham shot Darcy a rebellious look. “You cannot want to find him. Lord Courtenay will surely be unwilling to share his delectable wife with you. From what I see, I did you a favour.”
Darcy looked at Wickham, so stupid with his false bravado. He made an elaborate shrug towards his cousin. “Fitzwilliam, you had the right of it. Let us go and leave old George to his fate.” The two cousins rose, Darcy making a show of dusting off his clothing.
They had reached the door when Wickham cried out, “A moment, gentlemen!”
Darcy turned back, but Fitzwilliam did not. “Darcy, he is lying. Come.”
“I am not lying,” Wickham protested. “I am not.”
Darcy sat down slowly. “It is improbable that he lives. I shall demand your honesty in this. If I find you lied to me, the search is off at once. If you send me on a fool’s errand, I will entreat the hangman to allow me to assist.”
“I shall tell you all I know, Darcy, and as to the truth of it—I assure you of its validity on the grave of my father.”
Two hours later, Darcy and Fitzwilliam were in the carriage, despising the stench of the gaol that clung to them and pondering the events of Lord Courtenay’s ostensible death.
Darcy was first to speak. “Was he lying?”
Fitzwilliam was careful in his answer. “He has every cause to lie, of course. You need his assistance while he considers himself beyond help.”
“Deceiving me does him no good. There is nothing to be gained by sending me off on a fruitless search for a man dead and buried in the woods around Crewe.”
“If Henry was somehow able to drag himself from the scene of his shooting—if he lived beyond that day—it is to Wickham’s advantage that you discover it.”
“So?”
“So, from that, I would conclude that he likely told the truth.” Fitzwilliam looked at his cousin with great trepidation.
Darcy frowned pensively. “Wickham is the master of disguise, but even he must realise there is no good reason to have me needlessly searching.”
“Save for the fact he cannot admit outright that he killed Lord Courtenay. That would be tantamount to a confession.”
“True.” Darcy rubbed his eyes. “There are no answers, just more questions.”
Fitzwilliam nodded his agreement.
“What now?”
“We should first investigate some of Wickham’s claims. Hire some men to determine whether a man bearing the description of the late Lord Courtenay was put in a grave in Warrington. Someone—a servant or a merchant—must know something.”
Darcy continued the thought. “If there is nothing in that grave, then we begin a search in earnest. However, even if there is something there, a right sort of something…” Darcy rubbed his hand over his face. “I shall hire someone to investigate, and we shall go on from there.”
Fitzwilliam was let off at Matlock house, and Darcy, after a moment’s consideration, departed on another errand.
Darcy’s great uncle—the younger brother of Darcy’s grandfather—was a judge, and his son Robert had become a barrister.
Darcy did not maintain the close ties with his father’s family that he did with his mother’s branch.
Nevertheless, he did not doubt his cousin’s willingness to be of assistance nor his understanding of the need for discretion at this early stage of events.
Mr Robert Darcy was nearly seventy, tall, and distinguished.
As a barrister, he had a comfortable income.
He and his wife had not been blessed with children, and they had spent much of their time travelling or in the country until her death at about the same time as Darcy’s father.
Since that time, Robert had mostly resided in town, whiling his days away quietly in reading, politics, and his duty to the law.
He greeted his cousin cordially. “How do you do, sir! It has been some time since we have met, just the pair of us.” Uncle Robert had attended his young cousin’s wedding breakfast, but their interaction there had been understandably limited.
Darcy bowed. “That it has.” After a short time spent discussing news of family and recent items of interest in society, Darcy came to the heart of the matter.
“I would like your opinion on a situation of some delicacy. An opinion, nothing more, save for your customary discretion.”
Robert nodded. “Very well.”
Darcy hesitated a moment, drumming his fingers against his cousin’s table. “You know my wife is the widow of the late Earl of Courtenay, Henry Warren. His death had several unusual circumstances to it. Do you know the particulars, or would you have me repeat them to you?”
As it turned out, Robert did know the details rather well, having been involved in the trials of several of the radicals involved. Moreover, the latest events with Wickham had been brought to his attention.
“I do not suppose that your concerns rest on Mr Wickham’s behalf? If they do, I must tell you, he will almost certainly hang. Only something extraordinary could alter his fate.”
“I am here because of some information Wickham has given me—information that might lead to the discovery that Lord Courtenay is still alive.”
“Ah,” said Robert, tenting his fingers and looking thoughtful. “And you believe him?”
“I do not know,” Darcy replied quickly. “However, given what he has said, I am interested enough to investigate matters. My question for you is this.” Darcy leant forward. “Should Lord Courtenay be found alive, what becomes of my marriage? Shall we be required to annul it?”
Robert sighed heavily. “Annulments are a complicated business and not easy to come by.
There are, in truth, two kinds of dissolution of a sanctified union.
One, considered voidable through the ecclesiastical court, can be granted for legitimate marriages in which conditions exist that are grounds for annulment of the union: insanity or incompetence of one of the spouses, consanguinity, or affinity.
“However, for a marriage in which one of the parties was found to be already married to another at the time of the wedding, the second marriage is not dissolved, it is void. It simply never was because one of the parties was not eligible to be wed in the first place. The person—in your case, Mrs Darcy—who had undertaken the marriage while being wed to another would be guilty of bigamy and potentially subject to criminal charges. Any financial matters or other arrangements would be matters for the civil court.”
Darcy leant back with a heavy sigh of his own and rubbed his hand over his face.
Robert hastened to console him. “I cannot see that such a thing would occur, or if it did, it would be only in the most cursory manner. Lord Courtenay died in 1809 I believe?”
“August 1809, and we married in June of this year, almost three years since his death. No one could accuse her of mourning him in haste.”
“Not at all. Moreover, she acted in the interests of the monarchy, first to last. Her fealty and her morality cannot be in question.”
“That is not my worry. I am more distressed over the potential dissolution of my marriage. Would there be any recourse for me?”
Robert chose not to directly answer him. “It is highly unlikely that a peer of the realm would hide himself away all this time. The key conspirators were apprehended some time ago. He has been safe since then, and he could have sent word to her. Mark my words: this is nothing worthy of concern.”
“But thinking of worst possibilities—would there be anything at all that I could do to save my marriage?”
His cousin tilted his head back, studying the ceiling. After several long minutes, he looked kindly at the younger man and admitted, “I think not.”
The hired investigators made short work of one of their tasks: it was a simple matter to learn that Henry’s grave in the family plot at Warrington was empty. The groundskeepers exhumed the coffin and opened it to find a bag stuffed with grasses and hay.
The task of finding out what had become of Henry, or Henry’s body, was more difficult. October passed and moved into November and then December with still no word.
The months proved to be busy ones regardless. Jane was approaching her confinement, expecting a January birth if the midwife’s predictions were accurate. They were enjoying their new home in Derbyshire and impatient for the Darcys to return for Christmastide.
Elizabeth received word from Mrs Bennet that an unexpected match had occurred.
Miss Mary Bennet had caught the attention of the man who would take Netherfield Park.
He was an older gentleman who had once been a parson until a distant relation passed and left him a fortune.
He desired to join the landed gentry and had visited Hertfordshire in the autumn.
He was drawn to Mary for her morals and prudent interests, and he proposed within a month’s acquaintance.
Mary would be wed in February, and Netherfield would become the couple’s permanent home.
Reading the letter to Darcy, Elizabeth laughed.
“Kitty writes that Mama is incensed that there will be three of us married to untitled men. But she says that Mary is as happy as her husband is old. Evidently, the man claims to be in his fourth decade, but Kitty believes him of an age with my father.”
“I hope they will be very happy.”
As the weeks passed, Darcy alternately hoped and feared for news to come.
He persuaded himself that Henry must be dead and then believed just as strongly that he lived, still in hiding.
He would decide each morning that they could safely claim to be devoid of fear, and then he would be resolved to yet another day of waiting.
The reports that came were varied: a man who had been shot, one who had left on a ship bound for the colonies, another who had been ill with fever for several weeks in Crewe before giving up the ghost. There were so many possibilities in the world for a man who did not wish to be found that Darcy despaired of ever learning the truth.
He broached the subject with Elizabeth one night after they had dined.
“I received a letter from the investigators today.”
She looked up from her needlework. “Any news?”
He shook his head. “There are, unfortunately, many ways for a man to vanish. If he has gone overseas, I fear we might never know the truth.”
“Shall we call off the search?”
“Not yet. There are still possible clues to follow that might prove promising.”
“I shall rest easy as long as I know we have been diligent.”
Somewhere in both of their minds, they had determined that, if nothing of import was learnt by the end of the year, they would abandon the search.
The investigators, even though continuing to search for answers, had already concluded that Henry had left the scene of his shooting either on his own power or with the aid of another, and he had succumbed to his injuries shortly thereafter.
Elizabeth and Darcy were increasingly satisfied with that conclusion, particularly as it answered their own interests.
George Wickham remained in the gaol and grew increasingly desperate for his chances. Darcy was doing all he could for him though there was little to be done. He was seen, thus far, to be of use to the men who searched for the earl, but if nothing was found, he would be branded a traitor and hanged.
On the third day of January 1813, all of them experienced a reversal of fortune. Darcy and Elizabeth had remained in London for the Festive Season and it was there that the investigators paid them a visit.
“We have found a man working in one of the mines in Kidsgrove. He was shot and injured grievously somewhere in the latter part of the summer in 1809. The owner of the mine found him and nursed him to good health, and the man then chose to take work in the mine. His name is Henry Sumner.”
“His mother’s name,” Elizabeth whispered, looking faint.
The investigator nodded. “When he first recovered from his injuries, there were some issues with memory, and he believed that to be his name.”
Darcy replied gravely, “I see.”
“I have seen Mr Sumner,” the investigator told them. “If you have a miniature or portrait, I might be able to make a determination.”
Elizabeth went to retrieve a miniature of Henry done in Italy. She returned with it and wordlessly handed it to the man, who studied it for an excruciatingly long time.
At last, he nodded. “Yes, I believe it is the same man.”