Chapter Nineteen
Richard smoothed out the letter. “Well, it means nothing, I don’t suppose. She might not admit anything to her sister.”
Immediately, upon our arrival here, I shut her up in her room, and she dashed off a letter right away, but I intercepted it, and I read it.
It was to her sister, and it matched essentially what she had told me in the carriage. It did not mention the business between Mr. Wickham and my sister, I had to admit that.
But her description of me… I did not know what to make of it.
I snatched the letter back from Richard to read it again.
I have always found him too intense and too silent and I have always been drawn to him against my better judgment, against my very will.
He and I, whatever we have together, I fear it is combustible, Jane, and I fear it is going to burn me alive.
Send someone for me, please. I do not think I shall survive else.
“Will,” said Richard gently, “she would deny it in either case, you see that, yes?”
I nodded, looking at the letter. “Yes, the denial means nothing. An innocent woman would deny, a guilty woman would deny as well.”
“Quite,” said Richard. “We must not think about what she has said, but rather the evidence. She left the ball, she lied to me, and she met with him. If she had been innocent of his wiles, she would not have concealed what she was doing.”
“Well, she knew I hated him,” I said. “And she said he threatened her.”
“Threatened to reveal their affair,” said Richard. “Tell me again about, erm, the wedding night.”
“She seemed concerned that the marriage would be precarious if it wasn’t consummated,” I said.
“Yes, you said that. And she did not bleed.”
“No,” I said.
“Well, I do not know about that,” he muttered. “I have never taken a virgin to bed. Have you?”
“God in heaven, no, Richard,” I said. “I mean, except her, if she…”
“I think it may not be… I have heard it does not always happen, that there are ways the maidenhead can be broken, riding horses and the like.”
“She’s frightened of horses,” I muttered.
“That’s not the only way. Anyway, I’ve always thought it doesn’t make any sense. If a woman has a… piece of skin there, you know, how does she… you know what I speak of?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, it’s not as if women don’t have to have been having their bleeding before you bed them, so if there’s a piece of skin blocking—”
“No, but it’s not like that, the maidenhead.”
“Yes, exactly, what is it like? No one seems to actually know.”
“Well, we shall eliminate that, anyway. It also means nothing, like the denial.”
He considered this and then nodded. “All right, yes, so again, the evidence. The wedding night itself, I don’t want details, but you said she was… not like a maid?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I muttered, looking down at my hands and studying the creases in my palms. “As I said, I have never bedded another virgin.”
“Yes, but you have been privy to talk amongst other men before. I have never been married either, but we all have an idea about what the act is like with a wife versus a mistress, and wives are supposed to be reticent and frightened and shy.”
“Well, she was…” I shook my head. I did not wish to speak of it with him.
What I wished to do chiefly was to cry, because it had been a singular sort of experience, one of the sweetest of my life, the joining of the two of us, and I did not like to think it had been manufactured or that she had been tricking me in some way.
“Let us just go back, all the way back, Richard. We need to think this through.”
“My apologies, Will, I should not have asked you to tell me about—”
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head, gesturing with my hands, trying to shake off my inclination to tears. “If it is a trap, if my own sweet, dear wife is nothing but the Elizabeth Trap, then I need to know when it started and how it started and how he did it.”
“All right,” said Richard.
“He arrived in town after we were stuck together in the house, or at least, that is what was reported,” I said. “I suppose he could have been there earlier, telling her how to speak to me.”
“You have both said that you did not really get along at first, though?”
“True,” I said. “But he might have done that on purpose, knowing it would stir me.”
My cousin raised his eyebrows.
“What?” I said. “You like it about her, too, so don’t even pretend that the vivacious sparkling wit you see in her is not that.”
“Oh, no, I just…” Richard chuckled, looking away from me. “I only meant that it was a strange game for Wickham to play, that is all. And, anyway, how would he have contrived to get Elizabeth under your roof? Did not that happen because of the sister’s malady?”
“Maybe he took their carriage so that Jane Bennet would have to go horseback and have to get caught in the rain and then likely get ill and—” I broke off. “That is all very convoluted.”
“Indeed.” Richard’s expression was conciliatory.
I sighed.
“It is more likely,” said my cousin, “that he arrived in town, heard the rumors about your wife and you, and decided to make use of them.”
“Yes, all right,” I said. “So, he wished to convince her to marry me.”
“Because you had asked and she had refused?”
“Well, no,” I said, thinking about that.
“No, so perhaps it was after, once she had agreed to marry me. Because this is when she began saying all those things to me, that I liked her because she was scandalous and that we should have a scandalously short engagement, and all manner of that sort of thing.”
Richard scratched his neck, looking uncomfortable. “That… does not sound like the sort of teasing a virginal woman does, no.”
“So, he would have already been at her by then,” I said. “And she must have been sneaking around with him.”
“Except I thought she had a broken ankle and couldn’t walk at that point.”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, that would have made it difficult.”
“Why did she think that telling you that she was a scandal would make you wish to marry her faster?” said Richard.
“Oh, I don’t know. It was this conversation we were having about Wickham, actually. You see, I had been spending the summer with Bingley because I thought that perhaps he was the solution, that I should simply marry Georgiana to him.”
Richard thought this through. “Well, yes, it makes sense. You wanted a man who would be grateful to have her, but you did not wish him to need her money, of course, because a man like that would likely spend it all and leave her nothing. I see why. And Bingley is not quite the sort of man you would expect Georgiana to be united with, so if there were some impression that you and he were fast friends, then it would explain your choice, and this was why you spent so many months in his company.”
“Yes, entirely my thinking,” I said. “And she had surmised all this herself as well. So, when I told her that Mr. Wickham was the man who had deceived my sister, she said that marrying me would distract anyone from even thinking about my sister, because she was so frightfully improper.”
“Who was? Georgiana?
“No, Elizabeth was,” I said. “Although, actually, I sort of got the impression she was a bit insecure about all of that, even then. I do not know why this woman married me. I do not think she wished to, not in the end.”
“She did it because of Wickham pressuring her, we are saying?”
“I do not know,” I said. “Maybe. But I do not even know if I think that. I think he got to her after we were married, actually.” I was thinking it through.
She had not changed her story once, except for a little thing, a thing in which she said he appeared in a room and said that if she cried out he would claim she wanted him there.
Then she went back and said that he seemed charming at first.
So, that was when it had happened. I sighed heavily.
“What do you mean?” said Richard.
I relayed to him what I had been thinking.
“Hmm, yes, that is foreboding,” said Richard.
“But I do not think that is where it happened, not in your house, not after she was married to you. Think about this, Will, he wished to take your wife’s virtue, clearly, that is his triumph over you.
So, he must have done it at some point before you were married. ”
“When?” I said. “You just pointed out she was unable to walk.”
“Well, one does not need to walk to accomplish such a thing. She thought he was charming, she said?”
“Handsome, she said,” I muttered, my stomach turning over. “The perfect gentleman, she said, everything that is good and pleasing, she said.” My voice got uglier as I spoke.
“Damnation,” he said softly.
“Yes, but here it is, Richard,” I said, my voice breaking, “speaking of Georgiana made me see it. She is his victim, same as my sister.”
Richard tilted his head back.
“And it is at least somewhat my error, because I did not tell her everything,” I said. “This all could have happened before she knew what Wickham had done, after all.”
“That does not excuse her, for she should not have let a man like him under her skirts—”
“Yes, and neither should Georgiana, but—”
“Well, I thought we were decided that she did not. That he is a liar, that he had claimed to have done it only to make us furious.”
I spread my hands.
Richard huffed. “Ah, here we are again.”
It was quiet for some time.
“I love her,” I said finally. “I do not care.”
“That is a lie. You do care.”
“I shall blame him and not her,” I said. “I shall forgive her.”
“If he has gotten her with child?”
Oh, damnation, I remembered him saying that. It hit me in the chest, and I could not breathe for several moments. I swallowed hard. “Well, then, we shall hope it is a girl child.”
Richard gaped at me.
“If it is not…” I took a deep breath. “Well, I do not know, but it is foolish to punish an innocent babe for something that is not its fault. And if I claim a child, it is mine, and that is that.”
Richard rubbed his forehead. “This is quite a reversal from the way you were at the beginning of this conversation, I have to say.”