Chapter 4 #2
“Miss Darcy has been a comfort to me as well,” Miss Bennet said. Her voice was even and she gave Georgiana a little smile, but her eyes remained watchful. “I have benefited greatly from our acquaintance.”
Wickham pressed on, all easy charm. “Georgiana tells me you are here for your health. I do hope the sea air has been restorative. There is nothing quite like Ramsgate in summer. The light, the promenades, the society . . . One might almost forget one’s troubles entirely.”
Darcy had seen this performance a hundred times. The attentive questions, the gentlemanly appeal, the way he made every woman feel she was the only person in the room.
Miss Bennet smiled, but it was an uneasy one. “The sea air has been most beneficial, thank you. Though I find I am not so easily distracted from my troubles as all that.”
He felt an unexpected flare of respect. Miss Bennet had known Wickham for all of two minutes and had already put up her guard.
“Miss Bennet. Mrs. Morgan.” Darcy heard the harshness in his own voice but could not soften it. “I must ask you to excuse the disorder. There is a family matter that requires my immediate attention. I would be obliged if you would take my sister into the garden for a quarter of an hour.”
Miss Bennet glanced at his sister, then at him. “We would not wish to intrude—”
“You are not intruding.” He knew it was rude to interrupt, but just now he could not be counted upon to control his temper. It was the best he could do. “The garden, if you please.”
She held his gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then she took Georgiana’s arm. “It would be my pleasure.”
The three ladies departed. The door closed. Darcy turned to Wickham.
“Well.” Wickham sank into a chair as though he had been invited to sit. “This is rather awkward.”
“Remove yourself from that chair.”
Wickham raised an eyebrow but complied, making a performance of brushing off his coat.
“Still giving orders, I see. Some things never change. Do you remember when we were boys and you used to direct all our games? ‘Wickham, you shall be the French. Wickham, you shall die dramatically.’ I always had to die dramatically.”
“You had a talent for acting. A skill you have evidently retained.”
“Darcy.” Wickham pressed a hand to his heart. “Was that a joke? I did not know you had it in you. Your father always said you were too serious by half.”
“My father,” Darcy said quietly, “is not a subject I recommend you raise.”
The smile flickered, just for a moment. Then Wickham recovered, spreading his hands in a gesture of wounded innocence. “I meant no offence. I only meant that he would have wanted us to resolve this as friends. As brothers, almost. He did call me his second son. Surely you remember.”
“I remember many things about you, Wickham. I remember signing over three thousand pounds for you to study the law. I remember Miss Ashworth of Newcastle, and Mrs. Patterson of Bath, and the debts you left behind in Lambton that I paid so your creditors would not come knocking at Pemberley’s door.
I have warned them all that I shall not be doing so again. ”
“Ah.” Wickham examined his fingernails. “You have been keeping a tally. How very thorough of you.”
“I am a thorough man.”
“You are a tedious man. You always were.” Wickham’s voice was still light, but something harder had crept into his eyes.
“Your father understood joy, Darcy. He understood pleasure. He knew that life was meant to be lived, not balanced like an estate ledger. It is not my fault that you inherited all of his fortune and none of his warmth.”
When Darcy spoke, his voice was almost pleasant. “Are you quite finished?”
“That depends. Will you allow me to explain, or have you already convicted me in that meticulous mind of yours?”
“Explain what, precisely? The elopement you arranged while I believed my sister safe? My letters, which you had Mrs. Younge intercept, and Georgiana’s which you had her alter? The fifteen-year-old girl you convinced to marry you for her thirty thousand pounds?”
“You make it sound so mercenary.”
“What would you call it?”
“Love,” Wickham said, and had the audacity to smile. “Georgiana and I are in love. I know that is difficult for you to comprehend, when you have never felt a genuine emotion in your life, but some of us are capable of finer feelings.”
“You are only capable of coveting a finer fortune. That cologne you are wearing costs more than most men earn in a month. Tell me, did Mrs. Younge advance you the funds, or have you been dipping into other accounts that do not belong to you?”
Something ugly flickered across Wickham’s face. He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough. “I see your manners have not improved.”
“Neither has your character. You will leave Ramsgate within the hour.”
“Or what?” The warmth had curdled entirely now.
“You will call me out? We both know you will not, you are far too proper for that. You will write stern letters to your solicitor and make vague threats, and no more. Your sister was ready to elope with me. I have only to whisper in the right ears . . .” His voice trailed away.
“You are not a gentleman, Wickham, no matter how much you wish that you were. I have no need to call you out.” He smiled grimly.
“And as for that other matter . . . Perhaps you do not know, but Fitz is currently attached to Lord Wellington’s staff as an exploring officer. And he is currently in England.”
Wickham paled.
“He has spent the last three years operating behind French lines for months at a time. Gathering intelligence. Interrogating prisoners.” Darcy paused. “He has defined his work as ‘Making problems disappear.’”
“You would not.”
“I would not. I am a gentleman, as you say. Fitz, however, is a military man. He has a different definition of honour." Darcy met Wickham’s eyes. “When I tell him what you intended for Georgiana, and I will, I am certain he will wish to discuss it with you. Personally.”
The colour had drained from Wickham’s face. He knew Fitz. He knew exactly what that meant.
“You cannot prove anything.”
“I do not need to prove anything. Neither does Fitz. That is rather the point. All we need do is speak with Georgiana.”
Wickham collected his hat from the side table. At the door, he turned. “Your father would be ashamed of you, leaving me in such a situation.”
“If my father had thought of you as his son, he would have left you more than a thousand pounds and the hope of a living if you took orders.” Darcy crossed the space between them in three strides.
Wickham’s smirk faltered, and he took an involuntary step backward.
“And if my father knew what you had planned for his daughter,” Darcy said, and his voice came out raw and foreign, “he would have horsewhipped you himself.” He reached past Wickham and wrenched the door open so forcefully the hinges screamed. “Get out.”
Wickham was gone in an instant. There was the sound of footsteps in the hall and then the front door slammed. Darcy turned to Mrs. Younge, who had been standing frozen by the fireplace.
“Where are the rest of my sister’s letters?”
She tried to rally. “Mr. Darcy, I assure you, everything has been conducted with perfect propriety.”
“The letters she wrote me every week. The ones you told her you posted. The parts you retained and I never received.” He stepped closer. “Where are they?”
Her face told him everything. She had disposed of them. Darcy rang the bell for Franks.
“You will pack your things under my valet’s supervision.
You will leave this house within two hours.
You will not speak of your betrayal.” He waited for a protest, but she did not speak.
“As you know, absconding with an heiress is a criminal offence. I could see you both transported.” They had not actually succeeded, but the courts took a dim view of the practice.
“I will not speak of it so long as you pay me what I am owed,” Mrs. Younge said.
“Speak to my former solicitor here in Ramsgate. I presume he has a portion of the lease money you held back,” Darcy told her. “I am certain he will be generous.”
Her frown told him he had surmised her little plot correctly.
Franks appeared. “I took the liberty of locating Mrs. Younge’s trunks, sir,” he said.
“They were already partly packed.” He turned to Mrs. Younge with perfect pleasantness.
“This way, madam.” As he escorted her from the room, Mrs. Younge looked back, not at Darcy, but towards the garden. Towards Miss Bennet.
She had worked it out too. She knew who had warned him. There would be time to deal with that later, should they mean to do anything about it.
He went to find his sister.
In the garden, Miss Bennet sat beside Georgiana on a stone bench, one arm around the girl’s shoulders. Mrs. Morgan stood a few paces away, her expression unreadable. Georgiana was crying quietly, confused tears that struck Darcy harder than sobs would have.
“Miss Bennet, Mrs. Morgan, I thank you for your assistance. My carriage will convey you back to your lodgings.”
“That will not be necessary,” Miss Bennet said. “We are quite capable of walking.”
Mrs. Morgan cleared her throat. “Mr. Darcy, forgive me, but I am a resident of Ramsgate, and I must warn you that if we leave in haste or your carriage conveys us home at speed, it will be noticed. If you wish to avoid the appearance of anything being amiss, we ought to stay long enough to say we had tea.”
He stared at her. She was right. He had not thought—
“Tea,” he said.
“And a light meal.” Mrs. Morgan’s tone brooked no argument. “Miss Darcy has not eaten, and neither, I suspect, have you.”
They sat in the garden. The conversation was stilted. Georgiana wept quietly. Miss Bennet talked of inconsequential things, and Darcy realised she was not performing for him. She was giving his sister something ordinary to hold onto.
He watched her, this stranger who had inserted herself into his family’s crisis.
Her manner with Georgiana was gentle but not pitying.
She did not press for explanations or offer reassurances.
She simply sat beside a frightened girl and talked about novels as though the world had not just collapsed around them.
“I do not understand what happened,” Georgiana whispered at last.
Miss Bennet’s hand covered hers. “You do not need to understand it today.”
“But George—Mr. Wickham—he said he loved me.”
Darcy opened his mouth. George Wickham could never love any woman so well as he loved what she might bring him. And Georgiana would bring him a vast fortune.
Miss Bennet caught his eye and gave the smallest shake of her head. Not now.
He retreated, chastened by a woman he barely knew.
“Sometimes,” she said gently, “people say things they do not mean in order to gain things that they want. It is not your fault for believing them, it is his fault for being dishonest.”
Georgiana looked at her brother. “Did he lie?”
“Yes.”
“About everything?”
He could not answer. He did not know how to tell his sister that the man she loved had never existed. That the George Wickham she had met was nothing but an act, a mask, a creature conjured from the air.
Miss Bennet waited for him to speak, but when he remained silent, she spoke instead. “He was not wrong that you are worth loving, Miss Darcy. He was only wrong to pretend he was capable of it.”
Georgiana began to cry again, but it was a different kind of crying, softer, less desperate. Miss Bennet drew her closer, murmuring something Darcy could not hear.
Eventually they were able to calm Georgiana enough to remove to the parlour and have a proper if somewhat subdued tea.
Mrs. Morgan had been correct. The food had improved his outlook a bit, and his sister also appeared in slightly better spirits.
An hour after they had arrived, Miss Bennet and Mrs. Morgan rose to leave.
They said their farewells to Georgiana, who lingered in the doorway as Darcy followed them into the hall.
His gaze moved over Miss Bennet with fresh attention.
Her pelisse was well-made but not new, the fabric beginning to show wear at the cuffs.
A gentleman’s daughter, clearly, but not a wealthy one.
The kind of woman for whom a small sum might mean a great deal.
Perhaps he could show his appreciation to her in some small way.
“Miss Bennet,” he said. “A moment.”
She turned, her expression guarded.
“If you would leave your direction with the housekeeper, I will have my man of business send something to your father. For befriending my sister and your trouble today.” He paused. “And to thank you for your continued discretion.”
For a long moment, she simply looked at him. When she spoke, her voice was steady, almost conversational. “I see. You wish to know where to send payment for my silence.”
He was taken aback by her directness. “That is not what I said.”
“Is it not?” The words were even but sharp.
“You have examined my clothing, determined that my father is of more modest means than yourself, and concluded that my integrity might be purchased through your solicitor because of it.” She arched her eyebrows, and it changed her pretty features into something more forbidding.
“Tell me, Mr. Darcy. What sum had you set aside? I confess I am curious to know the price you have assigned to my character.”
“I meant no offence. I am simply thankful for your good sense in sending for me, and for your caution.”
“My good sense and caution,” she repeated slowly, “are not for sale, Mr. Darcy. Your sister is a lovely girl. What happened today is not her fault.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you?” Something flashed in her eyes, and then Mrs. Morgan touched her arm and she frowned, then said with reluctance, “Forgive me. It is not my place.”
“No,” he agreed, perhaps too quickly. She had mistaken him completely, and he had other matters to tend to. “It is not.”
She assessed him with an icy look. “Good day, Mr. Darcy.”
He watched the pair walk away and knew he had made an error. But he could still barely comprehend what he had interrupted, and he could not think about Miss Bennet’s pride just now.
First, he had to speak with his sister, who was undoubtedly broken-hearted.