Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The first thing Elizabeth noticed after the sounds had faded and the footmen had come in from the street and closed the door was that the house was very quiet without him.
Which was strange, considering that Fitzwilliam was not a man who made much noise. But his presence was felt everywhere here.
Aunt Gardiner and Jane had been sent home in Fitzwilliam’s town coach with a promise to inform Uncle Gardiner of what was happening.
And then Elizabeth and Georgiana drifted to the library by unspoken agreement.
Elizabeth felt her husband most in this room—well, and the sitting room between their chambers, but that she would not share even with Georgiana.
There were things to do here, books to hold, needlework to attempt, drawing to practice.
Elizabeth chose a volume at random from the nearest shelf and sat in her husband’s chair.
Georgiana took up her embroidery frame and set it down again almost immediately.
Outside, November pressed its grey face against the windows. The fire was well-made. She thought of her husband riding in the chill and how early dark came this time of year. For a time, neither woman spoke.
“I wonder,” Georgiana said at last as she looked out at the weather, “whether Richard will find Mrs. Younge quickly.”
“He seemed very certain he knew where to locate her.”
“Yes.” Georgiana smoothed the fabric in her frame. “He is usually right about things like that.”
Elizabeth turned a page she had not read, trying to decide whether to say something useful when Georgiana spoke again.
“Mr. Wickham was very kind to me at Ramsgate, much kinder than Mrs Younge.” She looked down at her lap. “I know that sounds ridiculous.”
She set her book down. “Georgiana, what it sounds like is that Mrs. Younge was overly firm so that you would seek solace with the handsome, kind Mr. Wickham. They attempted to persuade you into feeling yourself in love. But when I met you, you were not fooled. Your discomfort indicated that quite clearly.”
“Mr. Wickham said that he and my brother had quarrelled, and that we might have to elope. He was sure that once we were wed, they would be able to heal the breach. But I thought . . .”
“What did you think?” Elizabeth prompted.
“I thought they ought to resolve their differences before we wed and not rely upon a marriage to do so for them. It seemed, well, backwards.” She sighed.
“I have always wanted my brother at my wedding. But I might have given in had you and Mrs. Morgan not shown me what it was to have someone treat my own judgment as worth trusting.” Georgiana looked up.
“You found me at the best possible moment, though I fear you must think me very stupid.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I do not think that at all. I think you are fifteen and were a long way from home,” she said gently. “You had the good sense to hesitate, and then to reach out for help. I have never supposed you offered me your direction solely to exchange letters.”
“Does my brother think so too?”
“We have not spoken about it, but if you are concerned, you should ask him. He loves you, Georgiana, and is relieved he found you safe. He would have had a difficult time forgiving himself otherwise.”
“It would not have been his fault.”
“He would not be placated by that.”
Georgiana nodded. “I will speak to him. After all of this is over.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Good.”
They sat together a while longer. If Georgiana’s needlework made no progress and the book was held more than read, it did not matter.
The clock measured out the hour in quiet increments.
Elizabeth was not at ease, exactly, but she was less unmoored than she had been, and she believed Georgiana was the same.
The sound came from below.
Elizabeth would normally dismiss it. The house was full of ordinary sounds, servants’ footsteps, fires being tended, a maid asking a footman to move something, but this was not an ordinary sound. It sounded as though something had been knocked over.
She set down her book.
“What is it?” Georgiana asked.
“I am not sure.” Elizabeth was already moving towards the door. “Stay here.”
Georgiana did not stay.
When Elizabeth turned to say something further, she saw Georgiana’s face and did not say it. This was Georgiana’s home, and they were not unprotected. Fitzwilliam had seen to that.
They went down the main stair together.
The ground floor was still. The passage ran its full length before them, the doors closed, the lamps not yet lit for evening. The sound had come from somewhere back in the house, above the kitchens, perhaps, or the old service passage.
Then Elizabeth saw the door.
Lady Anne’s sitting room door was ajar, by perhaps two inches, a thin seam of weak grey light showing at the edge of it.
Georgiana stopped. Elizabeth felt rather than saw the small shock, the swift recognition. That was not a door that typically stood open.
It might be nothing, but Elizabeth moved in front of Georgiana. She put her hand flat against the door and pushed it open.
A man was inside, his back to them, moving through the room efficiently, like someone who knew exactly where he was going.
He dipped his hand into the drawer of the small writing table and removed a gold etui, which he slipped into his coat pocket.
On the mantelpiece behind him were three small pale rectangles of unfaded silk, where three portrait miniatures had stood in their intricate silver frames.
He turned.
“George,” Georgiana whispered, and Elizabeth realised that they had all been fooled. Mr. Wickham was not in Meryton, at least not presently. Presently, he was in Bereford House. Robbing it.
He seemed younger than she remembered, somehow. Handsomer. The smile came first, automatic, reflexive, the instinct of a man whose first response to any situation was charm—and then he saw them properly, and the smile did something more complicated.
For a moment no one spoke. Elizabeth was aware of the room, the hall behind her, and that the nearest footman, who was guarding the back and servant entrances, was the length of the passage away.
“The carriages were gone. You are not supposed to be here,” Mr. Wickham said.
He had been watching the house, then. Elizabeth looked at the bare spaces on the mantelpiece. She looked at the outline in his pocket. She looked at him.
“I believe, Mr. Wickham,” she said, “that is what I should be saying to you.”
His eyes alit on Georgiana, and he calculated.
She could see it, a swift, expert appraisal, whether he could possibly make it out of the house with her.
He must know this house well, for he had somehow made his way in without anyone hearing.
That being the case, he must also have a plan to get out.
He moved towards the door, and Elizabeth pushed Georgiana back.
“Go,” she said, low and urgent. “Find help.”
Georgiana bolted, crying out for help as she did.
Mr. Wickham watched her go, the calculation dropping away, leaving something rawer behind. It was the second time Georgiana had slipped through his fingers, and he must be angry. He looked at Elizabeth, and what was in his expression now was neither charm nor strategy.
It was simply fury, at last undisguised.
She stepped backward into the passage, frightened, as he moved forward. He was larger than he had seemed in Ramsgate. The resentment in his expression was genuine, quiet and cold, and she had her back almost to the wall before he stopped.
But stop he did—because he was forced to.
Within a few moments of Georgiana’s cries for assistance, the hall had begun to fill.
Two footmen came first, skidding to a halt at the far end of the passage.
Behind them came the housemaids, breathless and wide-eyed, one scullery maid still gripping her broom as though she had forgotten to set it aside.
Cook herself came up from the kitchens, flour on her sleeves and a cast-iron skillet clutched fast in her hand.
Two scullery maids hovered near her elbow, uncertain but unwilling to retreat.
Then Franks appeared from the back stair, a clothes iron in his hand.
Elizabeth watched Mr. Wickham’s expression as he registered them all.
His jaw tightened, but he held his ground.
His eyes were moving, still calculating.
He looked at them all, then back towards the front door.
Tracy stood to one side of it near the umbrella stand, his arms folded over his chest. Old. Slight. Hard of hearing. Whatever Mr. Wickham saw when he looked at Tracy, he evidently did not consider the butler a problem.
He was not going anywhere, not yet. But that did not keep him from talking.
“I had been in Ramsgate two months,” he said conversationally, as though they were discussing the weather. “Two months of careful work. Georgiana was falling in love with me. Another few days was all I needed.” He paused. “And then you arrived to spoil it all.”
He looked at her with something that was almost wonder.
“A nobody from Hertfordshire appears without invitation, and inside a week everything I had built was gone.” The wonder curdled into something darker.
“I wanted to ruin you as you had ruined me, and I wanted Darcy to be the one to do it. Honourable Darcy, who in all these years has never met a woman who meets his exacting standards, tarnished by ruining a girl and then abandoning her. Why would he do the honourable thing when he had been tricked and the woman was so entirely inferior?”
“George!” Georgiana exclaimed angrily.
“He should have walked away. Any other man would have.”
This was the most accurate thing Mr. Wickham had said. Her husband was truly the best of men.
“What did he say?” asked Tracy.
“He wanted to ruin Mrs. Darcy!” one of the kitchen maids supplied, with great indignation.
“Hush,” said Cook.
Wickham turned on her. “I am speak—”