Chapter 30
“Back again, like a bad penny,” George Wickham laughed unpleasantly to Darcy as he opened the door of his lodgings. “I assume you come as Bingley’s proxy with a message regarding the marriage contract.”
In marked contrast to Darcy’s last visit, Wickham opened the door wide and made an exaggerated welcoming gesture to bring him into the room.
He was at least dressed this time, including boots and combed hair, although his eyes and breath told of a day spent drinking, gaming and anticipating his future fortune rather than on any regimental business.
“I come here on behalf of Charles Bingley and Caroline Bingley, but also for my own satisfaction,” Darcy told Wickham, and was pleased to see a first flicker of uncertainty in his over-confident expression.
“I am pleased to inform you that Miss Bingley has accepted a proposal of marriage this afternoon, from John Tellington, Earl of Grantchester. They will be married as soon as the formalities are completed.”
For several seconds, George Wickham stood there stunned. Then he turned and hurled a wooden chair at the wall with a yell of thwarted rage as he realised he had been outmanoeuvred and cheated of his winnings yet again.
“You bastard, Darcy!” he shouted, followed by a string of even less savoury invective.
Darcy listened with folded arms until Wickham’s flow of insults slowed. They had fought often enough in their youth that he hoped Wickham would think better of any physical attack, knowing that he would usually lose.
“I cannot take all the credit, Wickham,” Darcy said coolly, thinking of the roles played by both Elizabeth Bennet and Lord Grantchester, “much as I would happily be the sole instrument of your destruction.”
“You’ve won, I’ve lost,” Wickham spat back moodily. “There is no need to stand here and gloat over all you have that I do not.”
“Honour, dignity, and respect, you mean?” Darcy suggested. “They are free to the poorest man amongst us, but you have disdained them. You deserve to be outcast.”
“It is easy for rich men to speak like that,” Wickham retorted. “Why don’t you just get out?”
“I haven’t finished with you yet,” Darcy replied. “There’s a letter I want you to write, resigning your commission and committing to leaving Hertfordshire for good.”
“So, you drive me first from Derbyshire and now from Hertfordshire. Am I to have no refuge?”
Wickham’s tone was melodramatic and self-pitying. It drew no sympathy from Darcy, who had heard it all a hundred times before. Everything was someone else’s fault, and Wickham was always entitled to more…
“If I had my way, you would have none,” Darcy told him. “However, there are many places in the country where I will never find you. You would be wisest to make your home there.”
“And if I don’t?” Wickham said with defiance. “What if I refuse your demands?”
“Then, from my consultation of local tradesmen, I imagine it would not be hard to put you in a debtor’s prison, if not a criminal one. If you write the letter I have requested and vanish tonight, however, there will also be some money for you.”
“Are you threatening me or bribing me?”
“Both, although I assure you the money comes from Bingley’s purse and not mine. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am threatening you and he is bribing you, but it is a payment for speed as much as for execution. If you do not cooperate with me tonight, you get nothing.”
If there had been another chair to throw, Wickham looked as though he might throw it. Then, not finding one, he seemed to become resigned and went to a battered desk in the corner of the sitting room, taking out a writing tray, paper and ink from its drawer.
“I’m tired of this dump anyway,” Wickham said sullenly as he picked up a quill and dipped it in the ink. “What do you want me to write?”
At Darcy’s dictation, the letter was written within ten minutes, formally resigning Wickham from the regiment with immediate effect and stating his commitment to leaving Hertfordshire forever.
“Sign and date it,” Darcy snapped when Wickham seemed ready to lay down the pen without these necessary touches.
In a few more seconds, it was done. When the ink was dry, Darcy folded the paper without another word and placed it in his pocket, dropping a small bag of gold and silver coins onto the desk in exchange.
“Goodbye, Wickham,” Darcy bid him from the doorway. “Make sure that we never meet again.”
“Go to hell, Darcy,” snarled the other man.
Within a half hour, Wickham’s letter was delivered directly into the hands of Colonel Forster, and Darcy breathed a long sigh of relief as he remounted his horse.
Now, he could finally undertake the mission on which he had been set all day, even while he worked to untangle Wickham’s evil web. His suit might now be dusty and his hair less tidily combed than when he left Netherfield that morning, but Darcy’s heart was more certain than ever of what he wanted.
The victory over Wickham even buoyed Darcy somewhat, giving him a hope that he had not quite dared to feel before. Was it possible that Elizabeth might love him too? Knowing that there was only one way to find out, he took the road for Longbourn.
∞∞∞
A rather puzzled and unusually subdued Mrs Bennet showed Darcy out into the modest Longbourn gardens.
Charles Bingley was already there, strolling arm-in-arm with Jane Bennet along the paths around the lawns.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth walked alone near the wilderness at the other end of the garden, twirling a sprig of some bush or shrub in her hands thoughtfully as she paced with discernible impatience, as though waiting for something, or someone…
Was she waiting for him? Darcy hoped so. He wished himself on her mind as much as she was on his.
“Mr Bingley and Jane are here, Mr Darcy,” Mrs Bennet rattled on. “They are to be married, you know, and very pleased I am to hear it. He is a fine young man of fortune, even if he has no title, and his sister is to marry Lord Grantchester directly.”
“So I believe, Madame,” remarked Darcy, finding himself no longer as irked by Mrs Bennet as he had been on earlier acquaintance. The woman had at least one very great claim to his affection, after all, for she had raised Elizabeth. “It all seems very well settled, to my mind.”
“I suppose it is,” she sighed. “Ah well, there is Lizzy over there, although why you should particularly want to speak to her, I do not know. Will you stay to supper, Mr Darcy, now you are here?”
Darcy looked towards the woman who had come to hold his heart in her hands. Elizabeth was strolling in the long grasses, about to disappear from sight through a stone gateway.
“I do not know,” he replied. “It depends upon…”
It depended on Elizabeth’s answer, which would either keep him at her side forever, or send him away desolate.
“No doubt your sister is waiting for you at Netherfield Park,” Mrs Bennet completed his sentence with her own construction. “Well, tell me if you change your mind. We have a large ham and plenty for everyone.”
After a few short words with Bingley to confirm the success of his day’s work in Meryton, Darcy followed Elizabeth through into the wilderness beyond the main gardens. Bingley and Miss Bennet made no attempt to detain him, and he had no wish to delay.
Clearing his throat as he walked through the stone gate, he saw Elizabeth stop and turn towards him, her hazel eyes sparkling and animated in the evening sunlight. Darcy strode up to her and stopped, looking for some encouragement and finding it.
“You came,” Elizabeth said softly, and he nodded.
“I was always coming here to see you today,” Darcy told her. “But I was delayed.”
They smiled at one another and then each looked away a little shyly, not ready quite yet for the more serious conversation that must be had.
“I believe everything is resolved,” Elizabeth remarked. “All the tangles are finally unravelled, and everything is as it should be.”
“Much is resolved thanks to your resourcefulness, compassion, and inventive thinking,” Darcy told her. “I believe that Lord Grantchester and Miss Bingley may well have a happy marriage.”
“Of its own kind,” Elizabeth agreed. “She knows of Lord Keeble and is going into this with her eyes open. I wish all three of them well.”
“Miss Bingley was more than willing to enter a civilised arrangement which gives her fortune, title, and two of the most sought-after men in London as her regular escorts,” Darcy said with a small laugh.
“Yes, that may well make her happy.”
“Shall we walk?” Darcy suggested, offering his arm and feeling a surge of warmth and affection as Elizabeth took it.
“I understand now why you could not explain yourself in opposing Jane’s engagement to Lord Grantchester,” she told him as they strolled. “I must apologise to you for so many of the things I said to you.”
“I am sorry that I could not tell you earlier,” Darcy replied. “I am sincerely sorry that you had to stumble on the truth in a way that must have been shocking for all concerned.”
“I know you could not,” she murmured. “I should not have leapt to such conclusions about you, and I regret so much. I was wrongheaded and rash.”
“Society is not tolerant of men like Grantchester and Keeble, and it was not my secret to tell,” Darcy pressed on earnestly. “Whatever you thought of me then, or think of me now, I was trying to do my best for my friend Grantchester, for your sister, and for my own moral sense…”
“Hush!” Elizabeth stopped him by taking both of his hands in hers and squeezing them gently in a way that made Darcy’s blood rush strongly in his veins.
“Dearest, sweetest Elizabeth…” he breathed, scarcely daring to believe that this was finally happening.
“Fitzwilliam Darcy, I believe you might be the best man I have ever known,” Elizabeth declared as she released his hands and looked tenderly at him, a smile curving her lips. “I do not think I know anyone finer or nobler.”
“Lord Grantchester did something I could not today, when he offered himself to save Miss Bingley,” Darcy said thoughtfully. “It was noble, and it was honourable, and I could never have done it, because my heart was already yours. I suppose he is a better man than I am.”
Elizabeth laughed at him affectionately. “Are you apologising to me for not being noble enough to marry another lady?” she inquired, and at that, Darcy was forced to laugh, too. “If so, I suggest you do not.”
“I am trying to tell you, in my own imperfect way, that there is no other woman for me in the world, Elizabeth Bennet. You are more to me than nobility or honour. I came here to ask for your hand in marriage, and I…”
Before Darcy reached the end of his sentence, Elizabeth reached out to take his hand and brought it to her lips. The warmth of this intimate touch seared him and seemed to temporarily answer every question still unanswered.
“You had better kiss me now,” she told him. “For then we must go inside and tell everyone that there is to be a third wedding. After that, we will have no peace.”
There could be no resisting such an invitation. Enfolding Elizabeth in his arms, Darcy bent his head to the lips of the woman he loved, in a kiss he wished could last forever.