CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The room Wickham had taken was smaller than his debts deserved and larger than his character did, and Darcy found him there on the third evening, sprawled in a chair with a bottle at his elbow and no visible shame whatsoever.
"Darcy." Wickham did not rise. "I confess I did not expect the honor."
"Where is she."
"Safe enough. Down the passage, in lodgings I have taken for her, which I assure you I cannot afford." Wickham poured himself another glass, unhurried. "You look unwell. London does not agree with you, or perhaps it is simply the company."
"You have not married her."
"I have not yet found sufficient reason to." Something sharpened behind Wickham's easy manner, the first honest thing Darcy had seen from him in the whole exchange. "Marriage requires an income, and mine, as you know better than anyone, is somewhat theoretical at present."
Darcy set his hat down on the small table between them, deliberately, and did not sit. "Name your price."
"How refreshingly direct." Wickham smiled, and there was nothing pleasant left in it.
"A living would suit me, though we both know that ship has sailed.
My debts, then, cleared entire. A commission bought somewhere far enough from Hertfordshire that I need not endure your continued disapproval at every assembly.
And a settlement on the girl herself, enough to make the whole arrangement look, to anyone asking, like generosity rather than what it plainly is. "
"You are asking me to purchase your good behavior."
"I am asking you to purchase my silence and my ring, in that order, since one is considerably more valuable to you than the other.
" Wickham leaned forward. "You want this settled quietly, Darcy.
I have watched you my whole life. You have never once been able to tolerate an account left open.
I find myself, for the first time, in a position to make you pay full price for that particular weakness. "
Darcy said nothing, and let the silence stretch, and Wickham, unable to bear it the way he had never been able to bear anything requiring patience, filled it himself.
"There is another matter." Wickham's voice dropped, almost conversational, which made it worse.
"A small thing, I am told, though it might prove larger in the wrong hands.
A proposal you once made, and rather badly, to a certain lady in Kent.
A list of grievances against her family, recited aloud, in full, and I am given to understand the lady in question wrote the whole of it down that same night, word for word. "
Darcy went very still. "Who told you this."
"A servant talks to a servant, and eventually the talk finds its way to a man who knows how to listen for it.
" Wickham's smile widened. "I do not know the contents precisely.
I know enough to guess they would not flatter you, if repeated in the right drawing rooms. Your aunt's servants gossip, Darcy.
So do mine, when I have the coin to keep them talking. "
"You are threatening to expose a private conversation between myself and Miss Bennet."
"I am observing that such a document, if it exists, would ruin more than my reputation, should it become known.
It would ruin hers, twice over, once for having received such an insult, and once more for having kept it, which decent society would find stranger still than the insult itself.
I imagine you would pay handsomely to see that particular account stay closed, quite apart from settling mine. "
Darcy's hands had curled, unbidden, at his sides.
He forced them still, forced his voice level, and understood, with a clarity that frightened him, that he had walked into this room prepared to negotiate for Lydia's marriage and had instead been ambushed by a threat against the one thing he could not simply purchase his way clear of: Elizabeth's own words, in her own hand, now hostage to a man who had never once in his life honored a debt he was not forced to.
"I will pay your debts," Darcy said finally. "I will buy your commission and settle money on Lydia Bennet as though she were my own sister. I will do all of it, and gladly, for her sake and her family's."
"Generous."
"But you will marry her within the fortnight, publicly, without further negotiation, and you will never speak again, to any living soul, of any list, real or imagined, belonging to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
" Darcy's voice had gone very quiet, which Wickham, watching his face, seemed finally to recognize as more dangerous than shouting would have been.
"If I ever hear so much as a whisper of it repeated, in any drawing room in England, I will withdraw every shilling of support I have ever given you, publicly, with full explanation of why, and I will see you ruined so thoroughly that Newcastle itself will not be far enough to hide in. "
Wickham's easy smile faltered, just slightly, the first genuine crack Darcy had seen in it all evening. "You would ruin your own sister's brother in law over a threat you have already agreed to pay to silence."
"I would ruin you for sport, Wickham, and count it cheap at the price." Darcy picked up his hat. "You have named your terms. I accept them. Do not test whether I meant the second half as thoroughly as the first."