CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The wedding took place a fortnight later, in London, small and hurried and entirely without the joy such an occasion ought to have carried.
Elizabeth attended at her father's insistence, though every part of her recoiled from the necessity of it, and stood beside Jane in a church that felt, to her, more like a courtroom than a chapel.
Lydia, radiant with the particular obliviousness that had gotten her into this trouble in the first place, chattered through the whole affair as though she had achieved some triumph rather than survived a disaster narrowly averted, and Wickham stood beside her with his usual easy charm fully restored, no trace whatsoever of the desperate man who had, by all accounts Elizabeth had gathered secondhand, been discovered in considerably reduced circumstances only weeks before.
"You look unwell, sister," Wickham said, finding Elizabeth alone for a moment near the church door while the rest of the party gathered their things. "Marriage does not seem to agree with your constitution, and you have not even attempted it yourself."
"I am simply tired, Mr. Wickham."
"Tired. Yes." He studied her with an attention that had nothing friendly left in it, though his voice stayed light.
"I have heard the most curious thing, in my dealings these past weeks.
A rumor, nothing more, of a certain document.
A list, I believe, kept by a certain lady, recording rather indelicate words once spoken to her by a certain proud gentleman of my acquaintance. "
Elizabeth's blood went cold, though she kept her face composed through years of practice. "I have no notion what you mean."
"No. Of course not." His smile did not reach his eyes.
"Curious, is it not, how a man's pride can undo him twice over, once in the speaking of a thing, and once more when the words refuse to stay buried.
I wonder what such a document might be worth, in the right hands, to a family so recently rescued from one scandal and so poorly equipped to survive a second. "
"Are you threatening me, sir, at my own sister's wedding?"
"I am observing," Wickham said, "that certain accounts have a way of coming due regardless of how carefully one believes them settled. Give my regards to Mr. Darcy, when next you see him. I understand he settles debts rather generously, when properly motivated."
He walked away before she could answer, rejoining Lydia's side with his usual practiced ease, and Elizabeth stood alone by the church door with her heart pounding, understanding, with sudden dreadful clarity, exactly what he had just told her without ever quite saying it: that Darcy had known, that Darcy had bought Wickham's silence about something far more dangerous than a hasty marriage, and that Darcy had never once mentioned a word of it to her.
She said nothing to Jane, nothing to her aunt and uncle, though the exchange sat in her chest like a stone the entire carriage ride back to the Gardiners' house.
She locked herself in the small room she had been given and took out the writing box, and stared at the list she had kept for two months as private evidence, her own careful accounting of a wrong done to her, and understood for the first time that it had never been hers alone to protect.
It had become, without her ever intending it, a weapon in someone else's hands, and a man she was only just beginning to trust had apparently spent weeks quietly fighting to keep it from being used.
She did not know whether to be grateful or furious.
Both feelings arrived together, tangled past separating, and she sat with the box open on her lap long after the candle had burned low, waiting for a knock at the door that did not come, and wondering how long Darcy had intended to let her believe the danger had never existed at all.
Word came two days later that Mr. Darcy had called, and would wait upon Mr. Gardiner that afternoon on a matter of business before the family's return to Longbourn.
Elizabeth arranged, with more determination than subtlety, to be alone in the small back parlor when he arrived, and heard his step in the passage before Mrs. Gardiner could announce him properly.
He stopped in the doorway the moment he saw her, and something in his face, some careful composure he had clearly arranged for the business meeting ahead, faltered visibly.
"Miss Bennet. I had thought to speak with your uncle."
"You may speak with me first." She rose, and found her hands were not quite steady, though her voice held firm.
"Mr. Wickham found occasion, at my sister's wedding, to inform me that a certain document of mine has become known to him, and that he considered it a matter of some financial interest. I understand from the manner of his hinting that you were already fully aware of this before I was. "
Darcy's face went very still. "Elizabeth."
"How long," she said, "have you known that my own private words, kept for my own private reasons, were being used against you, and against me, without my ever once being told the danger existed at all?"