Chapter Twenty-One
Time, which had once seemed both stagnant and cruelly unyielding, now passed with a different quality altogether—swift in its outward progression, but heavy with all that lay beneath it.
For Darcy, the weeks that followed were marked not by rest, but by deliberate movement.
He did not seek Wickham at once after that first encounter.
Instead, he allowed the acquaintance to grow as such things must—gradually, without design apparent to any but himself.
He returned to the gaming hell on several evenings, sometimes to observe, sometimes to play with sufficient restraint to maintain credibility, and always with the purpose of drawing nearer to the man who had altered the course of his life.
Wickham received him readily.
That, in itself, did not surprise Darcy. He soon perceived that Wickham now welcomed any society that did not demand too much of him. The careless charm remained, but it had worn thin at the edges through excess and something deeper and less easily named.
Darcy watched, listening and waiting.
The first of their more substantial conversations took place on an evening thick with smoke and restless energy, when the gaming tables were crowded and the air seemed to hum with the fever of risk.
Darcy arrived later than usual and found Wickham drinking regularly, though he was not so far gone as to be insensible. He sat at the far end of the room, one arm draped loosely over the back of his chair, his attention divided between the cards before him and the glass at his side.
“Ah,” Wickham said as Darcy approached, his expression brightening with easy familiarity. “My Sardinian friend. Come to observe again, or will you at last risk something of consequence?”
“I have learned that observation is often the safer course,” Darcy replied, taking the chair beside him.
“Safer, yes,” Wickham said with a crooked smile. “But far less entertaining.”
“That depends upon one’s purpose.”
Wickham studied him with suspicion on his face, then laughed.
“You are not a man who plays for amusement alone, I think.”
Darcy inclined his head. “Few men are, when they are honest with themselves.”
Wickham’s gaze lingered, seeming to weigh the remark, before he turned back to the table.The game progressed.
Coins changed hands. Wickham lost more than he won, though he seemed less concerned with the outcome than with the act itself.
He drank between rounds, not heavily, but steadily, maintaining a deliberate distance from the world through constant effort.
When at last he pushed back from the table, his purse lighter than before, he gestured toward a secluded corner.
“Come,” he said. “Let us leave these vultures to their feast.”
Darcy followed.
They took seats somewhat removed from the press of the room, where conversation might be carried on without immediate interruption. A servant appeared with fresh glasses, and Wickham accepted his with a nod before raising it in a loose approximation of a toast.
“To fortune,” he said. “Though she is a fickle mistress.”
Darcy did not raise his own glass.
“Is she?” he asked.
Wickham smirked faintly. “You would argue otherwise?”
“I might argue,” Darcy said evenly, “that fortune is less fickle than men suppose—and that what appears as chance is often the result of choices not fully understood.”
Wickham gave a short laugh. “Ah. A philosopher.”
“Hardly.” Darcy swirled his glass, watching the liquid spin.
“Then a man who has not lost enough to learn better.”
Darcy regarded him steadily. “Or one who has lost enough to consider the matter more closely.”
The words seemed to strike somewhere deeper than Wickham expected. For a moment, his expression altered—not entirely, but enough to suggest that something beneath the surface had been touched. Then he shrugged it off.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Though I confess I find it easier not to consider such things too deeply.”
“And still you do.”
Wickham glanced at him, amused. “Do I?”
“Your tone suggests it.”
Wickham leaned back, studying him with renewed interest. “You are an unusual man, Count Vendicarsi.”
“So, I am told.”
Wickham swirled the contents of his glass, watching the liquid catch the dim light. “My good fortune,” he said after a moment, almost idly, “came at a steep price.”
Darcy did not respond at once. There it is. “And do you find the exchange worth it?” he asked.
Wickham’s smile returned, though it lacked its former ease. “Worth is a curious measure,” he said. “One seldom knows it at the time. Only afterward—when the cost is already paid.”
“And what is to be done then?”
Wickham laughed again, though there was little humor in it. “Done? Nothing, I imagine. I drink. I play. One carries on as though nothing has altered.”
Darcy’s gaze did not waver. “Or one seeks to make amends.”
Wickham’s expression sharpened. “For what purpose?”
“For justice,” Darcy said. “Because it is right.”
Wickham’s eyes flickered. “Justice,” he repeated. “You imply it is something readily obtained.”
“It is not,” Darcy said. “But that does not make it less necessary.”
Wickham held his gaze for a long moment, then he looked away. “Some things,” he said, his voice lower now, “are too final.”
Darcy did not press him further.
Not yet.
The second occasion came some days later, in a more private setting.
Darcy had encountered Wickham not at the gaming tables, but at a lesser-known establishment—a place where gentlemen gathered not solely for gambling, but for conversation, drink, and the temporary illusion of ease.
Wickham was seated near the fire when Darcy entered, one leg stretched out before him, his posture relaxed in a way that suggested both comfort and indifference.
“You are becoming a regular feature of my evenings,” Wickham said as Darcy approached.
“I might say the same of you.”
Wickham gestured to the empty chair opposite him.
“Sit. You may convince me to reform.”
Darcy took the seat. “I had not thought you inclined toward reform.”
“Nor had I,” Wickham said lightly. “But stranger things have happened.”
A servant brought wine. They drank.
For a time, their conversation was of little consequence—society, the weather, the endless rotation of faces and names that defined London's social world.
Beneath it all, Darcy felt the same undercurrent, a sense of something unresolved pressing against the surface.
It was Wickham who spoke first.
“You asked me, the other night,” he said, not looking directly at Darcy, “whether the exchange was worth it.”
Darcy inclined his head. “I did.”
Wickham stared into his glass. “I thought it was,” he said. “At the time.”
“And now?”
Wickham smiled faintly. “Now, I find that what I gained sits uneasily upon me.”
Darcy said nothing.
Wickham’s voice lowered. “My wife,” he said, almost reluctantly. “You know I am married?”
“I had heard as much.”
Wickham nodded. “She is…everything one might wish for in such a situation.”
Darcy’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly upon his glass. “And even so,” he said, “you do not appear content.”
Wickham let out a slow breath. “I do not deserve her,” he said bluntly.
Darcy’s gaze sharpened. That was unexpected. “Few men believe themselves deserving of what is best in their lives,” he said.
Wickham shook his head. “No. You do not understand.” He laughed, though the sound was strained. “I cannot bear to be around her.”
Darcy felt a flicker of something dangerously close to anger. “And why is that?” He struggled to keep his tone nonchalant.
Wickham hesitated. “She reminds me of—” He stopped.
The silence that followed was heavy. “Of what?” Darcy prompted.
Wickham shook his head, dismissing it. “No matter. It is nothing.”
Darcy leaned forward. “Nothing rarely troubles a man so greatly.”
Wickham met his gaze then, and there was no pretense in him at all. “Of what I was,” he said. “Of what I might have been.”
Darcy held his eyes. “And what prevents you from being so now?”
Wickham’s expression hardened. “Reality,” he said.
“Reality is not so immutable as you suppose.”
Wickham laughed, though his hand trembled as he raised his glass. “You speak as though men may simply choose to undo their past.”
“They may choose to answer for it,” Darcy said.
Wickham’s gaze snapped to his.
Darcy detected a familiar, unyielding quality in his own tone, one that belonged more to the man he had once been than to the identity he now wore, and the effect upon Wickham was immediate. For an instant, Wickham’s expression changed. Recognition flickered.
“Impossible,” he muttered.
Darcy did not move.
Wickham shook his head, dismissing the thought with visible effort, and took a long swallow of wine. His hand was not entirely steady. “You remind me,” he said after a moment, forcing a lighter tone, “of a man I once knew.”
Darcy’s pulse quickened, though his expression remained shuttered. Blast, I ought to be more careful. “Do I?” Thankfully, his voice did not betray him.
“Yes.” Wickham studied him more closely now. “He had a similar way of speaking. Very certain. Very…unyielding.”
Darcy inclined his head. “And what became of him?”
Wickham’s gaze dropped. “He died,” he said.
The words fell between them. Darcy felt them like a blow—and still, he did not flinch. “I see,” he said.
Wickham swallowed. “A pity,” he added, though the word seemed insufficient even to his own ears.
Darcy regarded him steadily. “Yes,” he said.
“A great pity.”
Silence followed. The fire crackled in the grate. Around them, the murmur of other conversations continued, oblivious to the tension that had settled between the two men.
Wickham leaned back at last, as though the moment had cost him more than he wished to show. “You are a curious companion, Count Vendicarsi,” he said.
“I am.”
Wickham smiled faintly. “Perhaps that is why I find your company tolerable.”
Darcy inclined his head. “Perhaps.” But as he rose to take his leave some time later, he knew that something had shifted.