Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
The outbuilding where Lydia was held was chilly, even in August. It was tiny, damp, and smelled strongly of rotten wood and mouse droppings. She could hear mice or other small animals rustling in the corners and in the pile of hay against the wall.
Lydia sat in a heavy chair, her hands free, but manacled to the floor by her ankle with a device Wickham had stolen from the militia camp. Her foot throbbed painfully from the hard, cold iron. Her bonnet was gone. Her hair was half fallen from its pins.
Though she had cried earlier–infuriatedly, tempestuously, fleetingly–she was no longer weeping now. She was incensed.
Mr Wickham paced before her, wearing out his own emotions and the scattered pattern of his plans. He had been ranting for what seemed like hours. It was quite obvious that his charming facade had hidden not only a propensity for evil, but also at least a slight tendency towards madness.
“You do not understand,” he said for at least the thirtieth time. “They owe me. Darcy owes me. My godfather owes me. They have always owed me.”
“You are quite mad.” Lydia glared at him. “I hope you realise that.”
He ignored her. “Darcy has had every advantage. Every comfort. Every expectation.”
“So have you, or so I understand,” she observed.
“And what of me?” He spun around and gestured wildly. “What was I to have?”
“An astonishingly magnificent disgrace brought about by your own greed and corruption?” Lydia asked.
He turned on her angrily. “You would do well not to offend me.”
“You would do well to stop ranting,” Lydia shot back. “Did you bring me out here just to bore me to death? I thought waiting for Kitty to draw flowers was tedious.”
“I should have married Georgiana.” He resumed pacing. “My godfather ought to have offered me Georgiana.”
“He would as soon recommend you to marry Princess Sophia.” Lydia giggled.
“What did you say?”
“Georgiana is too good for you. Mr Darcy would have never offered her to you. The fact that you expected it is evidence that you are as mad as a March hare.”
Lydia continued mercilessly. “She is too well-bred for you, too pretty for you, too gentle for you. And far too sane for you. She is above you in every possible way. Did you expect Mr Darcy to marry his daughter to the lazy, selfish, insane, self-important, low-born son of his servant?”
This earned her a sharp backhand that rocked her chair backwards and split her lip. Before she had time to do more than gasp, he turned and left her, slamming the door behind him.
When he returned two hours later, he had paper and a pencil.
Lydia narrowed her eyes, wondering from where he had stolen it as he sat across from her at the small table and began to write. Suddenly, a tiny spider ran across his hand, and he jumped back from the table, screaming like a girl.
“You have the heart of a lion, I see.” Lydia would have been amused if her circumstances were not so dire. “It is only a spider.”
“Say what you like, I cannot bear them.” Wickham inspected the table before sitting back down to continue his work. His expression turned gleeful as he wrote. “If Darcy values his own interests, he will pay, and handsomely indeed.”
“For what?” Lydia asked sceptically. “Why would Mr Darcy pay you for me? I am not his responsibility.”
“To settle matters.” He kept writing. “Once I am engaged to you, Miss Lydia, Darcy will have every reason to be generous.”
“Engaged to me?” Lydia was astounded, but intent on offending him at every opportunity. “Why would you engage yourself to me? And why on earth would I accept you? I may be no Georgiana Darcy, but even I am a gentlewoman, and above the son of a steward.”
“For your connection to your sister, stupid.” He laughed unpleasantly. “For someone so far above me, you are exceedingly dense. And do not play superior. You were half in love with me when last we met.”
Lydia suddenly understood. This had never been about her. This was about retribution and money. And about Elizabeth’s courtship.
Anger coursed through her. “You are even more wicked than Mary and Charlotte said.”
He laughed again as he completed his letter and folded it clumsily.
He then rose, kicked his chair away and moved toward her.
Something in his expression shifted. There was nothing charming or handsome about him now.
His countenance betrayed something that Lydia could not identify.
Still, it filled her instantly with terror.
He grinned and sat on the edge of the table, far too close for her comfort. “Your cooperation would make this much easier, Miss Lydia. If I had asked you to marry me a fortnight ago, you would have thrown off your respectability to crawl into my bed.”
“Yet somehow I would now rather crawl into a nest of rats.”
He laughed in derision and reached for her.
Lydia Bennet responded with the concentrated fury of an insulted wildcat. She kicked him as hard as she could, the cold iron manacle digging painfully into her leg.
Wickham cried out in surprise and fury and grasped a fistful of her hair .
She twisted violently and raked both hands across his face before he could completely subdue her. She dug her nails as deeply into his flesh as she could, knowing that she had missed his eyes, and regretting it acutely.
Wickham emitted a most rewarding scream, followed by a string of language that would have earned Mary a swooning spell. He staggered backwards, clutching his face. Blood ran heavily between his fingers.
“You little fiend!”
Lydia gasped and glared at him with rancour. “If you touch me again, I will render you unrecognisable.”
Wickham roared and rushed at her. Before he could even brush her with his outstretched hands, she lifted both feet, manacle and all, and kicked out as hard as she could, directly in a location that her father had once informed her would incapacitate any man if she ever found herself in trouble.
Wickham dropped like a stone in front of her, his face turning blue.
Lydia wondered if she had killed him. For a moment, the man seemed to be completely unable to breathe as she looked on in terrified interest.
Finally, he sucked in a ragged breath and let out a howl that ought to have been heard for miles. Lydia wondered how far away from other people they were.
He attempted to rise, then doubled over onto the floor and clutched the front of his trousers.
He wheezed for some minutes, and Lydia wondered if he was actually weeping.
At length, he crawled away, then collapsed on the pile of filthy hay near the back wall.
The villain lay bleeding, swearing, and eventually fell asleep.
Lydia waited quietly as dark fell, thinking wildly of how she might escape. Hours passed, but she never fell asleep. She was wide awake, unwilling to be vulnerable if the fiend woke.
Perhaps two hours before dawn, Wickham stirred.
He rose stiffly, one hand pressed gingerly to the front of his trousers, and the other dabbing at his scratched face.
The two of them glared at each other, Lydia unwilling to show fear.
He retrieved the letter from where it had fallen upon the floor during their struggle. “I shall return presently. If you make a single sound while I am gone–”
“Do not waste your breath,” she said defiantly.
“You are too far from even the closest farm. There is no point in even gagging you. No one will hear you. It is your own breath you will waste.”
“I believe that we already established that your will means nothing to me.” Lydia refused to look away, though her heart pounded in her chest.
He ignored this and pocketed the ransom letter, then left her. The flimsy door closed, and a latch turned.
Lydia began to count as she listened to his footsteps fade into the woods.
She struggled with the manacle as she did so.
Only when she was certain that twenty minutes had passed and that Wickham must be entirely out of earshot did she inhale and scream.
Not gracefully; not refined, nor ladylike by any possible method of measurement.
A scream of such violence, it should have awakened Lucifer himself from the very depths of hell. Then again; and again. She screamed until her throat was hoarse, until her eyes hurt and her head pounded.
Finally… she heard footsteps approaching, and a frightened voice outside.
“Hallo?”
“In here!” Lydia began to weep. “Please, help me!”
The door was ripped open. A young farm boy, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, stared at her in horror.
“Good Lord,” he breathed in surprise.
“Indeed,” Lydia croaked, her voice spent. “Can you open this contraption on my ankle, please?”
Three hours later, dirty, enraged, her energy spent, and wrapped in the boy’s coat, Lydia Bennet was presented at the back kitchen door of the Bennets’ cottage like a highly indignant parcel.
The cook opened the door and screamed, which summoned the entire household in approximately five seconds.
Peter and a small group of servants burst in first. Then Mr Bennet, followed by the entire family.
“Lydia!” Jane seized her.
Charlotte looked as though she might either faint or kill someone. Possibly both.
Mr Bennet was pale as death as he examined her and took stock of her condition. “Who are you and where was she?”
The farm boy, suddenly in the uncomfortable centre of gentrified chaos, removed his cap.
“Jacob Evins, sir. I found ‘er screamin’ ‘er ‘ead off in an outbuildin’ in the woods.
Was chained up. We ‘id ‘er in the ‘ouse wid me mam an’ sister while we went out to lay in wait fer the villain’s return. Me father an’ brothers ‘ave the officer locked up, sir.”
Mr Bennet was aghast. “You what?”
“He lef’ ‘er fer a while. Ta deliver a note, she said. That’s when I found ‘er. Then he come back fer ‘er.”