Chapter Nine A Bright Idea in a Dark Room
WICKHAM REMAINED AT the Philips residence for twelve minutes after Miss Elizabeth left.
He spent five of them staring at the door, three accepting Mrs Philips’s concern for his sudden pallor and four waiting for a cloud to settle over the High Street.
The performance required patience. A gentleman could not flee from a drawing room after kissing a woman’s hand merely because her blood had awakened an ancient hunger and turned his eyes black.
People noticed that sort of thing, especially in Meryton, where a silence of eight seconds qualified as an event.
When the sun disappeared behind a bank of cloud, Wickham excused himself on the grounds of military duty.
Denny and Carter accepted the explanation because neither had enough experience of the militia to identify a military duty when one appeared.
Wickham bowed to Mrs Philips and left before Mr Collins returned with a bishop, a crucifix, or whatever else clergymen employed when their instincts exceeded their understanding.
His rooms lay on the upper floor of a house near the officers’ lodgings.
Reaching them required the careful negotiation of three shop awnings, a covered passage, and twenty exposed feet of pavement.
Wickham crossed the final distance under the cloud, entered the house, and climbed the stairs without acknowledging his landlady’s attempt to discuss supper.
He closed his chamber door, turned the key, and drove the bolt into place. The shutters had been left drawn, but a narrow thread of daylight entered between them and lay across the floorboards. Wickham seized a blanket from the bed and wedged it into the opening until the light disappeared.
Darkness filled the room.
The lodgings contained a bed, a washstand, a wardrobe, and two chairs, one of which existed chiefly to obstruct him. Wickham struck it with his knee while crossing the room, kicked it aside, and resumed pacing.
His charm had lasted until the door closed. It deserted him now with the same efficiency it had shown whenever no one remained to admire it.
Darcy had threatened him in the High Street, Hurst had mentioned debts which should have remained buried with the men who held them, and Elizabeth Bennet had refused to believe a perfectly respectable accusation unsupported by fact. Of the three offences, hers was the most irritating.
Wickham had not demanded unquestioning devotion.
He had simply expected her to hear that Darcy was proud, unjust, and responsible for the loss of a fortune, then arrange the details herself.
Most people were grateful for the opportunity.
Give them an injured expression, a dead benefactor, and a refusal to speak from motives of honour, and they constructed the gallows without requiring further assistance.
Miss Elizabeth had asked questions. Worse, she had defended Darcy.
Wickham turned at the wall and paced back to the bed, replaying her answer in a voice made unnecessarily intelligent by memory.
Darcy might seem proud, she had said, but she had witnessed honourable principles in him.
Wickham could tolerate a woman admiring Darcy’s estate, appearance, or ten thousand a year.
Those were ordinary failures of judgement.
Admiring his principles suggested that the man had been conducting himself well in private, which was both unlikely and personally offensive.
Darcy had also apologised to her.
That detail had disturbed Wickham’s smile, because his nemesis apologised with the frequency of solar eclipses. If he had surrendered one voluntarily, Elizabeth Bennet mattered to him.
Wickham stopped in front of the washstand. His reflection failed to appear in the small mirror above it, leaving the dark room agreeably free of criticism. He poured water into the basin, dipped both hands into it, and remembered Darcy stepping beneath the milliner’s awning.
Your time has come. Prepare to meet your creator.
The word returned with the force of a command.
Creator.
Wickham lifted his wet hands and watched the droplets slide across skin which had not warmed in fifty-one years. Darcy had created him in 1760, although Wickham had required several months of argument to persuade him.
At the time, Wickham had been young, mortal, and burdened by the offensive knowledge that other men had things he deserved. Darcy had Pemberley, rank, authority, wealth, and a life which was unlikely to end. Wickham had charm, excellent teeth, and expectations which refused to become income.
Immortality had seemed the obvious correction.
“Turn me,” Wickham had demanded one winter evening in Darcy’s library.
Darcy stood at the window with his back to the room, watching snow settle over Pemberley’s lawns. He had not moved for so long that a mortal man might have mistaken him for part of the architecture.
“No.”
Wickham poured himself another glass of Darcy’s brandy. “You have not considered the advantages.”
“I considered them before you entered.”
“You require men you can trust.”
Darcy turned from the window. “That argument would improve if made by a man I trusted.”
Wickham had laughed because offence was less useful than persistence. He followed Darcy through the library, positioned himself between him and the door, and began listing the services he might perform across centuries.
Darcy listened until the end. “Conversion will give you strength, hunger, and time. It will not confer wealth, judgement, or rank.”
“Judgement may be acquired.”
“You have shown no inclination towards it,” Darcy replied.
“Then I shall have eternity to begin.”
Darcy’s expression suggested that eternity had already become too long.
He refused again. Wickham returned the following evening, the following week, and every suitable opportunity thereafter. He submitted a formal petition, gave consent before witnesses, and swore obedience to vampire law with the same ease he brought to all promises expected to become inconvenient.
Eventually, Darcy relented.
For the first year, Wickham believed eternity had fulfilled every promise he invented for it.
He could cross a room before a mortal eye followed him.
He could hear heartbeats through doors, compel inconvenient witnesses, and feed without waiting for invitation, affection, or payment.
Human law no longer concerned him because human magistrates rarely suspected that the gentleman smiling at them had consumed the principal witness.
He did not deliberately kill anyone during that year.
Several people awakened as vampires because he misjudged when to stop feeding, but accidents attended every new skill.
A young man learning to ride occasionally fell from the saddle.
A young vampire learning to feed occasionally left the saddle immortal and screaming.
It was unreasonable to demand perfection from either.
Darcy disagreed.
He called the conversions violations. Wickham called them sustenance. Darcy insisted that each new vampire required instruction, sponsorship, and protection. Wickham considered this a boring chore.
Immortality nevertheless developed one serious defect: it did not produce money.
Wickham remained dependent on Darcy’s tolerance and subordinate to his authority.
He had endless years in which to improve his situation, but no estate on which to enjoy them.
Pemberley remained Darcy’s. Every servant obeyed Darcy, every vampire in the household recognised Darcy’s rank and every door opened for Darcy before Wickham reached it.
Then Wickham considered Georgiana.
She was nearly three hundred years old and remained physically as she had been when her mother converted her at fifteen.
Pemberley had protected her so thoroughly that centuries had given her knowledge without experience.
She could discuss music, languages, and changes of dynasty, but one sincere compliment from an unrelated man left her uncertain where to place her hands.
Darcy treated her as something precious and perpetually endangered. Wickham treated her as a woman.
At least, that was how he explained his attention to her.
He listened when she complained of her brother’s restrictions.
He described places she had never visited and societies where an immortal woman might move without her brother’s permission.
He told her that her youth belonged to her rather than the family who preserved it.
Most importantly, he told her that he loved her.
Georgiana believed him because no one had taught her that love could be performed.
She agreed to a binding ritual. Among vampires, the bond carried the weight of mortal marriage and several additional inconveniences involving blood, obedience, and property.
Once joined to Georgiana, Wickham would acquire consequence within the hidden world, access to her fortune, and a position too near Darcy’s own for easy removal.
He had not intended to harm her. He had intended to marry her, enjoy her money, and allow her to remain happy, which seemed a fair division of the spoils.
Unfortunately, Darcy returned to Pemberley before the ritual.
Wickham never discovered what brought him home early. At the time, he suspected divine intervention, although any deity responsible had shown a regrettable preference for Darcy.
The confrontation occurred in Darcy’s study. Wickham entered expecting argument and found Darcy standing behind the desk with the written terms of the proposed binding in one hand.
“You will leave Pemberley tonight,” Darcy ordered.
Wickham closed the door and leaned against it. “Georgiana has consented.”
“She does not understand what you are.”
“She understands that I love her.”
Darcy placed the papers on the desk with extraordinary care. “You do not love her.”