Chapter Twenty-Three
Elizabeth's answer, when it came the following morning, arrived not in the form of a letter but in the shape of a note delivered by a servant she did not immediately recognize, requesting, in terms both urgent and carefully vague, that she meet the writer at a small tea house near Gracechurch Street at her earliest convenience, on a matter the note described only as "a business concerning your own reputation, which I believe you would rather resolve privately than have resolved for you by less careful hands. "
The hand was Wickham's. She recognized it the moment she had read past the first line, and understood, reading the note through a second time, that he had grown impatient with whatever discretion he had originally promised, and meant now to press his advantage more directly.
She did not tell her aunt where she was going, only that she had an errand to attend to, a small deception she regretted even as she practiced it, but she had determined, in the sleepless hours following Fitzwilliam's revelation, that she was thoroughly finished with allowing this business to be managed by anyone other than herself, and Wickham's threat, she judged, was hers to answer directly, whatever risk the answering carried.
She took her aunt's maid as escort, propriety observed if not entirely satisfied, and found Wickham already seated when she arrived, his easy, practiced charm arranging itself into a smile of welcome that she met with an expression considerably colder than any she had ever directed at him before.
"Miss Elizabeth. How very good of you to come. I confess I did not expect quite so prompt a reply."
"I did not come, Mr. Wickham, to exchange pleasantries with a man attempting to extort money from me through the threat of exposing a private matter that concerns me a great deal more nearly than it concerns him.
I came to tell you plainly that your scheme will not succeed, and to ask that you abandon it before it costs you rather more than the small embarrassment you presently hope to relieve through it. "
Wickham's smile flickered, though he recovered it quickly enough. "You misunderstand me, Miss Elizabeth. I offer only discretion, in exchange for a small kindness between old friends"
"You offer nothing, Mr. Wickham, beyond a threat dressed in pleasant language, and I have grown considerably too weary, these past weeks, of pleasant language concealing ugly intentions to be deceived by yours any longer.
" Elizabeth kept her voice low, mindful of the tea house's other occupants, but there was a steel in it she had not permitted herself to fully deploy in any of her previous, more cautious exchanges with him.
"I know your history, Mr. Wickham, considerably more of it now than I did when we first became acquainted in Hertfordshire.
I know what you attempted with Miss Darcy at Ramsgate, and I know that Mr. Darcy's forbearance in that matter has been rather more generous than your conduct has ever deserved.
If you attempt to spread any further version of this present business, true or false, I will make certain that every particular of the Ramsgate affair becomes as widely known as whatever gossip you presently hope to profit from regarding myself, and I do not think, Mr. Wickham, that your present creditors, or your present hopes of advancement in whatever regiment will still have you, will survive the telling nearly so comfortably as mine will survive yours. "
Wickham's composure, for the first time in the whole of their acquaintance, deserted him entirely. "You would not."
"I would, and gladly, if you leave me no other course.
I have spent weeks now watching people I love suffer consequences they did not earn, for a scandal none of us invited, and I find I have very little patience remaining for a man who would add to that suffering merely to relieve a debt of his own making.
Leave London, Mr. Wickham, or leave this particular scheme, whichever you prefer, but leave me and Mr. Darcy both entirely alone, or I promise you, the reckoning that follows will cost you considerably more than whatever small sum you presently hope to extract. "
She rose, before he could summon any further answer, and left the tea house with a composure she had not entirely felt while delivering the speech but that settled over her, walking back toward Gracechurch Street, into something like genuine satisfaction, the particular satisfaction of a woman who had, for the first time in this whole exhausting business, taken a threat directly in hand rather than waiting for someone else to manage it on her behalf.
She did not know, yet, whether her words would prove sufficient to silence him permanently.
But she understood, walking home through the ordinary bustle of a London afternoon entirely indifferent to the private battle she had just fought and, she rather thought, won, that she had reclaimed something in the confrontation beyond mere safety from Wickham's threat: she had reclaimed, after weeks of being spoken of, judged, and managed by people who had never troubled themselves to ask her own account of the matter, the simple and considerable satisfaction of speaking for herself, plainly, to the one person who had least deserved her patience and received, instead, exactly the reckoning his conduct had long invited.