The Grand Tour
Mr Darcy’s Grand Tour had taken him no farther than a narrow house off Half Moon Street, rented in the name of a captain presently in Lisbon and therefore unlikely to require it.
It was not comfortable. It was not fashionable. It was not Darcy House. That, Richard had said, was its chief recommendation. There were days when Darcy thought the Continent might almost have been preferable.
France, at least, would not have contained Wickham. Italy would not have contained Miss Bennet. London, unfortunately, contained both.
The thought was unjust to Miss Bennet, who had done nothing to deserve being placed in the same sentence as his brother-in-law, and everything to deserve being left entirely out of his danger.
That, he reminded himself, had been the purpose of Netherfield.
Of silence. Of distance. Of one cruel sentence delivered where Wickham could hear it.
Of no consequence.
The words had served their purpose badly.
“The Grand Tour is holding?” Darcy had asked Richard two days earlier.
“Well enough.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” Richard had said. “It is a strategy. Wickham does not need to believe you are in France. He only needs to be unable to prove you are not.”
The narrow house had three rooms of any consequence and a staircase that announced every visitor before they reached the top of it.
Darcy had learned to recognise the uneven rhythm of Richard’s stride, two steps taken normally and the third faster, a habit from some old injury he never spoke of and Darcy had long since stopped asking about.
He heard it now. Richard came in without knocking, as he always did, and dropped into the chair opposite.
“Well,” he said. “She has met your sister four times now.”
Darcy set down his pen. “Four.”
“The print shop. Twice in the park. And once with Mrs Gardiner and the Gardiner children in attendance. You did not know about the fourth.”
“I did not know about the first, until you told me.”
“Georgiana did not think it wise to write any of it down.” Richard’s mouth twisted, not quite a smile. “Letters can be read by people who are not their intended audience.”
“What does she know?”
“Less than you fear. More than is comfortable,” Richard said. “Georgiana has been careful. But careful is not the same as safe, and you of all people understand the difference.”
“And Miss Elizabeth Bennet?” Darcy asked.
Richard’s brows lifted.
“Do not.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say that Miss Elizabeth Bennet appears to possess both sense and self-command, which is inconvenient for everyone trying to treat her as if she has neither.”
Darcy’s hand closed around the pen until he felt the edge bite into his fingers.
“Has Wickham approached her?”
“Yes.”
Darcy stood so quickly the chair struck the wall behind him. “When?”
“Three days ago,” Richard said. “In a shop near Cheapside. Mrs Gardiner was with her.”
“What did he say to her?”
“I do not know the whole of it. My information comes secondhand, and secondhand information is worth exactly what it costs. What I know is that he spoke of guardianship. Of his claim. Of solicitors and bankers, in a manner designed to be overheard and understood.”
“He threatened her.”
“He informed her. Which is a more dangerous thing, because it leaves nothing for a magistrate to seize hold of.”
Darcy’s hand was still curled where the pen had been.
“And she said nothing that revealed what she knows?”
“By all accounts, she gave him exactly nothing. Mrs Gardiner gave him rather less than that.”
“She should not have been there,” Darcy said. “She should not be in London at all.”
“She is in London because her sister is to be married, and because her aunt and uncle live there, and because young women do not generally arrange their movements around the convenience of men who have told them nothing.” Richard’s tone sharpened slightly.
“You cannot fault her for being where she has every right to be, Darcy.”
“I am not faulting her.”
“You are faulting someone. I would rather it were not the one person in London who has managed to bring us more information about Wickham in three weeks than we have had in years.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Mr Gardiner has friends in the right places, and Miss Bennet has apparently learned when to tell her aunt the truth.”
Darcy stared.
“Yes,” Richard said. “I know. It is a shocking development. A young woman with sense has used it.”
“Richard.”
“Mr Gardiner has heard of unusual banking instructions connected to a Derbyshire estate. More frequent since November. Larger since November. Nothing he can prove, and nothing he can safely repeat, but enough.”
“He knows about the accounts?”
“He knows someone is moving money,” Richard said. “He does not know enough to name it theft.”
“It is theft.”
“It is authority misused until a court agrees with you.”
“And the solicitors?”
“Act on authority, not affection. Wickham signs as guardian. Until August, that signature opens doors yours cannot.”
Darcy crossed to the window. There was nothing to see but rooftops and smoke.
“How much has he moved?”
“Enough that the bank noticed. Not enough, yet, to ruin Pemberley.” Richard’s voice had gone careful. “But he has been moving faster since November. Faster still, I am told, in the last fortnight.”
“Since the ball.”
“Since the fire, I would guess. The ball only confirmed what the fire already told him.”
“Told him what?”
“That you suspect him. That you have allies. That August is no longer a date he can simply wait out and hope you have grown careless. Someone expecting years to manage moves slowly. Someone counting months moves the way Wickham is moving now.”
“Then he means to take what he can,” Darcy said, “before he loses the rest.”
“That is my reading of it, yes.”
“And if he succeeds? If the money is gone, moved beyond any solicitor’s reach, before August?”
Richard did not answer at once. “Then you inherit an estate with a hole in it,” he said finally, “and a guardian who has made himself very difficult to prosecute, because men with money well hidden have a way of becoming men with very good lawyers.”
“There is also,” Richard added, more quietly, “the other possibility.”
“Which is?”
“That a frightened man with nothing left to lose stops being merely a thief.”
For a moment Darcy was no longer in the narrow London house.
He was in the stable yard at Pemberley, Caesar wild-eyed and sweating, the tampered saddle before him.
He was on the bridge, hearing timber crack beneath his horse.
He was in the smoke at Netherfield, Elizabeth somewhere beyond a locked door and Wickham’s careful hands nowhere to be seen.
“Stops,” he said, “as though he has not already crossed that line.”
Richard did not deny it.
“No. But desperation makes men careless. Careless men are easier to catch.”
“And easier to provoke.”
“Yes.”
Darcy returned to his chair, though he did not sit. He rested one hand on its back.
“Then we cannot simply wait.”
“We are not simply waiting.” Richard’s voice held an edge of patience worn thin.
“My father has solicitors speaking where solicitors may speak, and men placed where men may be placed without making a spectacle of it. Mr Gardiner is asking questions in places where questions are noticed. I have men watching the house, the bank, and now, it seems, your sister’s morning walks.
You are not idle, Darcy. You are constrained. ”
“It does not feel different.”
“No,” Richard said. “I imagine it does not.”
“Georgiana,” Darcy said. “If he suspects she has been speaking to anyone…”
“He suspects something. He does not know what. She is careful. She has always been careful. It is the one skill he taught her without meaning to.”
The fire had burned low and not been tended.
“I want to see her,” Darcy said.
“You cannot.”
“I am aware of what I cannot do, Richard. I asked what I want.”
“Write to her,” Richard said. “Through me. I will see it reaches her safely, and nowhere near a desk Wickham can search.”
“And Miss Elizabeth?” he said finally.
“What about her?”
“Nothing,” Darcy said. “I am asking what I cannot do.”
For once, Richard did not answer with a joke.
“No. You cannot write to her.”
Darcy’s hand tightened on the chair back.
“I know.”
“Any letter would have to pass through too many hands. Even if it reached her safely, the fact of it would matter more than the contents.”
“I know.”
“And if Wickham learned you had written to her…”
“She would become proof,” Darcy said.
Darcy let go of the chair and turned away. “I made her of no consequence to prevent exactly that.”
“And now?”
“Now,” he said, “I think I only told him where to look.”
Richard rose and crossed to the hearth. He stirred the fire with more force than was needed, sending a brief flare of sparks up the chimney.
“Wickham was always going to look,” he said. “You gave him a reason to dismiss her. He has now found reasons not to. That does not mean you led him to her.”
Darcy gave a short, humourless laugh. “It is near enough.”
“No. And thinking so will not help you decide what to do next.”
“You did not use to argue philosophy.”
“I did not used to need to.” Richard returned to his chair, dropping into it with less ceremony than before. “You have always been the sensible one, Darcy. It is disorienting to find you arguing with logic instead of using it.”
“Forgive me. I am told I have had rather an unsettling autumn.”
“You have had an unsettling five years,” Richard said, “and only noticed the autumn.”
That, Darcy could not argue with. The fire had caught properly now, throwing more light into the room than it had managed all morning. Outside, a cart rattled past, and somewhere further off a church bell marked the hour with the flat indifference London reserved for men hiding in borrowed houses.
“What do we do,” Darcy said, “until August?”
“What we have been doing. Watch. Wait. Gather what Mr Gardiner gathers, and add what my own people can add to it, until we have enough that a court need not take Wickham’s word over yours. It is not satisfying. It is, I think, the only thing that actually works.”
“And if he moves faster than we can prove it?”
“Then we move faster too.” Richard’s voice did not rise, but something in it sharpened.
“My father did not put his name, his men, and his solicitors behind this for ornament, Darcy. Nor did I station good men outside coffee-houses in December for my own amusement. We are not waiting idly any more than you are.”
“Thank you,” Darcy said, and meant considerably more by it than the words alone carried.
Richard dismissed the thanks with a flick of his hand.
“Write to Georgiana,” he said instead. “Tell her whatever a brother is permitted to tell a sister he cannot visit. I will see it reaches her.”
At the door, he stopped.
“And Darcy…”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you decide to do about Miss Elizabeth, once August arrives,” Richard said, “do try to manage it with rather more grace than you managed the ballroom.”
He left before Darcy could find a suitable answer, which Richard had clearly intended. Darcy remained standing after the door closed. Richard’s footsteps went down the staircase, the uneven rhythm fading until the house settled again into its borrowed silence.
For a few moments Darcy did nothing. Then he crossed to the desk, drew out a clean sheet, and wrote his sister’s name.
Georgiana.
The ink sat black and final against the page. He had written to her a hundred times before. From Cambridge. From Pemberley. From London, when London had been no more dangerous than too many dinners and too many relations. He had never before found her name so difficult.
My dear sister, he wrote, and stopped.
There was so much he could not say. There was, he was discovering, very little else.