by Pamela Aidan
The rooming inn that answered to the address on his card stood a cut above its neighbors, but that was not saying a great deal. Darcy’s gaze encompassed the unsuccessful attempt at the whitewashing of the walls and the yard within. Both spoke of better days gone long before the hostelry had fallen into the bad company of the encroaching neighborhood. He looked down at the card again. This was surely the place. Darcy breathed deeply, his chest filling with the rancid air of this sad place. The time had inevitably come. His chest grew tight. No, no…he must rule those old emotions! He forced himself to let the pent-up tension release. The degree of happiness to which Elizabeth was entitled, that which he passionately wished for her, depended upon how he conducted this interview.
Taking a step into the yard, he looked into the small, cramped windows of the upper floor that surrounded it. A flash of movement at one caught his eye, and he looked into the smoky glass to see a delicate-shaped face peering down at him. His heart stopped. It was Lydia Bennet, but her resemblance to Elizabeth was just enough to give him a start. Lydia’s face disappeared. He must act quickly. Darcy leapt for the hostelry’s door. Ducking his head as he entered, he quickly crossed the tavern floor and ran up the narrow steps to the rooming hall.
“Wickham.” He called the name down the hall in a voice that held every expectation of an answer. Silence reigned for several moments; then, suddenly, a door opened with a flourish and Wickham stood there, his neckcloth loose and soiled but his head high. “Darcy,” he acknowledged him, a smirk upon his lips as he shrugged his waistcoat closed.
Darcy advanced upon him. “I have come about Miss Lydia Bennet.” Stopping directly in front of Wickham, he looked him squarely in the eye. “I know she is within.”
A hint of wariness flitted across Wickham’s face and as quickly disappeared. “She is why you are here?” His tone was disbelieving. Straightening, he threw back his shoulders in an attempt to block Darcy’s view of the room behind him. “What can you possibly want with her?”
“At present, my business is with you, but I also desire to speak with her and her alone. I trust you have no objection.” Darcy regarded him evenly, conveying as little as possible in his face or voice.
“Of course, I have no objection…if it is business,” Wickham replied. He stepped aside and called over his shoulder, “Lydia! You have a visitor,” then turned back to Darcy with a speculative gleam.
A pair of wide eyes in a flushed countenance appeared next to Wickham’s shoulder. “Mr. Darcy…to see me?” The girl looked up at him doubtfully.
Darcy bowed to her. “Miss Lydia Bennet, may I speak with you in a few moments?” he asked, then added with a glance at her companion, “privately.” At her mute nod, he bowed and turned to Wickham. “Shall we go below?”
Wickham shrugged his shoulders as he buttoned his waistcoat. “If you wish.” With a fleeting salute upon Lydia’s cheek, he turned and without a backward glance sauntered down the hall, leaving Darcy to follow.
Ducking his head to enter the taproom, Wickham then straightened, flung his hand toward a shadowed table next to the far wall, and looked back at Darcy with a raised brow. Nodding curtly, Darcy strode to the table while Wickham informed the innkeeper that they required the house’s best.
“An’ who’s to pay fer it is what I wants to know,” the man growled. “Haven’t seen a bit o’ the brass —”
“My companion will pay, never fear.” Wickham interrupted his speech. “Two of your best, now, and keep the glasses full.” He turned back to Darcy with a brief smirk. “Keeping Lydia is not cheap, and I know you will not mind the expense.” He sat at the table and lapsed into silence while the innkeeper brought their brimming glasses and set them down with an indecorous slam.
“I’ll see the brass first,” he demanded. Meeting the man’s pugnacious look with equanimity, Darcy fished inside his waistcoat pocket and laid some coins out on the table. “All right, then.” The innkeeper’s big hand swept up the coins. Hefting them in his palm, he peered at them for a moment before nodding his satisfaction and leaving the two men to themselves.
Darcy turned back to Wickham in time to catch him warily studying him. Immediately, Wickham looked down to the drink before him and grasped the glass for a long first draw. Darcy did likewise but kept his quarry squarely in his sight. Both glasses were put down on the table, almost in unison. “George,” Darcy addressed him with the name of his boyhood.
Wickham’s gaze flew up to his at the sound. He then wiped at his mouth and sat back. “Darcy,” he responded, a note of tightness in his voice, “perhaps you will now be so good as to tell me why you are here. You must have gone to some lengths to find me. Is it Colonel Forster that you represent? I should think he would believe himself well rid of as unhandy an officer as I.”
“You truly cannot guess my reason?” Darcy regarded him with a mixture of astonishment and disgust that he labored to disguise. “It is, of course, the young woman above! What can you have been thinking to play so carelessly with such a young girl and a gentleman’s daughter as well?”
“I am not to blame!” Wickham bristled indignantly. “Not entirely, at any rate. She would come with me, the silly chit!”
“Why did you leave your regiment, then, if not for the purpose of taking advantage of her?”
“You know very well why!” Wickham grimaced darkly. “I found myself to be quite impossibly in debt. My honor was vigorously called into question by some sniveling brats with quarterly allowances that would set me up for a year. It followed soon after that satisfaction was demanded forthwith. Naturally, I was obliged to leave!”
Darcy’s lips pressed together, stifling a heavy sigh. It was ever thus with George Wickham. “And now what, George? What are your plans?”
“I have not the slightest idea, as yet!” Wickham paused to swallow the last of his glass, then pounded the flat of his hand upon the table to catch the attention of the slatternly woman behind the bar. “Another round, there’s a dear.” But instead of the mistress, a scrawny boy appeared with the pitcher from behind the smoke-darkened bar and carefully filled the glasses with the frothy brew.
“All right an’ tight, govn’r?” he asked with a slow wink only Darcy could see.
“Yes, that will do.” Darcy recognized the urchin Tyke Tanner had designated to shadow him. Good, he thought, Wickham will not be able simply to disappear. The boy pulled on his forelock and retreated to the other side of the taproom.
“I shall resign, of course, but where I shall go or what I shall live on, I cannot say.” Wickham pulled a weary face and sipped at the new foam atop his glass.
“And the young person upstairs?” Darcy persisted. “Why have you not yet married her? Although her father may not be imagined rich, he would be able to do something for you!”
“Marry Lydia? Good God!” Wickham looked at him in mock horror.
“You must have some feelings for her, to have engaged her affections so far as to convince her to fly with you.”
“No convincing was necessary, let me assure you.” He took a gulp of his ale. “She was quite happy to go adventuring.”
“Adventuring! Wickham, she is a gentleman’s daughter! She can no more return to her life after this without marriage than —”
“I promised nothing but some fun and a chance to spite those who did not appreciate her lively spirits.” Wickham leaned over the table, his hand tightly gripping his ale. “Any ill consequences may be squarely laid to her folly alone.” At Darcy’s silence, he sat back and took another gulp. “It was never my design to marry the chit!” he growled. “Her family is scarcely wealthy enough to suit my requirements. Believe me, Darcy.” He raised his glass to him. “I have finally come to see my limitations. My only recourse is to marry very, very well, and that will not likely happen in this part of the country with my debts shadowing me like a hangman. No, I shall have to go elsewhere. Scotland, perhaps, or I understand that there are some exceedingly rich Americans who think an English son-in-l
aw is just the thing to add to the respectability of their names.”
“You realize we are at war with them.”
Wickham shrugged his shoulders. “South America, then, or a rich planter’s daughter in the Indies. It is all the same.”
“I see.” Darcy eyed him steadily and prepared to set out his bait. “What if there were a more immediate source of relief for your present situation? Not as great as a planter’s heiress, by any means, but a comfortable solution.”
The familiar gleam of avarice sprang into Wickham’s eyes. “I might be persuaded, if the solution is suitably ‘comfortable,’ as you say.” He paused, regarding Darcy shrewdly, then asked, “But come now, Darcy, what is your interest in this? How is it that you have become involved?”
There it was, the question he knew would come. Darcy slowly leaned forward, his eyes holding Wickham’s. “Interest? My interest is simply this: that you cease to be a menace to innocent young women. I kept silent concerning your seduction of Georgiana and in so doing have allowed you to prey upon others. If I had spoken, the girl upstairs — and possibly others — would have been kept safe from your careless use of them. But I did not speak, and your indifference to the consequences of your appetites has brought the respectability of an entire family of my personal acquaintance into disrepute. What my silence has effected, I will all do that is in my power to put right.”
“What do you propose?” Wickham had not flinched at the recital of his behavior but shifted forward to the edge of his chair in anticipation. Darcy sat back and held his peace, allowing Wickham to shoulder the weight of beginning the negotiating. “I suppose that a wedding would be expected,” Wickham advanced cautiously.
Darcy rose. He had Wickham’s attention, and that was all he wished to secure at this juncture. Let him flail about in uncertainty for the present. “I wish to speak to Miss Lydia now, if you please.”
“May I come in?” Darcy inquired gently as Lydia Bennet pulled her eyes away from Wickham’s retreating figure and turned them up to him in confusion. She was so very young. How had this been allowed to happen? Neglect, his conscience answered, a neglect not so very different from yours. “I assure you most solemnly,” he continued, “I mean you no harm, but I should not wish any neighbors you may have to overhear our conversation.”
“If you must,” she replied and motioned for him to enter the tiny room. Inside was only the meanest of bedsteads, a rickety table and lamp, and an equally unstable chair. Clothes, bottles, and dishes lay about the place, all in a state of profound disarray. As he turned his regard back down to her, her tense attitude recalled to him Georgiana’s protest that his presence was intimidating even to those who loved him. In such cramped surroundings, his height could not help but seem threatening to a very young woman in her circumstances. He carefully lowered his weight onto the chair, composed his face in what he hoped were beneficent lines, and examined his charge.
It was quite obvious that Wickham had done little to see to her comfort. The gown she wore was rumpled and stained, her hair was a tangle. It appeared that she had come with little more than could be packed in a valise. They were, very likely, all but destitute. His hopes for the interview rose. “Miss Lydia, please be at ease. I have not come to offer you an insult,” he assured her. “I come as…as a disinterested acquaintance to ask you to consider the position into which you have been led and to provide a way to return to the anxious bosom of your family with as much honor as may be.”
If it were possible, Lydia’s eyes opened even wider. “What?” she replied, every evidence of astonishment upon her face. “Are you joking?”
“I assure you, I am not,” he answered, surprised by her response but maintaining his composure.
“I am to be married,” she informed him smugly. “I shall be Mrs. George Wickham and quite honorably so, if you please.”
“Has a date been set, then?” he asked, his regard steady.
“N-no,” Lydia admitted, turning away from him. “We must wait until some horrible people who are jealous of George can be repaid some trifling sums.” Her words were merely a recital of an excuse she’d had from Wickham. Poor girl, she believed the wretch. “Really, it is most unfair!” She rounded on him suddenly. “Why must people be so cruel to my poor Wickham?” She looked at him, her eyes accusing. “And you are among them. George has told me!”
“My relationship with Wickham is a long and difficult one, Miss Lydia.’ ” He shifted his position, the chair threatening to take him to the floor. “My presence here has nothing to do with that, nor any tale of hardship with which Wickham has entertained you.” At his words, Lydia’s chin tilted up in a manner so like Elizabeth’s that his heart nearly seized. He persisted. “Please, hear me. Your family are beside themselves with worry for your safety. Since Wickham cannot, as you admit, offer you marriage at this time, why not return to your family until he can come to claim you with all honor?”
“It will not be so very long” — she bristled — “and I do not wish to leave.” Her pose as a soon-to-be-married woman dissolved into girlish intransigence under his piercing regard. “Oh,” she cried, stamping her foot, “why should you be here and say these things to me?” An unhappy thought must then have occurred to her, for she stiffened, her face turning cautious. “Is my father waiting below?”
Darcy allowed a few moments of silence to separate her outburst from his answer. She must understand clearly what little he could tell her. “No, your father is not here. I am here by no one’s urging or plea.”
“Oh.” She breathed out again and shook herself slightly. “Well, then.” In a moment, she clapped her hand to her mouth, then giggled and hugged herself. “I’ve done it, haven’t I! Oh, they shall all be green with envy of me, every one! And how I shall laugh!”
“Laugh at the distress of your family and all those who wish them well? For that is what it is, Miss Lydia. They suffer no envy, but fear for you and reproach for themselves.” He searched her face, hoping for some twinge of conscience, but his words had not, evidently, found a home with her.
“It all will not matter a jot when I go home a married woman,” she informed him airily and turned away to the window.
“You think not? It would be very strange if that were so, and I assure you that your sisters Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth do not regard the matter in such a light.” His statement appeared to give her pause, for she turned back to him. “You would not wish to live under the disapprobation of two of your closest relations whose chances for an advantageous future would be considerably lessened by such actions on your part.”
Lydia’s lips formed into a pout as her eyes slid away from him. “My sisters! My sisters will do very well, or would if they…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes shifted back to him, now bright with suspicious curiosity. “How do you know of my sisters’ regard or, for that matter, about any of this? Lizzy doesn’t even like you; no one does that I ever heard, except for Mr. Bingley.”
The dart, so inelegantly flung, still possessed a sting. Darcy rose from his seat in irritation with both himself and his antagonist and strode to her. The child was entirely self-absorbed, dangerously careless, and hopelessly naïve. How was he to make her see the truth of her position? He looked out the small, grime-laced window for a moment and then turned back to her. “You must know that your sister was to travel with your Aunt and Uncle Gardiner during the summer.”
“Yes, a boring trip north.” She sniffed in disdain. “No parties or balls or picnics. Only Aunt and Uncle Gardiner prosing on and on.”
“On their travels,” he continued, “they stopped to view my estate in Derbyshire. It was there that your sister received word that you had entrusted your future to Wickham. In great distress at this news, your sister confided in me. She and her party left immediately for Longbourn, your uncle to join your father in searching for you.” He paused. Here was the difficult part. “My long association with Wickham put me in a better position to find you both; therefore, I reso
lved to do so and without their knowledge should I raise their hopes but meet with no success.”
“I still cannot imagine why you should care to trouble yourself,” she replied tartly. “We will be married — in time. My friends will be happy for me. There is nothing so terrible about that, that you should come here and say I should leave George.”
“Can you not imagine the precarious position in which this puts the respectability of your family? They will, if they have not already, become a byword in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, the neighbors!” Lydia stamped her foot. “Old, catty busybodies with no use for fun! Who cares about them? I do not!”
“But your sisters —”
“I shall see to getting them husbands, shan’t I? For I shall be married and before them all!”
Darcy held his silence when she had finished. Lydia Bennet was not to be reasoned with or shamed into leaving her illicit lover. She seemed to have no understanding of the consequences of her actions for herself or her family, nor had she any concern to discover what her behavior would cost them. He looked down at the hat and gloves in his hands in order to conceal the unsettling nature of his thoughts. Unlike Lydia Bennet, his sister had known what she was doing and repented of it, if only at the last. This child — he glanced up at the bedraggled and defiant girl before him — flesh and blood of the woman he loved, had no such advantage. How was he to convince her to give up her dangerous toy? He had only one resource left and, fortunately, permission to use it. Still, he would employ it discreetly.
“Miss Lydia, would it influence you in any way if you knew you were not the first young woman George Wickham has convinced to fly with him?”
“What do you mean?”
