by Pamela Aidan
“I mean that I have personal knowledge of another who was deceived by Wickham’s blandishments and promises into consenting to elope with him. It was clear that his reasons for courting her without the knowledge or consent of her relations were dictated not by passion but by economics. She was an heiress, and Wickham was in need of money.”
Lydia’s eyes flew open. “What has Miss King to do with anything? George never…Oh!” She stamped her foot at him yet again and took a hasty step toward him. “I may not be an heiress, but I know George loves me!”
“Miss Lydia.” Darcy leaned forward earnestly. “Wickham is ever in need of money. He has no profession. He has tried to live by his wits and by chance, and has failed at them both. He must marry for money; he has no choice.” Compassion welled up in him as he looked down into her set, young face. “You are right; you are not an heiress,” he agreed gently, “and whether he truly loves you or not, for that reason, you must believe me, he will not marry you.”
A flicker of doubt crossed her countenance. Brightness welled at the corners of her eyes. Was it enough? Too quickly, the doubt faded. She hastily wiped at her eyes, and her chin took on an immovable cast that bore an alarming resemblance to her mother’s. “George will marry me, and that is the end of it! Now, I think you should leave!”
Heaving a sigh, Darcy bowed his acquiescence and turned to go. “Miss Lydia.” He looked back at her from the doorway. “May I leave you my card should you change your mind?” She shrugged her shoulders, which he took for permission, and laying it on the table, he bowed again and walked from the room. It had been as he had feared. The girl would not be dissuaded. He must deal with Wickham.
Chapter 9
The Marriage of True Minds
Upon closing the door on his unsuccessful interview with Lydia Bennet, Darcy walked slowly down the hall and stairs to the inn’s public rooms and Wickham, considering his next moves. The rogue would believe he held the upper hand, and indeed, he did in immediate particulars. The facts of Darcy’s presence and Lydia’s obstinacy proclaimed it. But it was a tenuous ascendancy, and it remained to Darcy to impress upon Wickham every uncertainty and danger inherent in his position as acutely as possible while still keeping his birds in hand. For if they flew, all might well be lost.
Wickham turned from the window as Darcy entered the public room, his perpetual smirk widening as he broadly noted that Darcy came down alone. He sauntered over to the table that they had occupied previously, setting down a half-empty glass before sitting. “Amazingly loyal little thing, is she not? I have not quite decided whether that is an advantageous or an unfortunate trait in a woman, but there it is. What shall you do about it?”
“Indeed,” Darcy replied, taking the opposite chair. “What would you suggest?”
Wickham laughed as if he had made a joke, but his levity trailed and sobered under Darcy’s continued solemn regard. “Well,” he offered, “you might carry her off bodily, you or someone hired, kicking and screaming her little head off. I, nor anyone here, would stand in your way for…” He looked at him speculatively. “Ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand pounds,” Darcy repeated without emotion. “But there is the problem of her reputation, and that of her family. Ten thousand pounds in your pocket will not restore them to respectability. No, your previous assumption of a nuptial is the direction you should pursue.” He sat back.
Wickham’s mouth turned down in a brief grimace, but his eyes said that he was keen to continue. “All right, ten thousand pounds.” He slapped the table as if he were at a horse auction. “And I marry her!”
Darcy affected a look of mild surprise. “And by this magnanimous offer, am I to assume you to believe that, first of all, I am a fool, and second, your name alone attached to hers will confer adequate compensation for your actions and effect the restoration of the entire family’s name?”
“What do you —”
“What do I believe? Quite simply, that once any appreciable amount of money is in your possession, you will leave her a grass widow to deal with your creditors, and I shall have financed a considerable amount of gross self-indulgence and future debauchery. Or was a reformation of character an addendum you neglected to mention?”
Wickham cast him a look of cold hatred. “Always the tight-arsed prig afraid to dirty his clothes! Character!” he spat out. “Only the rich can afford character, but most of them seem to dispense with it soon enough. They just have the money or the power to buy their way out of trouble before the whispers get too loud, but poor men…poor men are judged without mercy —”
“Yes,” Darcy interrupted him, “there is the matter of your debts. Do you have any idea how much they are?” Wickham shrugged his disinterest. Darcy pressed the issue. “Let us only consider, then, those since your arrival in Meryton. What is their amount?”
Wickham shrugged again. “I have no notion, except…” He looked away a moment before continuing. “Except for what in honor I owe to fellow officers.” As if suddenly enlightened, he straightened and pounded the table between them. “They are the cause for this whole damned mess! If those ‘fine young gentlemen’ had not been so bloody-minded, so damned precise about things, and ready to cry to Mamá, I would not be here!”
“I shall pay your debts.”
“What?” Wickham looked at him sharply. “All of them?”
“All of those you have incurred since setting foot in Meryton.”
“You must be joking! All of them? Not knowing their sum?” he asked, incredulous.
“I shall pay your debts, whether from tradesman or officer,” Darcy repeated. He had not moved since sitting back against his chair nor, oddly enough, had he felt the anger or disgust that heretofore had arisen with little more than the thought of George Wickham. He had an objective, and would hone to it, but something had changed, and he was able to deal with Wickham calmly.
Wickham’s incredulity turned swiftly to suspicion. “But that would mean you would hold them all. At any time, you could call them in.”
“Yes, that would be true.” Darcy inclined his head in agreement. “You would be dependent upon” — he paused, searching for the word, and was bemused to find it from his sister’s lips — “mercy, which would be excessively large and silent, I assure you, so long as you comport yourself like a gentleman in every sense of the word and treat your wife with honor.” Agitated by the prospect, Wickham rose from his chair and strode to the window. “I do not require that you believe in honor — you may continue to despise it all you wish — only act in such a way that others believe you do.” Darcy spoke to his back. Wickham turned to face him, his expression unreadable. “But should it come to me that you are mistreating your wife or contracting unwarranted debt…” He let the sentence dangle.
“Bought and shackled!” Wickham’s face contorted in anger. “Where is the profit for me in this charming little picture? I could simply walk away from you, the girl, and the whole damned thing this minute, you know.”
“You could try, but there are so many interested in your whereabouts: tradesmen, angry fathers, your former fellow officers, not to mention your commander. I found you within days of learning of your flight from Brighton. They will as well.”
Wickham blanched, swallowed hard, and then reddened. “You wouldn’t…,” he ground out from between clenched jaws, his eyes hunted and wild.
“I sincerely hope that it will not come to that,” Darcy replied, a sense of calm flowing deep and wide through his body. The veracity of his words took him by surprise no less than they did his adversary. He should have been feeling every sort of exultation in his impending triumph over the one who had bedevilled his life and threatened his family. At least, he should have felt the excitement of closing upon the quarry, but strangely, he did not. Was it pity? Did he pity Wickham? No…it was not that, not precisely.
Wickham relaxed from his rigid stance and resumed his seat across the table. “If I agreed to all of this, how shall I go on and with a w
ife to support? Satisfying the damned bloodsuckers is all well and good, but what shall I live on?” Darcy’s lack of an immediate reply appeared to worry him, for Wickham’s foot began tapping nervously against the inn floor. “I have no profession.” He looked down at his hands and then up at Darcy. “Kympton! Give me the living at Kympton!” Darcy began to shake his head. “It is what your father desired for me! It is perfect!”
“No! Absolutely not!” Darcy’s voice cut sharply through Wickham’s demands. “There is another possibility, but I desired to reach an understanding with you before pursuing it further.” He rose from the chair. “Do we have an understanding? You will not attempt to flee this inn and will meet with me tomorrow to discuss your situation further, and I will not inform on you or retract any promise I have made to you thus far.”
Wickham considered for a moment and then, sighing, stretched out his hand. “Agreed.” Darcy stared at the outstretched hand, a tightness springing up within his breast. “Ah, well…” Wickham began to withdraw it.
“No, here!” Darcy smothered the imp that would tease him back into black resentment and took Wickham’s hand briefly into his grip. “Agreed. I will call upon you tomorrow afternoon.” He spoke hurriedly. “Make my good-byes known to Miss Lydia Bennet.” Then retrieving his hat and walking stick, he left Wickham standing alone in the public room to think as he wished about what had just passed between them.
Reaching the hired cab, Darcy called up an address to the driver and climbed inside. As the cab threaded through the streets, Darcy threw his hat and gloves beside him on the worn, cracked leather seat and rubbed first at his eyes, then briskly over his entire face. Sitting back into the squabs, he stretched out his legs and evaluated his position. He had found them! The sad meanness of the place in which he had found them was enough to depress the most optimistic of men, and Wickham was not one of that happy tribe. Rather, Darcy was certain, he was chafing miserably at the necessity of being cut off from the life he craved and was desperately eager for a way back into enough respectability to reach for it again. Were the terms he had proposed enough to tempt Wickham? It appeared so; at least for the moment. After the moment had passed, it was likely that only holding Wickham’s debts over his head would keep him between the traces.
Darcy closed his eyes, a great sigh escaping him. As onerous as were the terms to Wickham, the fact of the matter was that the man’s acceptance of his offer to purchase his debts and the measures required insuring its terms would tie him to Wickham for the rest of his life. Darcy had known this from the outset, and the distaste it evoked had roused his latent antipathy despite all efforts to cultivate an attitude suitable to the delicacy of his task. But then, in the face of it all — Lydia Bennet’s childish defiance and selfishness, Wickham’s bravado, devoid of conscience — compassion had unexpectedly welled up within him, and what anger and pride could not contrive, the fall of mercy’s gentle rain had brought to pass. They had an agreement. It was a beginning that held some hope.
Hope! Darcy’s attention shifted to that sweet presence in his heart for whom hope would impart so much — Elizabeth. If only he could relieve her mind with the assurance that her sister was found and that plans were in motion to secure her return. What she must be enduring as she waited for news day after silent day! “Soon,” he promised her, his voice soft in the shadows of the cab. “Soon.”
The cab slowed to a stop in front of the officers’ billet of His Majesty’s Royal Horse Guards, and as the cabbie dropped down to open the door, Darcy withdrew a card from the case in his waistcoat pocket. Handing it to the man, he instructed him to take it to the officer on duty and request the whereabouts of Colonel Fitzwilliam. In less than five minutes, he knew exactly where his cousin was.
“Good God, Fitz, what are you doing here and in that!” Darcy laughed at the disapproval on Richard’s face as his cousin opened the cab’s door and set out the steps himself. How good it was to laugh again! “Here, get your hat, for pity’s sake, and make sure you dust it off!”
“Do not offend my driver, if you please!” Darcy warned him with a wink. “He is an uncommon brave one and stands by his word.” He turned to the man and pressed thrice his fare in his hand as he looked him squarely in the eye. “I am very grateful to him.”
“T’anks, gov’ner…ah, sir.” The man flushed and, ducking his head while he backed away, clambered up into his seat and drove off.
Darcy turned to see his cousin staring at him in utter disbelief. Clapping him on the shoulder, he said, “Come, I have found Wickham and need your help. Where can we talk?”
A few minutes later, they stood in the doorway of a public house favored by a large number of His Majesty’s officers, most of whom looked curiously at Darcy after stepping aside and nodding to his companion. “Not many civilians brave enough to part the ‘Red Sea,’ ” Richard explained as he ushered his cousin to a snug table in the corner. “They are wondering who you are. Now, tell me how the Devil you found the scabby miscreant before I did!”
Darcy shook his head. “Another time, perhaps. I need your help in something else in which you are particularly knowledgeable.” Richard grinned slyly at him. “What? No! I refer, my dear Cuz, to your military knowledge.”
Richard sat back complacently. “Say on! What do you wish to know?”
“What does a lieutenancy cost?”
“A lieutenancy? It would depend upon the unit and where it is stationed. Anywhere between five hundred and nine hundred pounds.” His brow wrinkled. “Why do you — Hold there!” The colonel came forward in his chair and pinned Darcy with a look of horror. “You do not mean it for Wickham!”
“In one crack!” Darcy’s lips turned up in amusement at his cousin’s expression. “I will never understand why D’Arcy calls you a slow-top!”
“Because he is an idiot! But that is not to the point.” Richard’s eyes narrowed, and he tapped a finger on the table between them. “You mean to purchase Wickham a lieutenancy. Wickham — the blackguard who almost ruined —” He stopped and bit his lip, then continued. “Who has thrown every good you have done him in your teeth, who owes money to every tradesman and an apology to every young woman’s father between here and Derbyshire.” Richard’s face grew more flushed with each charge. “What has he done that he should abandon his militia regiment and you reward him with a career in the army? Lieutenant!” He snorted. “Let him start at the bottom and learn discipline and respect if he is wild for the army!”
“I cannot tell you; it is not mine to reveal the particulars,” Darcy reminded his cousin, who sat back in frustration, shaking his head. He relented. “You must know that I do not do this with Wickham’s welfare as my object. He has…” Darcy paused and frowned. “Damn if he has not compromised another young woman, but this time, she is from a respectable but modestly situated family with whom I have some acquaintance. There is nothing for it but that they must marry, and you know as well as I that George is in no position to support a wife. It is for the young woman and her family that I do this.” He traced one of the dark rings on the table left by innumerable pints. “Perhaps, if I had been less proud, I might have had some success in making Wickham’s character understood before ever he endangered one of their daughters.”
Richard eyed his cousin steadily as he stroked his chin, examining him, Darcy knew, for any weakness on which he could work. “All right, all right!” He finally surrendered, throwing up his hands. “You are set upon this — of which there is much more than meets the eye — and there will be no moving you! What do you want me to do?”
“Find a commission stationed here in England but in an obscure unit, preferably a place that offers few inducements to mischief.”
Richard’s eyebrows rose. “Bury him, you mean!” He snorted. “Well, your idea sounds better now than it did at first, I must say. Officers wishing to sell out of a stagnant unit in the middle of nowhere should not be difficult to locate. Perhaps I will be lucky and find one with a martinet commander who
devoutly believes that tormenting his staff is how to make men of them.” He laughed wickedly. “I shall send round a list to Erewile House.”
“I need it sooner rather than later.” Darcy rose, as did his cousin.
“Yes, sir!” Richard saluted him smartly, then leaned forward to whisper, “But if word should get out that I had any hand in foisting that wretch on the army, I shall have no mercy on you, Cuz.”
Later that evening a packet carrying Richard’s scrawl was laid upon Darcy’s desk. “The communication from Colonel Fitzwilliam, sir,” Witcher announced quietly at the door, then crossed the room at Darcy’s nod.
“Thank you, Witcher. That will be all.” He reached for the packet and began to break the seal.
Rather than leave, his butler looked pointedly at the tray at his master’s elbow. “Nothing to your liking, sir?”
“No, it is very well.” Darcy looked at the artfully arranged repast with dismay. “In the midst of all this” — he indicated his littered desk — “I forgot it was there.”
“Shall I remove it, sir?” From Witcher’s tone and his own long experience, Darcy knew that sending the food back without touching it would cause undue concern belowstairs.
“No, no, leave it here. Now that this has come,” he answered, waving the packet, “I shall feel more at leisure. Thank your good wife, Witcher.”
“Yes, sir.” The man sighed with relief. “Just so, sir.”
The seal broken, Darcy laid out the pages on his desk and reached for one of his housekeeper’s lemon biscuits. A half hour later, he drew forward paper and pen and began his purchase of a commission for George Wickham, Esquire, in the regiment from among those in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s list that lay the farthest distance from Hertfordshire and Polite Society.
The next morning, following his cousin’s instructions, Darcy presented his application to the proper authorities and within an hour was in possession of assurances that, when all the military wheels had ground, his request for a commission in the —— th Regiment, stationed in Newcastle, would be granted.
