The Road to Pemberley

by Marsha Altman

  I had gotten a coach with my last remaining bit of pay, and I was getting into it, when I heard panting and giggling. Puzzled, I looked out the window.

  Miss Lydia Bennet, the young and very silly sister of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, was also the particular friend of Mrs. Forster (my commander’s wife), and Lydia had been staying with the commander’s family. I saw Lydia running toward the carriage, in a flutter of ruffles and laces, an eager grin on her pretty, vacuous face.

  As she approached the carriage, the driver opened the door to her—if out of habit or because it was the logical thing to do, I’ll never know. She plunged in, in a cloud of perfume and giggles.

  Her face was flushed, a not unbecoming pink in a girl still very young and naturally very pretty. She leaned back in the seat, taking deep, racking breaths. “Oh, Lord, I’m fagged,” she said. And grinned. “But we’re eloping, Whicky.” She adjusted her skirts and gave me a sly look. “Imagine your being in love with me all this time. And never to tell me or give a sign of it to me personally, but only to write about it in letters. What a good joke. But I’m glad you did. We shall be married. And I only sixteen.” She gave me a sly look, under her quite long eyelashes. “To think I shall have done what none of my sisters has done.”

  “In love?” I asked, puzzled. Miss Lydia was very pretty, I’ll grant anyone that, but really—look at the way she was behaving when she thought she was eloping. Was this proper behavior for such an occasion? And why did she think she was eloping? With me?

  “Oh, Whicky, there’s no need pretending. Your note said it all so well. How much you loved me, how you couldn’t live without me. How you’d die lest I eloped with you. And how you’d have the coach here at this time.” She grinned at me.

  It was the scene with Darcy in the study after his father’s funeral all over again. Perhaps I should consider that it was not Darcy who was insane, but I. Perhaps I did those things and…forgot them? But why would I punish myself in such horrible ways? Why would I cut off my access to Pemberley? Why would I marry Miss Lydia Bennet?

  The coachman’s voice came through the window. “Sir, there’s a large group in pursuit. Sir…”

  The creditors. And now, if they caught me with this girl.… “Drive, man, drive!”

  “To Gretna Green!” Lydia Bennet called out, laughing.

  “To London!” I screamed desperately, over her voice.

  I confess I sat in my lodgings at Mrs. Young’s boardinghouse and drank myself into a stupor day after day for the next several weeks. If I was so insane as to gamble, wench, run up debts, and elope with Lydia Bennet—all without my knowing it—then there was nothing for it but to drink myself to death.

  Meanwhile, Lydia—who had been placed in the room next to mine and whom I had not touched, at least that I knew of—whined day and night, “When shall we go out? Are you going to take me to the theater? Are you going to take me to a review? When shall we be married? I’m bored.”

  How could even the dark side of my soul wish to elope with her?

  I had the notes cashed—surprisingly, without any trouble—and forwarded some money to Brighton to pay for the debts there. The rest of it, I invested in good wine. I sat by the window, drank, and dreamed of Georgiana. Georgiana, who didn’t love me. Georgiana, who had never loved me. Georgiana, who was now forever out of reach—because of Lydia Bennet.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Darcy found me. I had given my address when cashing those notes. What came as a surprise was that he took an interest at all. And that he looked as angry as I’d ever seen him, but controlled himself and didn’t punch me into the ground.

  He wanted something from me, you see. He wanted me to marry Miss Lydia Bennet.

  It seemed that, quite unknown to me, his romance with Miss Eliza Bennet had progressed till she was all he could think about. From the tone of his words, and though he’d not said it, he was either at the point of proposing or had proposed to Miss Bennet when the news of my elopement with Lydia had arrived.

  To Darcy’s eyes, it was all very simple. I must now marry Lydia so that the stain would be removed from the family. Then Darcy could marry Elizabeth.

  We were to be brothers. What a good joke. The Almighty, clearly, had Lydia’s sense of humor.

  I went through with it. What else was left for me to do? Twice, I tried to explain to Darcy that I was out of my mind, that I needed help. But the look in his eyes when he thought I was—as he put it—trying to wiggle out of it, wasn’t worth tempting.

  He drew up the papers, and he settled the money on me. Darcy in love carried all before him.

  I asked about Georgiana once. I think that eventually the scar his signet ring left on my chin might fade. In a few years.

  Lydia, of course, thought we were fighting over her. She was the sort of woman whom this kind of thing excited.

  And so we were married, on an insipid summer morning, when the milk thin sunlight trickled through the windows of the church on Cheapside.

  Her parents—kind, generous people—invited us to their house on our way to a garrison in the far North, where Darcy—for the sake of having me far away from him—had bought me a place in the regulars.

  Lydia was still untouched when we headed for the North. And still untouched when news of Darcy’s wedding reached us three months later.

  Did she know she was missing something—the full state of marriage? I’ve often wondered. After all, many families don’t tell their children anything about their own provenance till the marriage day. Particularly those children who are female. Perhaps some children are never told at all.

  She gave no sign of being disappointed. During our first year of marriage, she went about with a smile on her face and a song on her lips, to all eyes the happiest bride on the Lord’s earth. As for me, that was the easiest year in many years, save for Lydia’s incessant chatter and save for missing Georgiana night and day. I did not seem to have run up debts. No women claimed to have been seduced by me. Perhaps after saddling me with the erstwhile Miss Bennet and putting Georgiana forever out of my reach, my other, self-destructive self rested at last?

  And then, after a year, I got the news that my wife was increasing. Increasing! And I’d never touched her.

  But what if the other Wickham had? I didn’t ask. I waited in misery to be a proud papa, while enduring the congratulations of well-wishers all around me.

  There was no correspondence from Darcy. There was a note from Mrs. Darcy, wishing us happiness on the forthcoming occasion of our child’s birth. But such was my state, I thought I saw Smithen around town once or twice. But then I always had that impression, wherever I went.

  The birth didn’t go well. The mother was young. Just seventeen. Too young, it proved.

  Though you’d think that someone that buxom and full of interest in such things would give birth with a natural ease, things didn’t happen that way.

  I called the midwife early in the morning. I called the doctor late in the day. Lydia’s screams lost force through the day, becoming mere whimpers by nightfall. And then…nothing.

  I sat in a chair just outside the birth chamber, waiting and trying to compose my mind for fatherhood. What would I do? What could I do? The tyke would be my son or daughter, and—please the Lord—sane and healthy and not suffering from my obvious streak of insanity. I would be a father. The best father I could be.

  But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. My child was supposed to have Georgiana as a mother. He or she was supposed to have Georgiana’s eyes and that little crooked smile.

  I was crying a little when the midwife came out. I knew from her expression that something had gone very wrong. I stood up, my limbs seemingly tangling on each other, my voice failing me. “My…” I said. And then, “The baby?”

  “Oh, the baby is fine, Mr. Wickham,” she said, wiping her hands on her already blood-stained apron. “You have a daughter, Mr. Wickham. It is your wife. The poor thing. I—” She looked at my face and seemed to see grie
f reflected there, because she broke into tears. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wickham. I’m afraid she’s dead.”

  And thus I became a widower.

  It was days before I looked at my daughter, days before I returned to the world of the living. Something about Lydia’s awful death confirmed for me that I was cursed, and all those who involved themselves with me would end badly.

  I sat in my room and drank myself into a stupor and wished for death. But there were kind friends and concerned officers all around. My officer’s wife, she sent a nanny over to look after my daughter, whom I called Lydia. What else would I call her?

  And friends sent food and comfort and came and sat with me and tried to console me for the loss I didn’t really feel and should have felt.

  Guilt and rage swirled in me until one day I woke up, sober and with an aching head.

  It was a spring morning. The birds were singing. At breakfast, our housekeeper informed me that my daughter was a fine, lusty child and that my late wife’s things still remained in her room, waiting my going through them and packaging them to send to her family or to charity or whatever I intended to do with them.

  I went to Lydia’s room, a place I’d never—consciously—entered, and started sorting through her effects. She had no less than eighty-five exquisitely trimmed hats, plus ribbons and frippery to trim a hundred more. She’d missed her calling. She should have been a milliner.

  There was other stuff, none of any importance. And then, under some lace, in her most hidden drawer, I found a pile of letters tied together with a blue ribbon. I pulled them out, recognizing the handwriting, to my shock. It wasn’t mine. Or Darcy’s.

  The letters—clearly written by the hand of an intelligent man—were from the Brighton time and told Lydia of love, of passion, of undying devotion.

  In every letter, he told her to burn the missive. But women never burn such letters.

  I stared in horror at the huge, angular handwriting. Once seen, never forgotten. It was Smithen’s writing and no mistake.

  I stared at it as I realized that he was—also—tall and dark haired and blue eyed. In the darkened, smoky atmosphere of a gambling den, if he dressed like me and said his name was Wickham, who would doubt him? In the darkened bedchambers of tradesmen’s daughters, primed by a hundred previous love letters, who would believe he was not me? In my own conjugal bed, in the dark of night, if he threw my jacket over the foot and climbed into bed with Lydia, how was she to know he wasn’t me? It wasn’t as though I’d given her anything with which to compare his actions.

  The whole monstrous plan unfolded in my mind like a grotesque flower. And I realized I’d been had. I’d been played. My entire disgrace, my horrible marriage, and perhaps even my separation from Georgiana were all a game. Smithen’s game.

  But why?

  I saw the baby and arranged for her care while I was gone. If I had bothered to look at her earlier, I would have known. Her eyes were as close together as Smithen’s, and her mouth had a dissatisfied setting, just like his.

  But I could not hate her. She’d been conceived because I’d failed in my duty to my wife and because I hadn’t examined the events in my life. She was mine in guilt, if not in blood. We would do the best we could. I would try to raise that dissatisfied expression out of her little mouth and to coax her to overcome the duplicity the closetogether eyes suggested. I would be a good father.

  But first, before I settled down to be a quiet widower with a daughter, I must go see Darcy. If this was not my fault and not his fault, then we must talk to each other and clear up the misunderstanding. I doubted he would welcome me with open arms or let me court Georgiana. And I doubted Georgiana would want to be courted by me after all this time. But still, the truth needed to be out.

  With such resolute ideas, I arranged for a coach to carry me south, and I took care of some household affairs. At least no one accused me of gambling debts or seductions. As drunk as I’d been…

  But why hadn’t Smithen caused trouble for me recently? Something must have happened in the nature of an endgame. But what?

  I understood when I got Darcy’s letter. Announcing Georgiana’s upcoming marriage to the Baron d’If.

  It all went blurry. The date of the wedding was a week hence. Enough time to get there, if I rode night and day and rested not.

  And that brought me to the carriage, devouring the miles, approaching the place and date of my true love’s wedding to someone else. For no good purpose and on a fool’s errand. And yet. And yet, Darcy must know and perhaps Georgiana, too, must know that I was not a black-hearted villain. They must, by all that is holy, listen to me.

  If Georgiana was marrying this baron, she must love him—and who was I to compete with nobility. Georgiana would marry him still. But she must know before she married that she had never loved a truly unworthy man. Perhaps it would give her peace and make her married life better.

  I intended to get there the night before the wedding, to explain all to the Darcys in decent privacy. In retrospect, all it would have earned me was being locked out of the house, perhaps thrown in jail.

  Fate had other plans. Due to an unfortunate incident with three cows, a pig, a muddy road, and a much-worn carriage wheel, I ended up getting to Pemberley when the family chapel was full of guests and the grounds gaily decorated with bows for the occasion.

  And I ended up bursting into the church—sweaty and reeking of travel, of tears, of wet wool, and of unwashed fur—just as the minister said, “…or forever hold your peace.”

  “I must speak!” I shouted, bursting into the church.

  The august company—and never had Pemberley in its glory hosted such a wondrous crowd of the highest nobility—fell silent. All eyes turned to me. Standing by the altar with his sister—and some blond youth whose looks I barely remarked on, save for noticing that he was swathed in velvet and golden braid—Darcy turned to give me a murderous glare.

  “Give me leave,” I said. “For I must speak.”

  The minister, astonished, waved me on. Georgiana, lovely as an angel in her lace and satin, looked as if she might swoon on the spot and leaned on the former Elizabeth Bennet, her matron of honor, for support, as if her legs would fail her. She was not, at least, immune to my presence.

  I poured my story out. Incoherently and in a confused, tangled mess, I told it all. The gambling. The tradesmen’s daughters. And yet I, who had been accused of so many seductions, I who had eloped and been married, had never lain with a woman or, indeed, with anyone. Not men. Not prostitutes. I saw Georgiana, pale and wan, lean farther back against her sister-in-law, and my mouth went on, all uncaring.

  “I’ve never had the slightest interest in whores,” I said.

  “You’re drunk, man,” Darcy said.

  “Not even a little,” I said, and went on to explain my discovery in Lydia’s drawer. As I spoke, I pulled the packet of letters from my jacket. “And I daresay, if you look, you’ll find similar letters with every tradesman’s daughter whom I ever supposedly seduced.” I extended the letters. I was aware of some commotion at the back of the church, but I didn’t turn to look.

  Darcy extended his hand for the letters, saw the handwriting, and exclaimed, “Smithen!”

  “All right,” Smithen said from the back of the church. “So you’ve found me out, but you’ll do nothing.”

  I looked back and saw him, unsteadily, point a gun at me. “I will shoot you dead if you take a step toward me!” he said.

  “You forgot you left me nothing to live for!” I yelled.

  The gun moved toward Darcy. Darcy took an inflexible step toward Smithen, all the same. “If you shoot,” Darcy snarled, “you’d better be very sure of hitting me, for you have only one shot in your weapon. And after that, I’ll be on you.”

  “All right!” Smithen yelled. “Then her.” He pointed his pistol at Georgiana. “Take another step toward me, and I will shoot her.”

  The baron, Georgiana’s would-be groom, made a sound like a whimp
er, removed a lace kerchief from his pocket, and dabbed at his brow, while staring at Smithen.

  But Georgiana had the blood of the Darcys in her veins, the very same Darcys who had once opposed a furious Henry VIII. She stood straight all of a sudden, and she took a step forward, away from Elizabeth Darcy.

  “You are evil,” she told Smithen. “And all evil will be punished.”

  Smithen laughed. It was a deranged sound. “Not today,” he said. And pulled the trigger.

  I jumped forward, not quite knowing what I was doing. I jumped in the path of the bullet, knowing only—without thinking—that I must save Georgiana. Georgiana must not die.

  The ball smashed into my shoulder. I felt it crush though skin and flesh and bone. I heard screams. I felt something warm down the front of my traveling jacket. Cold spread from my shoulder to my chest. I could not speak. Breathing hurt. My legs felt like running water. I fell.

  At the back of the church, there was a scuffle, the sound of fists hitting flesh. But I was all beyond it then. I noted that Georgiana’s groom was on the floor also, seemingly unconscious. I wondered if he’d been hit, too.

  But Georgiana was by my side, her fingers fluttering softly on my jacket, her voice as commanding and stern as Lady Catherine at her worst, “Bring lights, someone bring lights. And a knife to cut his jacket. And a tourniquet. Quick, man, put pressure on the wound. He’s bleeding his heart out. A doctor. Send for the doctor. Now!”

  Other hands were doing things to me. It didn’t matter. Georgiana, concerned and lovely, standing amid a wealth of satin stained with my blood, looked down on me with gentle tenderness. Suddenly, her lips touched mine—a moment of heaven. I tasted salt on them. Why was she crying? It was just me, and I did not matter.

  “You must live, my love,” she said. “You must live for me. For us.”

  “My love.” I took those words with me into darkness.