Page 55 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

“You may as well put the key in your pocket, Darcy. I am not going to try the window.”

Wickham had gone back to the table. He sat down at it as he had sat in a hundred card rooms, with one arm hung over the back of the chair, and poured himself the last of the wine. Georgiana’s chocolate stood beside the bottle untouched, and a skin had formed over it.

Darcy stayed where he was, with his back to the door. He kept the key in his hand, and the wards of it bit into his palm.

He had heard all of it from the passage. The door had stood a little open, and every word had come out to him under the lamp. He had heard Let him think, and kept still. He had heard the chair scrape when Wickham went down on his knee, and the soft voice telling Georgiana that very likely they would hang him. Twice Darcy’s hand had been on the latch. Twice he had taken it off again, because he had given Elizabeth his word in the carriage, and because she had been right.

Now Georgiana was out in the passage with his wife, and there was nothing between him and Wickham but a deal table. All the way up from the square he had supposed that when this moment came, he would knock the man down. He found that he did not want to. A blow would be over in a moment, and by morning Wickham would have made a story of it to tell in every taproom on the north road.

“Well?” Wickham lifted his glass. “I suppose you mean to thrash me. You had better be quick about it. The chaise is ordered for half past seven, and the post-boys do not like to be kept waiting.”

“The chaise will go back empty.”

“Then I shall ride on the outside of the night coach. It is all one to me.”

“It will not be all one to your colonel.”

The glass stopped halfway to Wickham’s mouth. He set it down again with great care.

“So you were listening at the door. I had not thought it of you.”

“I heard you tell my sister you might hang. It was the first true thing you said to her tonight.”

Wickham smiled at that, but he did not answer. Darcy came away from the door. He did not take the other chair. He stood at the end of the table, where the candle was, so that Wickham would have to look up at him to see his face.

“I am going to tell you what I know. You will not interrupt me. When I have done, you may contradict whatever you like, if you can.”

“You always did like the sound of your own voice better than mine.”

“You left debts at Cambridge that my father never heard of, because I paid them before he could. You took three thousand pounds instead of the living and asked me for more before two years were out. You left Meryton owing money to half the shops in the town, and a good deal more to the officers you played with. There were girls in Lambton, and I dare say in Meryton too, whose fathers would have had something to say to you, if they had ever known where to find you.”

“A few debts. There is not a man in the regiment without them.”

“There is not another man in the regiment who has tried to carry off two heiresses in three years.”

That went home. Darcy saw it go.

“Then there is Anne. You walked beside her phaeton in the Kentish lanes while her mother was from home, and you talked her into Scotland. When I came for her, you stood in the stable door and asked me how much I would give you to go quietly.” He kept his voice level. It was not easy. “I paid it. I have been sorry ever since.”

“I seem to remember you were glad enough to pay at the time.”

“And now this.” Darcy did not look at the chocolate, though he could see the cup at the edge of his sight. “You wrote to a girl of sixteen for some while and told her that her brother did not love her. You told her that her new sister wanted her out of the house. You brought her out alone at dusk, so that she could ruin herself for your sake, and then you knelt on the floor and asked her to pity you.”

Wickham pushed back his chair. For a moment the easy manner fell away, and what was left underneath was older and a good deal uglier.

“You had everything, Darcy. The house and the name, and the money. All I ever had was your father’s good opinion, and you could not even let me keep that.”

“My father died thinking well of you. It is the one thing I have never taken from you, and I never shall.” Darcy waited until the other man sat down again. “Now you will hear my terms. You will hear them once.”

The yard was noisy beyond the window. The night coach was nearly ready, and someone was calling the passengers for Barnet. Wickham did not look round.

“This is the last time. I will pay your most pressing debts, the ones that would see you taken up within the week. I do not do it out of charity, and I do not do it for my father’s sake. I do it because it is the cheapest way I know of being rid of you.” He laid the key down on the table between them. “My cousin will speak to your colonel. A militia officer who leaves to take a commission in the regulars is no deserter. They will call it zeal, and be glad to be rid of you. I shall buy you an ensigncy in a regiment of the line, quartered as far north as there are barracks to put you in.”

“An ensigncy, at my age?”

“It is more than you have earned. You will go where you are sent, and stay there. You will not come within a hundred miles of London. You will not come near my sister, nor any Darcy, nor any Fitzwilliam, nor any Bennet. You will not write to any of them, or send word by anybody else. If one of them so much as hears your name spoken in a room, I shall want to know why.”

“And if I find the north does not suit me?”