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THE DOOR DOWNSTAIRS shut behind Mr. Simmons.

Elizabeth marched over to the stairs.

Mr. Wickham held his ground.

Caroline came behind Elizabeth as they mounted the stairs, growing closer and closer to Mr. Wickham.

Just as they were about to close in on him, he abruptly turned and climbed the stairs ahead of them.

“What have you done?” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “Where is my sister? Where is Miss Darcy?”

Mr. Wickham laughed, not looking back as he alighted at the top of the stairs. “I didn’t expect it to be you who found me, I must say. Perhaps I should have. I haven’t stopped thinking of you since we met all those months ago.”

Elizabeth caught up to him. She seized him by the arm and made him turn to face her. “What have you done?”

His eyes danced. “Well, you’re here. It seems you likely have some idea what I’ve done.” He shook himself free of his grasp. He eyed Caroline. “This one. Is this your friend, the one you were so sure you’d match to Mr. Darcy before you decided to trick him into marrying you instead?”

“That is not what happened,” said Elizabeth.

“Yes, but she’s still your friend,” said Mr. Wickham, chuckling. “I knew it then, and I see it’s true now. You and I are alike.”

“We are most certainly not,” said Elizabeth .

Mr. Wickham turned and walked. He spoke without looking at them again. “Come along, then, if you will.”

Elizabeth reached back for Caroline and the two women, arm in arm, followed Mr. Wickham down the hallway, past a number of closed doors.

Mr. Wickham stopped at one door, opened it, and walked inside. Elizabeth and Caroline followed him. The room inside was small, containing only a single bed and a table with a wash basin. It was austere, no decoration.

Mr. Wickham sat down on the bed, surveying them, smiling. “Well, close the door, would you?”

Was that a good idea? Elizabeth hesitated.

Mr. Wickham got up from the bed, went around them, and closed it himself. He smiled at Caroline. “I never got your name.”

“I’m Miss Bingley,” said Caroline.

“Why did you stay friends with this one after she stole your man?” said Mr. Wickham, smirking.

“It was not that way,” said Caroline.

“We don’t have to answer his questions,” said Elizabeth. “He must answer ours.”

“Oh, I must?” said Mr. Wickham, walking back towards the bed. But instead of sitting, he spread his hands. “Where are my manners? You are my guests, you may sit.”

“We’ll stand,” said Elizabeth. “Where is my sister? Where is Miss Darcy?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Wickham, shaking his head. “No, I shall keep that to myself for the time being.”

“Have you abandoned them both somewhere?” said Elizabeth. “What is going on here?”

Mr. Wickham shrugged at the both of them and settled on the bed again. He scratched the side of his neck, still smiling, looking smug. “I never saw it in a woman before, you know.”

“Stop this,” said Elizabeth. And then, she glanced at Caroline, who did not seem imperious anymore, only small and unsure.

This is not the way, she realized. She was not going to get Mr. Wickham to comply by ordering him around.

Indeed, that was never the way to influence people, to manipulate them.

She took a deep breath. Yes, she needed to be smarter about this.

Mr. Wickham wanted to talk, it seemed. That could be a good thing.

He would talk. She would listen to what he revealed, and something would emerge, something she could use. “Never saw what in a woman?”

“He had it,” said Mr. Wickham. “I have it, but I think I learned it from him. Not because he taught it to me, though, simply because I observed him, saw him at work, saw how it was done. I haven’t the resources he had, of course, not the money or the estates or the wife who was the daughter of an earl and the connections. I have to make do with what I have.”

Wife who was the daughter of…? “You’re speaking of my husband’s father,” she ascertained. “What did the elder Mr. Darcy have?”

“The thing that you have,” said Mr. Wickham. “That gift to guide people, to make them do your bidding. The ability to get away with despicable behavior and not be blamed.”

She did not have that ability, or… well, even if she might, she did not use her abilities in that way.

Maybe she used to think that about herself, but her husband had shown her that she was only being too hard on herself.

She did not protest, but she knew Mr. Wickham was wrong.

“I thought you said the elder Darcy was a good man, the best man you knew,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” said Wickham, but his smile was fainter. “I quite admired him. And he was good to me. He did a lot for me. If he wanted things in return, well…” The smile was gone now.

“What things in return?” said Elizabeth, who was thinking of the way her husband had spoken about his father, and it hadn’t been entirely complimentary. What sort of man had the late Mr. Darcy been?

“Nothing improper,” said Mr. Wickham. “It was never like that.”

Elizabeth furrowed her brow, a creeping sensation stealing through her, pricking her with something like revulsion.

“He was good to me,” insisted Mr. Wickham.

“He was always good to me.” He lifted his shoulders.

“And there was no effect on me, you know. It certainly didn’t change my tastes or make me crave depravities.

The girls, they are grown. Quite grown.” He let out a breath, and he actually looked troubled.

Then his gaze snapped up to look at her.

“Stop it. Don’t do it to me , Mrs. Darcy. Not to me.”

“What am I doing?” she said. “I am simply letting you talk, Mr. Wickham.”

He nodded, alarm flashing across his features.

“Yes. So you are. And we need not talk of me. We may talk of you, instead. That is why I invited you up here, of course, because you intrigue me. I suppose I became fascinated with your sisters because of you. I hoped one of them would have it as well, that spark of something, whatever it is, that way of bending people, as you do. But none of them did. Lydia, she’s the closest, I suppose, but all she really has is a kind of petulant selfishness—however, it presents as rebellion, and I could use that.

I could bend that. And if she tried to rebel against me, well, that made it all the more fun. ”

“You hurt Lydia to hurt me?” said Elizabeth. “What is that I have done to you, Mr. Wickham?”

“No, not to hurt you,” he said. “I wonder if that’s why he liked me, if I was a bit of a challenge for him, just as Lydia was a bit of a challenge for me.

You, though, you, Mrs. Darcy, you’d be the best challenge of all, I think.

An equal. If I could get you to do my bidding…

” He shook his head. “But here we are now, you and me, and we are both trying to manipulate the other, are we not? Which of us will win?”

Elizabeth licked her lips. She did not care to speculate what had been done to Mr. Wickham by her husband’s father, but she suspected it was the height of vile malignance.

Maybe it had twisted him. She might even feel sorry for him, if things were different, but she could not, not now, not after he had done whatever it was he had done to Lydia and Georgiana.

“You have simply done it as a challenge, then? Just for amusement?”

“To see if I could,” he said, nodding. “Is that not why you made your matches, madam?”

The arrow struck. But she shrugged. “It’s been made plain to me that I never really made matches.

That—if I had any influence over anyone—it was a temporary sort of thing, a guiding of impulsiveness in the moment, nothing more.

I wasn’t making people fall in love with each other.

No one can do that. No one can control another person. ”

Mr. Wickham shook his head. “That isn’t true. One certainly can take charge of others. It’s not even difficult.”

“He couldn’t actually take charge of you, could he?

” said Elizabeth. “The elder Mr. Darcy, I mean. He made you do things, when he was alive, but when it came down to it, after his death, if you wished to defy his wishes, you could and you did. That’s why you never took the position as the rector, the one he wanted for you.

You didn’t take it because you needed to prove to yourself that he didn’t actually control you. ”

Mr. Wickham shot up from the bed. “That living was taken from me.”

“Do you believe that lie?” she said. “Have you told it so many times that you have convinced yourself it’s true?”

Mr. Wickham’s nostrils flared. “Fitzwilliam took that from me. He was always jealous of how close I was with his father—”

“I think,” said Elizabeth, “that my husband knew—I don’t know what he knew—but he knew that whatever his father did with you was some kind of mistreatment. I think he felt sorry for you. And I think he felt some kind of latent responsibility. Because that is who my husband is.”

Mr. Wickham grimaced. “No. No, it was not mistreatment. He was a good man. He was good to me.”

“Is that the sort of person you wish to be, George?” Elizabeth made her voice soft. She used his first name. “Do you wish to be the sort of person who uses and abuses people, just like he was? Do you wish to harm girls, who you well know are not grown? ”

Mr. Wickham bowed his head. He dragged his hand over his neck and the back of his hair, making it stand up.

To the floor, he mumbled, “I haven’t touched them.

I was going to. I just… Virginia knows what rooms they’re in.

” Abruptly, he bolted past them, throwing open the door. He rushed out into the hallway.

Caroline let out a cry as he pushed past her. She turned to go after him, but Elizabeth stopped her.

“Let him go,” she said quietly.

Caroline turned to her, her eyes wide. “Eliza! Do you think he meant…?”

“Let’s go find Mrs. Younge,” said Elizabeth.