Page 36

But in the meantime, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley had hauled Mr. Wickham back, and put him in the stables. They had left him in a horse’s stall with servants watching him.

Mr. Darcy was incredibly out of sorts. She attempted to speak to her husband, but he was barely capable of holding a conversation.

“What did he study when your father sent him to school?” she said to him. “Did he study to be a rector? Was his focus the church?”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Darcy. “I suppose he had himself set against that from the beginning. He could have been a solicitor, if he’d ever applied himself to it. He completed the schooling for it.”

“A solicitor,” she breathed thoughtfully.

“I am going to shoot him,” said Mr. Darcy. “No, string him up, like a horse thief. No… well, whatever I’m going to do, I cannot do it yet. I shall see to him in the morning.”

Later on, Elizabeth found herself in the stables, peering in at Mr. Wickham, who was holding court in the horse stall where he’d been imprisoned, trying to convince the servants to bring him extra bread and cheese other than what had been given him already.

He had not touched what he’d been given, she noted.

“Are you even hungry?” she said to him.

“Miss Bennet!” he said, delighted.

She glared at him. “Mrs. Darcy.”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Mrs. Darcy, how lovely to see you here. I was hoping I’d get a chance to see you.”

“Are you?” she said. “Hungry? Or are you simply attempting to get people to do your bidding?”

He chuckled. “Ah, you see straight through me.”

“I remember we had a conversation once, in which you accused me of trying to manipulate you. Do you remember?”

“I do,” he said. “And you didn’t try, Mrs. Darcy, you were extremely successful.” He wriggled about in the stall, as if his clothes had become uncomfortable. “Is that what you’re going to attempt to do to me now?”

She shrugged. “It occurs to me that you have a skill that needn’t only be used in the service of evil.”

“Evil,” he scoffed. “That’s stating it rather strongly, I think. I am not evil .”

“No, I don’t think you are,” she said. “Furthermore, my husband doesn’t think so either. He is loath to kill you, but you seem rather set on forcing his hand. Must you keep going after young girls?”

“I didn’t do anything to Lydia,” said Wickham, sighing. “I wasn’t going to either.”

“No? ”

“I only…” He shrugged. “I have accused him, you know, your husband, of being jealous, but it’s rightly the other way round, I suppose. I have always been jealous of him . We had such similar boyhoods, you know, and now we have such divergent adulthoods.”

“Similar boyhoods? Truly? Did you really?”

Wickham grimaced. “You know what I mean. I wish just a fraction of what he has, that is all. I suppose I come and find him, wherever he is, only because of that. He has so many good things, and I have absolutely nothing.”

“My husband says you studied to be a solicitor,” she said with a shrug.

“I suppose,” said Wickham. “But it’s a frightful amount of work, you know, getting established, finding clients, all that.”

She leaned over the edge of the stall. “I should think that would be rather easy for you, convincing someone to hire you. Or even convincing someone to let you some rooms to conduct your business. I should think that would be child’s play for someone of your talents.

Lydia says she didn’t even wish to go with you, but she could not seem to stop herself. ”

Wickham looked up at her, nostrils flaring. “I see what you’re doing. Don’t think I don’t.”

“I also think that for a man who is so very good at convincing other people to do his bidding, being a solicitor would rather be quite simple, would it not? I wonder if you might not have judges eating out of your hand, sir.”

He glared at her.

She shrugged. “Well, it’s too bad, of course. My husband’s going to kill you in the morning.”

“He won’t kill me,” said Mr. Wickham. “Come now, give me some credit, Mrs. Darcy. I can talk my way out of that.”

She smiled. “Well, for your sake, I hope so. For your sake, I hope you find some way to put your talents to good use, really. Otherwise, someone is going to kill you, and you won’t be able to talk yourself out of it. You and I both know it’s true.”

“I’m not going to become a solicitor just because you told me to do it, you know.”

“Of course not,” she said with a shrug. “Well, God have mercy on your soul, Mr. Wickham. You really are a tragic waste of good talents.” She shrugged, sniffing dramatically, and then she walked off.

The next morning, Mr. Wickham was gone, having somehow convinced the servants to let him go free.

Mr. Darcy gave chase, but Elizabeth thought his heart might not be in it.

When she got a letter from Caroline sometime in the midst of December which happened to mention offhand that Mr. Wickham had set up shop as a solicitor in London and that Colonel Fitzwilliam was waiting for the man to make one false move and he would end him, Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from throwing back her head and letting out a long and happy laugh.

Soon enough, she would need to convince her husband that they must all go back to London.

She had given up matchmaking as a serious undertaking, it was true, but her sister-in-law was in need of a good match, and perhaps she and Caroline might take some time away from their new baby daughters to see to the happiness of Georgiana Darcy.

It wasn’t always a terrible thing to be a bit manipulative, she thought, not if one’s manipulation encouraged the good in a person.

She had seen too much darkness in herself, but her husband had seen her light. If she could see the light in someone like Mr. Wickham, well, that must mean there was light in truly everyone.

* * *

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