Page 24 of Friendship and Forgiveness (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #7)

During the whole of the carriage ride into London, Caroline had kept her mind alert for an opportunity to escape. But they had gone at a steady pace, keeping to the smaller roads as much as possible.

Wickham had an angry look, and he reached over to laughingly grip her thigh. With a squeak Caroline scooted herself as far away from him as she could in the small gig.

He chuckled evilly.

The bulge in his coat where he’d hidden his pistol had a sort of hypnotic fascination for Caroline.

Her brain imagined him pulling it out and firing.

She’d try to jump aside… and still be hit. She felt it again and again in her mind. The ball breaking through her ribs, tearing open the heart. Her last thoughts as the blood bubbled out quickly.

A shot through the head. Instant blackness?

Would she even go to heaven after the sins she had committed?

That sense that in some sense she deserved such a fate, which had driven her to convince Wickham to exchange her for Lydia was still there.

The way he had grabbed her leg made her shiver with a sick slithering horror.

Like everyone else in the neighborhood, she had seen Wickham as a particularly handsome man.

But his good looks merely served to turn him into a more terrifying villain — the fact that a woman might enjoy his attentions if he had a worthy soul made the terror of rape worse.

Her hands squeezed and unsqueezed again.

There was a red fringe of sun falling over the horizon when they at last made their way to the outskirts of London. They came up to one of the main thoroughfares from the side road. Wickham looked at her before they turned onto it, and he patted his gun in the coat with his right hand. “Call out to anyone — show any sign of distress. If I even think you’ll make an attempt to escape, I’ll kill you. Vous comprenez ?”

“They’ll hang you!”

“Think that will stop me? They’ve already ruined me — I’ll kill you if I can’t use you to escape everything.” He laughed with an unhinged edge to the tone. “I always wondered what it would be like to watch a man die, who I killed. Would it be like killing a dog?”

There was this terror in her stomach. What would he do to her after he’d married her and acquired her money?

But she had no choice. None.

That gun kept her.

“I won’t try to escape.” Caroline was surprised that her voice came out steady and clear, rather than as an inaudible squeak.

He clucked and drove them through the streets of the city, into a dirtier, seedier part of the city than Caroline had ever been to before. High piles of rubbish were stuffed in the alleyways. Beggars in rags. Burly men on street corners. Plaster that had crumbled away revealing the brick structure. Bricks that had been beaten away and were crumbling themselves.

The scent of garbage was revolting.

The air was ominous with cold.

The sun went down.

Few lights. Just the sense of men staring at her.

Every wellborn girl knew there were parts of the metropolis — most of them — that she ought not go into ever, not even with an escort. This was undoubtedly one of them.

Caroline then had her chance — the moment she might have escaped.

They pulled to a stop in front of a tall building that looked a bit better maintained than many of them: bars on the windows above her, and an oak door with no placard.

Wickham leapt from the gig, leaving the horses standing, but not tied up. He pounded on the door.

She could grab the leather reins sitting on the seat next to her. Snap the horses into motion. Run away. Get far away. Escape.

Cold night air on her face.

Mr. Wickham would turn around, see her rush off. He’d pull the gun out and shoot at the back of the carriage, but he’d miss her because he could not directly see her anymore, and the bullet would anyways be stopped by the wood of the carriage.

Do it. Do it. Run!

Her hands remained stiff by her side. The reins were not picked up. The horses pawed at cobblestones that were slippery with horse manure.

A burly man with a dingy beard came out to speak with Wickham, and they talked together in low voices that did not carry while he gestured at her.

Now! Your last chance!

She tried to make herself do it, she really did.

Caroline lifted her hand to move towards the reins, but her terror of that gun created a sort of field around the leather straps that she could not press her hand through. It was like trying to force a lodestone against the wrong end of another lodestone.

Wickham returned, and he grabbed her arm and roughly pulled her from the carriage. She stumbled, but he kept shoving her, through the door and into the candle lit room beyond.

He slammed the door behind her, and then stood with his arm thrown dramatically out to display her. “A proper lady,” he said. “My ship has come in at last!”

They were in a short corridor that looked far better appointed than the outside of the building. Dark wood paneling, a thick red carpet dirty from boots tracking mud in, and two fine silver candle holders on either side of the door.

A brown haired woman who looked respectable from her dress and manners stood by the door next to the dingy man who'd met Wickham.

The man said, “Don’t know, George. Don’t know at all. She could be just a trollop you totted up nice.”

Wickham laughed. “This is Caroline Bingley, the heiress to twenty thousand pounds. Of age . She owns the money direct. No waiting. No worries about annoyed relations. All her relations hate her already. No one to rescue her. And she has agreed to make me the happiest of men.”

All three laughed cruelly.

“You sure she ain’t a trollop?” the man asked.

The woman sneered. “Look at that stiff nose she holds up over us. As though she is contaminated by the very neighborhood. That woman’s quality. Mark my word. She’s quality.”

“If you insist, Mrs. Younge,” the man replied skeptically. “But does she have a fortune? — Twenty thousand pounds. Girls like that aren’t unprotected. How are you going to marry her?”

“Special license.”

Both of them crackled with laughter. “How are you gonna manage and get that? Delusions of grandeur! Delusions!”

“Fuck you both.” Wickham snarled. “I’d shoot a hole through you as soon as speak to you. I can manage it — the assistant to the archbishop. He was at university with me. He’ll make sure I get a signed license if he knows what is good for him.”

“Blackmail, eh?” The woman shook her head. “Every person who comes in contact with you suffers for it. I’d still be Miss Darcy’s companion if I had never met you.”

“Fuck you too, Younge — I’ll need a loan. Twenty quid for the license.”

“Can’t get your man to stand for the fee himself? Can’t be a terribly good matter of blackmail.” She sneered.

“I’ll pay you back double when I have control of her fortune.”

“Ha!” Mrs. Younge replied. “You charmer.”

“Triple!”

“Don’t have many people who’ll trust you with money, do you?” She sneered. “Only way I’d trust you with twenty guineas is if you chopped off your favorite body part and left it as security.”

“A thousand pounds, Wickham?” the dingy man asked.

Wickham paused. Opened and closed his mouth. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not. You want me to keep this girl here till she’s married, I’ll do it. You want me to loan you the ready for your license, I’ll do it. But we’re sharing in your blessings.”

“This is robbery.”

He laughed and laughed. “You mean to rob the damn woman blind — you are the robber. I’m just sharing the blessing that has landed on an old friend. But good luck otherwise. Always pleasure to see you.”

Wickham stared at him.

He cackled. “Off with you. Off — don’t want our other visitors to be shocked off by seeing you here.”

“One hundred pounds.”

“You must visit more often. Bring more trollops. Best of luck in finding someone else who’ll take you in and loan you such money. Best luck.”

“Two hundred.”

The man then suddenly stepped forward in a terrifying motion that Caroline couldn’t track with her eyes. Muscles straining, he picked up Wickham by the lapels of his coat and pounded him against the wall. There was a sound of a crack, like some of the wood paneling broke. “One thousand pounds, or I fucking go to the Bow Street Runners myself with the girl, and tell them everything I know about you.”

“Fine, fine. Fuck you.”

He dropped Wickham, who stumbled to the ground, but he picked himself up instantly. “Give me the twenty pounds, and I’ll go off to Cartwright.”

“A thousand pounds when you have her fortune?”

“Damn you. Yes, a thousand pounds.”

He grinned and shook Wickham’s hand. “Let’s fetch the ready.”

Mrs. Younge exclaimed, “John, you can’t possibly trust that he’ll pay.”

“Oh, he’ll pay all right.” The man pulled a long knife from some pocket hidden in his coat and admired the edge, turning it back and forth in the candlelight to make it glitter. “He’ll pay, or I’ll sneak into that rich house he’ll buy for himself, climb up through the window one night, and slit that pretty neck.”

Wickham replied in a disgusted voice, “No need for threats. I said I’d pay. I’m a gentleman, aren’t I? Isn’t my word of honor worth something?”

That set off another bout of laughter which Wickham joined in. Caroline was then grabbed by the arm by Mrs. Younge and pulled into the next room.

A dozen women were present in this room, flopped in chairs and leaning against a fancy bar in red dresses that were so low cut that Caroline imagined that she could see the navel. Two men sat on different couches pressed against the sides of the room, one of them with a woman in his lap. The woman’s dress was half pulled off and hanging around her waist, leaving her breasts bare for everyone to see.

The same thin mahogany paneling and red drapes that were in the hallway covered the room, and guttering candles sat everywhere. There was a strong scent of cigar smoke, and, somehow shocking Caroline more than the rest, one woman sat on a stool by the bar puffing at her own cigar.

Caroline was quickly pulled through the room and up the stairs. And then up higher, and higher again. Wickham followed behind her and Mrs. Younge, while the man stayed in the main room of the bawdy house.

Terror grew in Caroline’s stomach with each step.

At the highest floor, Mrs. Younge used a pair of keys to open a heavy door. The room was completely dark, except that moonlight peered in through the barred window. As Caroline’s eyes adjusted she saw that the room was bare, except for a wide bed with brass posters. Mrs. Younge pushed her into the room, and Wickham leered at her. His face was lit up by the candles that Mrs. Younge set down on the windowsill.

His expression made a sick, dirty sensation crawl down her spine.

“Why are you doing this?” she suddenly asked him. “You — you know this is wrong.”

Wickham laughed and stepped closer to her. He pinched her cheeks between both of his hands and bent as though he meant to kiss her.

She closed her eyes and tried to pull back, resisting an urge to retch.

Wickham stepped back and slapped her hard. “You slut. I know how you slobbered after Darcy. Aren’t I better than him? Aren’t I more handsome than him? You just kissed him like a slut. They say you got him to fuck you, and he still wouldn’t marry you. Eh! You slut. Don’t you want to kiss me like you kissed Darcy?”

She shook her head no.

“Wait.” Mrs. Younge paled. “What does this woman have to do with Mr. Darcy? You did not say she had anything to do with Mr. Darcy.”

“He hates her, because she tried to force him to marry her.” Wickham cackled. “I wish it had worked. I hate that man. What is it that makes him think he is better than me? What is it—”

“Miss, what is your relation to Mr. Darcy?” Mrs. Younge asked with stress in her voice.

“None. I have nothing to do with him — it is what Mr. Wickham said. I acted in a horribly wrong way. And I—”

“Devil take it,” the woman cursed. “I do not care — but he’ll not seek to help you?”

She shook her head.

That unsettled look did not leave Mrs. Younge’s eyes.

She pushed Wickham towards the door and said, “You mean to marry her tomorrow. You can’t see her tonight then. It is bad luck.”

“I’ve already seen her tonight,” Wickham refused to be moved.

Mrs. Younge shoved him hard, and he stumbled out of the room, cursing Mrs. Younge as he went.

Once the door shut, there was immediately a solid click of a bolt falling into place. Caroline heard a bit of shouting between the two of them, but the thick wood blocked the words.

She looked around the room, holding the candle high.

The window was barred. There was no hope of escape. Just the bed, a single chair and a wash basin with a washcloth and a jug. Beneath it was an open seat and chamber pot that could be pulled out.

Caroline sat on the bed and stared at the moon, slowly moving in its arc through the window.

This room was a prison.

She wondered if it had been designed to imprison young women who'd been brought to this brothel, but who were not willing to share their favors with the customers.

She was cold, so she grabbed the quilt off the bed and wrapped it around her slender arms for warmth.

Perhaps she deserved this, but if she did, she was now properly paying for her crimes.

She’d tried to force Darcy to marry her, and now his father’s godson was going to force her to marry him.

There was a poetic justice in that.

At least Lydia was safe.

Caroline had a little worry for Lydia, having been left in the middle of a field five miles from her own home, but it was impossible for her to have any serious fear for the girl. There was only a miniscule chance that something might befall her that was worse than what was to happen to Caroline.

At least she’d helped Lydia.

Caroline scooted onto the bed, so she could sit in the corner of the room with her arms around her legs.

There was no fire, and she started to shiver as the hours went by.

She wouldn’t sleep at all tonight.

At least she had saved Lydia.

Sounds of pounding and rhythmic moans came from a neighboring room through the walls, and Caroline pressed herself even deeper into the corner, as though that provided safety. She had always been sheltered, but she was not so sheltered as to not know what those sounds meant.

Wickham would take her in that way once he’d forced the marriage vows out of her.

She was scared.

Eventually, despite the terror, Caroline fell asleep, her head lying against the wall.

She woke from unsettled dreams with a shriek at the sound of the bolt being thrown back.

Mrs. Younge opened the door. She paused to take in how Caroline was lying, pressed into the corner, and she sneered. “Get up. Time for your wedding.”

With an involuntary sideways shake of her head Caroline refused to move.

“Zounds! You rich useless girl. You always need to make everything difficult for everyone?”

The dingy man stood in the door behind her, clearly present to manage her if she tried to make a wild run to escape.

Mrs. Younge stepped into the room and jerked the quilt off Caroline. “You always thought everyone was so kind to you, and did so many things for you, fed you and pampered you and told you that you were special because you were . You ain’t, you slut. You just had money. But you won’t. Not after today. Not anymore. It’ll all be your husband’s, and I don’t reckon George will be a good husband. No, I don’t imagine he will be a satisfactory husband for you at all — get up!”

At the roar Caroline shrank against the wall, but then as Mrs. Younge went to grab her and yank her she steeled herself, took a deep breath, and rolled off the bed.

Something suddenly clicked in Caroline’s mind. “You were the companion of Miss Darcy who Mr. Darcy dismissed.”

“Heh, and you are the slut who threw your virginity away on him — did the stiff Mr. Darcy actually take your maidenhead before he abandoned you, like George said?”

At the way that Caroline did not reply, but rather stood there, in her dirty riding habit that she had set out in when leaving her little home so many hours before, Mrs. Younge shrugged. “No, I reckon he wouldn’t. That man would have married you if you’d convinced him to wax his wick with your butter. Eh?”

Caroline made no reply. But she could see no choice so she followed Mrs. Younge out the door and down the stairs. The dingy man followed them from behind.

Her heart raced with every step she took.

The fantasies of fleeing and being shot in the back, through the heart, through the head — dying in any case — returned. But this time she considered actually risking it.

Did she really want to live, if living meant marriage to Wickham?

If she died now, at least her fortune would be distributed to Charles and Louisa. After the wedding it would be Wickham’s.

And perhaps the king’s justice would catch Wickham, and he would hang for what he had done.

During the course of the four flights of stairs down, Caroline determined that even though it would fail, and he would shoot her, she would try to escape back through the door, as soon as they reached the ground floor, or maybe once she was brought out to be put in a carriage.

However the instant she was shoved into the common room of the establishment, that intention fled.

What first caught her eye was Wickham. He stood by the bar, a glass of whiskey in one hand, and the other played with the pistol that lay on the counter.

That pistol.

She could not look away from it.

I don’t want to die.

The impossibility of acting out her plan became clear to her.

She then saw that it would not have worked in any case.

The room looked much different now with the early morning light filtering through the windows than it had the previous evening.

Gone were the women in barely present dresses. None of the men were stripped to bare chests. The candles were out, there were only ashes in the fireplace. The look of the room was dingier, the wood paneling worn, broken off in places and soot soaked. The red draperies were a poor sort of chintz, not the silk that she had imagined the previous night. The stale scent of cigars and spilled beer and wine permeated everything. Only the mighty collection of alcohol behind the bar lost nothing of its magisterial dignity in the clearer light of day.

“My bride!” Wickham snickered.

A half dozen men, most burly, with arms as thick muscled as her thighs stood in the room, two of them by the door blocking any hope that she might have to escape.

One man in a rumpled black shirt and suit with a clerical collar peered at a piece of paper with his spectacles, pulling it close and then drawing back from it. He laughed and swallowed back a swig of alcohol. “George, by George. A real one. Never thought I’d see one of these. You really got it.”

“Of course I did.”

“Heh, heh. A special license — and on such short notice. Fine, intrepid fellow you are, Wickham.”

“Just marry us. Let's do it.”

“Heh, and such a lovely bride.”

The clergyman stuck his face next to Caroline’s and examined her. The scent of brandy and unwashed body odor sickened her.

He then giggled. “Poor girl. She can have no idea what you are like if she agreed to marry you. Eh, girl — you happy to be marrying my old college companion?”

Say it! Tell him that you are being forced to marry him. That it is only the gun that makes you marry.

But Wickham looked wholly unconcerned by anything she might say. He spun the pistol around and around on the bar, making a rough grating sound.

Caroline just mutely drew herself back from the clergyman.

He chuckled. “Well, George, let’s do this — can’t remember it at all, so let me see.” He pulled out from his coat pocket a battered copy of the Common Book of Prayer, bound in red leather and with stained pages that stuck together. “Let’s see — oh yes, you two must uh, stand there next to each other — you have a ring?”

“What?” Wickham said.

“It’s part of the service. You have to give her a ring. See here, it says you have to say, ‘with this ring do I thee wed’.”

“The fuck.”

“It’s in the service.”

“No, I don't have a damned ring. Devil take it, just sign the damned license, and write us into your parish registry, and tell everyone we married.”

The clergyman made a tutting sound. “This is why you would never have managed in the church. It isn’t valid if—”

“I don’t care if it is valid! I just care if the bank will believe it is!”

He tutted again. “You’ll need to find another priest if you don’t use a ring.”

The dingy man laughed, and he pulled a simple steel band off his pinkie finger. “Use this, Wicky. I’ll buy a new one with my share of the bitch’s fortune.”

Wickham took the ring.

“Stand there. Yes right there. And you, Miss — eh what is her name? The whole one. I need to know what to write in the registry.”

“Caroline Bingley,” Caroline replied in a quiet voice.

“Eh, wut?”

“Damn you,” Wickham cried. “It is written on the license!”

“Ah, yes.” He picked the thick piece of paper up again and studied it. “Caroline Bingley, eh? — that right, Miss?”

“Yes.”

“All right, all right.” He picked up the book of common prayer again, and started reading out the service in a drone, pausing every so often to hiccup.

Every word made Caroline’s heart race faster. She hoped she would faint away and wake when the nightmare was over. Words, rolling words.

One after another.

The men in the room stared and snickered, Mrs. Younge sprawled on a red divan, one foot crossed over the other. Stale scent of spilled wine.

Always, Mr. Wickham’s hand near the gun.

“Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her—”

“Fuck’s sake. At last. Yes,” Wickham interrupted him.

The parson snickered and waved his finger in Wickham’s face. “No, no, no — you have to say, ‘I will’.”

“Damn you, man. I will.”

“I have to finish the question first. Otherwise it isn’t valid — don’t you already know all this? Hic.”

Caroline got a strong sense that Wickham wanted to kill his friend. But if he did so too quickly, then the marriage would not be valid.

The parson started from “Wilt thou” again.

This time at the proper point Wickham said, “I will.”

The clergyman looked at her, and he said, “Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband—” Caroline could briefly not hear anything over the rushing in her ears. “Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him—”

She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

But there was the gun, sitting there, next to Wickham’s hand. He’d shoot her.

He’d shoot her if she didn’t say “I will.”

The parson finished the question, and he looked at her expectantly.

Wickham glared at her.

Caroline felt as though every nerve was tense. Trembling.

“You need to say — hic — ‘I will’,” the parson prompted her.

“I—”

“What is that noise?”

The dingy man who sat by the door that led to the corridor outside looked around, interrupting them. He stood and frowned at the door reaching towards the handle to open it.

Crack!

The door was kicked open, splintering the wood around the latch.

It slammed into the man, knocking him backwards.

Time seemed to stop for Caroline.

Splinters flying. Wickham’s hand going towards the gun.

Colonel Fitzwilliam stood in his officer’s uniform in the doorway holding a pistol in level hands and a dueling stance. Several red uniformed soldiers stood behind him.

Wickham’s hand reached the pistol, and he started pulling it from the bar. The other men in the room though were holding hands up and backing away from the door.

Gasps and exclamations.

The loud report of a pistol.

Smoke.

A little bit of the blood splattered onto Caroline.

Wickham slumped and fell to the side.

He had a small tidy hole in the front of his head, and a big gaping bloody mess in the back where the bullet had left. Caroline stared down at the dead body, blood burbling out of the back of Wickham’s head.

She’d never had any idea that the wound might be bigger in the back.

The men in the corridor came in, several soldiers and several Bow Street Runners. Colonel Fitzwilliam came towards her. With a moan Caroline rushed to him, and threw her arms around him, and she sobbed desperately.