Page 21 of Heiress of Longbourn (Pride and Prejudice Variations)

The horses lurched into motion, and Elizabeth turned to look out the window, unwilling to observe her silly sister clutching at her rogue of a … well, fiancé, presumably. Her father said that the arrangements had been made, and Lydia would soon be the wife of the impecunious, and villainess, and useless, George Wickham.

The carriage swung right on the Great North Road, and Elizabeth turned a confused look at her father, who lifted a finger to his lips. She settled back in her seat, her mind whirling. They were now headed north, not south back to Meryton. Were they indeed journeying to Scotland for the wedding? On the one hand, she could well understand that her father did not wish for Lydia to return to Meryton unwed. On the other, Jane’s wedding was less than a week hence, and surely Mr. Bennet wished to be home to give her away?

While she was intensely curious, she respected her father’s desire to be silent for a time, and thus she looked, instead, at the countryside rolling by. It was a chilly day outside, but a sunny one, and insensibly she felt her spirits rise at the view, with charming little towns, and horses and cows and sheep dotting the various fields.

Lydia, to her relief, fell asleep within half an hour of entering the carriage, though the sight of George Wickham wrapping his arm around her and drawing her close made Elizabeth slightly ill. He was not a good man and would doubtless be a terrible husband to her poor, deluded sister, but there was nothing to be done, after all.

It was a full three hours before the driver pulled into a posting house on the road. Lydia stirred and sat up. Wickham removed his arm from around her, and she stretched and looked outside the window at the sign of the Dandelion and Daffodil Inn.

“Where are we?” she asked curiously.

“Biggleswade,” Mr. Bennet said coolly.

Lydia frowned at her father. “When we will arrive home?”

“We are not returning home,” her father informed her. “We are journeying to Kympton in Derbyshire and will reach there tomorrow. You will be married there.”

Lydia blinked a few times and then turned in confusion towards Lieutenant Wickham.

“George, what is going on? I want to be married in Meryton, and I thought you disliked Derbyshire because that mean Mr. Darcy lives there.”

“My brother does despise Darcy, but I do not,” Wickham replied calmly. “You see, I am Alexander, not George, Miss Lydia.”

***

Parlor

Lion and the Lamb Inn

Brampton

Several Hours Previously

The soft steady ticking of a clock worked its way through the pleasant warm haze that lay over George Wickham's mind. His mouth was sour with the aftertaste of the brandy he had been consuming as he fell asleep. There had been great quantities of it, for Alexander had ordered a bottle, and kept George's glass continuously full. It had been an evening worthy of celebration, for Bennet was paying handsomely for the salvaging of his daughter's reputation.

The talk had gone on for some time, and eventually George had dozed off. His mind slowly became aware that he was leaning against comfortable leather, and that a fire was warming him from the front, logs crackling and popping in the flames. A thought niggled at the edge of his mind, that he had mislaid something important or forgotten some necessary task, but he was warm and comfortable, and he did not wish to move. Whatever he had forgotten could keep for a few more minutes.

The rustle of turning pages impinged on his consciousness, and Wickham frowned slightly. He forced his heavy eyelids open and stared at the fire in front of him. It was a dynamic orange blur, and he blinked once or twice until it came into focus. The rustling was coming from beside him, and he turned his head to the right.

The sight that met his eyes jerked him wide awake, cold lead settling in the pit of his belly. Fitzwilliam Darcy sat in the adjoining chair – both wingbacks, some distant part of Wickham's mind noted absently – his attention on the book in his hands.

“Darcy?” he muttered in a thickened tone and sat up quickly, causing an immediate headache to bloom near his temples. “What … what is going on?”

Darcy was wearing his usual annoying expression of aristocratic calm, but he did not speak immediately. Instead, he stood up, walked behind Wickham’s chair and, a minute later, appeared with a plate of bread and butter and a glass of ale.

“I expect you are hungry and thirsty,” Darcy said, setting down his offerings on a small table next to Wickham’s chair.

“That is uncommonly good of you, Darcy,” he said; he was, indeed, hungry and thirsty, and he quickly swallowed down the ale, and ate the bread and butter.

His headache diminished almost immediately, and he rose to his feet, stretched, and looked around curiously.

“Where are Mr. Bennet and Alexander?” he asked.

“They left Brampton three hours ago for Derbyshire,” Darcy explained, “and Miss Lydia is with them.”

George jolted in amazement. “What?!”

“Alexander deliberately chose your favorite brandy so that you would get drunk, and while you were sleeping by the fire, he donned a red coat and pretended to be you. He swept Miss Lydia into the Bennet carriage with her father and Miss Elizabeth, and by this time, Miss Lydia is many miles away and beyond your reach.”

George’s headache instantly returned with ferocity, and he stared at his enemy, his jaw drooping.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “I must marry Lydia, obviously. She is ruined, given that we spent the night together!”

Darcy shrugged and said, “Alexander has offered to marry her himself, and though I do not think she is a particularly good wife for a parson, he will certainly be a far better husband to her than you would.”

George’s knees were suddenly weak. He fell more than sat on the chair, and his vision blurred a few seconds before clearing.

“Nonsense,” he said feebly. “We had a deal. Mr. Bennet promised me five hundred pounds a year. He signed it.”

“Yes, and then you fell conveniently asleep in a drunken stupor, and the agreement was consigned to those very flames,” Darcy replied, nodding toward the fire.

Wickham turned horrified eyes on the crackling fireplace and shook his head. “You … no, it is impossible. I expect only cruelty from you, but my own brother? He would not treat me so dreadfully! We are twins!”

“Alexander is a godly man, and he knows as well as I do that you seduced Lydia Bennet for the sole purpose of extracting substantial sums from her father.”

George glared at Darcy, who was glaring back, and thought quickly.

“Well, it will not work, of course, for Alexander to marry Lydia,” he said defiantly. “I will tell everyone in Meryton that she ran away with me , and that we spent the night together.”

Darcy, to his exasperation, did not seem perturbed at all by this threat.

“You can, certainly, do that, George, but it is unlikely that anyone will believe you. Alexander made a point of dressing up in a militia redcoat, supplied by Colonel Forster, and pretended to be you as he rode out of town, and that was many hours after you fled with Miss Lydia. Moreover, I briefly spoke with Forster before Alexander and I began our journey north, and he is furious that you betrayed the Bennets by running away with their daughter. We did not have much time to talk, but he spoke rather wildly about having you hung for desertion, which would legally be his right; you took a commission in the militia, after all, and left without permission.”

Wickham slumped against the chair as the reality of Darcy’s words penetrated to his very bones. He was furious with Alexander for treating him in such a way, but as his alcoholic haze gave way to cold, bitter reality, he admitted to himself that he had been entirely outmaneuvered. Lydia was a young fool and malleable to his considerable charm, but with Mr. Bennet and Miss Elizabeth and Alexander keeping a close eye on her, she would no longer be of any use to him.

“We should never have stopped here,” he muttered. “If we had made it to Gretna Green...”

He trailed off, and Darcy lifted one dark eyebrow. “But you would hardly have done that, would you? You deliberately stopped here in Brampton and spent the night with Miss Lydia, and you waited for Mr. Bennet to arrive. You had every intention of blackmailing Bennet into providing you a large annual income. Your only mistake was underestimating Alexander. I freely confess he is the one who came up with the idea of tricking Lydia into accompanying him and her family north.”

Wickham swallowed hard. “You wish to see me starve.”

“I do not truly care whether you starve or not,” Darcy said, and there was such anger in that deep voice that George’s limbs froze in genuine terror. Too late, he remembered that he had tried to run off with Georgiana Darcy only a few months previously, and Darcy was furious with him.

“However,” Darcy continued, and now the voice was slightly less menacing, “Alexander does not wish you to die in a gutter, so I have an offer for you.”

George turned anxious eyes on his adversary. “What is it?”