Page 29
Story: The Deception
W hen Mr. Darcy was announced at Matlock House, he was immediately accosted by his aunt and uncle. “Darcy! Have you at last regained your senses?” the Earl asked him.
“I had not realised that I had lost them,” he replied, calmly.
“Of course you have. You cannot possibly marry a young woman whose sister eloped and then vanished from sight.” The Earl scoffed at such a notion.
“I am aware of the difficulties, Uncle, which is why I am working so hard to find that sister.”
“Even if she is found, to marry into such a family? You cannot be serious,” his aunt said.
Mr. Darcy chose to ignore this. “Is Richard about?”
“He is.” She pulled the bell cord and asked the maid to send the Colonel to the drawing room.
When he arrived, Darcy rose and opened the satchel he had brought with him. He took out a thick roll of paper and handed it to his cousin. “The drawings, Richard, as we hoped.”
The Colonel set the roll of paper on the table and carefully unrolled it. There was a stack – over a dozen – of drawings of a young girl. “This is Miss Lydia?”
“Yes; her sisters agree that it is an excellent likeness.”
The Countess peered around her son’s broad shoulders. “She is a pretty thing; I do not wonder that Wickham was interested.”
“She is, indeed,” the Colonel agreed. “Darcy, at Mother’s suggestion, I have enlisted a number of retired Army men to help us with the search; I shall hand out these drawings to aid their enquiries. I dismissed the Bow Street runners, as I believe the Army men to be far superior.”
Mr. Darcy nodded, adding, “I have some news as well. My man of business, Mr. Dawton, has found Mrs. Younge’s boarding house. It is in St. Giles.”
The Colonel’s eyes lit up. “Excellent! I will accompany you there.”
“That was my hope.”
“Do not take the Fitzwilliam carriage,” the Earl advised. “It will be far too conspicuous in that part of town.”
“Quite right; a hackney, I think,” Mr. Darcy said.
***
The hackney pulled up in front of a rundown boarding house.
It was three stories tall, though the top floor seemed to be leaning toward the street.
The paint was flaking off, the roof was pitched rather lower on one end than the other, and one of the posts in the front entryway looked very much as if it had given up on life and would collapse at any moment.
The Colonel wrinkled his nose. “I think I would prefer sleeping in an Army tent to this place.”
The hackney driver called down. “Oi! Are ya wanting me to wait fer ya here? Cost ya extra, you know, it bein’ St. Giles.”
“Yes, please wait,” Mr. Darcy replied at once. He flipped the man a coin, adding, “There will be another like it when we come out.”
The driver pocketed the coin at once, looking about himself furtively to make certain no one had seen it.
Mr. Darcy and the Colonel stepped to the front door and knocked. The door opened a minute later, and then promptly closed again – or it would have, had the Colonel not inserted a booted foot into the doorway.
“Mrs. Younge, there is no point in hiding,” Mr. Darcy said. “I know where you live now.”
There was no sound from the other side, so the Colonel pushed the door open. Mrs. Younge stepped back. “I had rather hoped I had seen the last of you, Mr. Darcy,” she snapped at him.
“Oddly, I was thinking the same thing,” Mr. Darcy snapped back.
“Then why are you here?” she demanded.
“I am looking for your old friend Wickham.”
“He is not present,” she said, pulling her dignity about her like a tattered cloak.
“I can see that he is not present; where is he?”
“I do not know.” She shrugged and began to turn away.
“I find myself hard-pressed to believe you,” Mr. Darcy replied. Turning to the Colonel, he said, “Richard, evidently there is nothing for it but to knock on every door.”
“And if the door is locked, simply break it in,” the Colonel added.
“Exactly.”
“No! No, do not break the doors. I will bring my keys,” Mrs. Younge said, quickly.
“Very good,” Mr. Darcy said. “Though I do think the Colonel was rather looking forward to breaking the doors.”
The Colonel turned to his cousin. “I will wait here by the front door in case the devil tries to escape while you are searching.”
Mrs. Younge scowled fiercely at the Colonel, who merely stared back at her.
Mr. Darcy followed Mrs. Younge up the stairs.
She opened the doors, one after another, waiting while he searched the room for any hint that Wickham had resided there.
One of the rooms contained a woman with three children; she immediately set up an outcry upon seeing a strange man in the doorway, but Mr. Darcy apologised profusely, handed her a guinea, and backed out.
“You might have warned me,” he told Mrs. Younge, irritably.
“Would you have believed me?”
“Likely not,” he admitted. “But can you blame me?”
She simply snorted.
One by one, Mrs. Younge opened the doors and he searched the room, looking under the beds and in the wardrobes; then they made their way up to the second floor, and again, doors were unlocked and opened and the rooms searched, but there was no sign of Mr. Darcy’s quarry.
When they reached the top floor, however, Mrs. Younge’s behaviour changed noticeably.
She began to speak quite loudly, and her hands shook as she opened each door.
When she opened the next to the last door on the right, Mr. Darcy was knocked down to the ground the moment the door was opened.
Wickham leapt over Mr. Darcy’s prone body and shot down the stairs like a bullet from a gun.
Mr. Darcy collected himself in time to see Mrs. Younge hurrying after Wickham as quickly as her legs could carry her.
Mr. Darcy smiled to himself; there was no need for him to hurry. The Colonel, no doubt, already had matters in hand. Indeed, when Mr. Darcy descended the stairs, he found the Colonel standing with one booted foot upon Wickham’s back.
“Took your time, Darcy,” the Colonel observed.
“I was certain you had taken charge of the situation, cousin,” Mr. Darcy drawled.
“As you see.”
Mrs. Younge was weeping piteously, but Mr. Darcy had no interest in her. The Colonel, whistling, reached into his coat pocket and took out a thin rope; with this, he bound Wickham’s hands behind his back.
“Come, Wickham, we are prepared to be reasonable,” Mr. Darcy said. “Let him sit up, Richard.”
“Not quite yet.” With another length of rope, the Colonel quickly bound Wickham’s feet. “There; he will not run away from us.”
The Colonel rolled Wickham over with his foot, and then reached down and hauled him into a standing position. “Well, well, a trussed chicken and no mistake,” the Colonel chuckled. “I have longed for this moment since I heard about what you did to my little cousin.”
Wickham sneered. “Georgiana? Let me tell you –“
But he got no further, for the Colonel slapped him across the face, hard. “I will not hear her name on your lips. Next time, I will break your nose. I advise you not to test me on this, Wickham, as it would give me great pleasure to ruin your famous good looks.”
Wickham was now trembling. Unable to remain standing, he sank to his knees. “What is it you want?” he whispered.
“I want Lydia Bennet,” Mr. Darcy snapped.
Wickham could not resist saying, “She hardly seems your type, Darcy, but if she is what you want –“
“Shut up, Wickham. She is – rather, she was – an innocent young woman. Where is she?”
“I do not know.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Believe what you like; I took her to the Cock and Bull on Whitechapel High Street and kept her there for a week. Then one day she up and left on her own. I know not where she went.”
“Is this the truth, Wickham?”
“It is.”
“Darcy, let us take him with us to the Cock and Bull and confirm his story. If he is telling the truth, we will let him go. If he is not, I will take him into one of the alleyways in that area and kill him.”
“I know you have been longing to run him through,” Mr. Darcy said, conversationally.
“Indeed, and for some years now. I tell you, nothing would give me greater pleasure, so I rather hope he is lying.”
“I am not lying!” Wickham cried out. “She left. I would have protected her –“
“Yes, indeed, of course you would have,” Mr. Darcy mocked him.
Mrs. Younge tried to intervene. “Leave him here, I will watch over him until you return.”
No one paid her the least notice. Mr. Darcy went out to enlist the hackney driver’s assistance; the three men carried Wickham out to the hackney and tossed him onto the floor.
“Extra for the third, ya know,” the hackney driver informed Mr. Darcy.
“Just drive. The Cock and Bull on Whitechapel High Street.”
Upon reaching the inn, Wickham’s story was confirmed. The innkeeper greeted Wickham with a frown, taking down a dirty sheet of paper on which he had figured how much was owed to him for the young woman’s food. “She took quite a bit of food with her when she left,” the innkeeper complained.
“Which way did she go?” Mr. Darcy asked, urgently.
At this, the innkeeper turned a bit red. “Well, she asked which way was Gracechurch Street…”
“And?”
“I was a bit upset, you understand, about the food not being paid for.”
“AND?” Darcy roared, utterly frustrated.
It was so unexpected that the innkeeper flinched and answered at once. “I pointed her in the opposite direction.”
“You what? You pointed that young girl deeper into Whitechapel?” Mr. Darcy could not believe his ears.
“Not proud of it,” the man whispered. “A bit worried now, to tell the truth. I got a daughter her age, and I - ”
“Have you heard anything of her?”
“Not a word.”
“When was this?”
“Hold on.” The man closed his eyes and thought hard. Finally he opened them again and said, “Second week in August. Dunno, the eighth, the ninth?”
The Colonel turned to Mr. Darcy. “Well, at least we know what direction she took.”
Returning to the hackney, the Colonel said, “You were telling the truth, Wickham.”
“I told you I was! Now keep your promise and let me go.”
Table of Contents
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- Page 29 (Reading here)
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