Darcy & Elizabeth (57 page)

“I beg you, sirs,” she addressed them, “may we have privacy for our discourse?”

The men turned to each other, hooted, and pretended high manners, mocking hers. “Woohoo! She begs us, she do! What else will she beg us, I ask you?”

Kneebone turned to the men, menacingly demanding, “Leave us!” And they did directly.

Relieved, Elizabeth quieted Lydia, who was still enumerating Wickham's shortcomings as a husband and had only arrived to count three of a possible hundred, saying to her, “Lydia dear, you may post a letter upon your own time.”

Wickham grinned. At that moment she could think of no greater want than to rid the smile from his face.

“May we be frank, Mr. Wickham?”

“I most humbly desire that, Elizabeth.”

She ignored his familiarity, “We have been advised by our attorney…”

“Mr. Phillips, I presume—lovely man. He still owes me five pounds from cards,” Wickham interrupted.

“Let her speak, Wickham,” Kneebone raised his voice.

It was incendiary.

Wickham retorted, “I do not recall one major is to command another major in what he may or may not do. I am an officer of the Waterloo battle and a gentleman. I have a history with this lady; we are friends! I beg you, leave this conversation to us!”

“Ha! You, Wickham, are neither a hero nor a gentleman!” Lydia cried.

“I do not care to be spoken to in that manner by a woman who arranges her hair with a pitchfork and dresses like a Covent Garden tart!”

Wickham had half risen. Elisabeth rose as well as she could from behind the table and put her hand between them, but to no avail.

“You, sir, are no gentleman,” boomed Kneebone. “Of that I am certain. You are an adulterer and a card-cheat.”

“You, Kneebone, who claimed you are friend to all things demure in a woman, have taken Lydia to your bed! What hypocrisy!”

Although she had never heard them before, Elizabeth knew fighting words when uttered—and there had been more than a few just exchanged. She grabbed Lydia by the hand to make away, but both were tangled in their skirts whilst attempting to escape the bench.

“Draw your weapon, Kneebone,” snorted Wickham, pulling a knife from his boot.

In a flash, Kneebone unsheathed his sword.

Suddenly, was there not alarm enough in the room, the cocking of a pistol was heard. To her horror, Elizabeth saw that Lydia had withdrawn a tiny single-shot pistol from her reticule.

When Kneebone turned to look aghast at his wife, Wickham slid the point of his blade to his fingers and drew back to throw it at Kneebone. With that came the report of Lydia's gun. The bullet hit the knife with a ping, knocking it from Wickham's hand and, as luck would have it, ricocheting into his foot. He did not immediately react, but looked at his foot in wonder.

Lydia looked at the still-smoking end of her gun, saying, “I thought I would be a better shot than that.”

“Whatever do you mean?” cried Kneebone. “That was magnificent! You shot the knife from his hand!”

“I was,” Lydia groused, “aiming at the curl in the middle of his bloody forehead!”

Only then did Wickham begin to hop about, endeavouring unsuccessfully to keep from howling in pain, “Are you compleatly mad, woman? Discharging a weapon at me! This is a first even for you, Lydia!”

Instantly, Lydia was by Wickham's side, “Oh dear! Poor Wickham! What have I done? What have I done?”

Lydia was still keening whilst endeavouring to put her arms about Wickham. Kneebone was even more aghast than when she had discharged the gun. “Lydia, dearest!”

Elizabeth had had quite enough. She grasped Lydia by her bonnet strings and forced her from Wickham, dragging her through the crowd that was just then beginning to form in the hopes of seeing a person lying dead from malfeasance.

“Come, Major Kneebone!” she demanded.

He had been standing as if a statue, arms outstretched, still murmuring, “Lydia, dearest.”

At last Kneebone regained his composure and clutched Lydia about the waist, lifting her up and over what various personages laid in their way to the hack. They scrambled into the coach, neither of the ladies waiting to be handed into their seat. Indeed, Kneebone climbed onto the top with the driver, wresting the reins from him once atop. He flapped the reins wildly but could only urge the horses into an indolent canter.

It was good enough for them to make their escape.

***

When they arrived home from the encounter with Wickham, all involved were quite happy to have absconded—not only with their lives, but from the constabulary as well. Disturbed by that possibility, they sat with the drapes drawn for the remainder of the day, with Kneebone taking periodic trips to the window to watch for their apprehenders. In time, Lydia realised she would not be dragged off to Newgate and remained unrepentant. Still, as attempted murder was frowned upon in any neighbourhood in London, Lydia begged Elizabeth to keep the confidence of her actions. Elizabeth agreed readily. She truly did not care for Darcy to learn of it, particularly in light of her similar exertion in his aunt's direction. Her poor husband might come to the conclusion that her entire family was a threat to tranquillity. Hence she was not inclined to be called forth to the magistrate as an accessory to such a crime. Had anything more than Wickham's dignity (and only a tiny bit of his big toe) been injured, the outcome might have been quite dissimilar.

After the initial fright was over Elizabeth was so angry with Lydia, she was all but rendered speechless, “Really, Lydia!”

She did not inquire as to where Lydia had acquired a pistol. It seemed pointless. After all, Lydia was not entirely to blame. Hers was not the first weapon drawn. The entire fracas recalled to Elizabeth an episode in her own life that was not so benign. In want of not recalling that horrifying event, she suffered from a headache that evening. In light of such a fiasco of a negotiation, as Elizabeth saw it, their foremost challenge was not that nothing was decided. What most worried her was the revelation that Lydia was not immune to Wickham's wiles. Kneebone was not inconsolable, but was clearly miffed—uncertain which held the greatest weight, that Lydia endeavoured to kill Wickham in his defence or that she threw herself at Wickham's feet after the fact.

As for Lydia, she vowed to Kneebone that she had not meant to go to Wickham as she had, but, “When I saw what I had done, I could not bear to be his murderer.”

Kneebone allowed that grounds for remorse, but did not appear altogether convinced of her loyalty. It was then that Lydia came to Elizabeth to implore her to be rid of Wickham on her behalf.

“If you do not,” she said, “I cannot answer for what might come to pass.”

Those were the first genuine tears she had ever recollected of Lydia. (Even as a child, she had taken advantage of her mother's partiality and her position of youngest, wailing like a banshee at the smallest injury and weeping buckets with any cross words.) It was clear to Elizabeth that neither Kneebone nor Lydia could be trusted to meet with Wickham again. Such a violent outcome had made her more resolute against Darcy engaging him as well. The pendulum had again swung upon the issue of seeing Wickham by herself. She believed that her initial instinct to see Wickham alone had been correct. Having seen him for as brief a time as she had, it was still not a pleasing prospect. It did not take much intuition to tell her that she had not seen the last of him.

After a sleepless night, the next morning she held in her hand a note that she had scribbled to Wickham. She looked it over once again before she bade a messenger to deliver it to Wickham at the public house where last they saw him. When she gave the boy the address, Lydia tried to surreptitiously read what was written from over her shoulder, but Elizabeth quickly folded it and shooed her away.

Had Lydia seen it, she would have read:

As I had not the time to tell you, we have been advised that the law reads that in cases such as yours, a wife may choose between her first husband and her second. Moreover, if desertion is proven, the husband has morally dissolved the marriage as well. I only ask you to leave Lydia in peace.

If you choose not to desist, I must advise you that information to your detriment will be used against you.

This, of course, was a compleat bluff. They had no real evidence, only hearsay. Wickham was officially a hero, killed in hostilities for the Crown. At that moment she was desperate not to meet with him again—most certainly not alone in a vile tavern. Moreover, the longer she stayed in London without advising Darcy, she knew she was at risk of injuring his trust. She was even more convinced after the altercation the previous morning that she wanted Darcy nowhere near Wickham.

She sealed the folded letter with red wax only and handed it to the boy with a half-crown for his trouble. The boy looked at her in wonder, gave the coin a bite just to make certain it was real, and took off on a hard run. Elizabeth marvelled at his sense of purpose. When she closed the door and turned, Lydia stood before her.

“We must await his answer,” Elizabeth said.

Lydia turned and walked away. The little nurse was standing by the doorway holding the baby. To the girl's astonishment, Lydia took her daughter from her, pressed her to her breast, and carried her into the sitting room. The girl looked directly at Elizabeth. Neither quit the gaze.

At last Elizabeth asked, “Pray, do I
know
you?”

“No ma'am,” Sally answered, then seeing her opening, said, “not exactly.”

A Turn or Two

The little servant girl with the searching eyes had quite a tale to tell.

It seemed that the Darcys had sorely underestimated the extent of behindhand prattle that came in the aftermath of war. It not only traversed Derbyshire, it made its way to London and beyond. Hence Sally had been very much upon his trail when her path crossed Wickham's.

When the Darcys supposed that only they were privy to the heinous crimes of George Wickham, they were greatly mistaken. As much as those within the inner circle of their servitors dedicated themselves to maintaining their privacy and abhorred its betrayal, those in more distant positions were not so circumspect. Indeed, the greater the distance, the more injudicious the talk. There may have been only whispers, but they were pervasive.

Much of the talk was birthed in the field hospital in Belgium where Mr. Darcy's scruples called upon him to aid the wretched wounded as a stretcher-bearer. Whilst initially it was only a matter of curiosity who the tall, aristocratic man was, once one was privy to it, so was every other soldier (at least those whose wounds bade them sensible enough to be told). To have a man such as Mr. Darcy labouring as a stretcher-bearer had been a fine sight indeed, and it arrested the attention of any number of onlookers. The member of Wickham's command with whom Mr. Darcy spoke in that hospital recognised not only that Mr. Darcy was a man of some means, he knew in what county those means largely existed.

The grenadier who was important enough for Mr. Darcy to comfort became equally memorable. Both names were murmured from one end of the hospital to the other. Upon the return of those surviving soldiers to their home counties, those names were repeated. The means by which the young grenadier John Christie received his wound were recounted and the name of the officer responsible were hissed from one person to the next. These soldiers who surrounded the young grenadier—those near enough and alert enough to be privy to the tale—were not officers. The few men of rank wounded were sequestered upon the far wall, away from the riff-raff which comprised the enlisted men. Hence, the disgrace Major Wickham employed in service to his king remained unknown to those who might take legal interest in such an occurrence. There was but one man who knew both who Mr. Darcy was and heard what John Christie said of his commanding officer. That man was not inclined to speak publicly—far too many men who reported such misdeeds came under undue inspection by the authorities. He spoke his mind in more than one ale-house, but no more.

That man had been but one of many who despised the act but thought little of that oversight, for it was the way of the world. It was only one of the more conspicuous injuries done to the working man by those who comprised their betters in the established order. Indeed, word of such a crime as Major Wickham's only served to inflame the perturbable masses. What Sally learnt from stealing away to the Darcys' stables was only a slight variation of the truth. (Even the high-born believed any story worth retelling had to take a bend or two.) It had enough authenticity to redirect Sally's quest from finding her brother to finding his killer and seeing that if the law did not exact vengeance upon her brother's behalf, she would. The only thing that stood in her way was the question of whether that officer was killed in battle or had deserted, as some had said.

Sally had always been quick to make friends and that trait served her well at the Pemberley stables. In that she had only brief periods of time to escape Lydia's watch, it was remarkable that she found Edward Hardin's wife with such ease. It had been even more astonishing to Sally that when she told Mrs. Hardin that her brother's name was John Christie, that lady scooped her into her arms and hugged her to her generous bosom.

“I loved that boy as if 'e were my own,” she said.

Hearing that such a kind woman had looked after her brother made Sally all but cry with pleasure.

“Law', now, gerl,” Mrs. Hardin said, “he was a fine lad. You can be proud.”

That her pride could be extended to her brother's induction into the grenadiers was added pleasure. That he had given all he had to give to the king upon the field of battle was not. She was not altogether surprised. Not receiving another letter after his deployment made clear his fate. The particulars Mrs. Hardin whispered were of grave importance to her. But these came not in buckets, but in a trickle. With each creep down to Mrs. Hardin's kitchen, more of her brother's situation fell apparent.

Learning that her mother had actually once worked as a maid at Pemberley was one of the first surprises—she had always thought it was one of her mother's tales. Sally explained that John was but her half-brother, but of this Mrs. Hardin seemed already aware.

Mrs. Hardin was shelling a bowl of peas with precision as she talked, expertly inserting her thumbnail into the pods, evicting the peas from their snug home and into her dish.

“Here, gerl,” she said, “make yerself useful.”

Grasping a handful of peas, she dropped them into Sally's lap. Sally had never shelled peas, but she was observant and caught on in a hurry.

“Your mama worked at Pemberley, did ye know that?”

“Nay,” replied Sally, “I would think that if I worked in such a fine house I would never want to leave it.”

Mr. Hardin looked at her carefully, gauging her words.

“Do you know your brother's pa?” she asked cautiously.

“I only know that my mama weren't married to him,” she answered straightforwardly.

Mrs. Hardin barely recalled the events that she related, but filled the holes in her memory as best she could. She was far too loyal to her husband's employer to pass on those allegations of a youthful dalliance with Abigail that had taken on a life of their own after her death. Word filtered back from the Continent that Mr. Darcy had sat bedside of John Christie's dying body, enough for some of those in Pemberley's service to surmise that their connection was of a particular kind. But the Hardins knew better. The last housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, had put that fallacy to rest for good. Had Sally arrived a twelve-month before, she might have heard a far different story than she did. Because whilst Mrs. Reynolds had squelched that earlier rumour, she had confirmed another upon her deathbed. For those who nursed Mrs. Reynolds in her last hours were privy to that woman's revelation to Mr. Darcy regarding George Wickham's paternity. That was one bit of information that Mrs. Hardin thought twice about sharing. At last, her loyalty to the boy whom she had thought of as a son bade her tell his thoughtful sister what was thought to be the truth of his death. She related it in detail, not omitting Mr. Darcy's overseeing his final hours.

Hence, before Sally left the Hardins' kitchen, she had obtained a great deal of intelligence. That it all dawned upon her slowly did not make the absorbing of it any less painful. But once she accepted that her brother was dead—killed by Major George Wickham in the act of that devil's desertion, the rest was only a means to what ends she sought. She knew her brother's murderer was George Wickham and that he was Mrs. Darcy's brother-in-law. Mr. Darcy comforted her brother on his deathbed. Mrs. Darcy's sister, Mrs. Wickham, abided with her uncle, Mr. Gardiner, in Cheapside until her marriage to Major Kneebone. Major Wickham was said to be both dead and a deserter.

“Anybody who knows that scoundrel don't think for a minute he didn't run when the fightin' heated up,” observed Mrs. Hardin.

Sally had but caught a glimpse of Mr. Darcy at Pemberley. She could only tell that he was a proud man, given to prideful ways, but she would have liked to shake his hand.

Then, quite without warning, Sally found herself under the same roof as her brother's murderer. She did not know if it was a boon or not that she had been unaware of it until after the fact. Everyone was in such an uproar, she fancied that she could have leapt upon him and garrotted him before anyone could stop her. It was her intention to take the retribution against Wickham that the army had not. She was still uncertain whether his family actually knew of this Wickham's deeds. Clearly, Mrs. Kneebone was not witting of the talk. (It was clear she was not because everything she knew and then some came out of that lady's mouth.)

When her eyes had met with Mrs. Darcy's that day due to Mrs. Kneebone's unprecedented claiming of her daughter, Sally truly did not know what to do.

Mrs. Darcy took her aside, asking, “Pray, what is our connection?”

“My brother's name is—was John Christie.”

With that correction, an expression of sympathy overspread the lady's face. She first put her hand upon Sally's shoulder, squeezing it in gentle comfort. But as the first tears that she had shed for her brother since learning of his fate began to pool in her eyes, Mrs. Darcy drew her into her embrace.

“There, there,” was all she said.

In a moment, Sally made herself hush. Mrs. Darcy released her and she stood back.

“He was very brave,” said Mrs. Darcy.

“I don't know 'bout that,” said Sally, “but I do know that he was murdered by Major Wickham.”

It seemed like the right time to tell all she knew, and discover in return what his kin knew. Mrs. Darcy's countenance only registered enough surprise to suggest that what had taken her aback was not what she knew, but that she knew it.

“I don't think Mrs. Kneebone knows that. What say you?” Sally asked with a plain-spokenness unaccustomed by gentlefolk.

“No,” Mrs. Darcy answered. “I know that she does not.”

“I aim to kill 'im,” Sally said, “bein' as no one else seems inclined to.”

Mrs. Darcy was mildly taken aback once again, but regained her composure quickly. “Not that I disapprove of that man being held accountable for his misdeeds, but I think it best that we leave retribution to the courts.”

“Don't treat me like I don't know nothin', ma'am,” Sally told her bitterly, then thought to add, “beggin' yer pardon.”

“I did not mean to speak to you with condescension, but I do not withdraw my advice,” said Elizabeth.

“I shouldn't be meddlin' in rich men's affairs, eh?”

Sally knew that she had stepped over a line that few crossed without reproof. She would have jutted her chin in pure stubbornness, but Mrs. Darcy was too kind to insult her. She had to remind herself that she was not in Seven Dials and there were manners to be observed. She knew it was possible that she would be dismissed, but as she had located Major Wickham, Mrs. Kneebone's temper was not a particular inducement to stay.

“Can you remain at the ready?” asked Mrs. Darcy. “The limb of the law may need your assistance.”

Suddenly, acting as Mrs. Darcy's accomplice seemed the most important task imaginable. Sally set her vengeance aside—for the moment.