The Road to Pemberley (14 page)

I remember that other night of rain and darkness, and waiting inside the carriage for Georgiana and her packages.

It was cold for a summer night, with thunder and rain and a blustery wind that whistled around corners. Georgiana looked giddy, in her pelisse and hat, as she ran down the steps. And stopped.

There were hooves in the night and a horse drew up behind the carriage. Georgiana looked delighted. She ran toward where the horse had stopped.

I believe I knew even then the identity of the rider. I felt no surprise when, after a brief talk with Georgiana, Will appeared at the door to the carriage. He was furious. I'd seen him that furious only a couple of times while growing up—once when his groom had whipped a horse severely, and then again when a gardener had beaten the young gardener boy without mercy. Both times, Darcy—only a stripling—had threatened to have the offender flogged.

Now he was looking at me with a cold rage. He looked so pale that his lips appeared gray. “Eloping?” he asked. “You convinced her to elope?” His lips trembled and his gaze flashed with ire. “She is just sixteen.”

“I love her,” I croaked. “I want to marry her.”

“Oh, I am sure you love her,” Darcy said. “Which is why you want to destroy her reputation forever. Out of my sight, Wickham. Take this carriage to whatever miserable hole you huddle in.”

“You can't do that. Georgiana. I want to see Georgiana.”

“Meaning you want to blackmail me over whatever billets-doux she was indiscreet and innocent enough to write to you. Very well, Wickham. I'll send Smithen with a check, and you will send me every last scrap of paper you have of hers. Do you understand?”

I tried to protest, but he slammed the door of the carriage, and I heard him order the coachman, “Drive on. Drive this villain whence he came.”

And the carriage took off, bouncing and jostling through London streets.

I never saw Georgiana after that. Smithen brought me a note, the contents of which I scruple to mention, and a check that I did not wish to—and did not dare to—cash.

He took from me a letter written with an anguished heart and stained with my tears. It detailed, faithfully, all my dealings with Darcy and told Georgiana all that I would have liked to have spared her. It begged her, for the sake of the love we shared, to meet me the next day, at such and such hour, by the coachmen's on Hay Street. I thought we'd rent horses and make our way to Gretna Green in Scotland, where we could marry immediately. I was hoping for a miracle—that Darcy would actually give Georgiana my letter, unread.

Need I say she didn't show up? I sat and waited, in the warm summer evening, by a horses' trough, till the sky turned bright pink in the East. And then I went home with a broken heart.

How I lived, how I survived those few months, I don't know. I seized upon the recommendation of an acquaintance to join the militia. It seemed a good way to leave behind London, the scene of both my happiness and its shattering.

I went to Hertfordshire, to a little place called Merryton. And there found, to my chagrin, that Darcy was a guest at a country house nearby. Neatherfield, it was called. And, as with any man who has ten thousand a year to his name, he was the subject of lively speculation among the mamas and the daughters of Merryton.

Wishing to warn them all—but, for the sake of his father, not wishing to disgrace him publicly—I contented myself with warning one woman, a Miss Bennet, at whom Will was looking with particular intent. I realized my warning was most improper, but Miss Elizabeth Bennet seemed to understand it all.

And then the militia moved to Brighton. I went, happy to get away from Will. Tradesmen in Merryton had been accusing me of
seducing their daughters again, and there had been men coming for me for gambling debts I'd never incurred. And Smithen warned me that Will plotted my death. All of Will's other behavior was perfectly normal, so it seemed that I was the only object of his dangerous, mad obsessiveness. I left, hoping it would all improve between us.

But in Brighton, I was pursued once again for payment. Oddly, though Will had left Hertfordshire, I didn't see him in Brighton. Not once. I had to assume he was there, though, because I once glimpsed Smithen from a distance, and Smithen was, after all, Will's valet.

The debts got so awful that the only thing I could do was go to London and cash those old promissory notes. I prepared to do so.

That night, it was raining again. Seemed to be my fate whenever I had to travel by carriage. A note had arrived, informing me that this night I'd be thrown into debtor's prison.

It was not my intention to rot in jail for Darcy's spurious debts in my name. Of course, I might very well end up rotting in jail by cashing a note he said was extorted from him. But it was a risk I had to take.

I had gotten a coach with my last remaining bit of pay, and I was getting into it, when I heard panting and giggling. Puzzled, I looked out the window.

Miss Lydia Bennet, the young and very silly sister of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, was also the particular friend of Mrs. Forster (my commander's wife), and Lydia had been staying with the commander's family. I saw Lydia running toward the carriage, in a flutter of ruffles and laces, an eager grin on her pretty, vacuous face.

As she approached the carriage, the driver opened the door to her—if out of habit or because it was the logical thing to do, I'll never know. She plunged in, in a cloud of perfume and giggles.

Her face was flushed, a not unbecoming pink in a girl still very young and naturally very pretty. She leaned back in the seat, taking deep, racking breaths. “Oh, Lord, I'm fagged,” she said. And grinned. “But we're eloping, Whicky.” She adjusted her skirts and gave me a sly look. “Imagine your being in love with me all this time. And never to tell me or give a sign of it to me personally, but only to write about it in letters. What a good joke. But I'm glad you did. We shall be married. And I only sixteen.” She gave me a sly look, under her quite long eyelashes. “To think I shall have done what none of my sisters has done.”

“In love?” I asked, puzzled. Miss Lydia was very pretty, I'll grant anyone that, but really—look at the way she was behaving when she thought she was eloping. Was this proper behavior for such an occasion? And
why
did she think she was eloping? With me?

“Oh, Whicky, there's no need pretending. Your note said it all so well. How much you loved me, how you couldn't live without me. How you'd die lest I eloped with you. And how you'd have the coach here at this time.” She grinned at me.

It was the scene with Darcy in the study after his father's funeral all over again. Perhaps I should consider that it was not Darcy who was insane, but I. Perhaps I did those things and…forgot them? But why would I punish myself in such horrible ways? Why would I cut off my access to Pemberley? Why would I marry Miss Lydia Bennet?

The coachman's voice came through the window. “Sir, there's a large group in pursuit. Sir…”

The creditors. And now, if they caught me with this girl.… “Drive, man, drive!”

“To Gretna Green!” Lydia Bennet called out, laughing.

“To London!” I screamed desperately, over her voice.

I confess I sat in my lodgings at Mrs. Young's boardinghouse and drank myself into a stupor day after day for the next several weeks. If I was so insane as to gamble, wench, run up debts, and elope with Lydia Bennet—all without my knowing it—then there was nothing for it but to drink myself to death.

Meanwhile, Lydia—who had been placed in the room next to mine and whom I had not touched, at least that I knew of—whined day and night, “When shall we go out? Are you going to take me to the theater? Are you going to take me to a review? When shall we be married? I'm bored.”

How could even the dark side of my soul wish to elope with her?

I had the notes cashed—surprisingly, without any trouble—and forwarded some money to Brighton to pay for the debts there. The rest of it, I invested in good wine. I sat by the window, drank, and dreamed of Georgiana. Georgiana, who didn't love me. Georgiana, who had never loved me. Georgiana, who was now forever out of reach—because of Lydia Bennet.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that Darcy found me. I had given my address when cashing those notes. What came as a surprise was that he took an interest at all. And that he looked as angry as I'd ever seen him, but controlled himself and didn't punch me into the ground.

He wanted something from me, you see. He wanted me to
marry
Miss Lydia Bennet.

It seemed that, quite unknown to me, his romance with Miss Eliza Bennet had progressed till she was all he could think about. From the tone of his words, and though he'd not said it, he was
either at the point of proposing or had proposed to Miss Bennet when the news of my elopement with Lydia had arrived.

To Darcy's eyes, it was all very simple. I must now marry Lydia so that the stain would be removed from the family. Then Darcy could marry Elizabeth.

We were to be brothers. What a good joke. The Almighty, clearly, had Lydia's sense of humor.

I went through with it. What else was left for me to do? Twice, I tried to explain to Darcy that I was out of my mind, that I needed help. But the look in his eyes when he thought I was—as he put it—trying to wiggle out of it, wasn't worth tempting.

He drew up the papers, and he settled the money on me. Darcy in love carried all before him.

I asked about Georgiana once. I think that eventually the scar his signet ring left on my chin might fade. In a few years.

Lydia, of course, thought we were fighting over her. She was the sort of woman whom this kind of thing excited.

And so we were married, on an insipid summer morning, when the milk thin sunlight trickled through the windows of the church on Cheapside.

Her parents—kind, generous people—invited us to their house on our way to a garrison in the far North, where Darcy—for the sake of having me far away from him—had bought me a place in the regulars.

Lydia was still untouched when we headed for the North. And still untouched when news of Darcy's wedding reached us three months later.