Chapter One
“Devil take you! You damned useless cripple!”
George Wickham hissed and leaned close enough to Darcy’s desk that Darcy could smell a faint hint of expensiveeau de Cologneand a strong hint of cheap brandy from his once friend.
Darcy’s face did not waver and he calmly stared back at the dissolute man.
At last Wickham turned away with a sneer. “At leastIcan still walk! A cripple like you is barely a man.”
Fitzwilliam Darcy forced himself not to react, even though a sudden surge of anger roiled in his gut when Wickham hurled that insult at him. His father’s voice echoed through his head:Count to ten. One breath after another. You are a Darcy, you’ll not be controlled by the brute passions like lesser men.
Though his father had loved Wickham, his godson was a man controlled by his brute passions.
That thought brought a slight smile to Darcy’s face. “As much as I have enjoyed renewing our acquaintance, this interview is over, Mr. Wickham.”
“I’ve told you what desperate circumstances I am in now — can you not do anything to help me?” Wickham’s face changed from that enraged mask he’d displayed as he paced back and forth into a pleading and sweet face. “Come now, Fitz. Come. You remember good times — childhood times. Such sweet recollections. You’d not let me go about in poverty. Not when we were such good friends.”
“There is no substantial position that I would ever trust you with, and you have already wasted the charity and legacy my father intended for you.” Darcy took from his desk a ten pound note and pushed it towards him. “To help with present exigencies.”
Wickham sneered at it. “You merciless bastard. Mr. Darcy wanted me to have that living! He did!”
“You voluntarily surrendered the right to that living in exchange for a substantial consideration, and further, I have already determined upon a worthy candidate to fill the parsonage.”
“Keep your damned pitiable charity, I want what I’m owed, not this damn pittance!” Wickham seized the ten pound note from the desk and ripped it into tiny pieces, dropping the shredded banknote like confetti upon the table. “Cripple! Now that you are living with such misery, you want everyone else to be as miserable as you are.”
Darcy calmly pulled the bellpull next to his desk.
A few seconds later the door opened, and the footman stepped in. He was a Pemberley man, rather than one of the staff hired in Bath where Darcy had lived for the last six months during his convalescence and ongoing efforts to recover as much as possible from his illness. The footman was old enough to remember the years when Wickham still had the run of the estate, and his expression was forbidding.
Looking at him, Wickham slapped his hand on the desk one last time. The sound echoed meatily on the fine oak. “I’ll leave! Fine, I’ll leave! But one day you will regret that you denied George Wickham.”
“I am sure,” Darcy replied calmly. “But I beg you to note that you will be refused entry if you ever call again.”
One more sworn oath, and Wickham was gone.
Thomas, the footman, knew his business and he followed Wickham out, keeping close to his back. He’d ensure that his old friend — the apple of his father’s eye — neither hesitated, importuned any of the maids, nor stole anything on the way out of the rather cramped — a mere thirty-six feet across — house that Darcy now lived in.
Darcy leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He let out a long sigh.
By George, he was tired of being a cripple in Bath. He had a need of open countryside air again.
No.
Not a cripple.
Darcy pushed the Jefferson style swivel chair he’d had built by a furniture maker here in Bath back from the desk. It rolled smoothly on the well-oiled castors and Darcy swung the chair to the side and held it against the desk with one hand while he used the other to push himself up and forward so that he only sat on the edge of the chair.
Darcy grabbed his crutches from the hook on his desk from which they hung, and swung the chair so that its back rested against the desk as a brake. He levered himself up and using the gait he’d practiced with his crutches, until it was as instinctive as walking always had been, Darcy worked his way to the door.
Time for his daily exercises and conditioning, followed by a swim in the Roman baths.
Two footmen sat outside of his door. Thomas had returned from seeing Wickham out, and Samuel, one of the Bath men, waited with him. According to Darcy’s valet, Samuel had worked out well and might be interested in travelling to keep a place with the family. “Mr. Wickham left?” Darcy asked.
At Thomas’ nod, Darcy said, “Very good, he is never to be admitted, under any circumstances, and no matter what he says.”
“Yes, sir, very good, sir.”
Wickham was more crippled than he was.
