Hehatedthat.
Damn and curse Colonel Fitzwilliam. May his mother suffer from dysentery and die from diarrhea.
Captain Denny laughed as he watched Wickham stare at the current stakes in the pot, “Cash out, Wickham! Cash out.”
The other five people around one of the tables in Mrs. Phillips’s card party snickered.
They laughed at him!
Despicable, disgusting dandelions.
Wickham smiled smoothly, his eyes crinkled with a real smile that filled his face, but did not touch either soul or heart. “Ah, play is turning rich for me, perhaps I’ll need to bow out.”
Carter laughed again. “Cash Out Wicky.”
All of them should be blown away with a puff of air — even the Bennet girl, Lydia, who kept making those eyes at him. He’d strangle her too if he had his way.
His despised new moniker, ‘ash Out Wicky, had been the consequence with the greatest permanency of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s fetid denunciation.
At least over time the neighborhood, society, and his fellow officers had forgotten that they were supposed to dislike him and distrust him in general. They only distrusted him with money.
And the wine and melted cheese on toast that Mrs. Phillips served was far better than the fare he could afford for himself on his pathetic officer’s salary.
The young Bennet girl who was notproperlyout but still allowed to attend events at her aunt’s house smiled at him with that little glow that Wickham feared would reveal matters to even her incredibly dense aunt, uncle and mother. “Oh, la, what a joke! But I’ll lend you a guinea.” Her voice turned artfully, and obviously, in Wickham’s mind, sly. “I trust you to give agoodreturn.”
Heknewthat she referred to the kisses they’d shared. Fortunately, it seemed as though nobody else had any notion of their connection.
The second heiress he’d finagled into agreeing to elope with him was no dead and floppy bass when he kissed her. Jove, he pitied the manGeorgianawould marry one day.
Lydia had been eager for his lips, his tongue, and his hand on her breasts.
He’d have been able to take her if he hadn’t been the fool, and set their hidden meeting in a place that was still too public for such intercourse.
“If you want to lose your money to Cash Out Wicky,” Denny took a gulp from his wine, “you’ve purse enough.”
They all put up their stakes, with Lydia staking for Wickham as well as herself, and then flipped over their cards.
Lydia whooped as she won the set, and she giggled at Wickham, “The money is mine again, but you still owe me that return.”
And she actually winked.
In front ofallthe soldiers around the table.
This girl, in the midst of her first — so far as Wickham knew at least — intrigue had no sense of discretion or subtlety.
If he’d not convinced her that they should settle matters and run away to Gretna Green nearly immediately — tomorrow in fact — discovery would have been inevitable, quick, and unfortunate for all involved.
“Ho! Ho!” Carter snorted, “Has Cash Out Wickham gained an enthusiast?”
Lydia smirked at him, pretending to be an older, mature and knowing woman, when she really was barely more than a child. Sitting tall she lifted up her glass of wine and primly sipped it, before she looked at Wickham again.
Those eyes made him start to go hard again. She was exactly the sort of woman he’d seduced so many times — exceedingly young, a shapely bit of muslin, a bit stupid, and very eager for a lark and toknowwhat all the fuss about men and women was about.
Wickham considered himself a very successful man. At least four of his children lived in the world, and he had wholly succeeded at not placing any of them upon his own charge.
He’d had a bit of success even in Meryton — though in general with women married or widowed, rather than the young virgin maidens that any sensible man wanted to despoil. All the women he’d lain with in Meryton had been unsatisfied lustful sinners who'd been promised that he was dissolute and maybe discreet by Colonel Fitzwilliam’s speech.
Little gifts from hisamoureuxwere the only reason that he’d had the bare means to keep his dress in an almost, but not quite decent measure in this bored awful damned town.
