“Elizabeth,” he whispered when their lips parted, “marry me.”
Her eyes were wide; she looked almost scared.
And then she smiled so brilliantly that his breath was stolen away.
That look in her eyes was imprinted on his soul so that he would remember how she smiled at him now for the rest of his life.
“Yes, Mr. Darcy, I believe I will.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
As he waited, and waited, and then waited yet more, George Wickham’s sanguine and pleased mood transmuted itself into a roiling, buzzing thick cloud of flies. Like turning gold into lead.
That damned kissing Lydia slut.
Slut. Slut. Slut. Slut!
Fucking fuck her.
He’d rip her fingers out once they had married. He’d pull her hair out, one small clump at a time. He’d kick her, punch her, beat her and —damn.
It was an hour past the appointed meeting time with Lydia Bennet.
He was on the verge of tears from frustration, anger, and disappointment. Couldn’t heonce, foronce, justonceenjoy a little of the good fortune that fell on others in bounds?
Wickham clenched his teeth together so hard that they cracked and ached.
She wasn’t coming.
There had been a blessed time in Wickham’s life when he believed in happy fates, fairies, fairness, and that the world was a just and goodplace. That time was long past. He knew now that one always must pay attention to the reality of the situation, and not simply imagine things were the way they wished them to be.
She wasn’t coming. Even if she was late, an hour past the appointment was too much.
Had the stupid, indiscreet, stupidity of the bitch slut revealed her plan of laughingly fleeing to her family? He would either find himself challenged to a duel, or his position staying in the town and regiment would be made very difficult. Maybe the slatternly creature had just turned skittish.
She’d wanted his manly device. But the girl was still a virgin, and virgins often turned skittish and needed to be handled like unruly dogs when the point of climax came.
Maybe heiresses on the verge of elopement were like virgins, except he couldn’t be in their room, holding them, fixing their bodies in the right way, whispering to them to make them fulfill with their bodies the promise they had made with their sidelong glances and pleased flushes.
The curricle he’d rented —Cash Out Wickham, hahahaha— was slightly hidden behind a tall hedge in the small park of one of the notables. The scent of jasmine and rose filled the air, and bees buzzed pleasantly around. There was a soft breeze and pleasantly chilled morning air. The pleasant sound of attractive voices and footsteps sounded from the other side of the hedge.
They’d set the time for noon, and the traffic was in full flow.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
With the horsewhip he systematically wrecked every flower that he could reach. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.
It did not make him feel better.
Then he looked up from his destruction, and there she was.
Lydia Bennet stood there, pale, lips pressed together, arms pressed protectively over her chest, pretty blue bonnet fringed with pink.
He hurried over to her.
She shook her head as he approached. “George, I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t — didn’t sleep. Not a wink or a minute. It wouldn’t be right to Papa, or Mama, or my sisters, or—”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the carriage.
