Page 19 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

The transformation was remarkable. The charm was gone. The easy smile, the officer's bearing that had fooled half of Hertfordshire, all of it was gone at once. What remained was a man in a creased coat with three days of stubble.

His face had gone pale. He knew the game was over, and he knew he had lost it. "Darcy." An attempt at the old warmth. "Thank heaven it is you. I can explain."

"You cannot."

"We were boys at Pemberley, you and I. We were as good as brothers. Your father loved me like a son, and he would weep to see you set a constable on me." Wickham pressed a hand to his breast. "I have been ill-used all my life, Darcy, and by you most of all. The living. The money. And now, when I have at last found a girl who cares for me⁠—"

"Be quiet."

Wickham was quiet. He had always known the moment Darcy's tone crossed from displeasure into something harder. He had spent a boyhood at Pemberley learning exactly where that line lay. Darcy had just crossed it.

Gardiner had placed himself between Wickham and the street, not blocking, merely present. He was a large, calm man with a tradesman's hands. He had sent a boy running for the constable five minutes since.

"We will go inside," Darcy said. "Not the public room. The landlord has a back parlor."

The landlord, thick-necked and tired-eyed, led them to a small room behind the bar. It smelled of stored ale and damp plaster. One table. Four chairs. No window.

Darcy shut the door. He did not sit, and he offered Wickham nothing. "Sit down, Wickham."

Wickham sat. At once. The old Wickham would have lounged against the wall with his arms crossed and found his grin. This one sat because he was told to.

Mr. Bennet took the door. He did not lean. He stood with his arms at his sides and his spectacles on, his mouth carved in a line. He said nothing, and needed to say nothing. Gardiner stood by the table with his hands clasped behind his back, watching Wickham with a merchant's patience.

"I am going to tell you what will happen," Darcy said. "You will listen. You will not interrupt. When I am finished, you will be given one choice, and I advise you to make it wisely."

Wickham's mouth opened. Darcy looked at him. It closed.

"You deserted your regiment in time of war. Captain Gill has laid it before your colonel, and the colonel has written to the Horse Guards for a general court-martial. You will be tried by your brother officers."

Wickham shifted in the chair.

"You took money from Lord Thomas Braithwaite. A man in custody for abduction, branding, the sale of women, and murder. The money was payment for luring a girl of sixteen from her father's house, to disgrace a prosecution witness. That is conspiracy. That is an attempt to defeat the course of justice. Those charges go before a magistrate."

"I did not know what Braithwaite was." The warmth was gone from the voice now. What was left was thin and wheedling. "I was told the girl fancied me. I was told there would be money if I showed her attention. I knew nothing of any trial⁠—"

"You are lying."

"Darcy, for God's sake⁠—"

"You took money from a man charged with selling women. You lured a child from her father's house into another county. His solicitor arranged your lodgings. Letters came to you by hand, and you moved three times in three days because you were told to move. You never went to Gretna Green because you were never instructed to go." Darcy's voice did not rise. He let a silence fall after each sentence. "You knew what you were doing. You have done it before."

Wickham went very still.

"With my sister."

The words landed in the room and stayed. Gardiner's face did not move, but his clasped hands tightened. Mr. Bennet closed his eyes once.

For a year and more he had guarded that sentence. Darcy had just spent it in a Southwark back parlor, before a merchant who had never heard it. He waited for the regret. It did not come. What else had the compact changed?

"I was silent then," Darcy said. "I paid your debts. I sent you away. I told myself Georgiana's reputation was worth the price of letting you walk free. I was wrong. You walked free and did it again, to another girl, for other money, and this time you were not even pretending to your own ambition. You were a hired instrument."

Wickham said nothing. Behind his eyes the familiar machinery turned, hunting a story that might buy sympathy.

"Here is your choice. Cooperate with the prosecution against Braithwaite. Give a full account of your dealings with the solicitor, Graves. Every payment, every letter, every instruction. Testify to the conspiracy."

"And if I do?"

"Then you turn King's evidence, and you are not tried for the conspiracy. I will see that the Attorney General understands the bargain. The court-martial is beyond my reach. But a court may recommend a man to mercy, and I will tell it what you did for us."