Page 20 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"And if I do not?"

"Then you face every charge at its fullest weight, and you face it alone. Braithwaite will not spend a farthing on the man he hired, and Graves will deny your existence the day it becomes convenient." Darcy leaned in. "You are not a partner, Wickham. You are an expense. And an expense is the first thing a solicitor strikes out when the accounts are examined."

Wickham looked at the table. He looked at his hands. They were the hands of a man who had lived his whole life on charm and other men's money. Both purses were empty at once. "I want it in writing."

"You will have nothing in writing until you have sworn a full statement before a magistrate."

"Darcy—"

"Those are the terms. Cooperate fully, beginning now, or chance it before a judge who will see a deserter hired by a seller of women, and draw the obvious conclusion."

Then Mr. Bennet spoke, for the first time since the door had closed, quiet and level, with every grain of irony sifted out. "The girl you left upstairs. My daughter. She is sixteen years old. She believed you loved her."

Wickham looked at him, and whatever stood in Mr. Bennet's face made him look away again.

"I have just come from her. I will not tell you what state she is in. You have not earned the knowledge."

He paused. When he went on, his eyes were flint. "I should like to break your nose," he said. His voice was perfectly mild. "I am not a violent man. I have spent a lifetime avoiding confrontation because words have always sufficed. I find they do not suffice for this occasion."

"Mr. Bennet." Gardiner. Not a warning. A steadying.

"I will not break it. My daughter needs a father with clean knuckles." He took off his spectacles and polished them, slowly. "And I find I can bear the restraint, Mr. Wickham, because I need not do it myself. You are a deserter in time of war. Your brother officers will do a great deal worse to you than a broken nose, and they will not bruise their hands doing it. I would not dream of spoiling their work."

The constable arrived ten minutes on, broad, unhurried, a man who had made arrests in Southwark before and knew the choreography. Gardiner met him at the door and gave him the facts in a tradesman's efficient sentences. Wickham was taken. He did not resist. Wickham walked through the public room and into the street. The men he had been playing vingt-et-un with an hour ago watched him go with mild interest. They had seen arrests before and had their own troubles.

The constable would hold him at the Borough watch-house until the military came. Captain Gill's name was invoked, and the constable nodded. Military matters he understood.

Darcy stood in the street. He watched Wickham walk away between the constable and his man. Then he waited for satisfaction. Why did none come? What came was tiredness, bone-deep, three days of it arriving all at once behind his eyes. Wickham taken. Lydia found. The search over.

The work, not.

"I will walk to the watch-house and see the paperwork properly filed," Gardiner said. "I know the magistrate's clerk." He clasped Darcy's arm once, firm, and went.

Mr. Bennet stood beside Darcy, calm now.

"You did not break his nose," Darcy said.

"I wanted to."

"I have wanted to break George Wickham's nose since Ramsgate. The queue is long."

Mr. Bennet almost smiled, a gray, exhausted flicker, but there. "Then let us go. My daughter is waiting."

Before anything else, Darcy sent two of his own men riding out of London. One to Captain Gill, confirming the arrest and the watch-house. One to Jane at Netherfield, six words. Lydia found safe. To Netherfield tomorrow.

The Gardiners' house was warm and lit and smelled of soup.

Mrs. Gardiner met them at the door with red eyes and a handkerchief balled in her fist. "She is asleep. Elizabeth is with her." She blew her nose. "Do not mind me. I held up very well until she thanked me for the broth. Lydia, thanking people! I went into the pantry and cried like a goose."

Darcy went up. Lydia lay curled with the blanket to her chin, face still blotched, impossibly young.

Elizabeth sat in the chair beside the bed, dry-eyed, composed, present. "She cried herself to sleep," Elizabeth said. "Mrs. Gardiner gave her broth, and she drank half, and then she simply stopped. Like a candle going out."

"Wickham is in custody."

"Good."

"He will cooperate. He has nothing else left."