Page 54 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

The court rose at four. Tomorrow the Crown would call George Wickham.

Somewhere in the cells beneath, if there was any justice, Lord Braithwaite lay awake listening to the doors close.

CHAPTER 19

They brought George Wickham into the House of Lords in irons. The sound of the chains crossing that ancient floor was small and clear. It carried all the way to the roof.

Darcy had known he was coming. He had helped arrange it, through Gill and the Attorney General's office. It had taken weeks of correspondence to compel one deserter's testimony from military custody. He had thought himself prepared. He was not. Some boy's part of him still expected the old Wickham, the easy stride and the ready smile. What came up the floor between two warders was a diminished man in a coat without buttons. Unshaven. Gray at the temples where the gray had never shown before. He moved in the shortened steps the irons taught a man, whether he consented to learn or not.

The peers regarded him with a contempt they had not spent on Braithwaite. Darcy watched it move along the benches, and understood it, and despised it a little. Braithwaite was one of their own gone wrong, which was a tragedy. Wickham was a steward's son who had dressed as a gentleman, which was an impertinence. They would forgive the monster his monstrousness before they forgave the commoner's attempt to rise above his station.

Beside him, Elizabeth had gone very still. At the end of the row, Mr. Bennet took off his spectacles and began, without hurry, to clean them.

Wickham was sworn. His eyes went round the chamber once, the practiced sweep of a man locating the exits and the ladies. He found no exits, and no ladies disposed to be charmed, and his gaze came to rest, briefly, on Darcy.

Darcy looked back at him. He thought of Ramsgate. He thought of what Elizabeth had told him, a girl of sixteen in a Southwark tavern saying I was a delivery. He gave him nothing.

The Attorney General rose, and there was no kindness in his voice today. He had been kind to Elizabeth, gentle with Alban, patient with Collins. For Wickham his tone was cold and flat. "Mr. Wickham. In September last you were a lieutenant of militia quartered at Meryton. You deserted that post."

"I resigned it, sir, in a manner that⁠—"

"You deserted it. You are presently in military custody awaiting court-martial upon that charge. Before you deserted, while you were quartered at Meryton, you came into money. Did you earn it by your commission?"

"No."

"Did you win it at cards?"

A pause. "No."

"Then who paid you?"

"I must protest the word paid⁠—"

"Who paid you, Mr. Wickham?"

"I received certain sums," Wickham said, "from a gentleman with whom I had a passing acquaintance, in the way of a private favor. I understood there was an interest in embarrassing a certain family. It was represented to me as a matter of, of social rivalry. A joke, almost. Great families are forever at these games, and I saw no reason⁠—"

"A joke." The Attorney General let the word stand alone in the chamber for a moment, where it had room to be looked at. "You were given your instructions in writing. By whom?"

"They came by letter. Unsigned."

"These letters?"

They were produced, handed up, entered. Three short sheets, taken from his coat when he was arrested for desertion. Make yourself agreeable at Longbourn. Learn where Mrs. Darcy goes, and who calls upon her. A friend.

"The hand has been examined," the Attorney General said, to the House rather than to the witness. "It is the hand of Mr. Josiah Graves, solicitor, of Chancery Lane, who until his removal from that office was the prisoner's confidential man of business, who visited the prisoner daily in custody, and who is himself at this hour committed to Newgate for the corruption of a clerk of this prosecution, the attempted poisoning of a Crown witness, and the forging of a noble lord's name. My lords will draw their own conclusions as to what instructions traveled by that channel, and from whom." He turned back to the witness and walked him through the letters one by one. Each gave an order, and each order had been obeyed. And who had paid for it all? The horse hire, the card debts settled, the coin in his purse? Wickham had, by the record of his mess bills and his tailor, no money whatever.

Wickham's mouth tightened. The charm made one last sortie. He smiled, ruefully, boyishly. It was the smile that had opened doors, purses, and hearts from Derbyshire to Hertfordshire. And to whom did Wickham offer it now? The assembled peerage of England!

"There it is," Mr. Bennet murmured, to nobody in particular.

Nobody smiled back. Three hundred faces looked at George Wickham, and not one of them gave him anything at all.

Darcy watched the smile die. He had waited years to see that smile fail. He felt no joy now, only a grim satisfaction.

"I will ask you plainly," the Attorney General said, "and I remind you of your oath and of the terms upon which you were admitted King's evidence. Who set you on that family?"

The silence stretched. In the dock, Braithwaite had not moved for a quarter of an hour. And Darcy, watching the wreck in the witness box, felt the old fear rise up beside his hatred, the fear he had carried into the chamber every day of this trial. Wickham knew about Ramsgate. Would he speak Georgiana's name into the largest room in England, from spite, or panic, or the plain pleasure of breaking something? It would save him nothing. When had that ever stopped him?