Page 55 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

Elizabeth's hand found Darcy's wrist. She knew. How did she always know?

Wickham looked at the rail in front of him. Then, for one moment, he looked across the chamber at the dock, at the man standing in it. Whatever he owed that man, whatever fear or fee still bound them, Darcy watched it weighed against the court-martial, the conspiracy charges, and the whole remaining length of George Wickham's life. "He paid me," Wickham said.

The whole chamber leaned forward.

"Lord Braithwaite paid me. Through Graves. Three payments. I was to make myself agreeable to Mrs. Darcy's family at Meryton and send word of the Darcys' doings. Where Mrs. Darcy went. Whom she saw. When she meant to travel to London. I was told it was to embarrass the Darcy family at a convenient moment, and that was reason enough for me." His voice had gone flat, the charm not so much abandoned as used up. "I did not know what he was. I did not know about the rest of it. The women. The ships. The branding." He looked up, and for the first time in Darcy's long acquaintance with him there was nothing at all behind his face but the words themselves. "I have done things I do not regret enough, my lords. I know what I am. But I did not know about the rest. I would want that written down. I did not know."

Was it true? No man in the chamber could have said, and Darcy could not say it himself. But he watched the faces along the scarlet benches, and he saw that it did not matter. The thing that damned Braithwaite was already done. A peer of the realm, from hiding, through his solicitor, had paid a deserter three times to spy upon the Crown's chief witness. The peers had been offered many stories in four days. No one had offered them one in which that fact was respectable.

The Attorney General sat down. Braithwaite rose for the cross-examination, and Darcy saw at once that something had changed in him. The courtesy was still there, and the beautiful tailoring, and the voice.

But the look he turned on Wickham was new. Personal. "You are a deserter," Braithwaite said, "a debtor, a seducer, and by your own account this morning, a hired instrument. Tell their lordships why they should credit one word you say."

It landed. Darcy felt it land along the benches. A bought witness, buying down his own charges with testimony. Behind them a peer murmured to his neighbor that one could not hang a dog on a hired man's word, and the neighbor agreed. The Attorney General's quill stopped moving. Blast him! It was the best moment Braithwaite had had thus far.

Wickham lifted his head. Out of the wreckage came one last flicker of the old Pemberley boy, insolent, unafraid. He had nothing left to lose and a gift for finding the soft place. "They should not," he said. "No sensible man should. That is rather the point, my lord. You knew what I was when you bought me. A gentleman does not blame the quality of the tool. He blames the hand that chose it."

Color rose above Braithwaite's cravat. He reached for the last weapon he had. "The House may judge what such a man's oath is worth. In September last, sir, when you left Meryton, is it not the case that you⁠—"

"Shall I tell their lordships what else you paid me for, my lord?" Wickham asked.

Elizabeth's fingers closed on Darcy's wrist. Below, the Attorney General was already on his feet. "My lord Steward. The House has given a direction on this matter."

"It has." The Lord High Steward did not raise his voice. "Lord Braithwaite, you will leave September where it lies."

For one full second, Lord Braithwaite had no reply.

In that second Darcy saw it at last. It was the thing Elizabeth had seen in the cellar, the thing Alban had seen at the gate, the thing the whole chamber had been waiting four days to see. The composure slipped, a half-inch. Behind it was not rage but astonishment. All his life, Braithwaite had done things to other people. Now a steward's son had done something to him, and the whole House had watched.

"No further questions," Braithwaite said.

The warders took Wickham down. He went with his short ironed steps, and as he passed below the gallery he glanced up once. It was not at Darcy but at the end of the row, at Mr. Bennet. Whatever he was looking for there, he did not receive it. Mr. Bennet put his spectacles back on. He looked at George Wickham without the least interest.

The Crown closed its case at three o'clock, save for one matter. The Attorney General asked leave to read a sworn deposition before the House retired. The law required a medical man to swear that the deponent could not attend. Hers was still on the road from Hertfordshire. Leave was given.

The Lord High Steward inquired whether the prisoner wished to open a defense, and named the hour for the morning. The House rose in a roar of talk that the staff could not knock quiet.

Darcy handed Elizabeth into the carriage and stood a moment in the gray afternoon. What had Braithwaite lost? His solicitor. His bought clerk. His letter. His hireling. And today, for one second, his composure. Tomorrow he would stand up with nothing left but his rank and his voice.

But Braithwaite was cornered, not beaten. Darcy had seen what the man did to fences.

"Fitzwilliam." Elizabeth, from the carriage, her hand out. "Come home."

He went. But the thought followed him home through the lamplit streets and sat with him at dinner. It was still there when the candles burned down. The trial had gone too well. What did Braithwaite have left to spend?

CHAPTER 20

Richard had once held a bridge in Spain that had to hold until noon. He had passed that morning somewhere between prayer and dread. He passed the fifth morning of the trial the same way, sitting in the gallery of the House of Lords with his watch in his pocket and his heart pounding.

On the floor below, Lord Braithwaite was delivering the defense of his life, and the miserable truth was that defense was good.

He called no witnesses. He needed none, he said, for the Crown had called them all for him. And then he took the Crown's case apart piece by piece, holding each piece up to the light. "Consider, my lords, what you have actually been shown. A lady who has suffered terribly, and who never once saw my face in her suffering. A child of six, reared these months past in the bosom of the family that accuses me, who tells you of a ring and a nickname. A village dressmaker, who once took a parcel from a footman she cannot name. A clergyman's diary that proves I once paid a morning call in Kent. A deserter, bought and paid for by his own cheerful admission, who will say anything that shortens his own reckoning. And a letter, my lords, unsigned, delivered by nobody, from nowhere." He spread his hands, regretful, reasonable. "Where is the iron? Where is the cellar? The cottage is ash and the keepers of it are dead and the one object said to bear my initial has conveniently vanished from the prosecution's own strongroom. You are asked to hang a peer of England on grief, on a child's memory, and on the word of a man in irons. I decline to believe their lordships capable of it."

It was good. Blast him, it was good! Richard checked his watch. Where the devil were they?

Braithwaite sat down. The chamber rustled. Along the benches Richard could see it plainly: the settling, the shape of men making their peace with reasonable doubt.

The Lord High Steward consulted the clerks, and then inquired whether the Crown, before the House retired to consider, had anything further to offer.