Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MR. CHARLES BINGLEY was roused by a servant, who spoke and spoke, but Bingley comprehended none of it until he heard the name Bennet.

Then, he was wide awake.

Truly, if Caroline had been there, she likely would have scolded him for sleeping so late. It was late morning, late for lying in.

When he saw his unlikely guest, he thought she must have been lost on the streets of London for hours upon hours.

She was in the kitchens, bedraggled, dirty, shaking, clutching a cup of tea and looking too shocked to cry. "I am sorry. I should not have trespassed on your hospitality, but I have been walking a long time, and this place is closer than my aunt's and uncle's. If I'd had the presence of mind for it, I would have waited to get away from him, but I was an idiot."

Jane Bennet. The elder sister.

He sat down across from her. She was pretty, wasn't she? Maybe she was prettier when she was dirty than when she wasn't? Or maybe he'd been sort of dazzled by the sister, by Elizabeth, and hadn't taken the time to properly consider this one.

"No apologies, Miss Bennet," he said. "You mustn't be down here, at the servant's entrance. You are our guest. "

"Oh, no, sir, I am ruined," she said, making a face. "You will wish to deny that you let me inside your house, trust me. This way, you can tell the servants to put out that I was someone else, if anyone should inquire into the uprightness of the household."

He regarded her, her appearance, what she'd just said, and something inside him turned inside out. He shot up from the table and began barking orders to the servants. Miss Bennet needed a blanket, and she needed something sweet to eat, and would someone, for the love of God, go to his study and fetch his whisky because she likely needed a strong drink and—

She was on her feet, eyes wide. "Stop. Have you not heard what I've just said?"

"Can you manage the stairs?" he said. "I should like to take you upstairs to somewhere more comfortable. Let me know if you'd like a bath, or simply to be alone, perhaps to rest on a bed—"

"I am not staying here," she said. "I want nothing more than to rest here, inside, for a quarter hour, and then I shall be on my way to Gracechurch Street. I would not put you out in this manner, sir. I am ever so sorry. I had hoped that I would not disturb anyone. If I had not known this was your house because of the descriptions given in my sister's letters, I would not have even thought to trespass. Truly, the fact I have, it must mean that my wits are addled. What am I thinking?" She shook, looking around, out of sorts. "All right, I shall go. I believe I can walk again, and—"

"No," he said. He did something mad. He touched her. It wasn't proper, and it likely wasn't anything she welcomed after whatever horrific experience she'd been through, but she wasn't thinking clearly and could not care for herself, so he must intervene. He put his hand against the small of her back and began to steer her toward the servants' stairs. "We're going up to the drawing room, Miss Bennet."

She sputtered, trying to mount a protest, but he was guiding her now, and she seemed to give up and surrender.

Good .

He realized he should likely not saddle her with a number of choices. She was overwhelmed and frightened, and she would need him to steer the ship, as it were. He could ascertain what was needed for her well-being and he must do it, because she was in no state to do it for herself.

Soon, he had her upstairs in the drawing room, sitting in a comfortable, tufted chair, with a blanket wrapped around her, and the servants were setting out her tea from downstairs along with an assortment of sweetbread.

He shut them out as soon as all was prepared, telling them not to enter unless they were called for. He sincerely hoped they would not listen at doors.

He was having a full-body reaction that was puzzling to him, but he didn't have time to think about it. He simply knew it was right and that he would act. He came back to sit opposite her. "I wish to kill him, whoever he is."

She drew back, her face ashen. "What?"

"I should like him strung up. I think that would be best, really, and it could be done. But I also know that watching the spectacle of that might be worse for you than what you've already been through—"

"What do you think happened to me?"

"You said, even now, that you were ruined."

"Yes, but he didn't do anything to me."

His lips parted. He blinked at her. "Forgive me, I don't know if I understand."

She picked up her tea. "I don't know how to explain it. Perhaps if I begin when it started."

"I don't wish to speak of anything that you don't wish to speak of," he said. "If you wish to talk to me, though, I am willing to listen."

"He tricked me, I suppose. Likely from the beginning, it's all been a trick. He lied to me. Lizzy pointed it out. She said he had been caught in a lie, and I didn't want to believe it, and I twisted everything up so that he could have been a good man, just misunderstood. She's right. I always think too well of everyone."

Nothing she was saying made him want to kill this man less. He didn't know why he wanted to kill him so badly, of course. By all rights, this woman was not his responsibility, so it wasn't his place, but the urge had gripped him now, and it felt right. He would not mind if she were his responsibility.

"He said we were getting married. It was late, the middle of the night. He said we would go around London and we would drive straight through the morning on our way to Scotland, and then I fell asleep in the carriage, and I woke up, and we were in London, at some boardinghouse and he had only one room for us, and I tried to ascertain if we would be resting a while and then on our way, but he was… with the woman who owned the boardinghouse, he was… I left. I saw it for what it was, right in that instant. He was never going to marry me. I realized his plan was to ruin me and abandon me here. I was so horrified that I simply ran."

"Oh, good," said Bingley. "Exactly right. You did exactly the right thing. What a blackguard. You deserve better than such treatment, Miss Bennet. You are not a woman to be eloped with. You are a woman to be respectably married, not some shameful secret."

"Lizzy said that, too. I don't have any excuse for being so stupid."

He shook his head. "No, none of that. We are all stupid in love, if it comes to that."

She clutched her teacup. "Well… I don't know if it was the right thing or not, you see. Once I was two blocks away, all alone on the London streets, a woman walking alone, I began to think I had only worsened my situation. What was I to say at that point? If anyone discovered me, well, what would they think?"

"No, you had to get away from him."

"Well, I think I might have been able to get a letter off to someone and stayed there, in relative safety—"

"He would have ravished you."

"Oh, I don't think he would have forced me," she said. Then, she considered. "I suppose I have no idea what he would have done. "

"You were exactly right to run. And I'm glad you found your way into this neighborhood, and that you recognized our house. It's all going to be all right now. You will not be ruined."

"But—"

"No, nothing's happened. And now you're here, under my protection."

"Now, I'm here, alone with another man!"

"Well, if it comes to that, I'll marry you," he said, and that felt right too. He smiled at the thought. It seemed wondrous in every way. Yes, this woman, her .

"You—" She was stunned.

"If you'll have me, which… perhaps, with your sister… but it's not as if I married her or something. If we'd been married, you and I couldn't marry, of course, because of the laws about not marrying your brother's wife—sister's husband—whatever the case, that didn't happen. So, it's all above board. Of course, you probably don't like me. Elizabeth obviously doesn't like me after the way I treated her, and—"

"I don't know you, sir," she said.

"All right, well, I said, ‘if it comes to that,'" he said, but he was still smiling.

"It doesn't matter if nothing's happened," she said. "I was gone, overnight, and if he is questioned, he will likely tell everyone—"

"Well, we shall silence him, then," said Bingley. "So, who is he?"

"You're not still saying you would kill him."

Bingley shrugged. He had never killed anyone. He had been in a duel once, and the other man had taken his bullet, in the shoulder, but the man had survived, and Bingley had sworn off dueling after that. It seemed so petty to try to shoot each other over disagreements. Anyway, whoever this man was, he didn't deserve the dignity of a duel. Bingley could do it. He felt that with a strange, awful certainty that settled into him.

She peered into her teacup, and a wild laugh came out of her. "Oh, I don't know what is wrong with me that it warms me that you would say that. For I don't wish anyone dead, and his death would do nothing for me, but the fact that you…"

"Tell me his name."

"You mustn't kill him," she said, setting down her teacup. "It's Mr. Wickham."

He shot up out of his chair. "Of course it's him."

BINGLEY ARRIVED AT the boardinghouse that Jane had described to him at roughly the same time as Colonel Fitzwilliam was riding up on his horse. Bingley didn't know him very well, though they had been introduced before.

The colonel recognized him and dismounted. He led his horse by the reins toward him. "Mr. Bingley? What are you doing here?"

Mr. Bingley's mind was working very quickly. He remembered speaking to Jane at the theater. She had been going to Kent to stay at the parsonage there. And then he'd heard that Darcy and all his party had gone to Rosings. He had thought then that Darcy was following Elizabeth around, so he realized that they'd all been there together, and he knew, with a surge of some strange emotion, that the colonel would have been spending time in Jane's presence. "You have come after her, haven't you?" was what he replied.

The colonel stopped short, pulling his horse to halt with him. "I am not at liberty to say what I'm doing here, because it's all of a rather delicate nature, I'm afraid, but suffice it to say, I have no idea what you are doing."

"I'm here to find Mr. Wickham," said Mr. Bingley.

"Really," said the colonel. "And when you say ‘her,' you mean Miss Jane Bennet?"

"She's not here anymore," said Mr. Bingley. "She is safely tucked away in my house, and I am seeing to her comfort and safety, but Wickham has much to answer for."

The colonel made a face like something smelled bad. "I see."

"No, not like that," said Bingley. "She got away before he was able to fully impose his villainy on her—"

"Thank Christ in heaven for that," said the colonel. "How did she get away from him? Why is she with you?"

"She ran away, and she managed to make her way to my house—"

"But why you?"

"I don't know, but I'm glad she did," said Bingley stoutly. "And now, I shall find that man and…" Well, he still wanted to kill him, but he supposed it wasn't wise to announce his intent to murder loudly on the London streets.

"We shall find him together," said the colonel. "Let me tie my horse up."

"We don't need to do anything together," said Bingley. "I'm quite capable of seeing to all of this myself."

The colonel, who was in the process of tying up his horse, only smiled faintly at this.

Bingley didn't like him, he decided. He turned on his heel and started for the entryway of the boardinghouse.

The colonel fell into step with him only moments later. Bingley thought of forcing his way to be in the lead, but this seemed petty and idiotic, so he felt he had no choice but to allow the colonel to walk with him.

At the doorway, they were met by a woman in her mid-thirties.

"Mrs. Younge," said the colonel. "I'd say it's a pleasure to see you again, but after you sold my niece's virtue for some sliver of her dowry or whatever it was you did, I have to admit it's not a pleasure."

The woman, obviously Mrs. Younge, put her hands on her hips. "Virtue? You think so little of me, do you? As her governess, I was there to protect her. She wanted to marry him, and I was making sure the marriage took place before anything happened. On that, you may depend."

Oh, Bingley was understanding this rather readily. He had known that Darcy had dismissed some governess of Miss Darcy's, but he hadn't ever met her or known the particulars. This must be the woman. She was in league with Mr. Wickham, was she? Well, he was appalled.

"I don't care what tale you wish to spin to yourself," said the colonel. "You know what you did, and the fact that you are, even now, not even the least bit sorry, it tells me everything I need to know of you. We don't need to converse. What you shall do is to take us immediately to see Mr. Wickham."

She shrugged. "He's gone, as it happens."

"Gone?" spoke up Bingley. "Gone where?"

"He didn't tell me where he was going," said Mrs. Younge. "He simply left."

"If you think I shall take your word for that, you're mad," said the colonel, pushing past the woman.

"You can't simply force your way inside!" cried Mrs. Younge.

"Oh, no?" said the colonel. "And yet, here I am, doing it."

Bingley followed in the man's wake, as the colonel opened every door he could open and banged on each locked one until the inhabitants presented themselves. They looked in each and every room in the entire place.

Wickham was nowhere to be found.