Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

MR. GEORGE WICKHAM did like Lydia Bennet. He liked her rather more than he'd liked her sister. Elizabeth had been fun—well, funny, he supposed. But Lydia was like him in a way that Elizabeth never was. Wickham and Lydia were cut from the same cloth in a number of ways. They were adventurers. They liked to be wild, to have the wind in their hair, the wide world ahead of them. They liked to take risks. They liked feeling alive.

Lots of people wouldn't understand it, the call to danger, he supposed, but he and Lydia, they understood each other.

It was a pity he was going to have to sneak out in the middle of the night and abandon her tonight. He didn't know what would become of her, and there was at least a nominal chance he could have gotten a child on her, which filled him with a kind of dread that insisted he must run and also made him feel a kind of awful guilt. He shouldn't go.

He would miss her.

Ah, well, there was really nothing for it, that was the cold truth of the matter.

Currently, she was at the table, rereading a gossip news sheet that had been left behind at their luncheon table and sipping at some port—they had both been too often drunk during this entire enterprise, really. There had been a dearth of clear thinking on either of their parts. He liked to blame her equally, even though she was too young and too silly to really be blamed. Whatever the case, it was all terrible, and that was that.

He was sitting on the bed in the room at Amelia's boardinghouse, with his own glass of port, thinking about how best to make his escape that night. He must not wake Lydia, of course, that was imperative. He was debating on whether he wanted to have her again that night. On the one hand, he definitely did, on the other, it would make him sleepy, and then he might drift off, sleep too long, and miss his chance to get away.

There was a knock at the door.

He wasn't expecting anyone. "Who's there?"

"Open up," said the voice on the other end, and he stood up in an ecstasy of relief. God in heaven, it had actually happened. Darcy had come. He had despaired of the man coming at all. He had hoped and then realized he was idiotic and then given up entirely and decided to escape and seek his luck elsewhere.

Delighted, Wickham crossed the room and flung open the door. "Fitzwilliam."

"Georgie," said Darcy, but he wasn't alone. He had his wife and his sister with him. What was the man thinking?

Darcy swept into the room. "There. Good, you're here. Come along, then, Miss Bennet."

Lydia looked up, furrowing her brow. "Come along? To where? I'm here, with Georgie. We're getting married."

"Are you," Elizabeth said. It wasn't really a question.

Lydia glanced at Wickham, as if waiting for him to confirm it.

He didn't.

Lydia sighed, rolling her eyes. "Well, at some point, anyway. I'm certainly not leaving. I have to get married one way or the other."

"You do," said Elizabeth. "But we've taken care of that."

"Yes," said Darcy. "It's all settled. We have someone in mind for you. His name is Grayson."

"Grayson," said Wickham, affronted. "In Lambton, that Grayson? With the dogs?"

"Oh, you know him," said Darcy.

"You saw my dogs, I suppose?" said Elizabeth.

Wickham had seen her dogs. He had thought they seemed rather too much like mutts for the mistress of Pemberley, but he hadn't said anything.

"Mr. Grayson insists we stole those dogs from him," said Elizabeth.

"It's all entirely untrue, but since he's so upset, this situation presented itself, and we're all very pleased with how it's worked out," said Mr. Darcy.

"I'm not marrying anyone except Mr. Wickham," said Lydia hotly. "Tell them, Georgie."

"I'm confused," said Wickham. "Grayson won't want her, not after I've…" He cleared his throat. "There's no marrying her to someone else. Everyone knows she ran off with me. It won't work."

"Well," said Georgiana, smiling brightly at him, "we had an idea about that, you see. You remember how Fitz and Lizzy were in a carriage accident?"

"You two, you could have been in a carriage accident," said Elizabeth. "Somewhere remote, of course. And then, the story will be that Grayson found you both, and rescued you from bandits or highwaymen or something, and Lydia was so swept up in his gallantry, she fell in love with him."

"No," said Wickham. "That's preposterous. No one would believe that. And why would Grayson want to marry her?"

"Excuse me?" said Lydia, glaring at him. "I am a very enticing prospective wife."

Wickham did not like the idea of Grayson on her, he found. Not at all.

"She's the daughter of a gentleman. It will be a step up for Grayson," said Darcy. "Would be a step up for you, too, I suppose, but you don't want to marry her."

"Why would you give her to Grayson?" said Wickham.

"Well, Grayson wants us to pay for the dogs," said Elizabeth. "And this way, he'll forgive the debt."

"But you can pay him," said Wickham.

"Yes, but this also saves the Bennet family reputation," said Darcy.

"No one will believe there have been two carriage accidents for both of the daughters," said Wickham. "It's preposterous."

"That's exactly why people will believe it," said Georgiana. "The sort of coincidence that's just too strange not to believe. As if it's divine providence. People will love the story. They'll absolutely never question Lydia's reputation. And all will be well."

"So, come along, Lydia," said Elizabeth.

Lydia shook her head. "No, I shan't. I absolutely shall not do such a thing. Georgie, tell them."

Wickham seethed. "You're not taking her."

"I suppose if you could convince Grayson not to marry her, you could marry her instead," said Mr. Darcy. "He's in town, in fact. We know he's going to be at Gustav's Tavern later tonight. We'll take Lydia there to meet him tomorrow."

"How would I convince him of anything?" said Wickham.

"I don't know," said Georgiana. "You're good at convincing people of things."

"He'd want money," said Wickham. "I don't have any."

"It seems to me you're good at finding ways to get money, actually," said Elizabeth with a shrug. "Always trickery, always for selfish reasons, of course. You wouldn't be capable of doing something to take care of another person or to prove your love or to show you were worthy of the hand of my younger sister."

"She's practically my niece," said Mr. Darcy. "I would definitely never let you marry her."

Lydia glared at him. "Georgie."

He furrowed his brow.

"Georgie!" said Lydia again, very offended. "You don't want me at all."

"I can't do anything about it, Lydia," he muttered.

"Yes, you're so very pitiful," said Georgiana with a sigh.

"Come with us now, Lydia," said Elizabeth.

"No," said Lydia, but when they came over to take her by the hands, she didn't struggle as they led her out. Instead, she simply looked over her shoulder at him, her gaze begging him to say something, to do something.

And then, they were gone.

He sat down heavily at the chair where she'd been sitting, glanced down at the gossip sheet, and began drinking the port she'd left behind.

It was better, he told himself. He'd wanted rid of her, after all. It was exactly as he wanted things.

But he left the room after about twenty minutes and he went down to a tavern he sometimes frequented, where he knew he could get in on a card game on credit. It was a risky move. He didn't have many lines of credit left. And he was as wont to lose as to win when it came to gambling.

But… he didn't entirely know why that it was different this time. He found himself making different choices than he usually would have made. He wasn't playing for the sensation, for the feeling of risk and possible excitement. He was playing for Lydia. And now that Lydia had been taken from him, he was angry about it.

When he left, some hours later, it was with a full purse.

He didn't even debate going elsewhere with it. He wasn't even tempted to drink it away or to book a passage to the continent or any number of other things he'd usually be interested in doing.

Instead, he went directly to Gustav's Tavern and inquired after Mr. Grayson.

He was directed to a darkened corner, where a man sat in a hooded cloak, the hood entirely obscuring his face.

The man was not Grayson. Wickham knew that. It had been some time since he'd seen Grayson, but he would know this regardless. However, there was something strangely familiar about the man, he thought.

"I'm looking for Mr. Grayson," said Wickham.

"You can speak to me," came a gruff voice from under the hood.

"It's concerning a woman he wishes to marry," said Wickham.

"I can speak for Mr. Grayson on that matter."

"Can you?"

"I can." Something about the man's voice. Wickham didn't know why it seemed familiar. "I am here, in fact, to speak to the master of Pemberley about the very matter."

"Look, Grayson won't wish to marry her. She's likely gone with another man's child."

The man with the hood only grunted.

"He's accepting her in lieu of some debt for dogs," said Wickham. "But those dogs, I've seen them, and they can't be worth quite that much." He named instead, an amount he thought the dogs were worth. "I have that much here."

"Do you?"

"Well, Mr. Grayson could take the money, and he could find himself free from a wife he wouldn't want anyway. Seems to me it's a winning situation for Grayson."

"Hmm," said the man in the hood.

"I have more," said Wickham, sighing, taking out the purse. "Double that much, in fact. Grayson can have it all."

"I see," said the man in the hood.

Wickham waited.

The man in the hood shrugged.

"You tell Grayson whatever you like. Skim money off the top if you want. But you keep him from marrying Lydia Bennet. Do we have a deal?"

"Well, if the girl is really gone with another man's child, I suppose you did Grayson a service keeping him off her," said the man, holding out his hand. "Give me the coin."

Wickham felt defeated, because if that was the way of it, he'd spent money when all he'd needed to do was, well, spend in the girl. But he'd gotten the money to free her, hadn't he? He handed the purse over.

"Pleasure doing business with you," said the man with the hood, dismissing him.

"Wait," said Wickham. "What proof do I have that Grayson won't go after Lydia?"

"He simply won't be there."

"But I don't know where she is."

"They'll bring her here tomorrow," said the man in the hood. "I was meant to take her from this very table. You can arrive and be here instead."

Wickham nodded. "All right."

He retreated, and he might have gone back to the boardinghouse, but he was too nervous to do so, frightened that the man in the hood would somehow see Darcy and Lydia before he did. He spent the night walking round the building. When the tavern opened for breakfast, he was inside, sitting at the table, waiting.

He might have dozed a bit, he supposed. But he was awake when Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth, Georgiana, and Lydia all came in and stood over his table.

"Where's Grayson?" said Darcy.

"Got rid of him," said Wickham. "You'll marry her to me, and that's that."

"Oh, Georgie, I knew you hadn't abandoned me," said Lydia.

"Well, then," said Georgiana. "This seems to have worked out well."

"There is the fact that I don't know how exactly we're going to live," said Wickham.

Mr. Darcy sighed. "You predicted that, too, Gigi."

"He is nothing if not predictable," said Georgiana.