Pamela Aidan - These Three Remain

“If you must,” she replied and motioned for him to enter the tiny room. Inside was only the meanest of bedsteads, a rickety table and lamp, and an equally unstable chair. Clothes, bottles, and dishes lay about the place, all in a state of profound disarray. As he turned his regard back down to her, her tense attitude recalled to him Georgiana’s protest that his presence was intimidating even to those who loved him. In such cramped surroundings, his height could not help but seem threatening to a very young woman in her circumstances. He carefully lowered his weight onto the chair, composed his face in what he hoped were beneficent lines, and examined his charge.

It was quite obvious that Wickham had done little to see to her comfort. The gown she wore was rumpled and stained, her hair was a tangle. It appeared that she had come with little more than could be packed in a valise. They were, very likely, all but destitute. His hopes for the interview rose. “Miss Lydia, please be at ease. I have not come to offer you an insult,” he assured her. “I come as…as a disinterested acquaintance to ask you to consider the position into which you have been led and to provide a way to return to the anxious bosom of your family with as much honor as may be.”

If it were possible, Lydia’s eyes opened even wider. “What?” she replied, every evidence of astonishment upon her face. “Are you joking?”

“I assure you, I am not,” he answered, surprised by her response but maintaining his composure.

“I am to be married,” she informed him smugly. “I shall be Mrs. George Wickham and quite honorably so, if you please.”

“Has a date been set, then?” he asked, his regard steady.

“N-no,” Lydia admitted, turning away from him. “We must wait until some horrible people who are jealous of George can be repaid some trifling sums.” Her words were merely a recital of an excuse she’d had from Wickham. Poor girl, she believed the wretch. “Really, it is most unfair!” She rounded on him suddenly. “Why must people be so cruel to my poor Wickham?” She looked at him, her eyes accusing. “And you are among them. George has told me!”

“My relationship with Wickham is a long and difficult one, Miss Lydia.’ ” He shifted his position, the chair threatening to take him to the floor. “My presence here has nothing to do with that, nor any tale of hardship with which Wickham has entertained you.” At his words, Lydia’s chin tilted up in a manner so like Elizabeth’s that his heart nearly seized. He persisted. “Please, hear me. Your family are beside themselves with worry for your safety. Since Wickham cannot, as you admit, offer you marriage at this time, why not return to your family until he can come to claim you with all honor?”

“It will not be so very long” — she bristled — “and I do not wish to leave.” Her pose as a soon-to-be-married woman dissolved into girlish intransigence under his piercing regard. “Oh,” she cried, stamping her foot, “why should you be here and say these things to me?” An unhappy thought must then have occurred to her, for she stiffened, her face turning cautious. “Is my father waiting below?”

Darcy allowed a few moments of silence to separate her outburst from his answer. She must understand clearly what little he could tell her. “No, your father is not here. I am here by no one’s urging or plea.”

“Oh.” She breathed out again and shook herself slightly. “Well, then.” In a moment, she clapped her hand to her mouth, then giggled and hugged herself. “I’ve done it, haven’t I! Oh, they shall all be green with envy of me, every one! And how I shall laugh!”

“Laugh at the distress of your family and all those who wish them well? For that is what it is, Miss Lydia. They suffer no envy, but fear for you and reproach for themselves.” He searched her face, hoping for some twinge of conscience, but his words had not, evidently, found a home with her.

“It all will not matter a jot when I go home a married woman,” she informed him airily and turned away to the window.

“You think not? It would be very strange if that were so, and I assure you that your sisters Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth do not regard the matter in such a light.” His statement appeared to give her pause, for she turned back to him. “You would not wish to live under the disapprobation of two of your closest relations whose chances for an advantageous future would be considerably lessened by such actions on your part.”

Lydia’s lips formed into a pout as her eyes slid away from him. “My sisters! My sisters will do very well, or would if they…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes shifted back to him, now bright with suspicious curiosity. “How do you know of my sisters’ regard or, for that matter, about any of this? Lizzy doesn’t even like you; no one does that I ever heard, except for Mr. Bingley.”

The dart, so inelegantly flung, still possessed a sting. Darcy rose from his seat in irritation with both himself and his antagonist and strode to her. The child was entirely self-absorbed, dangerously careless, and hopelessly naïve. How was he to make her see the truth of her position? He looked out the small, grime-laced window for a moment and then turned back to her. “You must know that your sister was to travel with your Aunt and Uncle Gardiner during the summer.”

“Yes, a boring trip north.” She sniffed in disdain. “No parties or balls or picnics. Only Aunt and Uncle Gardiner prosing on and on.”

“On their travels,” he continued, “they stopped to view my estate in Derbyshire. It was there that your sister received word that you had entrusted your future to Wickham. In great distress at this news, your sister confided in me. She and her party left immediately for Longbourn, your uncle to join your father in searching for you.” He paused. Here was the difficult part. “My long association with Wickham put me in a better position to find you both; therefore, I resolved to do so and without their knowledge should I raise their hopes but meet with no success.”

“I still cannot imagine why you should care to trouble yourself,” she replied tartly. “We will be married — in time. My friends will be happy for me. There is nothing so terrible about that, that you should come here and say I should leave George.”

“Can you not imagine the precarious position in which this puts the respectability of your family? They will, if they have not already, become a byword in the neighborhood.”

“Oh, the neighbors!” Lydia stamped her foot. “Old, catty busybodies with no use for fun! Who cares about them? I do not!”

“But your sisters —”

“I shall see to getting them husbands, shan’t I? For I shall be married and before them all!”

Darcy held his silence when she had finished. Lydia Bennet was not to be reasoned with or shamed into leaving her illicit lover. She seemed to have no understanding of the consequences of her actions for herself or her family, nor had she any concern to discover what her behavior would cost them. He looked down at the hat and gloves in his hands in order to conceal the unsettling nature of his thoughts. Unlike Lydia Bennet, his sister had known what she was doing and repented of it, if only at the last. This child — he glanced up at the bedraggled and defiant girl before him — flesh and blood of the woman he loved, had no such advantage. How was he to convince her to give up her dangerous toy? He had only one resource left and, fortunately, permission to use it. Still, he would employ it discreetly.

“Miss Lydia, would it influence you in any way if you knew you were not the first young woman George Wickham has convinced to fly with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I have personal knowledge of another who was deceived by Wickham’s blandishments and promises into consenting to elope with him. It was clear that his reasons for courting her without the knowledge or consent of her relations were dictated not by passion but by economics. She was an heiress, and Wickham was in need of money.”

Lydia’s eyes flew open. “What has Miss King to do with anything? George never…Oh!” She stamped her foot at him yet again and took a hasty step toward him. “I may not be an heiress, but I know George loves me!”

“Miss Lydia.” Darcy leaned forward earnestly. “Wickham is ever in need of money. He has no profession. He has tried to live by his wits and by chance, and has failed at them both. He must marry for money; he has no choice.” Compassion welled up in him as he looked down into her set, young face. “You are right; you are not an heiress,” he agreed gently, “and whether he truly loves you or not, for that reason, you must believe me, he will not marry you.”

A flicker of doubt crossed her countenance. Brightness welled at the corners of her eyes. Was it enough? Too quickly, the doubt faded. She hastily wiped at her eyes, and her chin took on an immovable cast that bore an alarming resemblance to her mother’s. “George will marry me, and that is the end of it! Now, I think you should leave!”

Heaving a sigh, Darcy bowed his acquiescence and turned to go. “Miss Lydia.” He looked back at her from the doorway. “May I leave you my card should you change your mind?” She shrugged her shoulders, which he took for permission, and laying it on the table, he bowed again and walked from the room. It had been as he had feared. The girl would not be dissuaded. He must deal with Wickham.

Upon closing the door on his unsuccessful interview with Lydia Bennet, Darcy walked slowly down the hall and stairs to the inn’s public rooms and Wickham, considering his next moves. The rogue would believe he held the upper hand, and indeed, he did in immediate particulars. The facts of Darcy’s presence and Lydia’s obstinacy proclaimed it. But it was a tenuous ascendancy, and it remained to Darcy to impress upon Wickham every uncertainty and danger inherent in his position as acutely as possible while still keeping his birds in hand. For if they flew, all might well be lost.