Page 25 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
“He doesn’t touch me!” Her voice was far too bright.
Darcy’s heart squeezed. God. How long? How long had this been going on? He fell into step with her. “You won’t see him,” he said again.
“But Fitz—”
“I don’t care if you never talk about it,” he said. “You don’t have to. You can keep it all inside, and I shall never ask any questions, but you will noteverbe alone with that man again.”
She let out a strange, mangled noise. “But… but…”
He didn’t know what to make of it. She was protecting him for some reason, but then Wickham had gotten to that servant girl, made hersaythings, and Darcy knew about Wickham’s wheedling. “I forbid it,” he said again. “You’re too old for such things, anyway. You ought to have had a chaperone.”
“He’s the rector!” she protested.
“No, on this, I am firm,” he said.
And he was.
Until later, when Mrs. Reynolds appeared in his study as he was having his evening glass of port.
“Georgiana was upset because she says you’re set against Georgie Wickham again,” she said from the doorway. “Is that the right of it?”
He sighed. “Oh, I don’t know, Mrs. Reynolds. I sometimes get a sense of something when it comes to him.”
Mrs. Reynolds came into the room. She was plump and old and dear. When his mother had died, it had been Mrs. Reynolds who had held him in her arms while he sobbed over and over,It can’t be true. It can’t be true.
In some ways, she was a mother to him. The only mother he had left.
“A sense of something?” She was gentle, but he could tell she didn’t approve.
“I know you’ve known him since he was a boy—”
“Both of you since you were boys. And he’s never been anything but sweet.”
He looked down into his port.
“I know, Fitzwilliam,” said Mrs. Reynolds, coming over to touch his shoulder. “I know. You were a boy. You had lost your mother. All you had was your father, and there he was, singing those praises to Georgie Wickham. It’s only natural you’d feel jealous.”
“I don’t think it’s about that,” said Mr. Darcy quietly, although she always said this to him, and it always gave him pause. He was always trying to curtail Wickham in some way. He used to deny that he was jealous at all. How could he be? Wickham was the steward’s son.
But everyone said it. Where did they get the idea if it wasn’t true?
Maybe he was jealous and simply didn’t realize it.
He sighed heavily. “I don’t think it’s asking too much that she have a chaperone.”
“Well, I suppose that makes sense,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “But I don’t think he’ll like it.”
Darcy looked up at her and had a sudden realization. Mrs. Reynolds got the idea that he was jealous from Wickham. Wickham talked to her, and Wickham was wheedling. He fed her poison about Mr. Darcy. He bent people to his will.
Darcy felt sick to his stomach.
How long had he let Wickham manipulate him through others, then? And what was it that Wickham had been doing to his sister exactly?
He was beginning to realize that it wasn’t farfetched to think that Wickham had wanted the parson position precisely because it would enable him to have this sort of influence over others. It made him untouchable.
“Maybe I don’t care what he likes,” said Mr. Darcy to Mrs. Reynolds. “And maybe I’m not and never have been jealous of him. Does that make sense, Mrs. Reynolds, for me to envy a man like Wickham? What does he have that I might covet?”
She drew back, giving him an odd look. “W-well, your father favored him—”
