Page 51 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“IT’S BAD,” RICHARDwas saying.
Darcy had known it was when his cousin couldn’t seem to tell him in the house, when Richard had insisted they go walking in the darkness of the gardens of Rosings, and when he wouldn’t speak for some time as they walked amongst the hedgerows.
Here, now, under the sliver of the moon in the blue-black shadows of the outdoors, now, he spoke, and his voice seemed disembodied and odd.
“He’s raping her,” Darcy murmured.
“I don’t know,” said Richard.
“You said it was bad.”
“She says no,” said Richard. “But there are apparently others, some of your servant girls, Fitz, maybe girls from the village, I don’t know. He is most certainly atthem. Maybe her status protects her from that. But… he is making them starve themselves, I think.”
“Sheisthin,” said Darcy. “But she’s always been small and delicate and—” He broke off, because he was remembering one of the maids who’d fainted away while scrubbing the floors and had hit her head and been concussed and had to be taken away for weeks, and he’d found her and carried her down the stairs, and she’d been like a rag doll in his arms, a bag of skin and bone, nothing to her. “God in Heaven, Richard, what has he beendoingright under my nose?”
“He was playing with you,” said Richard. “He has known you for your entire life, Fitz, and he knows all your weaknesses. He knew just how to wind you up and make you dance, like a music box, really. Don’t blame yourself. It’s no help. We must think of what there is now, what we can do now.”
“Whatcanwe do?”
“Get rid of him,” said Richard.
“Yes, all right. I said I would, didn’t I?” Darcy’s stomach turned over.
“I think the starvation is for two purposes. I think he likes them to look young, very young, and if they are thin enough, they have no… shape to them, no breasts, no hips, no thighs—”
“God,” said Darcy.
“But also they don’t bleed if they are very thin. So, he can’t get them with child.”
Darcy was going to vomit.
“Maybe he just likes the control over them,” said Richard. “Having a horde of young women doing whatever you tell them to do? It could be…”
“What could it be?”
“I don’t know,” said Richard. “In France, we spend all our time not fighting sitting around campfires speculating on why Napoleon is doing whatever he’s doing, why it’s never enough for him. I feel there’s a sort of man like that, one with an appetite that can’t be quenched. One woman is not enough. He must have a number of women. It’s not enough for her to be devoted. She must show her devotion by submitting to his will in a number of other ways. If she is half-skeletal, it is a badge of his dominion over her.”
“You think Wickham is like Napoleon?”
“On a smaller scale, perhaps?”
“We must kill him.” Darcy felt this in the pit of his stomach, an awful certainty.
“Yes.” Richard nodded. “Nothing else for it. But she will mourn him. She fancies herself in love with him.”
Darcy’s throat was tight with tears. How he’d failed her, his poor sister! “When?”
“I don’t know,” said the colonel. “Sooner is better than later. Best not to dwell on it too much, I think. It will make it loom large in our heads and make it more difficult. Let me look into making the sorts of necessary arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“I don’t know exactly, just let me worry about that.”
“She’s my sister, and I can worry about—”
“Darcy, let me plan out the murder, for the sake of all we hold dear. It doesn’t matter to me, do you understand? Things inside me are already broken, and I don’t need you broken as well.”
