Page 62 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
Elizabeth came closer.
“Thank God you’re already out there!” cried Wickham. “It’s Georgiana. She’s quit the house. I’d go after her myself, but if you’re already out there, can you do it? She’s very upset and I’m worried for her.”
Elizabeth let out a little cry. This man, he was the devil himself.
“Can’t you hear me?” Wickham leaned further out of the window. “Richard!” he bellowed. “It’sGeorgiana!”
And then…
He slipped.
He toppled halfway out the window and caught himself, bending in half, and he didn’t fall.
However, now, his feet were entirely off the floor and he kicked about for purchase, only hitting the wall above the window.
Elizabeth’s heart beat wild and fast in her chest.
Wickham screamed her name. “Mrs. Collins, some assistance, if you please!”
Elizabeth moved toward him like a woman in a dream. She bent down, picked up his ankles, and… and… pushed him the rest of the way out of the window.
He shrieked as he fell, face first onto the ground below.
Elizabeth looked out at him, splayed out down there.
He was moving, his arms twitching, and she could hear his groans. He’d survived the fall.
She turned, plastering her back into the wall next to the window. She was going to vomit.
What had she done?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RICHARD KNELT NEXTto the mangled form of Wickham’s groaning body. He turned the man over.
Face up, he was badly injured. His face was a mass of blood.
Wickham made a noise. It might have been words.
But Richard felt the thing inside him rise up, the thing in which a person ceased to be a person and became a problem to solve. He took Wickham’s face in both of his hands, very firm, and twisted the man’s neck sharply.
Snap.
Wickham went still.
Richard stood up. He got out his handkerchief and began to wipe the blood off his palms matter-of-factly. He turned on the footman. “Well, this is awful. You saw as well as I that Mrs. Collins tried to help him, but she couldn’t pull him back in. It was a frightful accident, truly. I put him out of his misery.”
The footman nodded, wordless.
“Tragic thing,” said Richard with a shrug, wiping at his fingers. “Let’s get an old tablecloth or something until we decide what to do with him. We don’t want the women to have to look at the horror of his face.”
“Yes, sir,” said the footman, swallowing. “Right away, sir.”
WHEN MR. DARCYreturned, having left Pemberley immediately, switching horses, and riding through the night, which meant that—since he had left there about a day behind Wickham—he arrived on the same evening the man had died, Richard showed him the body. They were keeping Wickham in a shed on the grounds, wrapped in several sets of sheets.
“The steward at Pemberley will wish his son back to bury him,” said Richard. “We should send him there.”
Darcy shook his head. “He justfell.”
