Page 77 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
“Not for me,” she said. “This is not some contest. Do not go back and bring me his head like some macabre play, and think that I shall reward whichever one of you dispatches him with my favor. He has his faults, granted, but killing him is not the way.”
“He raped my niece and he attempted to rape you!” exclaimed the colonel.
“Well,” muttered Mr. Bingley, “to be fair, it seems he has been foiled in both of those attempts.”
“I am not saying,” said Jane, “that I excuse him or that I shall ever trust him again, but there is something in him. A sort of vulnerability, some hurt deep down—”
“Oh, please!” said Mr. Bingley.
At the same time, the colonel groaned loudly.
“Well, perhaps he could be reformed,” said Jane.
They both simply glowered at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN THE CARRIAGEthrew a wheel, Mr. George Wickham had to go off and seek someone to repair it. Well, no, this wasn’t likely true. He could have stayed in the carriage with Lydia Bennet and sent off the driver for help, but he left before anyone could protest his plan.
He thought he’d simply leave.
He would not seek a new carriage wheel. He would consider this enterprise madness and decide that fate had intervened. He must, obviously, cease his attempts.
He was decided in this, and then he somehow found himself doing the exact opposite. He sought out a man who was skilled in the repair of carriages and they found a wheel that was roughly the same size, and he went back with that man to put the wheel on the carriage.
Why he did this, he did not know.
It wasn’t romance.
He didn’t mind Lydia Bennet, he supposed. She was pleasant in a number of ways. She was the tallest of the sisters, the most gregarious, and the youngest and silliest. She had been beside herself in joy at the thought of becoming his wife and allowed him to press several wet kisses to her in the carriage, more than Jane Bennet had allowed. Why, every time he got close to Jane, she put up armor, in that way of properly refined ladies, refusing to succumb. But Lydia was pliant and eager. He touched herbreast, and she had let out a sigh like nothing he’d ever heard in his life. He remembered her face, inches from his, eyes closed, panting prettily. “Do thatagain, that waslovely.”
So, he… hadn’t.
He had understood, right in that moment, that she was his for the taking, and he could have lifted her skirts right then and plundered her in the carriage.
But he…
Well, there was a reason he was doing this, after all, and it wasn’t really about Lydia, it was about something else, something strange and ephemeral and good, and he was actually beginning to despise himself for doing the thing he always did when something good happened in his life.
He had a tendency to destroy every bit of good fortune that came his way.
He didn’t want to destroy Lydia Bennet, pretty Lydia, and he didn’t want to destroy his connection to the Bennet family, and if he took advantage of the youngest sister like this, it meant that they might be forced into having him in their family, but that they would never really welcome him, that they would always hate him for having done this.
He regretted it all.
But he couldn’t get out of it anymore. He was going to have to marry one of them… Jane wouldn’t have him. Lydia would do. Maybe he simply needed to do it properly. Or as close to properly he could at this point.
He didn’t think he should take her back, because he had kissed her and fondled her and absconded with her. He should take her to Scotland, marry her, and wait until after they were married to do anything with her, do it all with as much uprightness as he could manage at this point.
Then, he arrived back at the carriage and Mr. Darcy was there.
Along with Mr. Bennet, who shot him a look that wasn’t reproachful but rather full of confusion and hurt.
Mr. Wickham didn’t like that look. It reminded him too much of the look his own father had given him, before his father had said,Georgie, I think it’s best if you don’t try to comeback here anymore, not after what you did to the little Darcy girl. I shall always love you, but that is not the way I raised you, and you know it.
Mr. Wickham hung his head.
Mr. Darcy approached him. He gestured with his head for Wickham to come with him, and Wickham left the carriage repair to Mr. Bennet and the driver and the man who’d come along with the new wheel.
