Page 69 of Elizabeth and Caroline
Elizabeth reached back for Caroline and the two women, arm in arm, followed Mr. Wickham down the hallway, past a number of closed doors.
Mr. Wickham stopped at one door, opened it, and walked inside. Elizabeth and Caroline followed him. The room inside was small, containing only a single bed and a table with a wash basin. It was austere, no decoration.
Mr. Wickham sat down on the bed, surveying them, smiling. “Well, close the door, would you?”
Was that a good idea? Elizabeth hesitated.
Mr. Wickham got up from the bed, went around them, and closed it himself. He smiled at Caroline. “I never got your name.”
“I’m Miss Bingley,” said Caroline.
“Why did you stay friends with this one after she stole your man?” said Mr. Wickham, smirking.
“It was not that way,” said Caroline.
“We don’t have to answer his questions,” said Elizabeth. “He must answer ours.”
“Oh, I must?” said Mr. Wickham, walking back towards the bed. But instead of sitting, he spread his hands. “Where are my manners? You are my guests, you may sit.”
“We’ll stand,” said Elizabeth. “Where is my sister? Where is Miss Darcy?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Wickham, shaking his head. “No, I shall keep that to myself for the time being.”
“Have you abandoned them both somewhere?” said Elizabeth. “What is going on here?”
Mr. Wickham shrugged at the both of them and settled on the bed again. He scratched the side of his neck, still smiling, looking smug. “I never saw it in a woman before, you know.”
“Stop this,” said Elizabeth. And then, she glanced at Caroline, who did not seem imperious anymore, only small and unsure.This is not the way,she realized. She was not going to get Mr. Wickham to comply by ordering himaround. Indeed, that was never the way to influence people, to manipulate them. She took a deep breath. Yes, she needed to be smarter about this. Mr. Wickham wanted to talk, it seemed. That could be a good thing. He would talk. She would listen to what he revealed, and something would emerge, something she could use. “Never saw what in a woman?”
“He had it,” said Mr. Wickham. “I have it, but I think I learned it from him. Not because he taught it to me, though, simply because I observed him, saw him at work, saw how it was done. I haven’t the resources he had, of course, not the money or the estates or the wife who was the daughter of an earl and the connections. I have to make do with what I have.”
Wife who was the daughter of…? “You’re speaking of my husband’s father,” she ascertained. “What did the elder Mr. Darcy have?”
“The thing that you have,” said Mr. Wickham. “That gift to guide people, to make them do your bidding. The ability to get away with despicable behavior and not be blamed.”
She didnothave that ability, or… well, even if she might, she did not use her abilities in that way. Maybe she used to think that about herself, but her husband had shown her that she was only being too hard on herself. She did not protest, but she knew Mr. Wickham was wrong. “I thought you said the elder Darcy was a good man, the best man you knew,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” said Wickham, but his smile was fainter. “I quite admired him. And he was good to me. He did a lot for me. If he wanted things in return, well…” The smile was gone now.
“What things in return?” said Elizabeth, who was thinking of the way her husband had spoken about his father, and it hadn’t been entirely complimentary. What sort of man had the late Mr. Darcy been?
“Nothing improper,” said Mr. Wickham. “It was never like that.”
Elizabeth furrowed her brow, a creeping sensationstealing through her, pricking her with something like revulsion.
“He was good to me,” insisted Mr. Wickham. “He wasalwaysgood to me.” He lifted his shoulders. “And there was no effect on me, you know. It certainly didn’t change my tastes or make me crave depravities. The girls, they are grown. Quite grown.” He let out a breath, and he actually looked troubled. Then his gaze snapped up to look at her. “Stop it. Don’t do it tome, Mrs. Darcy. Not to me.”
“What am I doing?” she said. “I am simply letting you talk, Mr. Wickham.”
He nodded, alarm flashing across his features. “Yes. So you are. And we need not talk of me. We may talk of you, instead. That is why I invited you up here, of course, because you intrigue me. I suppose I became fascinated with your sisters because of you. I hoped one of them would have it as well, that spark of something, whatever it is, that way of bending people, as you do. But none of them did. Lydia, she’s the closest, I suppose, but all she really has is a kind of petulant selfishness—however, it presents as rebellion, and I could use that. I could bend that. And if she tried to rebel against me, well, that made it all the more fun.”
“You hurt Lydia to hurt me?” said Elizabeth. “What is that I have done to you, Mr. Wickham?”
“No, not to hurt you,” he said. “I wonder if that’s why he liked me, if I was a bit of a challenge for him, just as Lydia was a bit of a challenge for me. You, though, you, Mrs. Darcy, you’d be the best challenge of all, I think. An equal. If I could get you to do my bidding…” He shook his head. “But here we are now, you and me, and we are both trying to manipulate the other, are we not? Which of us will win?”
Elizabeth licked her lips. She did not care to speculate what had been done to Mr. Wickham by her husband’s father, but she suspected it was the height of vile malignance. Maybe it had twisted him. She might even feel sorry for him, if things were different, but she could not, not now, not after he had done whatever it was he had done to Lydia and Georgiana. “You have simply done it as achallenge, then? Just for amusement?”
“To see if I could,” he said, nodding. “Is that not why you made your matches, madam?”
