Then, with the calm clarity of a man who had seen enough duplicity to recognize its outline through a laurel hedge, Mr. Darcy said flatly:
“By Jove, Mr. Bennet… you have a Wickham in your garden.”
***
A startled silence followed in the parlour.
Mr. Bennet, who had just been pouring himself a modest glass of claret, paused mid-motion and turned his head toward the window with the slow theatricality of a man long accustomed to absurd revelations in his own household.
“Are you quite certain, Mr. Darcy?” he asked with a mixture of dryness and disbelief. “It is not every day one hears of a Wickham blooming among the petunias.”
“I know the profile of his head too well to mistake it,” Darcy replied evenly, his gaze still fixed on the glass. “And I daresay the angle of his approach suggests he did not enter by the gate. The funny thing is, I came from Pemberley expressly to find him, and here he is—presenting himself in a dendrological fashion.”
Mr. Bingley leaned forward, squinting toward the garden hedge. “Surely he would not—surely he could not be so stupid or ill-advised...”
“I fear he could, and often is,” Darcy muttered.
Denny, who had been standing with quiet discomfort since entering the room, now took a step forward. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Part of the blame may lie with me. He knew I would call, and he insisted in following me this far. Since he was not invited, he left the path—he said only that he meant to speak briefly with Miss Lydia and be gone.”
Mr. Bennet turned his gaze upon the young officer with a narrowed expression, somewhere between amusement and reproach. “And you believed him?”
“I did not support his action,” Denny replied stiffly. “Nor did I approve. I warned him he was acting against orders.”
“And yet,” Darcy said, folding his arms, “here he is.”
At that moment, from somewhere beyond the hedge, came a girlish laugh—light, bright, and unmistakably familiar. Darcy’s jaw tightened. Mr. Bingley flushed. Mr. Bennet sighed and reached for his claret at last.
“Well,” said Mr. Bennet after a sip, “as this house presently contains four gentlemen and a window with an excellent view, I propose we intervene before the shrubbery becomes the scene of a courtship—or worse, a performance.”
Darcy was already crossing the room.
“Mr. Denny,” he said without looking back, “would you care to join me in removing your comrade from the flowerbeds?”
Mr. Denny followed without protest.
Mr. Bingley hesitated, then turned to Mr. Bennet. “Shall I—?”
“No, no, gentlemen,” said Mr. Bennet, waving his hand at Mr. Darcy and Mr. Denny. “If I must be drawn into every melodrama involving that young man, I should like to do so with an empty glass. It is my duty to go and clean the garden.”
He set down his glass with an air of cheerful resignation, rose, and buttoned his coat with the solemnity of a man preparing for light horticultural labour—or perhaps something closer to pest control. Without haste, and with no small touch of ceremony, he walked to the door, pausing only to retrieve his hat from a peg near the entrance.
The gentlemen left behind exchanged glances. Mr. Darcy’s expression remained composed, but Bingley looked as though he were preparing to laugh, or perhaps apologise to someone, though he could not yet decide to whom.
Denny felt a tightening in his chest that had nothing to do with military bearing. He had stood in line under cannon drills and taken orders from men far less composed, yet the quiet authority with which Mr. Bennet announced his intention to “clean the garden” unsettled him more than any parade-ground rebuke.
As for Mr. Bennet, he stepped into the garden with the leisurely gait of a man who neither feared scandal nor expected surprise. The November air was crisp and carried with it the faint scent of fallen leaves and—less poetically—Mr. Wickham’s cologne.
He found them near the edge of the hedge walk, beneath a half-leafless apple tree that offered no cover but pretended to. Lydia, all brightness and unfiltered delight, was in the midst of saying something that ended in a peal of laughter. Wickham stood far too close, smiling in the way that only men without income, prospects, or shame know how to smile.
“Mr. Wickham,” Mr. Bennet said, his tone genial but unmistakably audible, “what a pleasure to find you among the flora. I fear the roses are quite out of season, but perhaps you find the company of dahlias equally charming?”
Lydia turned at once, cheeks flushed from amusement and motion. “Papa!”
Wickham’s composure faltered for half a second—just long enough to betray the fact that he had not expected to be caught, and certainly not by the master of the house.
“I was merely—walking by,” Wickham said smoothly. “The gate was open, and I—”
“It is extraordinary,” Mr. Bennet interrupted, “how often one finds you near an open gate. Come now, I believe one of my guests would be very pleased to see you. He is in the parlour just now. Shall we go in and renew the acquaintance?”
