She stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. “Mr Wickham…we discussed this. I am being courted by Mr Darcy. I cannot accept.”
Ah. So she had given her heart to the man he loathed above all others. His jaw tightened, but he maintained his smile.
“Ah yes, Darcy. You must know—he is not what he seems.”
“Careful, sir,” she said sharply, colour rising in her cheeks. “I will not tolerate insults to Mr Darcy. He is the most honourable man I have ever known.”
That was enough. Wickham’s smile twisted cruelly as he stepped closer, his voice a whisper of venom.
“I see. Then allow me to speak plainly. You will not marry Fitzwilliam Darcy. You will do exactly as I say—or I shall ruin your entire family.”
She flinched, but he pressed on, relishing her distress. “I know the boy you claim as your brother is no Bennet. Oh yes, I know what happened on the thirteenth of September, five years ago. I remember the carriage crash. I remember you pulling a child from the wreckage.”
The chit did not even attempt to deny it. “You abandoned them!” she cried. “You left them to die!”
“Perhaps,” he drawled. “But I survived. And I have proof—letters, trinkets, a bonnet sewn by Anne’s own hand. Enough to alert her family, enough to bring ruin on all of you. Shall I send a missive to Rosings Park? To Lady Catherine herself?”
Elizabeth was pale as death. “What do you want?”
“Ten thousand pounds. And a letter—one that breaks off your courtship with Darcy. Send it to Pemberley. By express. He will receive it upon arrival.” He had asked around and knew Bennet had dowries for his daughters. It was not an impossible sum.
“You…you are a monster.”
He laughed again. “Call me what you will, Miss Bennet. But I am a practical man. And this is a practical solution to my... inconveniences.”
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she whispered, “You will destroy us all.”
“Only if you make me. You have two days.” He tipped an imaginary hat and stepped away, letting her stumble back down the path.
As he watched her go, hunched with grief, he felt no triumph. Only cold satisfaction. The game had begun.
Elizabeth waited until Wickham’s footsteps disappeared, her body trembling with the effort of holding herself together. Her legs felt unsteady beneath her, and she did not trust herself to walk immediately. When she finally moved, it was with one purpose—reaching Oakham Mount.
She climbed quickly, heedless of the twigs that caught her hem or the sharp gusts that whipped her bonnet strings against her cheeks. Her chest ached, not just from the incline but from the crushing weight of dread. Wickham had made his move. The threat she had feared for five years was no longer a vague worry or passing shadow—it was real, immediate, and terrible. And now, she had a choice to make.
But perhaps it was not a choice at all. Wickham expected her to turn to her father. He expected hesitation, delay, and time to vanish with the money. But no—Elizabeth would not do what he expected. Her father had already shown too much casualness, too much dismissal. No, she would go to the one man who had always faced Wickham with clarity and strength: Mr Darcy.
When she reached the summit, her breath caught in her throat. Not just from exertion, but from the sight of him—tall and straight-backed, framed by the grey sky and late autumn trees, as though he were a part of the very earth that steadied her.
“Elizabeth!” he called, already striding towards her. “My love—what has happened?”
She could not speak. Instead, she stumbled into his arms. He caught her instantly, folding her against his chest as her sobs erupted in shuddering gasps.
“My dearest girl,” he murmured, one hand stroking her back, the other cradling the back of her head. “You are shaking. Please—tell me what has frightened you so.”
She let him guide her to a nearby stump, all that remained of the great oak for which the mount was named. She sat, clinging to his hand.
“You must know,” she whispered. “I can keep the secret no longer, not after this. You will likely hate me—leave me—but I must speak.”
“Never,” he said fiercely. “Whatever you say, Elizabeth, I will not hate you. Speak and let me bear it with you.”
His voice was warm and sure, and it gave her strength. So she began.
She told him of the day her mother died and the chaos that occurred away from the house. She described the moment when the carriage crashed on the Great North Road, how dust and the screams of the horses mingled in the air, how she had pulled an infant from the arms of a dying woman and carried him from the wreckage.
She spared no detail—her fear, her panic, the decision to say nothing and claim the boy as her brother. “We—my father and I—told everyone he was born of my mother,” she said, her voice trembling. “No one questioned it, not with her gone and the baby already in the house. Living twins are so rare…”
Darcy’s expression was unreadable, his thumb still gently stroking her hand, though his posture had stilled. "Blast," he murmured. "I should have told Fitzwilliam of his presence."
