“We only wanted a little money,” she whispered.
Darcy scoffed. His sister was a foolish little girl. “By doing so, you are ruining my marriage and your friend’s spirits. She is absolutely sick with worry. All you wanted was to be a married woman, and this is how you treat another married woman, your friend and sister? You connive to shame her and end her marriage?”
Georgiana sniffled. “But it does not have to end. You won’t really divorce her. She did not actually betray you.”
“What do you think will happen when your husband offers his alleged proof? All the world would expect me to divorce her. How do I live with integrity if my wife had an affair with my brother-in-law?”
She threw up her hands. “But we were never truly going to say that Lizzy was unfaithful! We just thought she would ask you for the money if she thought George would admit to an affair.”
“And what of the money she has already paid you?” he asked.
She gave a quizzical look, and Wickham put an arm around her and said, “She has not paid me a shilling so far, which is why I will move forward with exposing Mrs Darcy unless you pay me for my silence.”
“Well, she gave me a little over five pounds…”
“And where is that?” Darcy asked her, glaring at Wickham.
“George said we must save it to pay for better lodgings. We will need it to move from here.” She looked around her in despair.
That money was surely gone to a prostitute downstairs the day he got it. “Mrs Darcy paid your husband fifty pounds for his silence. Where has that gone?”
His sister gaped at him, but Wickham said, “We need more than arich woman’s pin money to live on. If you do not pay me thirty thousand pounds, I will prove your wife’s infidelity. Can your family pride withstand that?” He laughed, enjoying the thought of it. “It will disgrace your entire family, degenerate your good standing, and lose the influence of Pemberley House for generations.”
Georgiana paled then whispered, “You will not truly tell the world she is an adulteress, will you? Lizzy has done nothing wrong.”
The look on Wickham’s face answered. “We will do what we must, my dear. Darcy can afford for me to be silent.”
“I will pay you nothing for your silence.”
Georgiana’s shoulders fell. “Are you happy here with him, living like this?” Darcy asked her. His sister, he regretted to say, looked like a slattern, unkempt and fatigued. Their lodgings, indeed their very rooms, were an abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety.
“If we had my fortune,” she implored, “George would not have to live so near to temptation and, and he would love me better,” she added, turning sad eyes to her husband. Wickham averted his gaze, but Darcy did not see an ounce of shame in his looks. “Then, if we had more money and could live anywhere else, he would be faithful, attentive?—”
“I am not giving that man thirty thousand pounds to waste.”
“We don’t even need thirty thousand,” she cried. “We just need enough to be gone from here.”
“Georgiana!” Wickham cried, his mouth twisting in revulsion.
“We do not need that much,” she insisted. “Remember when you said you would have me even after Fitzwilliam refused to give us the money?” She searched his face for some sign of affection, or perhaps a smile, but was disappointed. Turning to Darcy, she said, blubbering, “I only want enough to move from these terrible rooms. It is in a fine street, but he is always gone. There are card games into the small hours. It is noisy, with lodgers coming and going at all hours too.”
“Your husband is keeping you in near squalor in a brothel because he has no employment and he wastes any money that comes his way on cards and women. Those other lodgers are prostitutes with their customers. He keeps you near his preferred vices of drink, cards, and women.”
He thought he had to convince her, but Darcy saw in her face that his sister knew. She raised a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. “He loves me. He wrote me such sweet letters. He marriedme, so I know he would prefer me above all else if he were not so easily enticed. We just need to get away from this temptation.”
Darcy noticed her hands and gestured to see them. She came nearer and held them out and he saw the reddish-brown rash on her palms. He exhaled deeply. “You have a secret malady.”
She looked at her hands and brought one to her neck, where Darcy could now see the rash under her hair. “No, it is nothing. George said he had the same, and it went away.”
“Yes, that happens with the pox,” he said sadly. “You have passed the first phase of illness and are into the next. You will appear to get better, but it is a disease that remains hidden, although you could pass it on to a child if it survives. But the both of you have the pox, and someday, years from now, abscesses and ulcers will disfigure you both and might even affect your mind.”
“His lies know no bounds, my dear,” Wickham said, drawing her back to his side. “What a cruel and coarse thing to say. It is Gretna Green all over again. He repeats the same lies, hoping to turn you from my affections.”
“The prostitutes Mrs Younge employs do that,” Darcy said.
Wickham shot him a malicious look that his sister could not see. To her, he said, “We need that thirty thousand pounds so we can live far from any vice to lure me from your side.”
“I will not pay you,” he repeated.
