Georgiana’s face lit up with relief. “George, that is two hundred a year. We could leave this disgraceful situation, and then I can save you from these corruptions and immorality.”
But Wickham shook his head. “I want half of her mother’s marriage articles. I want fifteen.”
“Four thousand.”
Wickham scowled and said, “Ten thousand.”
“Three thousand.”
Wickham cursed. “I want more.”
“George!” his sister said in the sternest voice he had ever heard from her. “He will continue to offer less.”
Ignoring her, Wickham said to him, “For that amount, I may as well turn your wife into an object of ridicule and damn your family name for good!”
“If you come forward, you deliver your own ruination.” Darcy spoke in the same calm manner he had been using, but his low voice and stern look carried his point.
Wickham glared at him for a moment and then dropped his gaze. He did not argue, but threw himself into a chair and sulked.
“Would you like to stay married?” he asked Wickham, struggling to keep his patience. Wickham lacked in both intellectual and emotional depth, along with any morality.
He stayed silent, but he supposed his silence and sullen manner was his agreement. To Georgiana, he said, “If you return to Scotland, I will pay for your journey and your lodgings for one year, and settle three thousand pounds on you once you are there. If your husband joins you, then so be it. But none of that happens unless I have the journal and the aigrette.”
She looked at Wickham for approval, but he only huffed a petulant sigh. Georgiana went into the other room and Darcy watched her pick up a coat off the floor and reach into the pocket. Darcy kept a steady countenance as he took them both and tried not to show his relief. He exchanged them for the key to the door.
“Why Scotland?” Georgiana asked as she took the key.
“So you can more easily divorce him if he gives you proof of any future infidelity. Or if he decides three thousand pounds is not worth staying with you for and deserts you. But also because I need you both as far from me and my wife as possible.”
Her eyes went wide and her lip quivered. “But I never wanted him to slander Lizzy. It was just the threat of it, so you would give us some money.”
“It would never stop,” Darcy insisted. “And he was always going to hurt Elizabeth if it meant he could hurt me. That is the man you tied your life to. A man entirely without character who has now embroiled you in a scheme of extortion and betrayal.”
“But I can change him,” she whispered.
Darcy shook his head over it. “Everything I said to you in GretnaGreen still stands. I will not resign reason and integrity and have anything to do with either of you. If he ever abandons you, or you have proof of his adultery and want to divorce him, I will help you. Until that time, we will not acknowledge you.”
“I am sorry we hurt you—hurt you both,” she corrected. “But one day I will convince you George is a good man.”
“You need not prove anything to him,” Wickham called from where he was slumped in a chair. “Your loyalty is to me, not to your brother or his slut of a wife.”
If Darcy did not have Elizabeth’s items already, he might have struck Wickham for that.
“No eye, no tongue, no thought may be turned toward Mrs Darcy for the purposes you have alluded to,” he said warningly. “Anyone who disparages her name will meet me at dawn.”
Georgiana paled, then edged past him to unlock the door and then put a hand on Wickham’s shoulder.
“George,” she said hesitantly, before swallowing and trying again. “There is no need to shame them and drag us into disaster. Remember how you said how much you loved me, that you needed me to settle you into domestic life? We cannot do that here. But with my three thousand and your one, we will have a hundred and sixty pounds. This will put us in a superior condition in life than most. And we will have each other.”
It was reasonable, but Wickham spent fifty pounds in a week on women, dice, and drink. Their income would afford a man, his wife, and some children an ample sufficiency of all the necessaries of life, but with little superfluity.
Darcy went to the door, but turned back to say to Georgiana, “He will never love you the way you want him to.”
She just smiled and shook her head. “You will see. He wanted me even when you said you would not give me the thirty thousand pounds. He said he would fight for me to the last drop of his blood. Is that not romantic?” she cried with wide eyes. “He will be loyal and kind, just like he was in Ramsgate, like he was when I was a child.”
There was no reasoning with her. He had gotten what he came for, and there was no reason to stay with two such misguided people.
“You are very much like our father, who was loyal to Wickham to the last. Two excellent people blinded by affection and charm.”
