“Oh, isn’t it?”
He groaned. “This is about Mr. Wickham.”
I drew in a breath. “I suppose you don’t wish to talk about that.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “In a way, you are right. It is the possible censure of others that he holds over me. It is my family’s reputation that he threatened, and he went at us through my very young and very innocent sister, and… but what does it matter now? I am separated from her. She is far off, all alone. I left her. Maybe I was angry with her, even though I never blamed her, not truly. But maybe I was still angry, even though she didn’t deserve it. No, no, it’shimI reserve all my ire for, of course.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said quietly.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You don’t know him well, I suppose. But he is always concerned, one way or the other, with getting money for himself. It is all he thinks of. I suppose he’d like to rise, too, above his station in life, but then he has quite managedthat. You welcomed him into your social circle as if I should consider him my equal.”
“Oh, no one is your equal,” I muttered sarcastically. “Just daughters of dukes and princesses, who might rightly turn down your marriage proposal. Heaven forbid you break bread with the son of one of your family’s servants.”
He sighed.
“And I don’t suppose I really saw him going after money, really. Well, there was the engagement with Miss King, I suppose, but I just saw that as practicality. After all, lots of people get married for practical reasons, and I never had any real conviction that he even thought of me in that way, and—”
“Thought of you in—oh, that’s disgusting.” Mr. Darcy got up from the fire, throwing off his blankets, and stalked over to me. “You had some sort of love affair with Mr. Wickham. Did he touch you?”
I wrapped the blankets around myself even tighter, looking up at him as he loomed over me, illuminated in the firelight. “I had nothing of the sort. He didn’t love me, and I never thought of him except with friendly regard.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Did he touch you?”
I sputtered up at him. “I mean it, Mr. Darcy, he and I never had many interactions at all. Of course, everyone thought he favored me, but I knew he didn’t. Everyone was conciliatory when he was engaged to someone else, but I never thought any of his behavior had indicated any kind of promise towards me.”
“So, that would mean, no? He didn’t touch you.”
I glared at him.
He raised his eyebrows, his expression fierce.
“I don’t know what you even mean by it,” I finally said. “If you mean, untoward touching, obviously not, but he helped me down from a carriage once, I think. He may have kissed the back of my hand once, but it was in jest. He was pretending to be—”
“That blackguard.” Mr. Darcy was not angry, but resigned, his voice deep and lethal. He stalked back around the fire. He did not sit down but gazed off into the distance, his nostrils flaring.
“You’re ever so hard on him,” I said.
Mr. Darcy let out a harsh noise that might have been termed a laugh. Then he sat down again, gathering up his blankets. “I have determined I shall stay here, with you, to finish this ill-formed experiment in drinking tea until sunrise. And then, I don’t know, I shall probably sleep through Thursday, but the following Thursday, I am going to go and kill him.”
“Mr.Darcy!” I was appalled. “This is the second time you’ve said this.”
“Won’t mean anything, because I rather suspect he’ll just be alive the following day,” he said, baring his teeth. “Maybe I’ll make a habit of it. Maybe I’ll kill him every day for a week of Thursdays. Maybe I’ll—”
“You are frightening me,” I whispered.
He made that noise, that not-laugh again. He fixed his gaze on me. “Do you know what he did to my sister? Did he speak to you of her?”
“Erm, once, I suppose,” I said, remembering. “He said that they were close when she was young, but that now she was very, very proud.”
“Oh, did he?” Mr. Darcy’s face twisted, shaking his head.
“He said she was fifteen or sixteen,” I said. “That would make her Lydia’s age, but you, sir, you are older than I, so there must be a bit of distance between your ages?”
“Yes, I was twelve when she was born,” he said. “She has only recently turned sixteen. When he did it, she was fifteen, and I don’t care how young it is that other people see fit to marry off women, that is too young, so—”
“Wait a moment,” I said. “You are saying, he… with your sister?”
“Tried to elope with her,” he said. “Not because he cares for her, no, but because he wished to take charge of her fortune. She has a dowry, you know. He made certain to make it look a certain way, also. He spent a night in her room and her companion, the governess I had engaged to look after her, that woman seemed to be in league with him on it. My sister says that they only slept, that he didn’t…”
