Wickham furrowed his brow, glancing back and forth between us. “I’m quite confused, I must say.”
“Are you?” I said. “Well, you must have seen it.” I nodded at him.
“Seen what?” said Wickham.
“Oh, you know of what I speak,” I said. “You say you have been with my wife in that way, so you know what I’m talking of.”
Wickham’s eyes widened. There was a long, long pause. Eventually, he spoke. “Oh,” he said in another voice. “Yes, erm, that.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s… odd.”
He nodded slowly. “Odd is a way to describe it, certainly.”
“Howwouldyou describe it?” I said. “I find it difficult to know how to speak of it at all.”
Wickham licked his lips.
I raised my eyebrows, waiting. “Well? You have seen my wife without her clothes, have you not? So, you’ve seen it.”
“Obviously, yes, I have,” said Wickham.
“What do you think it is?” I said.
“I… haven’t any notion,” said Wickham.
I waited.
He said, his voice getting shrill, “You obviously have no notion either.”
“I wonder, though, if it means she is sort of worthless, in general, as a wife, and that you, by corrupting her, have perhaps done me a favor. I mean, after seeing it, I found it quite difficult to… with her at all.”
Wickham’s eyes widened even further. He looked back and forth between myself and the colonel again.
“Was it easy for you?” I said. “You’d shove your prick in anything, I suppose.”
“You…” Wickham folded his arms over his chest. “No one speaks of his wife that way.”
I smirked at him.
“You’re making it up.”
“You’ve never seen my wife without her clothes,” I said, nostrils flaring.
“Well, all right, no, I haven’t.”
“Or my sister,” I said.
“No, what do you want from me? Clearly neither of them was going to allow me those sorts of liberties!”
I glared at him, thoroughly disgusted.
He hung his head.
“We should shoot him anyway,” I said to Richard. “He’s a waste of air.”
“Shoot me?” said Wickham, raising his face in horror. “You wouldn’t shoot me, Fitzwilliam! We grew up together, practically like brothers.” He was in a state of agitation, utterly shocked. He made to try to get away.
Richard stepped into his path.
