“Taken in?” cut in Richard. “By Wickham? Has Miss Bennet been associating with Mr. Wickham?”
“Well, yes, I saw them together,” I said. “And she indicated to me that he had told her something about me, something she thought was dreadful, but then I never did find out what.”
“You left this out?” said my cousin, glaring at me.
“Well, it hardly seemed important. She was not going to marry anyone. I had thought she might be taken in by Wickham’s false charm before I knew that. The rumor I had heard was that she must not marry in order to receive her inheritance, but that everybody was simply waiting about until after Lady Susannah died to make love to Miss Bennet, who would then be quite well off, after inheriting everything that Lady Susannah has.”
“And what does she have?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” I said. “I have driven past the house a few times. It is a stately sort of place, but mostly obscured by trees, so I have not seen it clearly. I understand that Lady Susannah was the daughter of a baron, and that she inherited this from him.”
“Perhaps it was some kind of summer home and he left it to her upon his death?”
“Something like that, yes,” I said.
“And why does she not leave it to someone in her own family?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said.
“Have you been introduced to Lady Susannah?”
“I saw her,” I said. “But no, I did not speak to her.”
“Well, she is the head of her own household, I suppose, so we can simply alight on her doorstep and introduce ourselves,” said Richard.
“I do not think we can do that,” I said.
“Well, I think we have to. If it were well known that we were new in the neighborhood, the polite thing would be for a male resident to come and present himself to the male resident, yes? But we could hardly expect Lady Susannah, a woman, and elderly woman at that, to be gallivanting about welcoming people. So, it falls to us, then, to go to her.”
I thought this through. “Perhaps,” I said. “But why are we going to see her at all?”
“You say that Miss Bennet is her companion, so it may be likely that she will be there,” said the colonel. “And anyway, this Lady Susannah sounds like the most interesting person here. Furthermore, you are rather a dolt when it comes to Mr. Wickham, I must say.”
“Am I?” I did not like hearing that.
“You’re too soft on him,” said Richard. “He is not your family.”
“I well know that,” I said, offended. I was looking at Wickham across the way now.
“He is not your family and you do not owe him any courtesy. He has attempted to take advantage of you in the grossest of ways, and you know this. You could have killed him for what he did and no one would have faulted you. The fact that you simply let him go, let him wreak havoc where he will, it is a mark against you.”
“You think I should have killed him?” I was astonished. I knew that my cousin had been off to war, but I had not expected it to make him so bloodthirsty.
“Have you ever killed anyone, Darcy?”
“Certainly not,” I said.
“Well, this is why you should simply allow me to kill him.”
“What? Now?”
“Well, not on the street like this, no. I would do it more stealthily, easily, quietly, and I would get rid of whatever remained. I would not give him a confrontation or any last words or any of that. Some men are worms and there is nothing to be done with them except crush them under one’s heel.”
I furrowed my brow. “He did not touch Georgiana.”
“So she says,” said the colonel. “And yet, she is reticent to come out in society. We truly do not know what he did.”
I squared my shoulders.
