Page 82 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Elizabeth stood behind the largest of them with her back pressed against the rough red bark, and her heart going so hard she thought the whole park must hear it.

She could see Anne through a gap in the branches. She was sitting on the old stone bench outside the ice-house door, in Georgiana's grey pelisse and Georgiana's grey bonnet with the veil down, her hands folded in her lap, very still. From here, in this light, she might have been anybody. She might have been a girl of seventeen, frightened and alone, waiting for a friend.

Five past six. Ten past. A blackbird was singing in the yews over Elizabeth's head, very loud and sweet, and would not stop.

At a quarter past, a man came out of the wood on the far side of the lake path, and walked towards the ice house.

He was not hurrying. He came along the edge of the water in the golden light with his hat in his hand, easy and graceful, as if he were out for an evening stroll; a tall fair man in a well-cut blue coat. He looked about him once, at the empty lawns and the distant house, and smiled. Then he saw the grey figure on the bench, and his smile widened, and he quickened his step.

"Georgiana," said George Wickham softly. "My dear. My poor little dear. You came."

The grey figure did not move.

"You need not be frightened," said Wickham. He had reached the bench. His voice was warm and gentle and full of feeling, the voice that had fooled a girl of fifteen on the sands at Ramsgate. "Your friend could not come herself. She sent me. She thought you would trust me, after all. We were such friends once, you and I. Do you remember? She has told me everything. Your brother is in terrible danger. I have a carriage waiting at the lodge. We must go at once, tonight, before—"

He put out his hand, and took the grey figure by the arm, and drew it up off the bench towards him.

The veil fell back.

"Good evening, Mr Wickham," said Anne de Bourgh. "You will not remember me. I was nine. You put a frog in my lap."

And she opened her mouth, and screamed.

It was, Elizabeth thought afterwards, the most magnificent scream she had ever heard. It went up through the yews like a rocket, and every rook in the park rose shrieking out of the beeches, and the blackbird stopped in the middle of a note. Wickham reeled back as though he had been struck, and let go of Anne's arm, and stared at her with his handsome face gone blank with shock.

And then the ice-house door burst open behind him, and James came out of it like a bull.

Wickham ran. He was quick; he had always been quick. He twisted away from James's great hands and made for the water, and found two men from the Hollins farm rising out of the reeds by the boathouse with pitchforks. He turned for the wood, and the two London grooms came out of the yews on the far side with their blunderbusses levelled. He turned back.

Elizabeth stepped out from behind the big yew into the middle of the path, in front of him.

She did not know she was going to do it. She had meant to stay hidden. But she was there, suddenly, standing in the gold evening light in her dark blue gown with her hands at her sides, between George Wickham and the only open way left, and he pulled up short in front of her, breathing hard, and looked at her.

For one moment they looked at each other, the length of a breath.

"Mrs Darcy," he said. He tried to smile. He very nearly managed it. "We do keep meeting on garden paths."

"We do," said Elizabeth. "This is the last time."

James's hand came down on his collar from behind.

It did not take long after that. Wickham fought, but not very hard. There were eight of them, and he was not a fool, whatever else he was. Two minutes later James and the head groom had him by the arms, and were walking him, stumbling and swearing, backwards through the open ice-house door into the cold stone dark.

Mrs Reynolds came down the path from the house with her skirts gathered in one hand and the great iron key in the other. She did not hurry. She walked up to the ice-house door, and looked in at the man in the blue coat standing in the gloom among the straw and the old melting blocks of last winter's ice, with his breath smoking.

"Master George," she said. "You stole a silver spoon off my tray when you were six years old. I never told your godfather. I have regretted it every day since."

Then she shut the door on him, and turned the key, and put it in her pocket.

#

They took it in turns to guard the ice-house door through the night: James and the head groom, then the two London men, then the Hollins father and son with their pitchforks, sitting on the stone bench under the yews with a lantern and a blanket and a jug of hot cider that Mrs Reynolds sent down every two hours. Wickham had a blanket too, passed in through the little ventilation grille at the top of the door. Elizabeth had insisted on it. It was very cold in the ice house. She did not want him dead. She wanted him in front of a magistrate.

She went down herself at eleven o'clock, with a shawl round her and a candle in a lantern, because she could not sleep, and because there was something she wanted to know.

James stood up from the bench when he saw her coming, and looked unhappy.

"Madam, you should not—"