Page 88 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Elizabeth lifted her head, and looked at him. His eyes were closed. He was smiling.

"There," she said softly, and kissed his cut jaw, and put her head back down on his heart.

He was asleep before she had finished the word. She lay and listened to him breathing, slow and deep and even, in the sunlight, and did not sleep herself for a long time. She did not want to. She wanted to lie here and hear it, and know that he was here, and that the door was open, and that the whole of her life lay in front of her like the valley from the top of the rise, green and gold, with the water shining.

Down by the lake, in the old stone ice house under the yews, George Wickham was still sitting in the straw with his blanket round his shoulders. He would keep. Mrs Reynolds had the key in her pocket.

And a hundred and fifty miles to the south, in a pretty house in Brook Street, Lady Theodosia Rowe was sitting at her writing desk in the morning sun, and waiting for a letter from Derbyshire that was never going to come.

Chapter 24: Confession

Pemberley. Wednesday, 29th April 1812

Mr Fenwick, the magistrate, came home from Derby at three o'clock in the afternoon, a full three days before he was expected, having found a letter from Mr Darcy of Pemberley waiting at the assize inn, and having read it twice, and ordered his horse. He was a stout, choleric, kindly man of sixty who had known Darcy's father for forty years, and he walked into Pemberley's library at a quarter past four still in his travelling coat, with two constables from Lambton behind him, and said, "Well, Fitzwilliam. Where is the young scoundrel?"

"In the ice house," said Darcy.

Mr Fenwick stared at him. Then he began to laugh, so hard he had to sit down.

They brought Wickham up at half past four.

Darcy had slept for six hours. He had woken at one in the afternoon, in the big bed in the sun, with his wife's head on his shoulder and her hair all over his face, and had lain there for a long time without moving, simply breathing, simply knowing she was there. Then he had got up and shaved properly, and dressed in clean clothes, and eaten a very large dinner under Mrs Reynolds's eye. He felt, for the first time in a month, like himself.

The cold clear anger that had sent him to his father's pistol case was gone. He had looked for it, while he shaved, and not found it. There was something else in its place. He could not have named it. It was quieter, and older, and very tired.

Wickham came in between the two constables with his wrists bound in front of him, still in the blue coat, which was creased and stained now with straw and damp. He had not shaved. His fair hair was dull and tangled, and there were dark smudges under his eyes, and he was shivering a little, in spite of the fire. A night in the ice house had taken the shine off him. He looked older than his years. He looked, for the first time in Darcy's memory, like exactly what he was.

He saw Darcy standing by the fireplace, and stopped, and something flickered across his face. Then he smiled. It was a tired, crooked, wary smile, but it was still his.

"Darcy," he said. "You got here quickly. I will say that for you. She said you would never leave London."

"Sit down, George."

Wickham sat, on the hard chair the constables pushed forward. Darcy did not sit. He stood by the fire with his hands behind his back, in his father's library, and looked at the man who had been his father's godson.

They had played in this room as boys. Darcy remembered it quite clearly: the two of them lying on their stomachs on this very hearthrug, on wet afternoons, with his father's great atlas open between them, arguing over which of them would be the explorer and which the native king. Wickham had always wanted to be the explorer. He had always won.

"I am going to tell you what I know," said Darcy quietly. "And then you are going to decide what to do."

He told him. He did not raise his voice. He laid it out, piece by piece, the way he would lay out an estate account: Samuel Hobb's sworn statement before the Bow Street magistrate, the purses of gold carried to the Bell in Salisbury Court, the Monday evenings. The account at Drummonds in the name of G. Wakefield, and the clerk who would swear to it. Mrs Coker's box under the stairs, and the copy in the clerk's hand, and the note in Lady Theodosia's. The northern mail from the Bull and Mouth, and the ostler who had seen him climb up onto the roof. The note in Georgiana's music case. Anne de Bourgh, who had sat on the bench in the veil, and whom he had taken by the arm and tried to lead away. Eight witnesses at the ice house.

And Colonel Forster's report to Horse Guards, posting Lieutenant George Wickham of the ——shire Militia as a deserter since the eighth of March.

Wickham listened without interrupting. By the end, the crooked smile had gone.

"Desertion in time of war," said Mr Fenwick heavily, from his chair by the window, "is a hanging matter, young man. The civil courts cannot touch it. It will go to a court martial. And they are not in a merciful mood at Horse Guards this spring, with Lord Wellington crying out for every man he can get."

Wickham's face had gone quite white under the stubble.

"And the attempted abduction of Miss Darcy," Mr Fenwick went on, "and the conspiracy to defame, and the forgery, which I understand from Mr Darcy's letter there was also, in Hyde Park..." He shook his head. "You will not see the outside of a gaol again, sir, if they do not hang you. Which I think they will."

There was a long silence in the library. The fire crackled. Outside, on the lawn, the rooks were quarrelling in the beeches.

Wickham looked down at his bound hands. Then up at Darcy.

"You said," he said, and his voice was not quite steady, "that I was going to decide what to do. That suggests there is something to decide."

"There is," said Darcy.