by Meg Osborne
“At home,” Lizzy said, cheerfully. “Not a one of them could be pressed to accompany me. Well, Mary at least is otherwise engaged - she and Mr Collins are in Meryton. And Jane-” She trailed off, suddenly shy of speaking about Jane’s deteriorating health with her new friend. “Jane is a little unwell.”
“I see.” Wickham’s features became serious, and Lizzy detected a note of compassion that made her rue her caution. He would take her concern seriously, she knew. More seriously than her family did, at any rate. And it would be good to confide in someone the true nature of her fears for Jane, without needing always to watch her words and tend to the feelings of others less able to bear the truth than she.
“In truth, she is more than a little unwell.” Lizzy sighed. “I am quite worried about her health.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Wickham glanced back up the path. “Meryton is not far, might I go for a doctor on your behalf? Or at least accompany you on your errands. Perhaps the apothecary will have some tincture that may help. We might take a carriage back so that speed might be of chief concern.”
“You are very kind, Mr Wickham,” Lizzy said, touched by his suggestions. “But I have agreed to wait, at least for a little while, before proceeding to the doctor. Father is certain she will rally.”
“I dare say he is correct.” Wickham nodded, slowly, as if digesting this information and weighing its veracity in his own mind before speaking again. “When someone one cares about is unwell it can often seem catastrophic - more so than the same symptoms in one we did not know well. It is impossible to be impartial in such a case, and so the situation appears far more grave than it may be in actuality.”
“Quite right!” Lizzy laughed. “And so, you see, I am perhaps a little more fanciful than you attest. My sister falls ill, and I am immediately convinced she is at death’s door.”
“Nonsense! I dare say you are right to have such a concern, and righter still to manage it. Perhaps give it another day, and if she still languishes, well, then you might be entirely justified in seeking a medical opinion.” He smiled. “On the other hand, she will likely rally and all that will have been achieved by your anxiety is a proof of what a good sister you are. So really, there is no harm to be felt.”
Lizzy was suitably cheered by this assessment, and her mood lifted still further when Wickham offered her his arm.
“Perhaps you might permit me to walk a little way with you, Miss Elizabeth? I think you will agree with me that walking is always more enjoyable when it is undertaken with a friend...”
“I CANNOT OWN I AM DISAPPOINTED to hear of his departure,” Wickham said. He and Elizabeth had been walking but a few minutes before their conversation turned to their mutual acquaintance. Lizzy recalled what Mr Wickham had said of Mr Darcy previously, and was not surprised that her friend was happy to see the back of him.
“Yet I see he is still up to his old tricks. Fitzwilliam Darcy can no more let a man alone without interfering than he can exist an hour without passing judgment on the rest of us and finding us wanting.”
Elizabeth gasped, surprised to hear such vitriol in the usually cheerful Wickham’s voice. Her reaction evidently tempered his, for he stopped walking a moment, and shot her a smile that was part penitent, part rueful, and all charming.
“Ah, you do not approve of me speaking so vehemently of a man I have already confessed to disliking. I dare say you are right, Miss Elizabeth, and I ought to guard my tongue a little better. Forgive me. I cannot help but speak the truth as I see it, and hang the consequences.” He hesitated, lowering his gaze momentarily. “Although, I do hope the consequences of speaking so just now are not so very dire. I would hate to think that a bad-tempered outburst might be enough to cost me your good opinion.”
“As if I could be so quick to judge!” she exclaimed. “Surely you confuse me with the gentleman to whom you refer.” She shook her head. “A notion to which I take the greatest objection. Mr Darcy is quick to form opinions, and even quicker to form judgments, from which he can apparently never be swayed. I would hate to be like him.”
“However could you be like him? He, who always grimaces and frowns as if his mere existence is a cause of displeasure to him - or perhaps it is the existence of anyone else in the world besides himself, for I dare say he certainly spares no good feeling in that quarter. He thinks himself far superior to the rest of us mere mortals.” His expression softened into a sly smile. “No, the only manner I would suggest you were alike was in your expression on my approach. Your frown was so fierce as you walked that I thought “that expression surely was learned from Mr Darcy. Poor Miss Elizabeth! I do hope she might be brought out of it with all speed.” Of course, when you confided the reason for your expression, I repented of the thought. If ever a person had reason to frown it would be you, out of concern for your sister. Mr Darcy can have no such excuse, and yet his expression is fierce on almost every occasion. The poor man must be close to doing himself an injury. I wonder that he does not scare himself, whenever he should happen to catch a glimpse of his scowl in a mirror.”
Elizabeth laughed, then stopped, suddenly. The teasing tone in Mr Wickham’s voice had become altogether unkind, bordering on cruel, and she thought his comments unnecessarily mean, even to one as doubtlessly deserving as Mr Darcy.
“He cannot help it, I suppose. And I must own that he does not always frown. I have seen him smile.”
“You never have!” Mr Wickham laughed. “Well, wonders will never cease. How came you to witness such a feat?”
“We were pressed into dancing together - a circumstance I wager he found as disagreeable as I did, for he is not fond of dancing, I believe.”
“And yet your company was so delightful that it provoked a smile in spite of his unhappy occupation?”
“I very much doubt that! Indeed, I confess to being rather unkind to poor Mr Darcy.”
“Poor Mr Darcy? Is he to be pitied now?”
“I think anyone who cannot find amusement in life, enough goodness to make one smile in spite of the little suffering each one of us is afflicted with, ought to be pitied. But you distract me from my story.” She shook her head, warningly, at her companion, and continued. “We were dancing together and I tried my best to engage poor Mr Darcy -” here she paused, and Wickham nodded, contritely, encouraging her to continue uninterrupted. “In conversation. We attempted two or three topics, I scarcely recall them now, with little success, for as I said, neither one of us were particularly happy to be forced together. Yet at last he turned to books - I rather think by this point he was grasping at straws. He knew me to be fond of reading, and I do not doubt he wished merely to prompt me into a monologue that he might no longer be impressed upon to talk, merely listen to me hold forth. Of course, I refused, and instead challenged him to name one book we might both have encountered and thus be free to discuss together.”
“Of course he failed?”
“He did not try! I am sorry to say that very soon after that the dance ended and we parted ways. And that is the last time our paths crossed.”
“I spy a problem in your story, Miss Eliza,” Wickham said, that lazy smile drawing upon his features once more. “You promised me evidence that Mr Darcy wore a smile.”
“It was upon first mentioning books - and I confess it did a great deal to improve his countenance. What a pity he might not wear a smile more often, then we might be able to tolerate him a little better.”
“And here I feel certain it is not Miss Elizabeth Bennet I am talking with at all, but her young sister. For it is Miss Lydia whose chief concern is beauty: I felt certain her sister rather more swayed by what is contained within a fellow’s head than the appearance of his features. Tell me the truth - you walk with me only because I am tolerably handsome and not because you find any value whatsoever in my conversation. Admit it! Your true nature is revealed.”
“Mr Wickham!” Elizabeth could not help but laugh out loud at the pantomime being performed before
her. “You are nonsensical!”
“And yet I notice you do not refute my claim.” He grinned, a sly, amused smile, that Elizabeth found herself returning. Their eyes met and she found herself at that moment unable to look away. His comments had been made in jest, yet in one aspect Elizabeth found him to be utterly truthful: he was indeed handsome, with an easy smile and blue eyes which were as disingenuous as Mr Darcy’s dark ones were stormy. Of course, I care little enough for appearances... This was true too: if all Wickham had to recommend him were his looks she certainly would not find his company so appealing. But he was clever, too, and witty. Why, they had been walking together almost a mile and she had scarcely noticed the passing of time.
There was a crack of thunder overhead, and a fat raindrop landed with decision upon her head, followed by another, then another.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Here, let us shelter beneath that tree.” Mr Wickham did not permit her any time to debate, for he grabbed her hand and fairly pulled her along behind him, reaching the shelter of the evergreen boughs just in time, for the rain began again with a vengeance. They were offered a little shelter, provided they stayed close to the trunk of the great tree, and it was then that Elizabeth realised that her fingers were still entwined with Mr Wickham’s, and she slipped her hand free, blushing a little at the closeness of contact, and circling both her arms around herself, partly because of the sudden drop in temperature that accompanied the downpour but partly, she acknowledged, by way of self-protection. The precariousness of her position suddenly dawned on her. Here she was out walking, alone, with a gentleman she knew barely anything of.
Untrue, she countered her conscience, jutting her chin out in a silent act of defiance. I know him to be amiable, and a gentleman. He is a member of the regiment, after all. What more do I need to know?
“I hope you will not get into trouble upon your return,” Wickham remarked, lightly, as he looked out across the fields that were now rendered hazy by rain that fell in rods. “I know it is not entirely respectable, being caught out in a rainstorm with a gentleman with whom you have no - agreement.” His voice changed, slightly, on this last word, and Elizabeth’s ears caught the drop in tone. At length, he looked back towards her, and she found herself once more caught by those striking blue eyes.
“I know it is not the most conventional approach, Miss Elizabeth, but you must know, that is, you must surely have gleaned some sense of my feelings for you.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat.
“Forgive me.” Wickham took her surprise for disapproval, and took a step backwards, dropping his arms to his sides.
“No -” Elizabeth said, stumbling a step towards him, and closing the gap his movement had created. “Please, you caught me off-guard.”
“Then I have misread your own affections?” There was a trace of wistfulness in his voice. “Either way, the fault is mine. I hesitated to speak any sooner, Miss Elizabeth, on account of my position, and because I thought - I wondered if perhaps you might care for another.”
“Another?” An image of Mr Darcy floated before Elizabeth’s eyes, and she batted it away. “Mr Wickham, believe me when I tell you that I care for no-one - that I have no existing connection with any gentleman.”
“Then I might risk speaking, for it is a risk. Miss Elizabeth, I wonder, that is, I hope -”
“Lizzy!”
Wickham’s words were interrupted by a high-pitched cry, and Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder in time to see a tiny figure racing towards them.
“Kitty?” She could barely make sense of the image of her younger sister hurrying towards them, ignorant of the rain and with more energy than she had exhibited all day.
“Oh, Lizzy!” Kitty sobbed, reaching their tree, and throwing her arms around her sister. She scarcely seemed to notice Mr Wickham, and certainly did not acknowledge him. “Mama bid me come to find you. They sent a servant out for the doctor. Lizzy! Jane is worse! She is much, much worse. You must come home right away!”
Elizabeth’s heart plummeted, and the rain drove down harder as if nature itself reflected her impending dread.
Chapter Four
Darcy bolted upright in his bed, the thundering of the rain from Meryton mirrored in the trundle of a carriage driving past outside his house. Strange, he thought. The wind must be blowing in just such a way that the sound reaches me...
He shivered, pulling his bedsheets to his shoulders, and glanced around the room. It was his own room: in his own house, in London. And yet, just a moment before he had been sheltering under a tree, he had been with Elizabeth, and with Wickham. And yet, not there, not exactly. It was as if some spirit was tormenting him, playing out some scene from a nightmare designed to plague him. Jane Bennet gravely ill, mourning a separation he himself had orchestrated. Elizabeth deceived by Wickham. The two of them talking together, laughing, mocking him – united, in fact, by their shared dislike of him. He shuddered, but this time it was nothing to do with the temperature.
“Twas a dream,” he murmured aloud. “Nought but a dream.” Elizabeth Bennet had appeared in his nightly imaginings merely because he had been thinking of her so shortly before turning in to bed. And why had he been thinking of her? Because she seemed set to haunt his daily as well as nightly imaginings. It is she herself haunting me, all the way from Hertfordshire. His lip curled in an amused half-smile. He was no lover of the gothic, and yet today he seemed to have slipped between the pages of just such a novel as those he despaired of Georgiana reading. He was Udolpho, plagued by mystery. Or Faust, with his past failings paraded before him. He shook his head. “Certainly, whatever I am, I am in need of sleep and good sense.” How long had it been since a dream so disturbed him? And a dream that was full of the normal everyday life of a family in Hertfordshire he hardly cared for. It was imagining, only, and yet what if it wasn’t? His heart constricted at the thought that this was not mere fiction, but a version of what was daily occurring behind him in Hertfordshire. He blinked, willing the memories to fade. What mattered it to him who Elizabeth Bennet chose to associate with? That she might be deceived by Wickham: that was the cause of his dismay. He certainly cared little enough who she formed attachments with. It was not as if he, Darcy, had ever intended on making her an offer.
He raked a hand through his dark hair and was relieved to feel his breathing return to normal. His pounding heart receded, and the dream itself began to fade from his memory. It was not so very unusual, he reasoned, to find one’s thoughts returning to a place one left behind as recently has he had quit Hertfordshire. Nor was it so very strange to see the Bennets as a key feature of his dreams, as they had been the reason behind his sudden removal to London, intentionally or otherwise. That it was Elizabeth in particular to whom his thoughts returned was also perhaps of little enough significance. He could admit, here, in a darkened room with only his own self to acknowledge the truth, that his first assessment of Elizabeth Bennet had been wrong. Formed hastily, and in an attempt to deflect Charles Bingley’s well-intentioned enquiry, he had dismissed Elizabeth as beneath his notice. How could she be, however, when he found her to be lively, spirited, intelligent and interesting, quite the most fascinating creature who had ever before crossed his path? And to think her placed in the middle of so unsuitable a family, in so unprepossessing a place as Longbourn? He shook his head in wonder. It was a nonsense, pure and simple. An impossible nonsense and he would do well to remove all thought of it from his mind.
He turned his pillow over so that he might find the cool side when again he lay down, staring into the blackness and waiting for sleep to find him.
I will not return to Longbourn, he instructed his subconscious. I will not return to Elizabeth Bennet, or to Wickham, or to Longbourn. I will not...
Chapter Five
St James’ Park was crowded at the best of times. At Christmas, when half of England who was not usually predisposed to be in London found itself there, it became unbearable.
&n
bsp; “Oh, good morning, Mrs Rackham.” Making a show of greeting any acquaintance she thought worthy of acknowledgement, Caroline Bingley’s voice took on an obsequious, snivelling tone that grated on Darcy’s nerves and merely increased his discomfort.
How came I to agree to this, anyway? he thought, walking with a polite two feet of distance between himself and Caroline. Charles was nowhere to be seen, and every few steps Caroline would shift a fraction closer to him. In answer, he would alter his course to restore the distance, as such that in a few short minutes he was almost scraping his boots on the grass at the edge of the path. He stopped, nodding a greeting towards some acquaintance, and determined that he would ask Caroline directly what her plans were for the evening. He was not entirely oblivious to her contentment with their current progress around the park. They walked with slow enough pace that they could not be mistaken for a pair of strangers - yet with the distance Darcy maintained in the hope that they would not be assumed to be courting, no matter what Caroline’s hopes were on that subject. They were walking slow enough, however, to be forced to stop and greet those who passed them that they recognised which, it seemed to Darcy, was practically everyone.
Is all of London in St. James’ Park this afternoon?
There. It was afternoon. Why could he not remember what pre-empted their visit to the park? Surely there must have been some chance, some slight opportunity he had clearly missed when he might have refused the suggestion of a walk. Why, then, had he not taken it? And where, in heavens’ name, was Charles?
“Oh, look, Mr Darcy!” Caroline trilled, raising her hand in a languid wave. “There is Charles and Miss Parker. Why, we must have walked a quite a pace, for I believe we have completed an entire circuit of the park in the time it has taken them to move but a few yards.” Her eyes sparkled. “But perhaps they have been too busy in conversation to focus very intently on exercise.”