A Visit to Scotland

by Meg Osborne

  “Do you intend on returning to London, William?” Anne asked, finding her voice at last. “Or perhaps Pemberley is next on your tour, for it is nearer, now.” She smiled, but there was a note of sorrow in her features.

  “Perhaps,” Darcy said, never lifting his eyes from Anne’s face. “I have not yet entirely decided.”

  “Of course.” Anne nodded. “Elizabeth will be eager to see her family again, I do not doubt.”

  Anne’s voice was tinged with sadness and not for the first time Wickham felt a flare of guilt for the future he had condemned her to. It had been folly, thinking that once they were married things would fall pat to please him. Lady Catherine’s silence had weighed heavily on his new wife, and whilst he had considered his skills unrivalled in winning over ladies of means and merit, he now recognised that such a feat would be rather more difficult with Lady Catherine de Bourgh than he had previously considered, particularly with no support from other quarters within Anne’s family. You knew it would not be an easy path, he counselled himself. But the money... Yet that thought, too, had become hollow. The promise of financial recompense was less enticing as it became less likely. He did not regret the marriage, but the future that lay ahead suddenly seemed altogether colder and poorer than he had previously imagined.

  “Have you heard from your mother, Mrs Wickham?” Caroline Bingley asked, in a curious tone. Wickham’s eyes flashed over to her, feeling all of a sudden how unkind it was to raise such a matter at the table when the issue clearly pained his wife. Miss Bingley’s face, however, was a studied picture of innocence, and he wondered if it had been the scent of gossip or true friendly inquiry which had prompted the question.

  “No,” Anne said, quietly. “I have written to her, but...there has been no reply.”

  “Why, she has likely not received your letter!” Caroline remarked. “For did not you hear tell she was in London, Charles?”

  Bingley was sensible enough to say nothing, taking an extraordinary interest in his dinner-plate, but the tips of his ears flashed red and Wickham felt a flare of anger that brother and sister had been idly discussing events and people as if they were mere fodder for entertainment. Darcy’s expression, too, reflected his own thunderous anger and he felt a strange kinship with his old foe. Their eyes met, and neither gentleman looked away until Anne spoke again.

  “She is?” Stricken, she reached for Wickham. “Oh, George! She will see I am not there and fret, for my letter surely missed her at Rosings. Oh, what shall we do?”

  “You need not do anything,” Darcy muttered. “Colonel Fitzwilliam will ensure she knows the truth.” He lifted his eyes to Anne, wide and ringed with sympathy. “I am afraid she will not delight in the news.”

  Not delight. Wickham might have laughed. He could well imagine any older lady being less than thrilled by the news her daughter had run away to Scotland to marry an itinerant scoundrel. But he felt Anne’s fingers slacken on his arm, and when he looked at her all trace of humour vanished from his face. Anne’s pale face was blotchy, her eyes filling with tears.

  “It is done, then,” she whispered. “I knew she would be unhappy, but hoped she might hear the news from my own pen. If she heard...gossip...”

  “Not gossip, dear,” Wickham said, speaking as tenderly to her as if she were a child. “Colonel Fitzwilliam will have told her as gently as he knew how.” This was no certainty: for Colonel Fitzwilliam was no admirer of Wickham’s, yet he felt certain the fellow would move heaven and earth to spare harm coming to his cousin, as he and Darcy had both done for Georgiana. Wickham blinked, then, seeing all too clearly the pain his rash actions had caused to this family, not once, but again and again. The sale of his living, the squandering of his wealth, the payment of debts over and over again by Darcy, without comment or complaint. Georgiana had been the last straw, Wickham knew, and yet Darcy had done his utmost to conceal the affair. He had acted to spare his sister’s reputation, certainly, yet it had also permitted Wickham the opportunity to move on, unscathed, and continue on his mission. My mission. He railed at his own selfishness. And what was that? To do exactly as I pleased? To destroy myself, and anybody foolish enough to care for me?

  “Excuse me,” he said, gruffly pushing back from the table. He set Anne’s hands gently, so very gently, on the table-top, disturbed by their frail whiteness against the heavy cloth, and stood. “I must just take a moment’s air. Do - do please continue with your meals.” He hurried to the door and out, through the raucous interior of the inn and into the night.

  Chapter Twelve

  Darcy was half-inclined to let Wickham go. Let him run from this, as I knew he would. His anger was kindled against him, against all the damage he had done in his short life, and he felt, momentarily, that he might, at last, be free of cleaning up the man’s messes.

  “Ought we...?” Bingley murmured, shifting in his seat.

  Darcy raised his glance, first to his friend, and then to Anne, who gripped the table-top so tightly her knuckles turned white.

  “George?” she murmured, turning towards the door. She swayed, even in her seat, and Elizabeth hurried to her side.

  “Here, Anne, dear,” she said, soothing her as one might a babe in arms. “Come, you must sit closer to the fire. Your hands are like ice. Darcy will go and see to Mr Wickham. I am sure he merely wished for some exercise, you know how gentlemen are when they are shut up indoors....” Nonsensical words strung into sentences that made a semblance of coherence, but, Darcy knew, Anne heard not a word. It was the tone of Lizzy’s voice that goaded her into movement, the gentleness of her embrace that edged her closer to the fire, that kept her upright. His eyes met Elizabeth’s, and he saw his own concern mirrored back to him. You must bring him back, she commanded. For Anne’s sake, you must make it alright.

  He was on his feet a moment later, throwing a command to Bingley over one shoulder to care for the ladies a moment, and ignoring Caroline’s open-mouthed observance of the domestic drama.

  “Is everything alright, sir?” the inn’s proprietor asked, having seen not one but two gentlemen flee the room in quick succession.

  “Quite alright, thank you,” Darcy said, not slowing his pace a moment. He ignored the crowd that populated the busy dining area, fixing on the door and hurrying through it.

  Wickham was standing over to one side, hunched over a wall and fumbling over some object. Another two steps and Darcy discerned it was a pipe, and he was struggling to fill it with the meagre pinch of tobacco he had, with fingers that shook with more than cold.

  “Will you make a habit of abandoning your wife at the dinner table?” Darcy asked, his anger simmering and giving his words an edge that was not lost on Wickham. His old friend’s shoulders sagged, and he knocked the pipe aside, turning and meeting Darcy head on.

  “Do you come to lecture me, William?” he asked, his eyes flashing with resentment and something else. Fear?

  Darcy blinked. Wickham does not fear me. He despises me. He lives to torment me. And he succeeds at it admirably...

  “I come to ask if you intend to join us for dinner.” It took all of Darcy’s strength to speak moderately, not to fly at George and strike him as he would have done when they were children. Then, George had been bigger than him, though younger, and he always came off the worse in their boyhood squabbles. Punishment, then, had also included an extra heaping of coals on his head from his father, who sought always to remind Darcy of his position in life. You are already so greatly favoured above young George, William, by virtue of your education, your position, your prospects. Do not seek to subjugate him entirely, for he admires you so. You must set an example to him, and teach him to do well. Darcy had vowed to try, and he had tried. But now, he began to think that Wickham was beyond helping.

  To his great surprise, then, George laughed.

  “You ask if I intend to join you for dinner?” He mimicked Darcy’s polite tone to perfection. “I declare, William, the world could be burning to the ground and you would
still stop to ensure you wore the correct pair of gloves.”

  “Whereas you would stand to one side enjoying the chaos, having lit the blaze.” Darcy shot back. The severity of his response hit home, and George leaned back, something akin to admiration fleetingly crossing his face.

  “Do you even care for the damage you have done - the damage you continue to do?” Darcy found that he could scarcely stop the flow of angry words that tripped over his tongue, nor did he wish to. He had bottled up his anger at George Wickham for too long, never saying to the man’s face even a fraction of the bitter thoughts he had nursed. “You bounce from crisis to crisis, little noticing what disasters you cause, or who is pulled in your wake. You care little enough for Anne - not only seducing her but marrying her! You realise there is no chance for her now? And what of Georgiana?” His voice lowered dangerously. “Do you even consider how she fares? And now she must be faced with you forever close by, and married to her cousin!” He shook his head. “But why am I surprised that this cruelty is not beyond you? Truly, George Wickham has never once, not even for a moment, cared for a single person other than George Wickham.”

  His tirade over, Darcy stopped, breathing heavily and struggling to wrangle his thoughts back into order. He had prevented himself from flying physically at George and striking him, but he had allowed his words to fly in his stead and he was surprised to see that at least some of them had found their mark.

  “You are right,” Wickham said, slowly. He dropped his gaze to his boots, looking at that moment the very image of the twelve-year-old boy Darcy remembered from childhood. “Come, Darcy, do not stop there. Tell me more about my troubles. My father’s memory spoiled. My living sold out for money I squandered at cards and on women whose names I did not even learn. My studies...” he laughed. “What a farce my schooling was. I am not stupid, you know, and I think that fact outraged my tutors still more than my desire for fun. I might have learned more, succeeded more, had I applied myself to my books with even a fraction of the attention I gave to drinking and larking with fellows who were not my friends.” He looked up at Darcy then, his expression unreadable. “How is Georgiana? I behaved so poorly to her, I know that now.” He shook his head. “I knew it then, and yet I persisted. It was so easy, you see. She loved me.” He shrugged. “Even when I stank of beer and was wretched to her, she looked upon me with those eyes that were so filled with compassion - just as yours now are filled with anger - and I hoped I might, somehow, make a change.” He sniffed. “It is dreadfully hard for a fellow to make any sort of change without money, though, and that has always been my downfall.”

  “If you required money why not ask for it?” Darcy asked, wearying of George’s familiar excuses. In truth, his foe’s response surprised him, and he felt warily as if he were being manipulated. Had he not better knowledge of Wickham’s Machiavellian orchestrations, he might have been moved by the man’s show of piety. He seemed every inch the penitent sinner, sorrowful and poised to repent.

  “Would you have given it, had I asked?”

  “I gave you plenty.” Darcy did not dare to run up an account, recalling half a dozen times off the top of his head when he - and his pocketbook - had stepped in to secure George Wickham’s pride or freedom. More than once his safety, too, for the fellow had a way of finding himself indebted to those who would as easily take a limb as a coin when owed.

  “And I squandered it - yes, Darcy, I see you are eager to remind me of my follies. You need not.” His voice dropped to miserable, self-pitying whisper. “I am well aware of them. More, even, than you, for you know only a fraction of my misdeeds.”

  Fearing a confession, Darcy cleared his throat.

  “It matters little, what happened in the past,” he muttered. “My concern is with the present, and the future. You are wed to my cousin, and for reasons that escape me, she seems truly to care for you. My question is, will you endeavour to deserve her affection? Will you strive to make yourself a better man, to build a better life for her than your current state condemns her to?”

  “What hope do I have?” Wickham asked, kicking at his pipe and sending it skittering across the cobbled ground. “I have no position, no employment. Your other cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, saw to that.”

  “And did you work hard to convince the regiment of your commitment, in spite of what rumours reached them?”

  Wickham said nothing.

  “What do you want, George?” The question was put so quietly, so gently that Darcy surprised even himself. It was as if he saw before him not George Wickham, rake and ne’er-do-well, but young George, the boy who had been his close companion and friend, the fellow he had found himself in scrapes right alongside, as often as they had been opposed, the son of the man his father had valued - and swore his own son to protect and aid as much as he could.

  “To succeed,” Wickham muttered, at last. “To be happy.”

  “Are you willing to work?” Darcy asked. “You have had your time of playing, now, of careening about and acting the gentleman without the funds to back it up. You have a wife now, a good and kind woman who will stand by you and love you all her days, whether you deserve it or not.”

  Wickham rolled his eyes skywards, and Darcy felt certain his lecture did more harm than good.

  “Personally, I care little what happens to you,” he said, realising he could no more reason with Wickham now than he had been able to in times past. “Stay here and wallow, blame me for every ill that befalls you, drink and smoke and gamble yourself into an early grave - the choice is yours.” His voice lowered ominously. “But I will not allow you to ruin my cousin any more than you already have. She will return to Pemberley with us before the week is out. You may come, if you truly intend to change.”

  Darcy’s words surprised even him, but he did not take them back. He straightened and turned back towards the inn.

  “Now, will you join us for dinner or shall we carry on without you?”

  COLOUR HAD RETURNED to Anne’s cheeks, but Elizabeth’s anxieties were but a little assuaged. Her breathing was low, and although she listened attentively to what words Lizzy summoned up to say, she did not offer any rejoinder. It was monologue, not conversation, and Lizzy glanced over to where Mr Bingley sat, watching them carefully and looking rather as if he would like to summon Darcy back.

  “Would you like some water, Miss Anne?”

  Lizzy was grateful that the severity of Anne’s situation was not lost on Caroline Bingley. In fact, the frail figure before them seemed to shock sense into Bingley’s sister and render her kind, which realisation rather softened Elizabeth’s feelings towards her. She knew Caroline wished to leave, that even the pursuit of delicious gossip was not enough to render her happy with their current accommodations. She had overheard more than one sharp word exchanged between brother and sister on their journey up and since their arrival in Scotland, with normally mild-mannered Mr Bingley exclaiming on more than one occasion, “The Hursts are at home: you might have stayed with them, you might stay with them now without it costing us much of a detour, Caro, so for goodness’ sake stop complaining. If you wish us to carry on without you only say the word.” There was no trace of disagreement between the pair now, for both held concern for Anne as their only focus.

  “Thank you.” Anne reached gratefully for the glass that Caroline had poured for her, and took a scant sip, coughing as she swallowed. Her breathing remained laboured, and Lizzy wondered again at the wisdom of her staying in the damp, dreary cottage she shared with her new husband. If only they might persuaded to move - but move where? It was true enough that Lady Catherine would not welcome them to Kent. London, too, would be rife with gossip about Anne’s flight north. There must be some other place, where the new Mr and Mrs Wickham might live quietly, and allow the rumours to die down. Pemberley! The word was a balm to her - the promise that awaited at the end of this dark tunnel. She and Darcy had discussed returning there, once this business was settled, although her husband would not be dra
wn on what “settled” would look like. Might they come with us to Derbyshire? she wondered. That would be distance enough from both Kent and London to afford a little privacy, and they would be close enough to have friends on hand. Lizzy lifted her gaze to the door, wondering how long they were to leave Darcy and Wickham without going after them. As if reading her mind, Bingley stood.

  “I ought to -”

  He had not finished his thought before the door opened, and Wickham stumbled quietly back into the room, closely followed by Darcy. Lizzy’s eyes widened at the strained cordiality that existed between the two men. When she raised a questioning glance to her husband, he dismissed it with the tiniest shake of the head, his unspoken promise clear in his eyes that he would relay all that had happened later, in the privacy of their own room.

  “George!” Anne breathed, turning back towards her husband. “George, dear, is everything alright?”

  “Don’t concern yourself with me,” he muttered. Lizzy was touched by the evident worry on his face though, and the softness he injected into his voice. “Are you still unwell, my love?”

  “Tis nought but a cold,” Anne said, smiling broadly. “I feel very much better here, by the fire.”

  “You must eat.” He pushed his own plate towards her. “You have not eaten enough since we arrived here.”

  “Yes, come on, we must all eat before the food gets any colder!” Bingley said, cheerily reaching for his fork and eating with relish.