North by Northanger (A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery) (15 page)

“Not everyone possesses the temperament for serious musical study.” They started walking to the drawing room, where Elizabeth hoped to deposit Lady Catherine and win herself a temporary reprieve. “Lydia certainly does not.”

“From all reports, Mrs. Wickham does not possess the temperament
for any serious undertaking, save a determination to engage in scandalous behavior with no regard for the consequences to herself or her family.” She stopped a few feet before the drawing room door and addressed Darcy. “I do hope you have ordered your wife to cut off all communication with her?”

“I have done nothing of the sort.”

A look of horror crossed Lady Catherine’s countenance. “You do not
receive
the Wickhams here?”

“Of course not. But Mrs. Darcy is free to correspond with or visit any of her sisters as frequently as she chooses.”

Upon entering the drawing room, they found not one but two young ladies passing the morning: Georgiana and a visitor. Elizabeth stopped just inside the doorway, astonished beyond measure.

“Lydia?”

“Lizzy! You are home at last!” Lydia sprang from her seat and hastened to Elizabeth. “Is not this an excellent surprise?”

“Lydia—” Still stunned, Elizabeth could only blink as Lydia grabbed her hands.

“Ha! Look at your face—I laugh just to see it!”

“Lydia, what are you
doing
here?”

“Lord almighty, Lizzy—after you left Jane’s, things were dull as dishwater! Our sister’s head is full of nothing but that baby. Did he eat enough? Does his napkin need changing? Is that a smile? Hush, he is sleeping. And Mama is just as bad! Whose eyes does he have? Whose nose? Whose ears? Bringing up relations dead so long I do not know who she talks about. Good grief! I could not stay one day more.”

Lydia’s boredom was easily believed, though it did not explain what had led her to arrive, unexpected and unwelcome, on
their
doorstep. “But, Lydia, why did you come to Pemberley?”

“To visit you, silly goose! You keep forgetting to invite me, so I decided to surprise you. Was that not a delightful scheme? Only you were not here. Did not you tell Jane you would stay in Bath but a fortnight? It must have been so jolly! Did you actually go bathing in public? Did
you ride in a sedan chair? I always imagined it would be ripping fun to be carried around town in a sedan chair. Oh—you must tell me all the latest fashions you saw! La! I long to go to Bath! I keep asking Wickham to take me, but he says we have not got the money.”

Here Lydia paused for air just long enough that all heard the snort of derision issued by Lady Catherine, who had observed the sisterly reunion in stony silence.

Georgiana crossed the room to greet her ladyship. “Good afternoon, aunt. Your arrival here is an unanticipated pleasure.” Her expression suggested that she meant it. As Lady Catherine was nobody’s favorite relation, Elizabeth presumed poor Georgiana welcomed not so much her aunt as the distraction from Lydia her presence offered.

“Aunt?” Lydia asked in a whisper so loud that it excluded no one. “Lizzy, is this the famous Lady Catherine?”

Though her ladyship had not requested an introduction, Elizabeth now felt obliged to attempt one. “Lady Catherine de Bourgh, may I present—”

“No, you may not.” She abruptly turned to Darcy. “I would go to my chamber now.”

“Allow me to accompany you,” Georgiana offered.

Lady Catherine spared Lydia a final glance that left no doubt of her contempt, then turned her back and marched from the room.

“Well!” Lydia said. “What got under her bonnet?” She laughed at her own remark.

Darcy merely regarded his sister-in-law in weary silence as Elizabeth pondered how to remedy this unforeseen turn of events. The presence of Wickham’s wife at Pemberley created awkwardness even without Lady Catherine among the party; the two could not possibly coexist in one house. Lydia would constantly expose herself to ridicule. Lady Catherine would surpass all known measures of insolence. And Elizabeth, caught in the middle, might well begin to consider gaol a not-so-dreadful alternative after all.

“Look at you!” Lydia exclaimed. “Your face is still all amazement. What an excellent joke we have played!”

Apprehension passed through Elizabeth. “We?”

“Wickham and I.”

Darcy stared at her. “Mr. Wickham is not
here
?”

“Of course he is. The scheme was half his idea—he could not send me off to enjoy it alone!”

His expression hardened. “Where might I find him?”

“Oh, he’s somewhere about. In the billiards room, I think. Or perhaps the saloon.”

Darcy met Elizabeth’s gaze. “Excuse me.” He departed with such purpose that Elizabeth almost pitied Mr. Wickham. It would not be a pleasant meeting.

“I declare, Lizzy, I do not know how you managed to marry into such a disagreeable family. None of them ever talk, they simply glare. Mr. Darcy—”

“Mr. Darcy cannot and will not receive Mr. Wickham at Pemberley, for reasons your husband full well understands.” To Elizabeth’s knowledge, Lydia remained unacquainted with Wickham’s attempted elopement with Georgiana, and she did not intend to share with her sister information so sensitive to Darcy’s. But Wickham himself knew better than to blacken their door. Elizabeth marveled at his temerity. Surely he realized how Darcy would respond to his unauthorized presence at Pemberley? “What were you thinking in coming here?”

Lydia pouted. “I wanted to help you, is all. You know—with the baby coming.”

Given Lydia’s lifelong preoccupation with herself, Elizabeth found it difficult to believe that altruism motivated her, especially since among the five sisters, they two were probably the least intimate. Elizabeth had possessed little patience for Lydia’s silliness and selfishness before her elopement, and lost all tolerance afterward. She studied her sister’s face to divine her true purpose. “My confinement will not begin for another few months.”

“I thought I could help you prepare. I suppose the baby will need clothes and such.”

If she relied upon Lydia to complete her infant’s layette, she might as well name the child Godiva. “You came to Pemberley to sew?”

“Yes! I have improved at it, you know. I had to tear apart half my gowns this season and make them over because the linendrapers will not let me buy any more material until Wickham pays for what I have already purchased. Wickham says he will, as soon as he has got the money, but in the meantime I could not go to the officers’ balls in last year’s gowns with all the other wives wearing new. Only imagine how everyone would talk! I think their husbands must receive better pay than Wickham, though I do not understand why. He is such a favorite in his regiment. He is always drinking with the other officers.”

No doubt.

“I told him he should just inform his captain that he deserves better pay. It is unfair, you know, not to be able to buy the things my friends do, and never to go to places like Bath. But Wickham will not ask. He says someday we shall have pots of money. But in the meantime it is quite vexing to have Mr. Lynton calling all the time.”

“Who is Mr. Lynton?”

“Oh, someone Wickham knows. I think he loaned Wickham a bit of money. What a horrible little man! I wish he would just leave us alone. Why, we no sooner returned from Jane’s than he was pounding on our door again. I think the best part of visiting you is not having to see
him
every day.”

At last, they had reached the real motive for Lydia’s visit. Its revelation came as no surprise. The Wickhams had once again landed themselves in financial distress.

She wondered whether Mr. Lynton were a moneylender. Extravagant habits and an immature disregard for their consequences saw the couple constantly living beyond their income, and Lydia had often applied to Elizabeth and Jane for relief. Though Lydia had chosen this life through her own recklessness, Elizabeth did not want her sister to suffer. She would never ask Darcy for money to give to the couple—he had advanced thousands of pounds just to bring about
Lydia’s marriage after her scandalous elopement—but she herself made them presents out of her pin money.

The couple’s current circumstances must be bad indeed to send them fleeing to Pemberley to avoid their creditors. Nevertheless, Wickham certainly could not stay, nor did she expect Lydia truly wanted to. In comparison to her usual society, the entertainments of Pemberley would not long satisfy her. Both sisters—not to mention everyone else in the household—would be happier if Lydia returned to the company of her friends.

Elizabeth sighed. “How many pounds do you need this time?”

Darcy did not find Mr. Wickham in the billiards room, nor in the saloon. He found him in the library. His library. As if Wickham’s mere presence at Pemberley were not sufficient insult. This was a trespass not to be borne.

Further, he did not discover Mr. Wickham alone. As Darcy entered the room, a housemaid quickly stepped away from Wickham’s side. She moved too fast for him to determine whether he had interrupted a clinch, but the libertine had obviously been making himself too free with one of the servants. Again.

“Darcy! I had no idea you had returned.” He leaned casually against one of the bookcases and offered an insincere grin. Darcy wanted to strike it from his impudent face.

“Obviously.”

Before dealing with the reprehensible Mr. Wickham, Darcy turned his attention to the housemaid. She was a young slip of a girl, easy prey for a lothario as charming and practiced as Wickham. Darcy’s mere gaze froze her in place.

“What is your name?” he asked.

She required a moment to find her voice. “Jenny, sir.”

“How long have you been employed at Pemberley?”

“I just started this week, sir.”

“Mrs. Reynolds no doubt advised you of the conduct expected from
all servants here, but I shall ask her to remind you. If you want to keep your place at Pemberley, I suggest you listen carefully this time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may go.”

Without another glance at Wickham, Jenny darted from the room. Wickham chuckled.

“Ever the stern master. I see nothing at Pemberley has changed.”

“Including you.”

Darcy had learned, after the fact, that during the period George Wickham had lived at Pemberley, he had seduced several of the female staff. Then, the handsome young rake had merely been the steward’s son—a status that, if higher than that of his paramours, had not been so very elevated.

And he had been a bachelor.

Now, Wickham was—he still recoiled at the thought—a member of the family. Darcy would never countenance a dalliance between him and one of Pemberley’s servants.

Wickham chuckled again. “You frightened the poor girl half to death. We were only talking. I am wed to your wife’s sister now, after all.”

“I hardly need reminding of that unfortunate fact.”

“Come, now. You cannot grudge me the connection you yourself went to such trouble to bring off.”

Darcy reviled George Wickham. The scoundrel tarnished everything he touched, and had any other method existed by which he could have saved Elizabeth’s foolish sister from utter ruin, he would have seized upon it. When he had found Wickham and Lydia unwed and cohabitating in London, he knew that by enforcing the promises of marriage through which Wickham had persuaded Lydia to run away, he was not securing permanent happiness for the bride. He had acted to rescue Lydia from social disgrace and from the danger that would have followed when Wickham eventually tired of her and moved on to his next conquest. Once fallen, she would have spent the rest of her life as the chattel of one rapacious man after another.

He had intervened not for Lydia’s sake, but for Elizabeth’s. At the time, Darcy had possessed no connection to Lydia; he and Elizabeth had not been engaged, nor anywhere close to an understanding. But he had wanted to spare Elizabeth the pain of having a sister so debased, and to salvage her own respectability from the ignominy into which it must necessarily have descended as a result of Lydia’s degradation. One fallen sister would have precluded all the rest from ever marrying well, if at all.

“Sometimes one must tolerate a parasite so as not to kill its host.”

At this, Wickham laughed openly. “Is that what I am? My dear Fitz, I regard myself more as your errant brother.”

“You are far too familiar.”

“Am I? We did grow up together.” He gestured toward the window. “How many hours did we spend angling in that river? Coursing for hares? Shooting? Hawking?” A flash of resentment crossed his countenance. “But I was just a convenient companion, was I not? Someone for Master Darcy to play with when no boys of superior birth offered better company.”

“You have not come here to reminisce—with you, an ulterior motive always exists. What is it?”

“Indeed, brother, your cynicism wounds me. I merely brought my wife to visit her sister.”

“Even were that true, it does not explain your own presence in a house where you know you have no entrée.” Nor how the rogue had gained admission in the first place. “Do not military duties summon you back to your regiment? I know that I, for one, rest easier at night in the knowledge that Mr. George Wickham defends England from invasion.”

“Duty indeed calls. I am afraid I must depart on Saturday.”

“You will depart
now
. Both you and Mrs. Wickham.”

“But the day grows short.”

“Lambton is but five miles. Stay the night there or continue on; I do not care.”

“We have not ordered a carriage.”

“My driver will convey you to the inn.” The good of the Wickhams’ immediately quitting Pemberley would more than mitigate the evil of suffering them to use Darcy’s private coach.

“You are the soul of generosity.” Wickham bowed cockily. “Until we meet again, then—wherever that might be.”

Darcy vowed it would not be at Pemberley.

Within a quarter hour, Darcy watched with satisfaction as his coach carried the Wickhams through the gates and from the grounds of the estate. As he stood at the window, Georgiana came to him.

“I want to apologize, brother, for your finding them here.”