Author's Notes: This was originally intended for an Outrageously Out of Character challenge on another site, but I ran out of time, but then the next challenge was for Colorful Deaths for Least Favorite characters, and considering that a certain character's death was planned for that story, I decided that with some tweaking, it could work for that one, though I'm not quite sure how colorful this death happens to be or the others mentioned in passing.

This is a bit darker than my usual tales, very appropriate I feel for this time of year. So I hope you take this little Halloween gift in the spirit it is intended.

The Biter Bit

George Wickham entered the cottage with a swagger, confident that everything was going to go his way. Of course, he had spent the previous ten minutes checking out the area just to be certain everything was how it was supposed to be. After all, he couldn't be too careful, and there was a chance Miss Bennet had let her lover know of this particular rendezvous, and he might not be so amenable to paying him off to prevent a scandal.

But everything seemed quiet and he had spotted his quarry through an uncovered window. She was seated at a table with a bottle of wine and two pewter mugs in front of her. He smiled smugly as he saw her take a sip. This looked like it was going to be easier than he had thought, even if she sat dressed in black like a widow in mourning. No one would suspect her of being one to slip out for trysts in the night. Still waters run deep, he thought. Perhaps I might try my luck after we conclude our business; after all, one lover or many, does it really make a difference?

She didn't move from her chair as he crossed the room, merely folded her hands in her lap beneath the table. He grinned at her and grabbed the bottle of wine, pouring a generous helping into the empty mug on his side of the table. Her frown made his smile widen as he swigged it back before pouring another cup and then dropping into the chair.

"Good of you to be on time and provide drink for a thirsty man even if it tastes like..." he searched for the word. "...parsnips. But then you could also have waited until I arrived to get started." He waved his mug in the air.

"I hardly drink," Miss Bennet said primly. "It's not as if there were not plenty for a man such as you, and I could not be certain how long you would make me wait."

"Well, I had to be certain you were alone," Wickham said. "No need to take chances, not when money and," he leaned forward with a leer, "reputations are on the line."

"And how exactly did you consider the chances you took when you persuaded my sister Lydia to send your note to me?" she asked coolly.

He grinned. "Simple. She didn't know why I had her write to you instead of Kitty. She just thought it was to make you envious of her good fortune, and she let me take the letter to post. It was easy enough to add my bit in once the letter was in my hand. So there's no fear that she can reveal anything."

"Very well, then the real question is what is it that you think you can reveal about me that is worth the price you have asked? Much less from where do you believe I could get such a sum?"

Wickham leaned back in the chair, a smug expression on his face and reached into his waistcoat pocket, pulling out a man's signet ring. "Recognize this?" he asked. "You dropped it in the woods on a particular night in May. I happened to see it as I was returning from a private... appointment of my own, and of course, I could not help but wonder at what such a... respectable young lady was doing walking in the woods at that hour of the night. Especially since you are not the sister most known for her love of walking." He took another drink of wine, even though he was already feeling a bit tipsy and numb, but then there was nothing really to fear from the not really so pious miss, was there?

"I see," she said. "So you assume it was a gift from a lover because of your own nocturnal dissipations, but there is no indication that that ring was ever mine, so what does it matter?"

"If that were true, then you would not have met me here alone, would you?" Wickham was starting to feel more numb in his legs. Perhaps he should have eaten before drinking all that wine or not ridden so far or so long. After all, this was business, even if it was with yet another foolish young woman; he should have been rested with a clear head. But surely it wouldn't make a difference. He had all the cards. "Why risk your reputation if there was nothing to fear?"

"I am not risking my reputation," she said to his surprise. "If on the morrow or even this evening you go out and say that I was here with you for any reason, I could immediately call on our housekeeper to say that I had not left the house, that in fact I had been in bed with a sick headache, and frankly, I believe that at the moment my reputation is far more solid than yours, as I have not left debts amongst the tradesmen of Meryton." As if anticipating that he also had the response she had sent him, she added. "And as my note was not signed nor in my own hand, that would not prove a single thing either."

"Then why did you agree to this meeting?" he asked, somewhat troubled by her calm demeanor. He had expected if not immediate compliance, at least pleading, yet she sat there as if she were the one who held the upper hand not him. It didn't help that his feet were numb and his subtle attempts to work life back into them made him look weak though he tried stretching his legs out as if he were fully confident, it didn't seem to make a difference.

Miss Bennet spoke with complete composure. "I needed to be sure that Lydia had no knowledge of your attempted extortion, nor that she was involved in your particular plot. I also feared what you might persuade her to, if you did not have the promise of a greater fiscal reward to look forward to," she said. "You see, I am afraid I know a bit more of you than you do of me."

"What do you mean?" he asked, curious and for some reason increasingly nervous, though he knew he shouldn't be. Perhaps it was the effect of the drink which seemed far stronger than any wine he'd had recently or the numbness and cold which seemed to be working its way up his legs. What was wrong with him?

"You might turn your mind back to my sister Elizabeth's change of attitude towards you after her return from Kent. Well, the information that changed it was in a letter, one that though she hid it, I did manage to find, and it told me a great deal, some of which I suspected, for you are a man too glib of tongue and too quick to disclaim responsibility. You are yet another serpent sent to seduce the innocent and the credulous and leave them ruined and undone."

"Now, Miss Mary, that is rather strong coming from a young lady who creeps around the countryside at night for her own nefarious purposes," he said, attempting to regain the high ground.

"I have my own reasons for that," she said. "A more noble purpose than your own."

"What noble purpose could that be?" he asked, unable to think of any noble purpose that could be served by nightly peregrinations. Plenty of base ones but no noble ones.

She ignored the question. "You were given four thousand pounds in lieu of the living you claim was denied you. Four thousand pounds which could easily have sustained you for years and enabled you to gain the profession you claimed to wish to study. Yet it did not," she said. "You are a man with the ability to make your own fortune in a myriad of ways, yet you wasted both time and money in idle dissipation, and instead sought to impose yourself on an innocent girl so that you might control her fortune."

"Is that Darcy's version? Not that I believe that the prig would break with propriety far enough to write something like that in a letter," Wickham scoffed, though he was starting to feel quite ill, and besides that wasn't quite accurate, as it had been three thousand for the living and a mere thousand pound inheritance, but the sum total was correct enough. "He never could stand the fact that I was preferred by his father and his sister. They would have given me more."

He was most curious about the letter, though he didn't intend to press the issue as it was more important for him to convince Mary Bennet to give him some money despite her confidence in her reputation. Though if Darcy had written a letter to Miss Elizabeth, then he knew it could only mean that they were engaged, as Darcy would never have addressed one to her otherwise, but if they were engaged, why was it not known? He could think of no reason for such an engagement to be kept secret unless... Oh, could the ever so proper Mr. Darcy actually be afraid of the imperious Lady Catherine or his uncle the earl? If so, he might be more amenable to giving Wickham what was owed him. Regardless of whether he got money tonight, he might still profit from it. He only barely noticed that the chit was speaking again between his thoughts and the cold heavy feeling settling over him.

"You would have squandered that as well," she said impassively. "You are nothing more than a poisonous leach that attaches itself to wealth but cannot hold it and who seeks his pleasure at the expense of others."

Who better deserved the right than he did? His expectations had been raised and he deserved better. And who was this bit of muslin to say him nay?

He saw her narrow her eyes at him as she continued her diatribe. "It is most unfortunately a man's world, and I have learned too well the damage men can do by indolence or profligacy, both of which you seem to possess in abundance." Her eyes flicked over him for a moment before she continued. "I have learned all about indolence from my father. With five daughters nearly grown and no sons, he has known the estate would be lost to us at his death, and yet he has done nothing to either restrain my mother's excesses or provide sufficient funds to care for us properly in the event of his death. And our mother can think of nothing better than to throw us at eligible men with no regard for their characters. A tyrant or a fool is just as acceptable to her as an actual respectful gentleman, and it has been some time now that I have been determined that no sister of mine be bartered away for the security of her family."

Wickham took another drink to try to shake away the creeping cold. "And what has that to do with the ring?" He really did not want to continue to listen to her blathering if he wasn't going to get his money, but then he didn't feel well enough to get back on his horse, so what did it hurt? He now had another string to his bow; he could afford to be magnanimous.

"For one, in a world where a woman's reputation is sometimes the only thing to save her from degradation, I would never allow myself to be seduced by a cad. Bad enough a man controls a woman in marriage; outside it, she is ruined while he is unaffected, even at times applauded. However, the only way to independence is through money, which I cannot earn through more legitimate channels, even as a governess, as my mother would never allow it. So I found another way," she said. "I do not suppose that you've heard the legend of the Wicked Lady of Hertfordshire."

He shrugged. "Something about it. I know her ghost is supposed to roam more widely than any ghost I've ever heard of. This place for one."

"Indeed. That's why it has been abandoned and left convenient for this meeting. But more importantly, she was a lady who disguised herself as a highwayman in order to try to recover her misappropriated fortune. Now, I could not condone," she said primly, "importuning innocent travelers merely to gather funds for myself and my sisters. However, the world is filled with scoundrels of various kinds, and there is money to be made in dealing with them."

Wickham sat up a little at this last remark despite the numbness in his limbs. This was something unexpected.

"I will say it was not easy to embark on my chosen career," Miss Bennet said. "There was a question of contacts and of course skills, though much could be learned through the right course of reading. I was also fortunate in being able to call upon the resources of my great aunt Moriarty, whose antecedents were somewhat less salubrious than my grandfather Gardener's and who was able to help with both as well as being able to invest the funds that we acquired and give me the excuse of visiting her when I needed to travel."

"The ring?" Wickham asked, trying to shake himself loose of the prickly cold and confounded by the words of a girl of no more than nineteen or twenty years.

"While a certain amount of business has been accomplished through judicious use of the Wicked Lady's ghost," Miss Bennet said, "a more permanent method of vengeance has proven, if not more profitable, certainly more satisfying, as the victims we avenge are often too poor for more conventional forms of retribution." She continued to sit straight up in her chair, hands out of sight beneath the table between them, the primness in her voice a stark contrast to the words she was speaking. "The ring you thought was a gift from a lover was in fact a payment from a young woman for dealing with the man who seduced and abandoned her after leaving her with child. While she did have a guardian who challenged the vile man, one John Willoughby by name, to a duel, he was too soft to do anything beyond frighten him, or perhaps he was concerned about the repercussions of killing the man. I do not know; nevertheless, it is certain that early last May Willoughby suffered an accident with an adder while riding alone one morning."

Wickham could not speak so shocked was he by Miss Bennet's words.

"Certain types of gentlemen tend to suffer from unfortunate accidents," Miss Bennet said, as casually as if she were discussing the weather. "Another such was a Mr. Crawford and his uncle the admiral, who while taking out a boat on a lake managed to capsize and drown. You would think an admiral even one whose mind was clouded with his dissipations would have been more careful, would you not?" She paused for a moment to stare him directly in the eye. "And then there is you."

"What?" Wickham struggled to sit up, a fear now running through him, but he found it almost impossible to move.

"Pity you have not the wisdom of Socrates though you are sharing his fate. A rather special concoction prepared especially for you, and in the wine you drank so freely. Not what I was drinking at all," she said. "Poison for a man with a poisonous tongue, seemed rather appropriate. You should never have threatened my family, Mr. Wickham."

Her stare was fierce and unrelenting, and while Wickham wished to rise to strike out at her, he could not. She was as cold as a marble goddess and about as merciful.

"I am the sister whom no one notices, but I am the one who notices everything such as your anger at my sister Elizabeth when she returned from Kent no longer willing to listen to your practiced charms as well as the calculation in your eye when you turned from her towards my youngest sister Lydia. Kitty may have tried to hide her letters, but I found them as well and read your name too often for my liking. I had thought to travel to Brighton to deal with you, when instead I received your letter, and you made everything so simple for me. The hand of providence is indeed mighty to bring you to this door and to your fate."

Wickham tried to speak but the room was going dark, and he cursed the name of Bennet as he died.

~o~O~o~

Once she was certain Wickham was dead, Mary Bennet whistled loudly before pouring out the remains of the wine onto the floor. The door opened just as she dropped the bottle next to the chair.

A stocky, well muscled man dressed as a laborer stood there. "Is all well, Mistress Mary?" he asked.

"Yes, Moran," she said, pulling out the pistol she had hidden on a shallow shelf beneath the table. "He was distracted by my talking until it was too late to do anything. I didn't even need this."

Moran looked at the corpse. "What do you want me to do with that?"

"Leave it. I'm sure he'll be discovered soon enough, and it won't matter if they think it was a falling out among thieves or the ghost of the Wicked Lady. We knew we were going to abandon this place in any event."

"Yes, Mistress Mary," Moran said.

"You might as well return to my aunt, after your run as the ghost. We will put things on hold for the next month or so. I believe that the Eliot matter can wait."

"As you say, Mistress Mary," Moran replied.

Mary cast one more glance at the body. The man had thought he held the upper hand, but she had never been as defenseless as he imagined. For once the man had underestimated his adversary with fatal consequences. She would almost pity him, if she did not hold him in such contempt.

She thought about how that solved her most recent concerns about Lydia, although it was almost inevitable that the silly girl would lose her head over yet another redcoat; hopefully one more easily dealt with or at least honorable enough to make a genuine offer to her. No, of more immediate concern to her was Elizabeth's trip to Lambton. Her aunt's contacts had indicated that Mr. Darcy and the Bingleys would be at Pemberley at approximately the same time as they, so there was a real possibility that the two might meet again, and she wondered if Mr. Darcy despite his assertions in his letter might pursue her sister if that happened, and if he did, would it be because of genuine emotion or because he had been denied something that he wanted. The reports of his more than usually unsociable behavior on his return to London from Kent gave no true indications of his mind, beyond the fact that he was not inclined to indulge in obvious acts of dissipation after a disappointment.

She shrugged, realizing this speculation was pointless. She would have to wait for letters or Elizabeth's return, and then of course, Mr. Darcy's if anything were to happen. And if he proved to be just another arrogant man determined to get his way, well, she could also afford to fill another grave. After all, she would do anything to protect her family.

The End

End Notes:

As I said this was originally meant to be an outrageously out of character story, hence Mary's ruthless behavior. However, I got stuck on the beginning set up and then there was a rash of OOC Mary Bennet stories, so I decided to put it aside to try to get back to work on my higher priority stories. However, considering that the plot bunny also included Wickham's death, I decided to give it another shot once the next theme was announced. As for why Mary Bennet, I can't entirely explain it why my muse got stuck on her, though I think it was in large part because of remembering my husband's conviction that Mary was the secret though benevolent mastermind behind events in my story Luck Changes the Game, so it decided to kick it up a notch into making her a criminal mastermind.

There really was a Wicked Lady of Hertfordshire. Something I discovered when my original plan was for Mary to be a notorious highwaywoman and was looking for a non de plume. She wasn't exactly from the side of Hertfordshire that Meryton is supposed to be located but still it is the same county and seemed too perfect to ignore. While the identification is not positive, the lady believed to be the Wicked Lady was Katherine Ferrers, who died around 1660 under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

I originally was going to call Mary's aunt Murtagh as it comes from the same roots as Moriarty in the anglicizations of the Irish name Ó Muircheartaigh, and I was initially wanting to be subtle about it, but as I was looking this over I figured subtle was pointless, as I rather liked the thought of Mary becoming a consulting criminal in a family of criminals. And on a quirky note, if you take the letters m, a, r, and y out of Moriarty you are left with riot or trio or tiro, and I so wanted to work that in somehow (perhaps with her working in concert with two other Marys) but it just never happened as it would have fit in more with the previous theme than the current one.

The poison Wickham was given was primarily hemlock and the symptoms used are basically some of those mentioned in the death of Socrates, but poetic license was definitely taken, so I know it's not the most accurate version. Put down any differences to added ingredients provided by Great Aunt Moriarty, who knows a thing or two about ridding herself of pests. All in all it was a rather merciful death I think, though perhaps not colorful enough, though I hope at least the other three deaths mentioned seemed apropos.

And despite Mary's contemplations, I'd never kill off either Darcy or Lizzy, so he's safe enough from her since he is a good man genuinely in love with her sister.