A/N: Thanks for reading! The comments were a little sparse for the last chapter, but every one is treasured. Guest made a guess on why I allow Lady Catherine to live. It is very rational. But for the author, the reason why a character lives or dies may come from a completely different direction. In any event, I really did not want to hurt anybody, even a villain, but it couldn't be helped!
Speaking if villains, here is one coming up.
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The next day Mr. Darcy had to take care of business for his uncle. He had to put off the pleasure of the company of his cousin and her friend until that evening when he would host a small family dinner to celebrate Anne's birthday a day in advance. She was adamant about not celebrating on her birthday when her mother was still suffering from the aftermath of the apoplexy.
Anne invited the Bennet sisters and the Gardiners to come to this dinner and spent the day beforehand with the Gracechurch Street ladies shopping and sight-seeing. She had wanted very much to visit Ranelagh, the pleasure gardens that Evelina visited many times and enjoyed immensely but was sorely disappointed that the place had closed permanently a few years back. Its replacement, Vauxhall Gardens, would not open for the season for another two weeks.
At the end of the day, after touring St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower and having ices at Gunter's, Anne found the most fascinating sight of all was the bustling city life around Cheapside.
As Elizabeth stepped off the carriage in front of Darcy House on Park Lane, she looked up at the ornate cornices on the façade of the house which, in her estimation, looked even grander than the Earl's Rockingham House.
For all this I could have been mistress! She shook her head as if to chase away these ruminations, which seemed to be occurring more and more often. Perhaps she had regrets? No, she told herself. As if to fortify against these unwanted thoughts, she reminded herself that Mr. Darcy would never accept her relations from trade as family – one so conceited and uncaring for others' feelings could not possibly credit her uncle's and aunt's good sense and gentility. He would disdain them simply because her uncle had to work to support his family. She wondered whether he would ask his staff to clean his house from top to bottom after this dinner to remove the stench of trade.
A man hidden among the trees in Hyde Park across the street watched the group alighting from the Darcy carriage with heightened interest. He had been trying to think of a way to gain entry to the house from which he used to come and go as if he had been the master's own son.
Lieutenant Wickham had hastily left Meryton when gossip started spreading that he might have been less upright than he claimed. The young lady he was courting, Miss King, was immediately whisked away to Liverpool by her uncle who came to Meryton for the express purpose of meeting her suitor before giving his consent for her engagement. His fellow officers were beginning to scrutinize him, and the tradesmen in Meryton were showing reluctance to extend credit to him. He found out from the most naïve girl in all England, Miss Lydia Bennet, that the gossip about him came from Mrs. Collins' sister, Maria Lucas, who was visiting her married sister in Hunsford. Miss Lydia, who remained his steadfast ally, was anxious to hear him declare that the rumors of his disreputable conduct were without merit, with which he, of course, readily obliged.
He racked his brain and finally concluded that Darcy was most likely the blackguard who maligned his name in Kent, as he visited his aunt, that virago Lady Catherine, every Easter. Wickham pushed his sob story about the dastardly acts of Darcy that put him in his current impoverished state with extra gusto until Lydia voluntarily offered him what remained of her quarterly pin money so that he could take the mail coach to London and demand 'satisfaction' from Darcy. She even lamented that she could not be his second on the field of honor.
Wickham was granted a two-day leave, but he handed in his resignation immediately before he left the barracks. There was no point to tarry around such an unfriendly backwater. He also felt humiliated that he had been spurned by a country girl with a paltry dowry of ten thousand pounds.
He arrived in London in the early afternoon. His plan was to sell the last of his belongings to get some ready cash to placate some London creditors from whom he was trying to escape when he joined the militia in Meryton. He owed almost a thousand pounds, but just fifty pounds might get him some breathing room while contemplating his next step. As was his wont while in London, he went to Mrs. Younge, his long-time paramour and co-conspirator in his attempt to elope with Mrs. Younge's charge, Miss Darcy, that had been so cruelly stymied by Darcy the summer before.
When he opened the locked closet at Mrs. Younge's boarding house, he could not help feeling sorry for himself. He was eight-and-twenty, and everything to his name was either in the sack next to him or was crammed inside the small space in front of him. At times like this he often wondered whether he should go to America where no one would know the deplorable state he constantly found himself in. Of course, these were also the times he blamed it all on Darcy.
He looked at his great coat and decided that selling winter clothing in spring weather could not possibly bring him much. He had a ring and a watch of some value, but he was not willing to sell either of these prized possessions. The ring was given to him by his mother before she ran off with someone else, promising to send for him when she was settled in America, but he never heard from her again. He was angry at his mother, but he simply could not part with this token from the only person who told him incessantly that he would grow up to be a great man, unlike his good-for-nothing father who preferred to be a steward, just a step above the servant class, instead of making something of himself as a prosperous solicitor. The pocket watch was given to him by his godfather when he went off to Cambridge with Darcy. It had proven to be a useful prop when he told his tale of woe: He had been ill-used by the heir of his godfather, who used to treat him like a son.
He surveyed the contents of the closet one last time. Just when he was about to push the door shut in frustration, the corners of a few sheets of paper underneath the coat caught his eye. He remembered what they were – little innocent notes written by Miss Georgiana Darcy to him in response to his flowery love letters. In those notes were lines like 'I received your compliments with gratitude,' or 'You flattered me, Mr. Wickham.' She sometimes corrected his spelling errors and gave him the sources of the quotes he remembered vaguely from his Cambridge days. She never addressed him as 'George' in writing, and only reluctantly in verbal greetings after she had agreed to elope to Gretna Green with him. She was every bit as stiff and dour as her brother.
Relatively harmless as these letters appeared, they might still be worth something to her too proper brother. Since Darcy was most likely the one who spread Wickham's past to the populace in Meryton, it was only fair that he, Wickham would spread Darcy's sister's indiscretion in town – unless her brother would buy him off. A smile finally appeared in his hitherto rather gloomy countenance, and he walked to Darcy house with a spring in his step. He was hoping to be at least a thousand pounds richer for these letters.
Once in front of Darcy House, however, his courage failed him. He had been warned at Ramsgate in no uncertain terms, that if he were found anywhere close to Darcy and his sister, the consequences for him would be too dire to imagine. He was aware that after Ramsgate, someone was buying up his debts at various places. Even though he knew deep down that Darcy would not carry out the threat on account of the elder Darcy's steady attachment to his godson to the very last, he still felt exceedingly nervous about stirring up Darcy's wrath. He could not step down, however. He just needed to gather up the courage to march into Darcy House and make his demand.
When he saw Miss de Bourgh in the company of the Bennet sisters and an unknown couple descending from the carriage, he could not believe his own eyes. In all his life, he had never seen Miss de Bourgh without her mother or some fierce retainers guarding her. Lady Catherine, of course, had never acknowledged his existence. He was forbidden to get close to her daughter, with one exception.
When Wickham was thirteen years of age, his father was asked by the elder Darcy to go to Rosings and examine the accounts, as Mr. Darcy had detected some irregularities during the annual spring visit. After Sir Lewis' death, Mr. Darcy and his brother-in-law Lord Fitzwilliam took turns every Easter to examine Rosings' accounts as trustees of the de Bourgh Estate. At that time Lady Anne had just given birth to Miss Darcy, and her recovery from childbirth was wrought with perils. Mr. Darcy did not wish to leave his wife and newborn daughter for a long period of time and asked Mr. Wickham, who was very capable and trustworthy, to investigate what could have caused the discrepancies in the books. Since the task might take some time, he urged Mr. Wickham to take his family with him and to make a holiday of it as a reward for his faithful and competent service to the Darcy family through the years.
The junior Wickham did not enjoy his stay at Rosings overly much. His parents were always occupied, and he was left to himself all the time. The only person around his age other than tenants' children, with whom his mother did not allow him to play, was Miss de Bourgh, but the mistress of Rosings in turn did not allow her daughter to play with him. To be honest, he would not choose the girl as a playmate if he had other options, as the other boys, Darcy and Richard, her cousins from the north, also did not deign to include her in their games. However, she did have extremely handsome ponies for her phaeton. Every morning when Miss de Bourgh trained her ponies and practiced driving the phaeton with the head groom, he would watch closely. Miss de Bourgh was aware of his presence and had even made some gestures of acknowledgment a few times.
About three weeks into the stay at Rosings, his mother came to him one night and roused him from sleep. She told him that she was going on a long trip, to America in fact, and would come back to fetch him once she was settled there. He was such a handsome lad – he had to be meant for something grand in the New World. She gave him her ring and then was gone.
The next morning, an uproar spread through the estate, and it reached even his juvenile ears. His father had discovered that the Rosings steward, Mr. Linden, had stolen fifteen thousand pounds from the Rosings' coffers in the previous year. The money was stolen mainly from Miss de Bourgh's put-aside dowry. Just before the magistrate was to be notified, the steward had disappeared. The fact that Mrs. Wickham also disappeared at the same time made it very likely that she was in collusion with Mr. Linden, possibly informing the embezzler of Mr. Wickham's progress in unearthing the deception.
The elder Mr. Darcy felt responsible for causing such a calamity to the Wickham family by sending Mr. Wickham to Rosings. He found out that Mrs. Wickham, the daughter of a draper, had always coveted the riches of the fine ladies who came into her father's shop. She might have been induced to abandon her family to seek a more elevated life elsewhere even if it meant she had to become an accomplice to a crime. To atone for his perceived sin, the master of Pemberley vowed to send George Wickham to school and then later to Cambridge with his own son and had reserved a valuable family living for the boy to raise his station equal to that of a gentleman.
There was one thing George Wickham had known for all these years: Miss de Bourgh was such a grand heiress that Miss Darcy's fortune would appear to be middle-class by comparison. Miss de Bourgh's dowry was forty thousand pounds, and she was to inherit the entire Rosings Estate when she came of age, which should have already happened. She was of course set aside for Darcy, and her mother was so ferocious in guarding the daughter that she was completely off limits to anyone but Darcy. He sometimes regretted that he had not been older when he visited Rosings and might have created some opportunities to seduce her during his stay. Unfortunately, he had been far more interested at the time in the ponies than their scrawny owner. Now that he had seen Miss de Bourgh without her mother, it behooved him to find out whether there would be any chance for him to gain her immense fortune. The thousand pounds that he had planned to wrangle out of the tight-wad Darcy could wait.
While waiting for the heiress to leave Darcy House, he went around to the mews to talk to some of the household staff of Darcy's neighbors. With his handsome person in his red coat and with his pleasant manners, he quite dazzled some of the grooms and housemaids when he struck up conversations with them. In such a way, he found out that Lady Catherine was indisposed at the Earl's house, and her daughter was staying there with her. The Earl himself was away on government business. Wickham could not believe his good luck. Fortune was finally smiling on him.
There was no point in waiting for Miss de Bourgh that evening as she would most likely be having dinner at Darcy House. He thus went to his favorite gambling den to take advantage of his lucky streak with the few pounds that Lydia Bennet had so obligingly given him. If he was lucky, he might win more than what he won the last time he was there – sufficient funds to outfit himself with the magnificent scarlet coat of a militia officer that made him feel like the great man that his mother had foretold.