Here we are at last! A bonafide, genuine NEW chapter never before published! Yay! Now, don't expect anything too exciting yet... We're not at the ball quite yet - that will be chapter 9. Thanks for bearing with me as the updates are surely going to slow down! I'll try not to take YEARS in between this time, though. My goal is no more than a month, so feel free to keep me accountable!
Also, I recently watched Austenland for the first time. I promise to only write fanfiction for that movie if I have writer's block here... promise. Cross my heart. :oD
See if you can spot the Wicked reference. (The musical.) Enjoy!
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Darcy was all but blind as he and Admiral barreled away. In the madness of escape, he cared not whether Bingley kept up with him or even followed at all. Either way, it would have gone unnoticed. So unduly focused was his flight that he only headed in the opposite direction with no regard as to destination.
The anger that gripped him was irrational and suffused with darkness, somehow managing to eclipse even the rage he'd felt at discovering his heartbroken sister flailing in the devastation left behind by Wickham at Ramsgate. His heart thundered heavily along with the horse's hooves, pounding vitriolic blood against his eardrums as his vision teemed red at the edges.
This was anger born of jealously, unlike anything he'd ever felt and yet containing a familiar echo of something long buried — hot, uncontrollable, all consuming. Over and over he saw Elizabeth looking from him to Wickham and back again, her eyes full of confusion and then accusation. And he felt as he had over ten years ago, watching his father shower easy affection and trust upon Wickham with whom he nurtured a connection he simply could not achieve with his own son.
Wickham, who could make him smile and bring him happiness in a way Darcy could not. Wickham, who seemed more like a son to him toward the end than did Darcy.
The injustice of it all made him want to scream into the air ripping past him. Long tucked away resentments rose to the surface, a forgotten layer of mud being stirred from the depths of a normally placid lake. Brackish and swirling, choking out his reason and preventing all coherent thought with liquid clouds of billowing, roiling fury. Unbearable pressure built in his chest, preventing any but the shallowest breath; his head swirled nauseously as spots began to dance before his eyes. Were he not atop a horse, he strongly suspected he would be trembling, a thought that only served to intensify the humiliation of it all.
Through this, he was gradually aware of his hands beginning to ache from the fierce grip he had on the reins. He only began returning to himself when Admiral made a loud, uncomfortable whinny at this harsh and sudden turn of events. Darcy pulled up sharply, allowing the animal to come to a staggering stop, realizing how unintentionally hard he'd pushed the horse in the midst of this unprecedented submission to emotion.
Swearing viciously, he loosed the reins, flinging them from his fingers in horror so they bounced against Admiral's neck. His trapped breath released in a shaky gush that only prompted his system to draw air right back in to pacify deprived muscles. If he didn't feel horrible enough, the sight of Admiral's similarly heaving sides was enough to shame him still further. He wanted desperately to lay this on Wickham, too, but knew the blame lay only at his own feet for being so carried away by his anger that he forgot entirely the importance of caring for his aging horse's comfort.
Such was his self-recrimination in that moment that he quite stubbornly discarded the fact that he was only human, after all. Occasions in which Darcy overreacted were so few and far between that he never failed to castigate himself more strongly than anyone who might have merely born witness to the failure of his self-possession, let alone those who might have taken offense at it.
How did this happen?
Why in heaven's name did it have to be Wickham of all people who drew Elizabeth's eye? Some unknown person he could have dealt with, most likely by instantly heaping various imaginary, malevolent indiscretions upon the stranger who had the temerity to capture her attention. Or, if taking up against the other party didn't work, he could blame weakness of character on Elizabeth's part for drawing her to someone with the limited prospects of a foot soldier.
He couldn't do either with Wickham. First, because he knew, intimately of the man's very real, very malevolent indiscretions, and second because he knew exactly how persuasive and convincing Wickham could be when it worked in his favor. Elizabeth likely had no experience dealing with someone so deceptive, so cunning; it was hardly her fault she fell prey to his flattery. Dozens of men and women before her had done the same.
Not that any of it mattered. She was free to take up with as many members of the militia as she wanted, it made no difference to him, he reasoned. It was only because he knew the level of Wickham's perfidy that he felt this absurd jealousy and concern for her innocence, surely.
Wickham was dangerous. And no matter how he felt about any of the young women in the area, he certainly felt sick at the thought of any of them falling victim to Wickham in the way Georgiana had. The horrid man would not hesitate to do so if he could profit from it somehow and he feared it would not necessarily matter if there was money involved.
After all, there were other things men wanted from women. Things that haunted dreams and could leave behind an unspeakable ache.
Why was Wickham here anyway? What could he be playing at now, taking up military service when he'd shown less than the smallest inclination in that area in the past? He must have been desperate, to be sure, to enter into such a structured existence so wholly unlike his usual dissipation. Aside from that anomaly, though, what capricious twist of chance had placed him in the very regiment that would end up in Hertfordshire at the same time as Darcy? With the whole of the British Empire available, why here?
Darcy's thoughts naturally turned to his past dealings with the man.
There was a time not so very far in the past when the sight of Wickham was welcome to him. There was a time when there was much Darcy would have done to see him happy and successful. After all, the man had practically been raised as his brother. His earliest memories involved racing about the grounds of Pemberley as a trio — he and his cousin, Robert Fitzwilliam, and Wickham — in all manner of frivolous recreation. He remembered learning alongside them everything from writing to throwing a ball to swimming to shooting a musket.
Wickham may have been the youngest of the three by a year or so, but he was by far the most precocious and certainly when compared with Darcy himself. Wickham was gregarious and reckless where Darcy was more quiet, reserved and cautious. As children, though, their differences mattered little to either, the balance of traits serving them well in their opposition, with Robert falling comfortably in between. They three spent hours adventuring through the Derbyshire countryside, practically inseparable but for their stations in life. Even when Robert was at home and it was only Darcy and Wickham, it mattered little.
The death of Lady Anne spelled an irrevocable turning point for everyone.
In the passing of his wife, Darcy's father began to recognize possibility of his own mortal end looming ever more imminent. His health had grown somewhat more precarious than he liked after years of over-indulgence in food and drink, and his waistline broader than he cared to recognize.
In the weeks after his wife's funeral, the elder Darcy was gripped by a conspicuous zeal to dive head long into his son's education in becoming Pemberley's Master. Still in the midst of his grief, however, he assigned the rather weighty task of this education to his steward, Nigel Wickham, rather than tutoring the boy himself. Darcy, lost to his own sorrow, could do nothing but follow his father's wishes and be quietly thankful for the distraction.
As Darcy's lessons in this area left him with less leisure time and took him more and more out of the company of his friends, George Wickham began to resent the consideration being given to Darcy's future, particularly because it forced him to sacrifice his own father's time and attention. Eventually, this led to George resenting Darcy himself.
Old Wickham's favorite topic of conversation soon became the young master to the exclusion of all else. As George struggled with this, it became more apparent that while Darcy's destiny was to be the Master, his was most certainly not. His was to be, if anything, the Master's particular friend. Prior to this, he had never fully appreciated what it would mean to live perpetually in the substantial shadow of the Darcy name. Though Wickham's education as a gentleman would have granted him access to the same levels of society, he had always known such admission would be accredited to the generosity of Darcy's father. There would never be any mention of him within the most exclusive circles as anything more than the fortunate son of old Mr. Darcy's steward and Fitzwilliam Darcy's friend.
For Wickham, it soon became clear that there was nothing more detestable in the world than playing second fiddle to anyone whether they be friend or foe. His pride simply wouldn't allow for it.
Day after day, it was impressed upon Darcy the sheer volume of responsibility that would become his the day he assumed full control of the estate. As this volume grew and he began to understand it better, so too did his reserve grow. The time he spent with George was but a pale resemblance to their carefree days as children when it didn't matter that Darcy's future was inevitably the brighter of the two. Even their conversation became stilted as Darcy's language shifted to that of a landowner with an estate full of concerns while Wickham's vocabulary only became better versed in public house slang.
For, without Darcy's influence on his time, and Robert being occupied by the commission purchased for him by his family, Wickham found himself frequently in the company of young men from Lambton and other surrounding villages whose manners and habits were quite different from those common at Pemberley. These were boys who already spent their days doing men's work and had the roughened hands and scars to prove it. They teased 'baby George' for being soft, proper, and conceited.
At least, they did at first.
So too began Wickham's education. He learned that people more readily accepted his presence when he spoke and acted as they did. He learned that holding your drink and having a deft hand at cards could earn a fair amount of respect and money. He learned that practiced charm could get him what he wanted, including a substantial line of credit whether the funds to support it existed or not. He learned that flowery language and an engaging nature made up for what he lacked in education.
In short, he learned that he was rather good at ingratiating himself by becoming whatever sort of man the situation demanded. He could ingratiate himself further by surpassing expectations of civility and manners just enough to dazzle people into giving him things to which he had no right whatsoever.
It was within the embrace of this new life that he swilled his first ale, experienced his first drunken brawl and discovered the true pleasures of a woman's company. Men trusted him easily, and women found him disarmingly good looking. The same charm he worked on shopkeepers, he discovered, worked as equally well with members of the fairer sex of any age, a turn of luck he never hesitated to use to his advantage.
One day, shortly before he and Darcy were scheduled to begin at Cambridge, Wickham found himself wandering the halls of Pemberley in pursuit of a maid who had recently been free with her favors. The path of that chase happened to lead him past the elder Darcy's study. He stopped short at the unexpected greeting that issued from within. George had always thought the old man rather daft and pompous, but accepted the invitation of a game of chess nonetheless. He was, after all, ever in the man's good graces and saw no profit in being otherwise. In addition, Pemberley's port wine was second to none and Wickham had developed a taste for fine drink; old Darcy favored it enough to have a decanter close at hand. Surprisingly, he found he almost enjoyed old Darcy's company. It gave him an opportunity he'd been lacking to hone his technique in gaining trust. The old man hardly noticed Wickham was in reality laughing at him far more than with him.
In the course of that first meeting, it occurred to George that Darcy's father was lonely, though it had been some time since the death of his wife. He knew the younger Darcy often kept too busy now to spend much time with his father; a situation neither seemed interested in amending.
While Wickham might have taken that distance for granted as well, he now felt instinctively that this particular lapse could work in his favor, for he had come to view loneliness as a weakness begging to be preyed upon. He realized during one such afternoon of drink and game that the reason the man could not bear to shepherd his son in becoming Master of Pemberley was because the physical reminder of his wife was deemed too painful to endure. (Wickham found this laughable given the lack of what he perceived as real love between old Darcy and his wife. This, in and of itself, was laughable, considering Wickham neither understood real love nor would have recognized it if, indeed, it bit him on the arse.)
Henceforth, Wickham eagerly schemed to make himself everything Darcy was not, thereby entrenching himself that much more firmly with the old sot. In appearance, he was already light where Darcy was dark and bore little resemblance to the family line. He made himself free and available when Darcy was preoccupied, cheerful and blithe where Darcy was increasingly reserved and taciturn, unassuming and open where Darcy grew to be known as arrogant and aloof.
As Wickham became an effective surrogate for the relationship old Darcy might have had with his son, his own resentments formed the cruelest kind of punishment possible for his old friend. He began to derive wicked enjoyment from Darcy's distress over the relationship. It amused him that Darcy had only embraced the role of Master so thoroughly in the hopes of pleasing his father but in doing so, had only achieved the further removal of himself from his father's life. In those moments, Wickham grew to relish a perverse sense of triumph at the hurtful look of betrayal in Darcy's eyes that couldn't quite be masked.
In time, Darcy learned to ignore the cutting pain of hearing his father's laugh and seeing his smile far more frequently when the company included George Wickham. He grew accustomed to the dull ache of finding the two of them together, seemingly engrossed in secret affairs of which he had no knowledge. He hid George's many escapades at Cambridge from his father's attention knowing such scandal would upset him greatly. He closeted away the bitterness he felt at the consolation old Darcy provided to a seemingly distraught George at Nigel Wickham's funeral, comfort he was unable or unwilling to give his own son when his mother died. He supported Wickham's decision to leave Cambridge to return to Pemberley in the midst of that supposed grief. He forced himself to forget how it felt to see a man he'd once worshipped be drawn in by Wickham and yet pay his son almost no mind at all.
Later, he would even convince himself to ignore the creeping suspicion that it was Wickham's presence that had somehow driven the elder Darcy to an early grave. He had no foundation for this suspicion and probably never would, but it did not escape his notice that his father's adherence to 'all things in moderation' (a favored recommendation of his in years past) went out the window when it came to drinking or smoking cigars with Wickham.
Darcy could still remember the conversation that passed between himself and Wickham only weeks after the funeral. By that time, Darcy had taken his father's study as his own at the urging of Mrs. Reynolds, who gently reminded him that he was officially the Master now, though he had been acting as such for several years by that time.
He'd taken the study with great reluctance and in spite of the fact that every time he entered the room, the presence of his father was so strong he was hit with a wave of refreshed grief that nearly brought him to his knees. The same memories made him endeavor to quell this reaction by reliving the many times his father had admonished him for showing too much emotion when he was a child, telling him not to be so thin-skinned. He forced himself to sit at his father's desk for hours at a time doing absolutely nothing but working to shutter up the raging grief inside him.
It was in the midst of one of one of these sessions that Wickham came to see him.
The will had been read several days prior, including the fairly recent provision that set aside the living at Kympton especially for him. Though Darcy had known of the will's contents for some time, it was still discomforting to have it be stated aloud in the dispassionate voice of his father's solicitor.
Such was the direction of his thoughts when a preemptive knock sounded from the door as Wickham entered the room. Darcy frowned automatically at Wickham's failure to observe the propriety of being announced first by the staff. Instead, he acted like a member of the family who needed no introduction. By this time, he and Wickham were not on the best of terms though neither had gone so far as to state plainly that the pretense of any friendship between them had died along with Darcy's father. Darcy had suspected for some time that Wickham often tailored this sort of behavior specifically to unnerve him.
Without preamble, Wickham had stated frankly that he was there about the living, a conversation Darcy dreaded having. If Wickham wanted to take it now, the responsibility of how and when to dislodge the current rector would fall to him. Yet before he could much anticipate the need to relate this to Wickham, he was met with unpleasantness of a completely different kind as Wickham told him disinterestedly that he only wanted the value of the living, not the living itself.
"What do you mean?" Darcy had been unable to keep himself from asking. "My father was under the impression you wanted to join the church." It was one of his dearest wishes, he thought frantically. What do you mean by not taking it? In his grief-stricken shock, he'd played right into Wickham's hands.
"Oh Darcy, how naïve you are," he'd drawled with a look of infuriating superiority. "I'm not about taking orders. I'm not sure where you father came up with that idea. I mean, really. Can you imagine anyone less suited to making sermons than I?"
In the end, if any good could be said to have come from Wickham's presence at Pemberley during the previous years, it existed only in the happiness the son saw in his father once again, if only for a short time. Though the means hurt him, for the end result of his father's happiness, Darcy would likely have sacrificed much more. Only in the memory of that happiness did he agree to surrender to Wickham the value of the living in one payment.
It was all Darcy could do to keep his countenance as he wrote out a check to his former friend and watched him leave. He tried not to feel that his father would be thoroughly disappointed by his inability to somehow force Wickham to take the living so kindly left for him.
He tried not to feel like he'd failed him in this, too.
If he made a point from that time on not to feel too strongly one way or another about anything or anyone, it was unconsciously done. Aside from his sister, the fact that he took to keeping the world at arm's length rarely intruded upon his thoughts. For his sanity, he treated thoughts of Wickham as the old proverb suggests; that which is out of sight is therefore out of mind.
Until now, of course.
He had successfully avoided all the bitterness, all the jealously, all the hurt for so long that he managed to believe it no longer existed. Certainly there had been reminders of it after Ramsgate, but even then he'd justified the level of his anger with Wickham as being entirely on his sister's behalf.
No longer. Now he acknowledged it and called it by its name. Repeated the words in his mind again and again.
Loathing. Unadulterated loathing. He loathed Wickham.
He hated Wickham and he hated himself for allowing his feelings to culminate in this sick jealousy involving, of all things, a woman. He hated that he'd allowed Wickham under his skin to the extent that he'd driven his favorite horse to lather. At that moment, he even hated Elizabeth for being so taken with such an obvious rake.
Appalled at himself, he dismounted roughly, realizing with dismay that not only was Admiral lathered, but his eyes wheeled about nervously, no doubt reacting to the emotion of his rider. Darcy sighed heavily and reached for the bridle, feeling that much worse when Admiral jerked away in alarm.
"Ho, there," he murmured softly, attempting to exude a tranquility he did not feel. He made soft soothing sounds and stroked his face and next until the horse began to calm and breathe more deeply, Darcy all the while willing him to understand this wretched and inadequate form of apology. He'd never lost himself in such a way that directly affected the horse and he felt as though he offended a dear friend.
After several minutes of this, Admiral blew out a breath and nudged his shoulder hard, as though seeking to remind him of whose side he was on. That and, Darcy imagined, it was his way of saying, Pull yourself together, man!
Darcy glanced around, attempting to place his position to Netherfield, and recognized nothing around him. With a huff of frustration, he led Admiral to the top of a small rise to get his bearings. Still, he could see no landmarks by which to orient their position.
At long last, he spied the weather vane atop Netherfield's stable through the leaves of a large chestnut blocking his view of the house. In the imprudence of his flight, he had succeeded in bypassing Netherfield entirely and by a least half a mile to the west.
The sun was beginning to break through the clouds and the day was turning warm and humid, a fact Darcy was now all too aware of as sweat began to dampen his collar. His hat had become dislodged during their mad dash, and the sun beat down on his head with a strength that felt like high summer. To cool his body and mind, he wished for a breath of air that seemed strangely absent in the heaviness that all too readily matched the feeling lingering in his chest. Roughly, he tugged loose the knot of his cravat and aimed his steps towards Netherfield as Admiral trudged tiredly behind him.
As he approached, he could see Bingley and several grooms in front of the stable door in animated conversation. The boy Edmund was already in the process of rubbing down Bingley's horse as his father, the head groom, spoke with the rider, and a third groom removed the saddle and took it inside. Darcy sighed as he recognized the level of Bingley's worry immediately, both in his posture and in the disarray of his hair. Both his own hat and Darcy's were clutched in one of Bingley's hands, the other making yet another pass through his bright red mane. Darcy could easily imagine he was the subject of their discourse.
Edmund was closest to him as he approached and the boy gave a very loud, obviously false cough that got the attention of Bingley and his father.
"Ah, Darcy! There you are! My goodness, are you alright?" Again, Bingley ran his hand through his impossibly mussed hair. Darcy suspected he looked quite disheveled himself. "You and Admiral quite outstripped us and then I lost sight of you. What on earth happened?"
"Ah…" Darcy glanced at where Edmund and his father gawked at the two of them curiously.
"Er… Allow me to take care of Admiral for you, sir," Edmund's father said pointedly, getting the hint that Darcy wanted to talk to Charles alone. "Come along, Edmund." This last he said sternly, for it was clear the boy was reluctant to leave when something exciting was happening.
"But—" Edmund started.
"Now, please," his father said louder as he walked Admiral past the threshold. Darcy could all but see the boy's shoulders slump a bit in disappointment and was slightly amused but felt little like laughing. If he did, he had a feeling it would sound as hysterical as he'd felt not twenty minutes ago. Instead, he watched as Edmund glumly took the reigns of Bingley's gray and started trudging after his father. Charles stepped closer to him as the boy left, holding out Darcy's hat.
"What is it, Darcy? You looked as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I— I have to say, it felt a bit like seeing one." He took the hat gingerly, as though it were the ghost in question.
"Really? I don't—"
"Charles, first, I must apologize. I shouldn't have left you like that, it was terribly rude of me. I'd be happy to explain. Perhaps inside? After we've… had a moment to refresh?" Darcy wanted a moment to get his thoughts in order before trying to explain to Bingley why the sight of a menial militia member had sent him into such a fit. Bingley, ever the consummate host, was happy to oblige.
In a quarter hour, the two of them met in the sitting room in which Darcy had penned the letter to his sister while Elizabeth was at Netherfield. Darcy had spent the intervening time setting his appearance to rights and wondering whether or not he ought to tell Bingley about Ramsgate. In the end, he concluded his friend would understand that it was to be held in strictest confidence. Bingley needed to know the truth of Wickham since he was now bound to play host to the man.
Darcy wouldn't put it past Wickham to pick pockets and possibly even steal from the house while he was in attendance. Bingley could at least warn the servants to keep an eye out.
When he entered the room, Bingley was already pacing up and down near the windows. He stopped as Darcy gestured for him to sit and took a seat on the opposite couch.
"Please, have a seat, Charles."
"Darcy, I really am quite worried. Are you alright?"
Darcy felt abashed at his friend's clear concern for him and was all the more embarrassed to have caused him alarm at a time when he was already feeling the stress of the upcoming ball. He wondered at the young man's ability to retain his head of thick, reddish blonde hair given the number of times he ran his fingers through it when feeling pressure such as he had of late.
"Honestly…. I am fine, Charles, thank you. I must ask… do you remember when I told you about the boy I grew up with named Wickham?" Bingley paused, his eyes narrowing as he shuffled through older memories.
"I believe so," he stated slowly as it came back to him. "Ah, yes… was he not the one who was suppose to take the living at Kympton but refused it? The living your father left to him in his will?" Darcy gave a wry chuckle, nodding.
"That's the one."
"Oh!" Bingley exclaimed as he began putting the two together. "Oh, no… surely not."
"I'm afraid so."
"You mean to say… that was him? The man who chose not to join the church is now a soldier? From what you told me, he hardly seemed the type to do either," Bingley frowned in surprise.
"You don't know the half of it, unfortunately," Darcy grumbled sourly. Hoping it wasn't a dreadful mistake, he went on to give a brief overview of what transpired at Ramsgate, leaving out the more delicate details regarding his sister.
There was a point at which Darcy had hoped Georgiana and Charles might take a match one day. Though she was too young at the time she was first introduced to the Bingleys, he had thought it would be worthwhile to watch her interactions with Charles to see if she developed feelings over time. Also, the more time they spent together under conditions that lacked the pressure to marry quickly, the better. The more rapport they developed, the more comfortable she might be with the idea of one day marrying him.
Though Charles and Georgiana got along perfectly well, she exhibited no more partiality toward him than she did any other acquaintance; he saw no sign his sister might one day feel differently about him. Marriages had been built on much less, though, and she did feel an easy, friendly affection for him. Ultimately, he thought he might revisit the matter one day if Bingley did not marry on his own before it was time for Georgiana to be out in society.
After Ramsgate, though, he did come to wish they had shown a little more feeling towards one another. Then at least he would know his sister was marrying an honorable man who's temperament and flaws were already in evidence. As it was, he dreaded the day Georgiana came out and started to draw the attention of suitors entirely unknown to him. He did not relish the thought of having to divine those men who were only seeking her fortune from those who were not.
He held no illusions about his own fate when it came to matrimony — he needed a match that brought honor to the family name whether he loved the woman or not. Georgiana, however, would wither away in a relationship in which there was no love. He simply couldn't see her thriving that way.
In any case, the most recent interactions between Charles and his sister signified no change in the way they saw each other and that had been before Miss Bennet entered the picture. Given his behavior toward the latter, he imagined the possibility of Charles joining the Darcy family was even more remote.
Darcy couldn't quite bring himself to regret not having Caroline Bingley as a confirmed relation rather than simply the sister of a friend. She needed no further reasons to invite herself to Pemberly whenever she could manage.
Charles listened with great concern as his friend related the Ramsgate tale involving the duplicitous Wickham. When Darcy had finished, Bingley once again ran a hand through his hopeless mane.
"I am so sorry to hear that… I had no idea, Darcy, really. I can rescind the invite to the militia if you don't wish him to attend. O-or I could find a way to speak with Colonel Forster and ask him to ensure Wickham is elsewhere that night—"
"Oh, no, please, Charles. I don't want you to change anything you've done. If Wickham shows his face here, I can handle it," he interrupted with much more confidence than he felt. "I suspect he will not, however, because while he doesn't mind making mischief, he has never been one to seek out conflict. He can't be sure I won't have revealed the truth about him to everyone present."
"Are you sure? I really don't mind disinviting them." Charles tight smile revealed that he might, however, mind having to tell Caroline he was disinviting them.
"Yes. I am certain. Now that I know he is here, I shall be more prepared to see him. I was taken quite off guard, seeing him walking with the Bennets."
"Oh, yes!— The Bennets! Er — do they know about him, do you think?"
"I doubt it. Wickham is very engaging and modest when he wants to be. I don't wish to alarm them but they ought to be warned…"
"Shall I try to relate this to Ja— er, Miss Bennet?"
Darcy chuckled again, both at the situation and Charles' slip. "No. No, I will take care of it. It is my responsibility. And I trust that otherwise, this matter will stay between us." He stated the last plainly, just so there was no possibility of confusion.
"Of course, Darcy," Bingley drawled with exasperation. "I would never do anything to hurt your sister. She is as dear to me as my own." Darcy nodded, thinking briefly again about the lost hope of Bingley as Georgiana's husband.
"I believe you, Charles. I apologize for speaking so bluntly. And… thank you," he said simply. Bingley waved a hand as if to suggest it was nothing.
"Speaking of sisters." He cleared his throat, straightened his coat, and squared his shoulders in preparation. "It is past time I seek out my own and attempt to keep her from going mad." Darcy merely raised his eyebrows with a slight grimace to indicate he did not in any way envy his position.
As Bingley left the room, Darcy made his way over to the windows and stood for a time gazing into the distance in thought, considering how best to address the issue.
On one hand, there was Colonel Forster, head of the regiment. He debated the possibility of alerting the colonel of Wickham's abominable past deeds. He couldn't see his way clear to it on several fronts; one, he was loath to give any more consequence, whether in time or thought, to the man who had so nearly ruined his sister and two, he was all but certain that any interference in Wickham's career in the regiment would be seen no more kindly than his 'refusing' the living in Kympton to him. There was little chance of improving his image to anyone to whom Wickham had already told the sorry tale; he could only make himself look worse.
On the other, there was Elizabeth. It was almost certain she was one of those who believed whatever Wickham had told her so far. Anything he did that impacted Wickham's chances would only solidify him in her mind as an unpleasant, cruel fellow intent on ruining a former friend. Additionally, it was always a possibility (however remote) that Wickham genuinely wanted to make a fresh start in this military venture of his... perhaps he should let well enough alone one way or another and allow Wickham to succeed or fail on his own merits.
No... I cannot. What if I say nothing and he tries to ruin her? I would never forgive myself.
There was nothing for it. He would only speak to Colonel Forster if worse came to worse, but he would have to tell Elizabeth somehow. If nothing else, it felt vitally important that she stay away from him… since she was the only one he knew for certain had captured Wickham's attention. He could only hope there was no one else for the moment.
Given that the ball was mere days away, the most logical option would be to ask her to dance with him. Unfortunately, this would have implications to the community he would be unable to take back. One dance, however, was less likely raise expectations than what would transpire between Jane Bennet and Charles (yet another situation he must keep an eye on).
For Fitzwilliam Darcy, it seemed, the Netherfield ball was destined to be a busy evening. Whatever risk he would face in dancing with Elizabeth, it would be worth it to warn her about Wickham before it was too late.