The door was harshly slammed open.
Georgiana Wickham startled up in shock from her seat, gripping her book tightly in her hands.
Mr. Younge paraded into the room, wearing a false beard, a wig, a new reddish scar across his forehead, and a fierce scowl. He looked her up and down with a dismissive coldness, as though she were a disgusting poisoned rodent wriggling on the floor of his drawing room, and the only question that he had was whether he'd prefer to beat her head in with a hammer, or let the poison take its awful course.
Mrs. Younge and Wickham followed, neither smiling. The three of them seemed to fill the dingy room that served the Wickhams as a drawing room, breakfast room, and library.
She had not expected to see her husband this morning. And she had hoped to never see either of the Younges ever again.
Mr. Younge's smuggling operation that he operated out of one of the docks on the far side of the Thames had been discovered more than a month before. She had not seen either of them since, and she lived in hope that she would hear from Mr. Wickham someday that Mr. Younge had been captured and awaited his trial and inevitable hanging.
She'd been happily — as happily as she ever was, in any case, burrowed under a heavy wool blanket while reading one of the latest releases from Minerva press that she'd borrowed from the nearby circulating library. She'd worn a pelisse against the January cold, and she had pushed a faded blue armchair right next to the window to catch as much light as possible. The gloomy sun did not last long at this time of year, and Georgiana liked to start reading as early as she could. It was still before noon.
With Wickham giving the lion's share and more of their quarterlies to the Younges, there was little money for proper candles, or even improper candles.
Usually, Wickham spent the whole day at drink and cards with friends, preferring bachelor chummery, without the polluting presence of a wife. When he was home of an evening, he invariably drank, and then he invariably ranted upon his favorite subject: How much he despised and loathed Georgiana's brother Fitzwilliam.
Mrs. Younge roughly grabbed the novel from Georgiana hands. She sneered at it. "Worthless sentimental garbage. Is this the sort of thing I taught you to waste your mind with?"
The woman hurled the book onto the floor, bending some of the pages and denting the cover.
Georgiana winced. The man who ran the circulating library would not be happy to see the damage. She picked it up, and said to Mrs. Younge, "I have made it my principal goal to unlearn all that you taught me."
She tried to hide her trembling under bravado.
While Wickham did not frighten her — he was terrified of her brother, and… he simply was not a violent man. That was not one of Wickham's many vices.
Every time she saw Mr. Younge, she felt like a vile spider crawled down her back. He was a man who ought to be feared, and who had killed more than one man with that knife he liked to clean his fingernails with.
"Ungrateful, worthless chit," Mrs. Younge replied. "You think our dear friend George did not tell us how you spat upon us? Refusing to let your brother give us the money we deserve. I found you a husband, did I not? Finder's fee."
"Quiet." Mr. Younge growled at his wife. He studied Georgiana, that cold, hateful look filling his eyes. Georgiana's heart raced, and a shiver of dread made her hands tremble. What sort of fool had she been to deny this man a fortune? "Upstairs — no tricks. I don't trust you. Upstairs with you. Leave that door open so I can see if you try to flee off."
Wickham laughed. "Where would she go?"
"I don't trust that piece of muslin. I never did — she'd find a watchman, or one of the runners to report where I am if she thought she could. My word upon it. Worthless woman." Mr. Younge spat in Georgiana's direction. "Up, up the stairs."
She stared blankly at him, holding the novel in front of her as though it was shield.
When she did not move quickly enough, he slid his knife out from where he kept it hid in his coat with a quick gesture, and mimed stabbing it towards her. "Out, bitch."
Georgiana's heart pounded in her chest as she fled the room.
She would have found someone to arrest the smuggler if she'd known how to safely do so.
In a minute Georgiana stood in the bedroom next to that bed where she slept with Wickham on those nights when he slept at home.
The silent stove stood in the corner.
Georgiana wore a pair of fingerless gloves and an autumn pelisse indoors due to the paucity of funds for coal. Georgiana shivered. Despite the cold a sheen of sweat covered her back and soaked her armpits.
A faint sound came out through the stove.
Without pausing, Georgiana opened the grate and knelt down, sticking her head close to where the pipe of the chimney went up through the stove. The pipe began in the drawing room before heading even higher, out of the house.
She had discovered in the autumn, shortly after they relocated to this more modest house, that she could easily hear conversations through the connected chimney if neither stove was lit. At the time Wickham had often entertained his friends here — that was near the end of those more prosperous days, when he still thought that the law would force Fitzwilliam to make the immediate transfer of her dowry to his possession. Georgiana did not like to stay with his friends, having her behind pinched by his bachelor friends, made to serve them beer and wine, and being surrounded by conversation of the most degraded and vile sort.
But… while she retreated to the bedroom to escape from Wickham, she wanted something like human company. She had no friends of her own, and no notion how to find them in her current situation.
So that intense loneliness had drawn her to listen to their laughing drunken conversation for hours on end.
"Nothing I can do!" George exclaimed as Georgiana put her ear against the stove. "I understand your present, difficult pos—"
"Devil take you, George! Devil and the devil's whores!" Younge's roar terrified Georgiana. "You are a worm, a dirty cheat, and a filthy rotting mold stain on the fabric of humanity."
"Stain on the fabric of humanity?" Wickham sneered back at his friend. "Now you have literary pretensions?"
"Gentlemen, gentlemen. Keep to the point, we may despise each other endlessly afterwards," Mrs. Younge's voice said placatingly.
"It is impossible for me to borrow against expectations," Wickham said. "I have tried, but there is no one who will trust me. That you have immediate need of the money does not make it possible."
"We will carve it out of your pretty wife," was Younge's reply.
"Ha!" Wickham bitterly laughed. "Ha, don't you think if it were that easy, I'd have paid you afore now?"
"I treat your promises to pay with the same respect I'd treat your mother's virtue."
Wickham spat at the man. "Don't insult the memory of my mother."
"I'll dig her up and break all of the bones, after I've murdered you if my current plan does not work."
"Dearest, you've scared our dear Wicky. You see how white he is." Mrs. Younge's voice again. "He knows that you will be excessively displeased with him if he does not help us to get what we're fairly owed. But we are all on the same side, we all want the same thing."
"It is all Darcy's fault," Wickham said. "Not mine, but—"
Mr. Younge replied with mockery in his tone, "You love this Darcy more than you love your own skin. He refused to let you be his Molly, eh? — that why you didn't tell him that you would beat his sister every day harder than the last until he paid you the money?"
"Fuck you." A thick glass slammed down on a table. "Darcy would have killed me."
"You little, pathetic, small coward," Mr. Younge replied, "And I will kill you if you don't do exactly what I tell you."
There was no sound.
Georgiana's hair stood on end. She was frightened, and not for her husband.
"I've figured it out. Solution to all your problems. See…" the Mr. Younge spoke slowly, hissing the 's' sound like a snake. "I've a friend who is a friend of the barrister whose office manages the settlement on your dear bitch heiress. Cost me a pretty penny to find this out — you ought to have told me the solution was so simple before — I'm going to add the charge to your debt."
"Fuck you, and I'll not—"
"Why didn't you tell me that we can just kill her to get the money?"
"What!" Wickham's shout was like Georgiana's own shock.
"Don't shout, Wicky," Mrs. Younge said. "It was a wholly reasonable error on your part, and my husband will explain all."
Georgiana felt her heart leap into her throat. She became more still than she'd ever been before.
"Her father was not quite so clever as you thought. Though the terms in which he settled the dowry on her allow her brother and her other guardian to control the terms under which the money is disbursed following a marriage, if she dies, the funds go to her natural heir — if she had a child, him. But if not…"
"What are you speaking of?"
"We kill her. You inherit the money. You can live happily," Mrs. Younge said cheerfully. "My husband and I get paid, and we'll be able to extricate ourselves from our present difficulties — we plan to relocate to the American colonies. I rather fancy the notion of buying one of those plantations with dozens of slaves."
"You want me to murder my wife? My Georgie-treasure? Are you insane?"
"No," Mr. Younge snarled back. "I am as sound of mind as any other thief or thug in London."
"No. She is—"
"It is simple really. I kill her, or I kill you. And then I'll kill her on general principles." There was a low thud, perhaps the sound of a knife being driven into a table.
There was no sound in the room for a long time.
Georgiana's breath was stuck. She was near to fainting. The frozen air around her was thick and choking.
There was sharp sound of a glass splintering and crackling as it was hurled on the floor.
Wickham's voice: "She does not deserve that. And that would be a betrayal of her father — he truly was my benefactor, and he loved me."
"Dear, dear Wicky, sometimes we must do things that are distasteful," Mrs. Younge replied in a saccharine tone. "Life is like that."
"Are you certain? Certain about the will?"
"Do you think I'd suggest we kill the girl if I were not? Or are you still desperately hoping that your Mr. Darcy will make you his catamite if you just simper for him?"
"If you suggest once more that I am a sodomite, I'll challenge you to a duel, even if you'll kill me." Wickham's voice was quiet, fierce, and unlike anything Georgiana had ever heard from him before.
"Oh, the suggestion strikes you to the quick?" A sneering laugh.
"I am not. And I will challenge you. I could not be a man if I did not. I did not ever wish for damned Darcy to make me his molly, his catamite, or anything else. I always despised him."
"I don't believe you — so much hate can only come from love."
"The point. The point!" Mrs. Younge cried. "Do not quarrel, lads, do not. It is as sure as the Bank of England that once she is dead, the money will be yours."
Another long silence.
"So what do we do? — just go upstairs and just cut the weasel?"
Georgiana's breath caught. She gasped, a deep loud breath. There was a bang as her head bashed against the side of the metal stove.
"What was that?" Wickham exclaimed. "I heard a sound."
"Bad conscience? Eh?" Mr. Younge snarled. "You'll not get out of this by claiming ghosts haunting the chimneys."
Wickham's voice was quiet. "She doesn't deserve this."
Terror. Terror. Terror.
Georgiana forced herself to stay still. She tried to imagine beating them over the head with the vase when they came up to the room.
I don't want to die.
"Kill that bitch in your own house?" was Mr. Younge's reply. "Are you stupid? Do you even know about the men that Mr. Darcy has hired to watch this house? — they wouldn't transfer the money if you were under prosecution for her murder. No, it needs to be done in a manner such that no one can suspect that you killed her."
"I won't do it myself," Wickham replied, as though he'd not heard what Mr. Younge had just said. "I can't. I've never killed a man. And she looks too much like her father."
"Worried about your own thin neck? Scared to have it snapped?"
"I'm not going to kill my own wife."
"Of course not. Of course not," Mrs. Younge said soothingly. "Not even my husband would expect a man to kill his own wife. And you are a gentle soul. You only need to arrange for her to be at the right place and at the right time. I had a thought that we could do right outside Vauxhall Gardens after you visit, give her a last chance for a little joy before the end."
Another long silence.
"If that is all…" Then Wickham said, "I can. I will. What is the plan?"
"I'll stab her — I'll like that more than I would like fucking her — and then I'll beat you about too. Pound in your cheeks so it doesn't seem suspicious. In front of witnesses, but not too many. Mr. Darcy and the rest of the world will just think it is a sad accident."
"When?"
"Tomorrow. One of my old men just betrayed me — I had to kill him, but the Runners found the body while I was preparing to toss it in the Thames. The sooner I am out of this country, the better."
"Tomorrow? So little time."
"If it were done when 'tis done," Mrs. Younge replied, "then 'twere well it were done quickly."
Soon after this there was the sound of doors opening and shutting. Georgiana pulled away from the stove and closed it softly. She lay down crosswise on the bed.
Her heart hurtled.
Had to leave.
Had to. Had to. Had to.
Oh, oh, oh. If only she had not been so stupid.
Why had she ever married a man like Wickham? Every step had been a mistake — but the worst had been her belief that she had no choice when she stood before that blacksmith. He had said she did not need to marry him if she'd changed her mind. He had been right. Better live as a disgraced girl forever than this.
She was pale, sweating all over, and shivering despite her coat.
All was quiet and cold. Every one of Georgiana's muscles ached.
Where would she go?
Even in this extreme, it was impossible to ask her brother for help. She was no longer Miss Darcy, and she simply would not turn herself into Miss Darcy once again.
Besides, if she told Fitzwilliam the truth, he would shoot Wickham, try to shoot Mr. Younge, and in the end, it would be her fault that her brother was hung.
She would far prefer to die than to have that upon her conscience.
After she'd waited for around an hour, tense and unmoving, for Wickham to enter the room again, Georgiana realized that he wouldn't.
A long shaky exhale.
Of course, he'd left the house. He had no desire to remain here longer than he must. She had enough of a sense of his personality to know that the guilt he felt about agreeing to this new scheme, one far more violent than his usual amorous tendencies, would drive him to avoid her presence.
She rose and to confirm cautiously tiptoed down the stairs and looked about at the rooms of the house.
Wickham was not there, though Georgiana nearly screamed when she found their rumpled maid-of-all-work who sat by the kitchen grate with her own novel.
After nodding to the woman, Georgiana went back up to her own room to quickly pack a bag filled with clothes and the little that she owned. It was not much, and there was nothing of substantial value that had not already been pawned. She still had her old jewelry box though. It was a simple but heavy Indiawood piece that she'd always liked more than the more elaborate and heavily jeweled boxes that her mother had preferred.
She stuffed it into the bag with the few changes of clothes since it might be worth a few shillings.
She refused to think about what she would do once she'd fled the rented house.
If she thought about the future, if she needed to decide where she would go before she started going there, she might freeze with indecision, and a fear of that unknown future would trap her here. Then she would be murdered, stabbed by Mr. Younge, and left to rot in the gardens in front of Vauxhall.
Once she'd packed the bag, she hurried downstairs. House slippers off. Walking shoes on. She stood up tall and stretched. Don't think. Just act. Just act. Just —
Grab the coat and out the door.
To the door.
Everything seemed dreamy and far away from her. It was suddenly like she was floating above herself, but her body somehow acted. Clean fluid steps, like when she worked with her dance master, or like how her brother walked.
Scratchy wool coat. It came off the hanger easily. She turned to pull it up her arm, but the sound of the door handle being turned stopped her.
Before she could react, the door was pulled open.
Wickham stood there, and he paused in the process of stepping over the threshold. He was lit behind by the sun. Their eyes met, and in that instant Georgiana could see a realization come over him, that she knew. His mouth hung open, and he began to reach out towards her.
Dropping her overcoat, Georgiana swung her bag, made heavy by the old jewelry box, as hard as she could at his head.
He shrieked and grabbed at it as it hit his forehead.
Georgiana ran past his startled hands and down the road, fleeing as Mr. Wickham followed her, fast as her legs would carry her.