“I yield! Damn, Darcy, don’t kill me!” Wickham looked exhausted and greatly aggrieved. As he clutched his wounded shoulder, bright red blood oozed out between his fingers, but his terrified eyes were fixed on Darcy.
Darcy hauled Wickham up by the neck of his shirt, his face only inches from Wickham’s. “If you ever touch my wife again – If you ever talk to her again – If you ever glance in her direction again – I will kill you!”
Wickham’s eyes went wide. “Your wife? I didn’t—“
Darcy’s fist connected resoundingly with Wickham’s stomach. Wickham fell back, hitting his head on the sill, and slumping to the floor, unconscious. Darcy stood over the man, breathing hard. Fitzwilliam grabbed his arm to keep him from hitting Wickham again, but Darcy felt his fury dissipate as he realized the threat from Wickham had ended.
Fitzwilliam stepped out of the room to descend the stairs and talk with their men downstairs. When he returned to the room, Darcy was tying Wickham’s hands together using the man’s own discarded cravat. “Our men have secured the downstairs. They captured Wickham’s men – one was knocked out and the other is tied up. None of our people were hurt. They are preparing to deliver those two to the jail. Do you want them to take Wickham too?”
Darcy gazed at their captive in disgust. “Not yet. I suppose we should get a doctor for his shoulder. Send a man for one and have someone come up and guard Wickham. Have them notify me when Wickham is awake. I have some questions for him; there is more to this story than it first appears.”
Fitzwilliam nodded slowly. “I am afraid you are right.”
After a man arrived to take charge of Wickham, Darcy bounded up the stairs to the attic bedroom. Preston was standing in front of the door, but gave way quickly to Darcy, who encouraged the soldier to go downstairs and help with the mopping up. Before he opened the door, Elizabeth rushed out. “I was so worried Wickham would kill you!” She flung her arms around his neck.
“I am all right, my love,” he assured her. With a strength he had not known she possessed, Elizabeth pulled him into the attic room, pressing him up against the cracked plaster of the wall and kissing him with an eagerness that rendered him breathless. “I should rescue you more often,” he said after she finally released his lips.
“I am certain there will be no need!” Elizabeth said emphatically. Then she leaned into him once more for another demanding kiss.
Half an hour later, Darcy, Fitzwilliam, and Elizabeth were sitting in the home’s small parlor. The Bow Street Runners had taken away the two hired ruffians, while some of the soldiers were upstairs guarding Wickham as the doctor treated him. Darcy had drawn Elizabeth into his lap as he sat on the room’s rather worn overstuffed loveseat and Elizabeth leaned into his chest, reassured by the warmth of his presence. It had been a long day. Fitzwilliam was seated across from them and the two men were discussing the details of their operation, including how to ensure that Wickham and his cronies were properly prosecuted.
Silence fell for a moment, only to be broken by Fitzwilliam. “What I do not understand is why Wickham undertook this scheme in the first place,” the Colonel glanced from Darcy to Elizabeth. “As attractive as Mrs. Darcy is, Wickham went to an awful lot of trouble just to seduce a beautiful woman.”
Darcy nodded. “I have been puzzling over that as well.”
Elizabeth settled next to Darcy, but he kept his arm about her. “I believe I have some pieces of that puzzle.” First recounting the conversation she had overheard between Wickham and Beecham, she then described the conclusions she had reached. Both men nodded in agreement, but they appeared sickened.
“Good God!” Darcy exclaimed in a strangled voice when she had finished. “The thought that someone would resort to such actions to ruin your reputation – it is appalling!”
“What a clever plan,” Fitzwilliam said with disdain. “Your reputation is ruined simply by having spent the night in the wrong house. Clever and disgusting.”
“Do you believe my conclusions are wrong?” Elizabeth asked.
Darcy stood and started pacing. “No, unfortunately I believe you are correct in every supposition. The question is: who would do such a thing? Who would hate you that much, desire my hand to that extent, and have the means to pay Wickham? It must have been a handsome sum since he did not demand a ransom from me. He is always one to wring the maximum profit from any situation.”
Fitzwilliam shook his head sadly. “There is only one probable suspect: Aunt Catherine.”
Darcy froze in his tracks. “She has the motive and the means,” he looked sickened at the thought. “I would rather find another candidate, but you are right, Richard. She is the likeliest culprit.”
“Would she do that to her own family? Her nephew—” Elizabeth asked.
“I am afraid family is the reason she would commit such an act.” Darcy said. “Her misplaced sense of pride and her insistence that I marry Anne. She can be ruthless in achieving her goals. Unfortunately, I can believe she would stoop to this.”
“She also does not consider you part of the family yet,” Fitzwilliam pointed out to Elizabeth. “It is that eventuality she thinks to prevent.”
“But does she even know Wickham?” Elizabeth’s expression was perplexed as she rested her head against the faded back of the loveseat.
Darcy stopped pacing and tightly gripped the back of a wooden chair. “Yes, Wickham would have met her when she visited Pemberley and he knows she wishes me to marry Anne. He must have visited Rosings to warn her about you.”
“So they concocted this scheme. Wickham seizes the opportunity to seduce Elizabeth and humiliate you – all for a princely sum, and Aunt Catherine assumes that once Elizabeth is ‘ruined,’ you will drop her and go running to Anne.” Fitzwilliam said.
“How horrible!” Elizabeth said. “To imagine them devising such a plan—”
Darcy settled onto the loveseat next to her and placed his arms around her. “It is despicable, but they did not succeed. Rather than spending the night in Wickham’s borrowed townhouse, you will spend it with me, your legally wedded husband.”
Comforted, Elizabeth let her head drop to Darcy’s shoulder. “I wonder who the witnesses are that Lady Catherine arranged,” she murmured.
Now it was Fitzwilliam’s turn to stand and pace. “I have a horrible suspicion it might be my parents.”