Page 55 of Undone

The name brought Elizabeth immediately to his thoughts before the greater puzzle reclaimed his attention.

"Yes." Fitzwilliam lowered his voice. "I have a plan, but it will only answer if we confront the two of them directly. There is more besides. I have begun to suspect you have been watched for far longer than either of us imagined. Perhaps even here, at Pemberley."

Darcy stared at him.

“Here?”

His cousin nodded.

“Consider it. How else has every endeavour of yours been anticipated? Crops destroyed. Livestock poisoned. Fires begun at precisely the wrong moment.

“Who besides yourself knows this estate as intimately as its master? Who knows your tenants, your servants, your habits, and every corner of Pemberley because he was raised almost as your equal?”

Darcy eyes widened as realisation struck him with dreadful force.

“Wickham.”

“Precisely. I do not suppose he acts alone. Men remain here who remember him fondly. Whether through loyalty or simple carelessness, someone has been supplying him or someone else with information.”

“Good God...”

“The more I consider it,” Fitzwilliam said quietly, “the more convinced I become that none of this began recently. It is too deliberate. Too patient. Mrs. Younge's complicity at Ramsgate no longer seems an isolated villainy. I believe it formed part of the same design.”

Darcy closed his eyes.

“No...”

“It would have ruined Georgiana's reputation beyond recovery,” Fitzwilliam said gently. “It would have stained the Darcy name for a generation.”

“How did I not perceive it?” Darcy whispered. “I believed myself capable of seeing through Wickham's pretences.”

“You were deceived because you loved him as a brother.” Fitzwilliam's voice softened. “That does not make you a fool, Darcy. It makes him a villain.”

Darcy rested his head against the back of the settee, struggling to order the chaos that had become his life.

At length, he opened his eyes. “This widow you mentioned, Mrs. Vane...who is she, and how does she fit into all this?”

“That,” Fitzwilliam said after a short silencr, “is precisely the difficulty. Beyond being a wealthy widow residing at Buxton, I know almost nothing of her.”

He met Darcy's gaze.

“But I have men making enquiries as we speak. If there is anything to be found, we shall have it soon.”

Darcy said nothing for a long while. His gaze remained upon the dying fire, the coals having burned low while neither of them had thought to replenish them. Wickham. Mrs. Younge. And now Mrs. Vane, most likely the woman who had shown him nothing but civility at Ashcombe, yet who, by some unseen thread, appeared connected to it all. He drew a weary breath. He had welcomed his cousin believing that, at last, he knew the hand behind the misfortunes that had dogged him these five years. Instead, he was left with but one more name, and greater confusion than before.

Twenty-Two

Hertfordshire

4th December, 1811

Darcy

Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam reached Hertfordshire on the afternoon of the fourth day after leaving Pemberley. They drove directly to Colonel Forster’s headquarters in Meryton, where every arrangement had been made in accordance with the letters Fitzwilliam had dispatched ahead. Wickham had been quietly detained upon his return to the town, while Mrs. Younge, apprehended at St Albans by the Bow Street man following her, had been conveyed under escort to Hertfordshire earlier that morning.

Colonel Forster received them in his office without ceremony. The gravity of Fitzwilliam’s correspondence had persuaded him that the matter extended far beyond an unpaid debt or an offence against military discipline, and he had already examined the note of hand Darcy had purchased. The signature had been compared with several specimens of Wickham’s writing held amongst the regimental papers, leaving no question of its authenticity.

The room prepared for the examination lay at the end of a narrow passage, removed from the bustle of the headquarters. It was plainly furnished, containing little beyond a stout oak table, six chairs, and a fire that had been allowed to burn low against the chill of the December afternoon. Two narrow windows admitted what little daylight remained, though thegathering dusk had already begun to cast long shadows across the floorboards.