Page 111 of A Question of Character

“You are acquainted?” she asked, astonishment plain in every syllable.

“Our acquaintance is of some duration,” Darcy said.

Wickham’s mouth moved, though not quite into a smile. “Yes. Of some duration.”

The silence that followed was too long for civility and too short for accusation. Darcy could not expose him here. Not before Elizabeth. Not before a girl whose bright color had drained from her cheeks at the sudden alteration in the room. Lydia. The thought landed with belated horror. Lydia Bennet, who had looked at Wickham last night as if he were the whole of her future.

Darcy spoke again to Wickham. “Will you accompany me to the door?”

Wickham’s eyes narrowed by the smallest degree. Then he bowed. “Of course.”

Mrs. Bennet made a faint, bewildered sound. Elizabeth stood.

Darcy did not look at her. If he did, he might say too much.

He crossed the room, aware of Wickham following, aware of every eye fixed upon them, and stepped into the hall with the rigid self-command of a man walking out of a room before the walls closed in.

The hall gave them no true privacy. Mrs. Bennet’s drawing room lay a few steps away, the front door stood within sight, and a maid with a dusting cloth had frozen near the stairs with the guilty stillness of a servant who wished she had chosen another moment to polish the banister. Darcy did not trust himself to speak where anyone might hear him. He walked toward the side door that opened upon a small gravel sweep and stopped when the air struck his face.

Wickham followed.

Outside, Longbourn looked offensively peaceful. Sunlight lay upon the worn stone step. A bee worried at the late flowers in a pot near the wall. Somewhere beyond the shrubbery, a younger girl laughed, unaware that her future had just been dragged into danger by the very man standing before him.

Darcy snapped, “What are you doing here?”

Wickham’s brow furrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“With this family.”

“I am a clerk in Mr. Philips’s office. Mr. Philips is Mrs. Bennet’s brother. I call here often.”

“You expect me to believe chance brought you to Longbourn?”

Wickham stared at him, and for the first time his confusion looked too unguarded to be comfortable. “Yes, because it did.”

“How did you know of my attachment to Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

“What?”

“Do not insult me with ignorance.”

Wickham’s face altered now, but not into guilt as expected, but impatience. “Darcy, I have no notion what accusation you have constructed, but if this concerns Miss Elizabeth Bennet, then I assure you I knew nothing of any attachment. I did not even know you were in Hertfordshire until you stood up in that drawing room.”

“You received my letter.”

“I received a letter,” Wickham said. “A remarkably threatening one with no useful explanation in it.”

Darcy took one step nearer. “No useful explanation?”

“It warned me from Miss Darcy, whom I have not seen since she was a child. It spoke of Ramsgate, where I have not been. It threatened consequences if I communicated with a young lady I have had no intention of addressing in any manner at all. I confess I found it baffling.”

“Do not speak her name.”

Wickham’s mouth shut.

“You are not worthy to use it.”

Color rose in Wickham’s face, but he mastered himself with visible effort. “Then I will not. But you are wrong if you imagine I have any designs upon your sister.”