Page 126 of Honor Requires

“I did not,” Wickham said plainly.

“No?” Hargrave’s tone remained even. “Mrs. Wickham appeared quite pleased to come to Town.”

Wickham’s chair scraped against the floor as he shifted. “You had no right.”

“I had every right,” Hargrave replied. “Your circumstances are not entirely your own, as you are well aware.”

A pause. “It would be a great pity,” Hargrave hinted, “if anything were to befall her while she enjoys the pleasures of Town.” The words were spoken lightly. The meaning was anything but.

Wickham’s voice dropped. “Are you threatening me?”

Hargrave did not answer at once. Instead, he allowed the silence to stretch, to settle, to press. “Remember our bargain,” he said at last. “Remember, also, how easily all that you possess might be taken from you.”

Wickham did not speak.

Hargrave inclined his head. “I trust we understand one another.” He departed without waiting for a reply.

Darcy remained where he was for several seconds after Hargrave had gone. The conversation had been brief. It had been sufficient enough for his understanding. Extortion. There was no other word for it. Darcy returned to the table.

Wickham had not moved. He sat as before, though the careless ease had vanished entirely. His hands rested flat against the table, his gaze fixed upon nothing, his expression drawn in a way that spoke more clearly than any words he might have offered.

Darcy signaled to a passing servant and requested a plate. When it was brought, he set it before Wickham. “You should eat,” he said.

Wickham regarded it with an air of detachment, as if encountering something unfamiliar. Then, slowly, he pushed it away. “I have no appetite,” he said. He rose abruptly, the movement unsteady. “For anything,” he added, though whether he spoke to Darcy or to himself was not entirely clear. Without another word, he turned and left.

Darcy watched him go. The room seemed emptier in his absence, though the surrounding noise had not diminished. He remained standing, his thoughts moving quickly now, aligning, connecting, forming a clearer picture than before. Georgiana was in Town, brought there not for pleasure, but for control.

Hargrave held Wickham through fear.

Through her. Darcy’s hands closed at his sides. He would threaten her. The realization struck with a force that burned through the last remnants of detachment.

This was no longer a matter of justice alone. It was immediate. Personal, and dangerous. Action would be required, careful and deliberate, but swift. Hargrave had made his move. Darcy would answer it. He turned from the table, his course already forming in his mind.

In the days that followed, Darcy did not abandon his efforts to remain near Wickham, though the man proved increasingly difficult to reach. Where once he had been careless and open in his dissipation, he now shifted between restless energy and abrupt withdrawal, as though governed by impulses he neither trusted nor controlled. Some evenings he spoke too freely, his words tumbling over one another in a manner that betrayed agitation rather than ease; on others, he would scarcely speak at all, departing early or avoiding company altogether.

Darcy observed the change with growing concern, recognizing in it not merely the effects of excess, but the strain of a man pressed from without and unraveling within.

It tried his patience in ways he had not anticipated.

He had spent years enduring stillness, forced into inaction. Now, with the end so nearly within reach, he found the waiting almost intolerable.

Hargrave’s design was evident, but incomplete, and Darcy could not determine what delayed its execution. More than once, he caught himself measuring time not in days but in opportunities lost, in chances still beyond his grasp.

Meanwhile, society maintained its endless circuit of engagements, and it was at one such gathering that he saw her—Georgiana—across a crowded room.

She stood beside a small group, her manner composed, her countenance gentle as ever, though there was a loneliness in her bearing that struck him with painful clarity.

Darcy did not move toward her. He did not trust himself to do so without betraying everything he had constructed.

Instead, he remained where he was, watching from a distance, his heart tightening at the sight of her so near and entirely beyond his reach.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The rooms at Lady Jersey’s were brilliant with light and movement, the great chandeliers above shedding such a profusion of brightness upon the polished floors and gilded moldings that every surface seemed to glow. The evening had drawn an excellent assembly, as it always did when the hostess chose to gather the higher circles about her, and the consequence of the company lent the occasion an air at once elegant and faintly oppressive. Footmen moved with practiced grace through the rooms bearing trays of ratafia and negus, while clusters of ladies in silks and satins formed and dissolved like shifting gardens under candlelight. Music drifted in from the adjoining room, not loud enough to command the gathering, but sufficient to lessen its edges.

Elizabeth stood with the Matlocks, Jane, and Bramley in a portion of the drawing room that afforded both a view of the assembly and a degree of shelter from its constant circulation. She had been grateful for the placement when they first arrived, though gratitude had quickly given way to restlessness. Her gaze moved too often toward the doors, her thoughts too often strayed from the conversation immediately before her, and she knew herself distracted in a manner that would once have mortified her.

Now, however, she found she could no longer regret it.