Chapter Twenty-Five

George Wickham was not enjoying the felicitous existence that he felt strongly he was due. And it had all started so well.

He was born lucky, blessed to be the first in his family to manifest a gift. And what a gift. He was a happy child brimming with beauty and charm. Everyone treated him like a prince. And he lived in a castle, or at least in very near proximity to one. His father was the Pemberley steward, and the Squire was so fond of him as to become his godfather. He was a gentleman by law and education, effectively brother to the heir. Young Darcy was Georgie’s plaything, who would do anything he asked.

When they started school together, Georgie discovered that almost everyone would do as he asked. Even the teachers could be bent to his whim, as long as he chose his words carefully, listening to the inner voice that told him what to say to get his way. It was an ideal existence. Then things started to change. Over time he noticed that people, Darcy in particular, were becoming more resistant to his charms. Not all people, only those who were around him the longest. By the fourth year, most of his year mates and his teachers accommodated his requests more out of habit than through actual persuasion.

This set the pattern for the rest of his education. He could convince new acquaintances of almost anything, but the longer someone interacted with him, the less effective his gift became. Darcy grew to be completely immune. In university, Georgie made many new friends among the scions of society and new conquests among the fairer sex. Certainly, he also made quite a few enemies among those men with strong wills and sharp wits. As he did not know who these men were before they had already taken offence from his harmless pranks and prevarications. The fact that one of these men was the Dean and one of the ladies was his niece led to the sudden end of his academic career, much to the disappointment of his father and godfather.

The years after leaving university were full of exploits and misadventures. Eventually Georgie’s childhood truly came to an end with the death of his father, followed not long afterwards by the passing of his godfather. He knew it was time to put away the toys of childhood and pursue his future. For that he needed funds. Old Mr. Darcy had always intended him for a life in the Church. He had no interest in such an ecclesiastic existence and made a deal with Darcy to produce a tidy sum in return for signing away any rights to the promised living. While he initially convinced a solicitor to take him into training, his goal was to find and marry an heiress or at least a wealthy widow of independent means and no sons.

But time after time, he found that such women usually had some protector that was not above providing Georgie the most painful persuasion to move to a less defended prey. He also discovered that cards, horses, cocks, and dice were all completely immune to his gifts; though he was never convinced that, if he just kept trying, he would not find a way to make them obey his whims. These continued attempts cost him the rest of his inheritance and much more.

Two years before, when he heard the living at Kympton was vacant, he approached Darcy to claim what had been left him. The jackanapes had flat out refused him what his godfather had promised him. This left him with few choices. He took to the road. He found patrons and special friends to keep him in comfort, but eventually his welcome always seemed to run out. Eventually he realized little Georgie needed to return to where it all began and claim all that was meant to be his from the beginning. After all, the old man had loved him much more than that stick-in-the-mud Fitzwilliam. He had a plan. Lovely young Georgianna was a wealthy woman in her own right, but more importantly she was heir to all of the Darcy wealth, if anything should happen to his old friend.

Little Georgiana was a ripe for the plucking, as he had expected. He was one day away from having it all, when that damned dark cloud once again blotted out his bright future. That left him with no choice. He was seriously contemplating exploring the joys of an extended sea voyage, on the first ship he could find, before certain unsavory tipstaffs or bloodthirsty shylocks should find him. Instead, it was a Frenchman.

“Mr. Wickham, my name is LaFontaine. I have acquired all of your outstanding debts, both legitimate and otherwise.”

“That was very kind of you,” Georgie offered, pitching his tone to reach his audience as only he could. Suddenly there was a pistol pointed at his nose.

“Don’t speak. If I have need of your response, you may nod yes or no. Do you understand?”

The suddenly silent man nodded enthusiastically to the pistol.

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“In order to stay alive and free you will do a few … favors for me. First you will be accepting a commission in the Derbyshire militia.”

Providing the Frenchman his favors had not proven too onerous at first. Rather than removing to the wilds of the Peak District, Lieutenant Georgie was posted to the War Office, as a liaison for his nominal home unit. While in the Horse Guards headquarters, he was able to make a number of new friends, mostly general officers. He listened as they poured out their woes and fears of the Tyrant’s forces sweeping across the world and somehow crossing the Channel to Albion’s pristine shores. They would even share with him their schemes to prevent such tragedies and to knock the Devil’s Favorite back on his boney arse. These were exactly the sorts of things the Frenchman was most interested in. And as long as LaFontaine was happy, Georgie’s life was quite pleasant.

Then he decided to send Georgie to some bucolic hinterland to gather intelligence on his militia compatriots.

“I want you to sow chaos and discord, but with subtlety and finesse. I am told there are two magistrates that are particularly troublesome to my compatriots. You are to separate them, if at all possible. You are to hamper the efficacy of the investigation and sabotage the effective resistance. And most importantly, you are to report to me about everything, every person, every word, every action. Do you understand?”

Georgie nodded enthusiastically.

When Georgie learned that that damned Darcy was one of the magistrates in question, he spent a quarter hour cursing continuously, without repeating himself more than twice. After the initial coordination meeting, Georgie had made sure to create the schedules in such a way as to separate Darcy and the delectable Miss Bennet. He smiled at the idea of a lady magistrate, though he supposed she was actually a sheriff, as her bookworm father was the official peacekeeper. He felt the best way to separate her from the usurper was to seduce her himself. It was a distasteful, tedious task, but he was willing to undertake it for the good of the nation.

The first meeting at the cit’s soiree went just as planned. He could tell from her expression, before the foolish soul driver interrupted them, that she was thinking differently of Darcy. During the next few days, he made an effort to place himself in proximity to Miss Bennet. He was not certain, but thought his efforts were progressing as well as could be expected with a country bumpkin still attached to her mother’s leading strings. The constant presence of the pestilential parson was problematic. When he learned from the lady mushroom that Miss Magistrate’s mother had her all but leg-shackled to the fool of a finger post, he decided to use that.

“Darcy, old boy,” Georgie said after another all-hands meeting the one-winged colonel had called. Darcy had dark rings under his eyes from all the night patrols. Georgie had watched him watching the delectable Miss Next-in-line throughout the meeting. He thought he had something to make the usurper’s ringed eyes red. “Do you not feel that all is as it should be?”

“What do you mean, Wickham? I do not have time for your thoughtless diversions. Say what you mean then leave me be.”

“I was just wondering if you were as satisfied as I that Miss Elizabeth had made such a prudent match.”

“Of what are you speaking?”

“Had you not heard? Her aunt was telling me that it is all but settled between her and her cousin the parson. He is the heir to Longbourn. She will be its mistress, allowing her to continue her care of the estate for decades to come. I cannot but feel she will be happy to stay at her home, for which she has such strong feelings.”

Darcy left the tent without speaking. Georgie smiled.

Thinking of the parson, when next he saw the bumbling knight’s ape-leader bringing back a patrol, Georgie decided to stir the pot a bit more. It was a long shot, but … “Miss Lucas, what do you think of Mr. Collins…”

The next day while working with the Colonel, Georgie was overheard muttering, “That makes no sense.”

“What have you found, Mr. Wickham?”

“I’m sure it is nothing, sir.”

“Out with it.”

“Well … it’s just that I was going over some notes from the original attacks and the Meryton battle …”

“And … Come on man, don’t make me beat it out of you.”

Releasing a heavy sigh, Georgie said “I could not help but notice that it was only days after the arrival of Mr. Darcy into the neighborhood that the initial attacks happened. It also seems odd that he led Miss Bennet into two different deadly battles that turned out to be false leads, before Mr. Bennet, over Mr. Darcy’s objections from what I have heard, discovered the clue that led them to the Dash’s farm.”

“I know all that, though when you put it in those terms it …” the Colonel shook his head. “What else?”

“As I said, I’m sure it might be nothing, but it struck me that Mr. Darcy, who is by all accounts, peerless in his powers … well, he let the fire-wielding woman go during the fight at Meryton. He basically ensured her escape, almost assisted in it by sending her away from the fight with his gravity gift.”

“A mistake?”

“For someone with his experience and abilities, it seems like a very unlikely mistake, sir. Or so it occurred to me.”

The Colonel turned back to his own papers with no further acknowledgement, though Georgie could see him thinking.

On the morning the 22nd, Georgie rode an hour and a half south to the outskirts of London to meet with his connections. “There will be a ball at Netherfield on the evening of the 26th. All of the local gentry will be in attendance, and a general invitation has gone out to all militia officers. Please pass the word.”

“I have it, boy,” snapped Mansfield. “Now go back to your tea party.” Georgie would have put the grizzled old man in his place, but the six-armed soldier was looking far too handy with all those bayonets.

With colleagues like these was it any wonder that Georgie was not enjoying the felicitous existence that he felt strongly he was due?