Pride and Premeditation (Jane Austen Murder Mystery #1)(66)

“I was shot,” Wickham insisted. He sounded nervous now. “When I was with the navy. You must have misunderstood, Lizzie.”

Lizzie had certainly misunderstood a great deal about this situation, but there was nothing wrong with her memory. She chose not to focus on that bit just now. “You wooed Georgiana?”

“We were in love!”

“He was in love with her fortune!” Darcy cut in. “And when our family didn’t give permission for them to marry, Wickham sought to force the matter by kidnapping Georgiana.”

“She went willingly.”

“She was fifteen!”

Lizzie caught her breath at the thought of someone as sweet as Georgiana Darcy taken in by Wickham’s deceitful words and promises—but she had very nearly been fooled by them herself, and she was older.

“I stopped them before they could reach Gretna Green,” Darcy explained, naming the Scottish town just over the border where a couple could marry without their family’s permission. “Wickham refused to leave quietly, unless I paid him ten thousand pounds.”

“Ten thousand pounds?” Lizzie could barely find the breath to voice the figure. “Did you?”

“I did,” Darcy said through gritted teeth, “and that was when we fought, and I challenged him.”

“But you didn’t arrive at the appointed time and hour?” Lizzie asked Wickham.

He refused to meet her gaze, keeping it firmly fixed on Darcy beyond her. “He didn’t,” Darcy confirmed. “God knows what he did with the money. I heard he joined the navy, and then deserted. I thought—hoped—that he’d simply drowned. Until you brought him up this evening.”

Lizzie had found herself so often at odds with Darcy that it came as rather a shock that she believed his every word. She saw now with startling clarity how Wickham had fooled her merely by appealing to her ego—and she had disclosed important details about her investigation. Abigail’s death was on her hands. She looked at the young man that she had once thought so charming. Caught between the dark waters of the Thames and a bullet, Wickham didn’t look so handsome anymore.

“You wanted to exact your revenge,” Lizzie said, addressing Wickham. “So you targeted Darcy’s best friend’s business, killed his brother-in-law, and framed Bingley. I suppose that once you had Netherfield and its owners out of the way, you had a plan to implicate Darcy in some sort of legal scandal? That’s why you wanted to swipe the legitimate insurance policy. You could make it seem as if Darcy were offering dodgy legal counsel, even encouraging illegal activity. It would have ruined him.”

“Exactly,” Wickham said.

“He’s not nearly smart enough to have figured that all out himself,” Darcy growled. “You forget that he worked for Pemberley for two years. Even if he had come up with a plan of that magnitude, he wouldn’t have had the drive to execute it.”

“Shut up, Darcy! You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

The fog began to shift, and in the long stretch of silence that followed, Lizzie could see Wickham and the entire scene more clearly than ever. He looked like a cornered animal—furious and frightened—and the hand holding the pistol trembled. Lizzie felt her courage waver, and she struggled to piece it all together. Logic, she reminded herself, but it was shockingly difficult to think logically when you stood between two pistols. “I find myself in agreement with Mr. Darcy,” Lizzie said, stalling. Could he have pulled this off by himself? But where was he escaping to? And . . . “Who’s waiting for you aboard that ship?” she asked.

The dock’s edge was a mere ten paces away, and so many ships were moored in the Thames that it was difficult to say for certain which one Wickham had been aiming for when he slowed the carriage. But if Lizzie’s hunch was correct, his destination would not be far off. Perhaps even close enough that whoever was waiting aboard was listening to every word. . . .

Lizzie was rewarded with the sound of two hands: clap . . . clap . . . clap.

Lizzie, Darcy, and Wickham searched the dark until they spotted the source of the sound—a figure standing on the deck of a schooner cozied up to the dock a mere stone’s throw away. “Bravo!” a voice called out.

A female voice.

Lizzie gasped, for she recognized it. A figure clad in breeches stepped forward, but it was no man—it was Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

“You’re much cleverer than I initially gave you credit for, Miss Bennet!” she called, leaning languidly against the deck’s railing. “Are you certain that you don’t want to reconsider my offer?”

Lizzie didn’t want to appear flustered, so she shouted back, “No thank you, Lady Catherine.”

Lady Catherine made a disappointed tsking sound and said, “Well, maybe not as clever as I thought, then.” The sound of a metallic click carried across the water, and quick as a flash, Lady Catherine held out her own pistol.

“Honestly,” Lizzie said in a shaky attempt at bravery, “don’t you think there are already plenty of pistols being waved about?”

“Lady Catherine?” Wickham asked, waiting for directions.

“Not now, Wickham. You’ve only made a larger mess of this. Miss Bennet, either you board this ship right now, or I shoot.”

“Who?” she asked. “Me or Darcy?”