Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (97 page)

As much as Elizabeth enjoyed being shocked at Lady Millhouse’s narrative about Darcy’s aunt (her colourful euphemisms alone were worth the listen), Elizabeth was dangling yet over what bechanced with Mr. and Mrs. Darcy.

“Thus, Lady Catherine told Elinor about Mr. Darcy’s affair. Pray, what happened? Did she confront him? Was there a row?”

“Nothing so dramatic, I am afraid.” Lady Millhouse tsked several times. “Albeit, in a manner of speaking she did confront him. She was near term when she learnt of the affair. She died only days after the birth. But with her dying breath she told the rector what name she wanted her daughter christened.”

“Georgiana.”

“Indeed. I dare say Gerard suffered every time he spoke his daughter’s name. I know he behaved more circumspectly. A little too late for his wife, however.”

“I do not believe Darcy knows any of this.”

“Few do. The liaison was discreet. Gerard was always discreet in his assignations.”

“He had others?”

“Not after Elinor died. Though the Duchess of Devonshire is in her grave and that chapter ended, others are not so compleat. It is best to let them lie. Do you not agree?”

Elizabeth knew had she been otherwise inclined she had no choice but to think so too. In a less than facile change of discourse, she looked upon Darcy’s likeness and thereupon to his father’s.

“How tall was Mr. Darcy? I mean Gerard Darcy?”

“I believe that he was as tall as your husband and when young, his hair was dark as well. Odd, how some traits are stronger than are others. Should we not breed as we do
horses? Weed out the ill characteristics, dishonesty, hypocrisy—was that done, we would not have any Lady Catherines about at all.”

They both laughed.

“That is a thought, but are we not bred in a sense now? Land to marry land, title to title, position to position, and produce a son above all else?”

As she spoke, Elizabeth endeavoured unsuccessfully not to sound bitter. If she did, Lady Millhouse did not acknowledge it, and Elizabeth peered at Gerard Darcy’s face and saw beyond his resemblance to her husband. Was it the story she had just heard that bade him oddly familiar to her? Or something else. She tried to pinpoint it in her mind, but before she mulled it long, Lady Millhouse startled her.

“Did our good Darcy know you were with child before he left?”

“Pray, how…?”

“Nothing mysterious. You have not ridden. I would have thought you would have ridden every day in your husband’s absence. Moreover, as often as he butters your bun you were bound to have one in the oven again sooner or later.”

Lady Millhouse’s explicit delineation of her marital activities obliged Elizabeth to crimson and hastily redirect the discourse once again, “I had once hoped my husband would be the first to learn of this baby. If he does not hurry home, I fear he may well be the last.”

With that small attempt at mirth, Lady Millhouse was cheered to know that Elizabeth had not compleatly given in to despair. Moreover, a little family history would give her more to chew upon than just fretting over her travails.

B
y mid-June, Wickham’s company had an influx of raw recruits come in a day behind Napoleon’s advance. Happy to get through his first battle alive and with the seat of his breeches unsoiled, Wickham, nevertheless, had not been pleased to see reinforcements. His company had lost thirty men upon the first flurry of artillery fire. They had been stacked up like so much cord-wood and carted away upon a groaning tumbrel only that dawn. Under such circumstances, most officers would have fallen upon their knees in gratitude for more soldiers. Wickham only saw them as more work, more responsibility and, most importantly, more reason to have to hold their position instead of retreating.

The newcomers all stood about looking apprehensive and green. He absently glanced at their anxious faces and waved to his sergeant-major to tell the sergeant (Wickham did not choose to speak to mere sergeants) to drill them. That done, he stayed in sullen petulance in his tent most of that day pondering his pitiable fate and the dispatch that announced it. For with his company numbers cut in half, his
superiors had ordered Wickham’s company to man a stand against Napoleon’s cannons as the French’s debouchment crossed into Belgium. There was a gap in allied defences betwixt Charleroi and Mons. It was crucial that it be stanched.

Man a stand? Were they mad? That he had survived the first murderous assault should have been heartening. Rather, his brief reprieve merely fed Wickham’s festering ill-temper. Customarily, he took his meals in his tent, but in his anxious boredom, he was disposed to take some fresh (if humid) air and stretch a bit. He threw back the flap and looked warily about. Hearing no sniper fire, he gingerly stepped out and extended his arms over his head.

His men were sitting about a fire and he walked over to get his ration of saltless biscuits and dried pork. He picked a bit of bacon off a young corporal’s tin, broke it in two, tossed half in his mouth and the other back upon the soldier’s dish. It hit with a clink and then slid to the ground. The corporal cut a rather impudent sneer at Wickham’s back as he picked up the meat, flicked it several times to divest it of sand, then popped it in his mouth. Wickham was busy sizing up the lot he was sent. It was not a particularly rewarding sight.

The new men were all young, all lanky and very tall. And because of that, all displayed half a forearm out the end of their cuffs, which further insulted Wickham’s overly employed
lèse-majesté
. They sat in a group upon the ground, their knees sticking up like grasshopper legs. The war dogs, anxious of word from home, were grilling them as to what county they represented. Wickham heard one young man, who sat a little aloof from the others, say he hailed from Derbyshire, thus it caught Wickham’s attention.

His men had moved about uneasily as Major Wickham joined them. The major’s surliness had been much in display and no man dared hazard a misdeed to incite his wrath. The disquiet of the veterans alerted the more trenchant recruits that their major was prone to splenetics.

Either oblivious to, or ignoring, the disquiet of his men, Wickham sought a seat near the Derbyshire lad. At his appearance, conversation dwindled into only a cough or two, thereupon a gradual disbandment of the enclave of talk commenced. If Wickham noticed this either, it was unapparent. John Christie had risen to move away with the others when Wickham stopped him with a query.

“Where in Derbyshire do you call home, lad?”

Wickham’s was forced congeniality. But was John uneasy about possible incarceration (his knife threat of a gentleman for certain, possible theft of the rig, and perchance even kidnapping), the young recruit admitted only Kympton as his home.

“Kympton!” Wickham exclaimed, “Now, that is an astonishing coincidence. For I am from Derbyshire and that is the living I should have had.”

He thereupon relaunched the story of the cruel young Mr. Darcy who had denied him the living that old Mr. Darcy had promised him. In his ennui, Wickham’s spirits improved remarkably by having an audience (however low) before whom to air his grievances. For the only thing Wickham enjoyed nearly as well as bedding other men’s wives was to be the sympathetic centre of a tale of treachery. Particularly this one.

The young lad’s face did not betray any understanding of the mendacity in Wickhams’ claims. He told Major Wickham nothing more than that he knew of Pemberley and the Darcys. Wickham was pleased. Having been exceedingly bored for weeks,
thereupon stricken with anxiety, he effortlessly slipped into his amiable social patter. It was a diversion to be in the company of someone who was both familiar with Pemberley and naïve enough to believe his tales. He sat and regaled the young man with all things Darcy until the insects eventually drove him back to his tent.

Once Wickham was out of earshot, an older soldier commented snidely upon the young grenadier’s presumed alliance with their truculent commanding officer. Their umbrage was understandable. Wickham had scarcely shown his face to them but to berate. One seen as befriending their tormentor was considered a traitor to their ranks. The only reaction culled from the knave at such a blatant mockery was a shrug of his shoulders. Hence, unrequited by pique and with little else to do, the soldiers soon found another victim to needle.

Far too fleetingly; the men would soon long for the torturous tedium of waiting. For as the sun was at its apex the next day, the first report of gunfire was heard. It was but one soldier who heard that initial shot. He stopped eating, his spoon suspended halfway to his mouth. Another soldier heard the second shot and stopped chewing. By the time a volley of gunfire erupted, food went flying into the air whilst every man not squatting in the latrine made a wild dash for his weapons. (The man in the latrine was tardy only as he could not run very fast with his smallclothes hugging his ankles.)

Several soldiers squabbled over who would be first to look through the spyglass at the coming Armageddon. All were frantic to see, for they had heard the main body of Napoleon’s Army was one hundred thousand men strong. It would be an awesome sight.

Wickham heard the melee if not the gunfire, and strode over to his bickering men. Bestrewing them to damnation, he wrested his spyglass from their trembling hands. As he put it to his eye, the ground began to rumble beneath them. The soldiers watched as their major looked through the lens once, then attempted to clean it with his sleeve before looking through it again. But he could not wipe away what he saw. An endless line of French battle
carre
approached their placement, and they were sixteen men wide and sixteen deep.

“Men to your positions!” Wickham screamed.

At this command, a flurry of activity commenced amongst the Grenadiers, not all of it military in nature. A few relieved themselves of their rations by various orifices and the literate amongst those not stricken with intestinal distress commenced composing their wills upon whatever bits of paper they could find.

That his company stood in the path of this great army forthwith was not information Wickham held early on. For if he had, the Prussian-Anglo forces would not have been able to count Major George Wickham still amongst them. Wickham had no intention of facing fire again. Abject terror did unspeakable things to a man’s mettle, was one possessed of any in the first place. Wickham had joined the army to wear the uniform, not to earn it. One battle was one too many.

He bade his time, for the cost of desertion was death. Possible death by hanging if he were caught or certain death upon the battlefield, however, seemed to Wickham to be his choice. Betwixt the possible and the certain was a hair’s breadth chance of escape. Wickham knew when he acted, he must act decisively. He was not certain how, but opportunity had an uncanny knack of calling his name when needed.

Whether the constant drilling Wickham had demanded was out of peevishness or perfection, it nevertheless served his men well. The Grenadiers were bombarded with cannon fire, but stood firm for some time launching their lethal pomegranates. It was the first action of any type John Christie had seen. Until they had gotten to the front, he had only looked at a grenade. None of the recruits had been given leave to touch one. They had practised with stones.

He had been impressed at their instructors’ precision the first time he picked up a real one. The rocks they had launched replicated the weight of the grenades. He gave one a little toss in the air to test it again and saw the man next to him flinch. John looked at him queerly for the fuse was not yet lit. (The previous fight had left a few men jumpy.)

Before the battle, he had spent a bit of time wondering (in light of his failed attempt at murdering Mr. Darcy) had he the courage to actually kill anyone. It fell apparent that neither enemy faces, nor the mothers that love them, come to mind when one is thinking of nothing but endeavouring to survive. Philosophising about war, he deduced, is useless under fire.

A cadence of launch was hastily (and a bit awkwardly) established. He watched the grenades dwindle, his arms aching in reverse proportion to size of their store. It took just over an hour to shoot their bolt. The firepower of veteran French troops created a bastinado unparalleled in John’s imagination. None of the Grenadiers could stand under such an assault, much less see in the acrid air. By snaking along upon his belly, he found a shallow ditch already inhabited by two fellow grenadiers. Implausible under the circumstances, none could keep themselves from curling into a foetal position and covering their heads in defence of incoming cannonballs. Yet, when the
tir de barrage
ceased, it was rather ominously.