With a certain grim sense of satisfaction, Darcy looked down at the card that had arrived that morning in the middle of his breakfast. It was from Mrs. Younge, of course. The name of her boarding house imprinted on the front, it was graced with a simple, straightforward note upon the back: “11 o’clock. £300.” Yes, he grimaced as he tucked the card into his waistcoat pocket, the woman knew her own interests and it had not included being unduly coy about the betrayal of a former conspirator. It had taken three days to arrive at the extravagant figure of three hundred pounds, but one had to begin somewhere and time was precious to both of them. The longer Elizabeth’s sister was without the countenance of a relative during her sojourn in London, the harder it would be to retrieve her character; if indeed, such could still be done at all.

It took only minutes to conclude the business before Darcy was once again in a hired hack, a second card in his hand with the direction of an entirely different part of Town written on its back. As Darcy read it to him, the driver’s face expressed more than a little surprise; but with a shrug, the jarvey shut the carriage door, climbed up into his perch, and slapped the reins. Settling back into the greasy cushions as the hack jerked into motion, Darcy contemplated the task before him. As he had planned during the hours between Pemberley and London, he would apply to Elizabeth’s sister at the outset. Her response would decide his course. If Lydia Bennet proved to be intractable, as Lord — of the Society had suggested, then the success of his mission would rest entirely upon his dealings with Wickham. Darcy knew that the latter was the more likely scenario. Wickham would have to be bought, and bought well, in order to agree to the sort of conditions that would serve to retrieve the characters of the many he had brought into disrepute. But it was not the amount of coin that would be required that was his concern. No, Darcy’s jaw clenched tightly, it was that it was Wickham.

The hack slowly wound its way through meaner and meaner streets until the driver stopped and, knocking on the door, announced that he could take him no further. Gripping his brass-knobbed walking stick with a firm hand, Darcy descended from the conveyance, purchased the driver’s time and promise to await his return, and set off in the man’s vaguely offered direction to his destination. Within moments of entering a veritable warren of streets lined with dank, wretched buildings, he was thoroughly confounded and forced to ask for directions. Yes, the fine gentleman was in the right neighborhood, just one street over from his desired address, as it were, and yes—a hand reached out—a few shillings would be appreciated. Darcy dug into his pocket and dropped the coins into the girl’s dirty palm. Good God, he thought, as he continued on, in what sort of place had Wickham taken refuge? The prospect of Elizabeth’s sister in such surroundings made his skin crawl. Elizabeth would be horrified! He could only hope that Lydia Bennet shared at least that much of her sister’s good sense. She might then be quite eager for rescue.

The rooming inn that answered to the address on his card stood a cut above its neighbors, but that was not saying a great deal. Darcy’s gaze encompassed the unsuccessful attempt at the whitewashing of the walls and the yard within. Both spoke of better days gone long before the hostelry had fallen into the bad company of the encroaching neighbourhood. He looked down at the card again. This was surely the place. Darcy breathed deeply, his chest filling with the fetid air of this sad place. The time had inevitably come. He had prepared for this, or so he had thought. His chest grew tight. No, no…he must rule those old emotions and refuse to allow Wickham the opportunity to undermine his purpose. He forced himself to let the pent up tension release. That degree of happiness to which Elizabeth was entitled, that which he passionately wished for her, depended upon how he conducted this interview.

Taking a step into the yard, he looked up into the small, cramped windows of the upper floor that surrounded it. A flash of movement at one caught his eye, and he looked up into the smoky glass to see a delicate-shaped face peering down at him. His heart stopped. It was Lydia Bennet, but her resemblance to Elizabeth was just enough to give him a start. Lydia’s face disappeared. He must act quickly. Darcy leapt for the hostelry’s door. Ducking his head as he entered, he quickly crossed the tavern floor and ran up the narrow steps to the rooming hall.

“Wickham.” He called the name down the hall in a voice that held every expectation of an answer. Silence reigned for several moments; then, suddenly, a door opened with a flourish and Wickham stood there, his neckcloth loose and soiled about his neck but his head high. “Darcy,” he acknowledged him, a smirk upon his lips as he shrugged his waistcoat closed.

Darcy advanced upon him. “I have come about Miss Lydia Bennet.” Stopping directly in front of Wickham, he looked him squarely in the eye. “I know she is within.”

A hint of wariness flitted across Wickham’s face and as quickly disappeared. “She is why you are here?” His tone was disbelieving. Straightening, he threw back his shoulders in an attempt to block Darcy’s view of the room behind him. “What can you possibly want with her?”

“At present, my business is with you, but I also desire to speak with her and her alone. I trust you have no objection.” He regarded him evenly, conveying as little as possible in his face or voice.

“Of course, I have no objection…if it is business,” Wickham replied. He stepped aside and called over his shoulder, “Lydia! You have a visitor,” then turned back to him with a speculative gleam.

A pair of wide eyes in a flushed countenance appeared next to Wickham’s shoulder. “Mr. Darcy…to see me?” Lydia Bennet looked up at him doubtfully.

Darcy bowed to her. “Miss Lydia Bennet, may I speak with you in a few moments?” he asked, then added with a glance at her companion, “privately.” At her mute nod, he bowed and turned to Wickham. “Shall we go below?” Wickham shrugged his shoulders as he buttoned his waistcoat. “If you wish.” With a fleeting salute upon Lydia’s cheek, he turned and without a backward glance sauntered down the hall, leaving Darcy to follow.

Ducking their heads to enter the tap room of the hostelry, Wickham then straightened and flung his hand toward a shadowed table next to the far wall and looked back at Darcy with a raised brow. Nodding curtly, Darcy strode to the table while Wickham informed the innkeeper that they required the house’s best.

“An’ who’s to pay fer it, is what I wants to know,” the man growled. “Haven’t seen a bit o’ the brass…”

“My companion will pay, never fear.” Wickham interrupted his speech. “Two of your best, now, and keep the glasses full.” He turned back to Darcy with a brief smirk. “Keeping Lydia is not cheap, and I know you will not mind the expense.” He sat at the table and lapsed into silence while the innkeeper brought their brimming glasses and set them down with an indecorous slam.

“I’ll see the brass first,” he demanded. Meeting the man’s pugnacious look with equanimity, Darcy fished inside his waistcoat pocket and laid some coins out on the table. “All right, then.” The innkeeper’s big hand swept up the coins. Hefting them in his palm, he peered at them for a moment before nodding his satisfaction and leaving them to themselves.

Darcy turned back to Wickham in time to catch him warily studying him. Immediately, Wickham looked down to the drink before him and grasped the glass for a long first draw. Darcy did likewise, but kept his quarry squarely in his sight as he did so. Both glasses were put down on the table, almost in unison. “George,” Darcy addressed him with the name of his boyhood. Wickham’s gaze flew up to his at the sound. He then wiped at his mouth and sat back.

“Darcy,” he responded, a note of tightness in his voice, “perhaps you will now be so good as to tell me why you are here. You must have gone to some lengths to find me. Is it Colonel Forster that you represent? I should think he would believe himself well rid of as unhandy an officer as I.”

“You truly can not guess my reason?” Darcy regarded him with a mixture of astonishment and disgust that he laboured to disguise. “It is, of course, the young woman above! What can you have been thinking to play so carelessly with such a young girl and a gentleman’s daughter as well?”

“I am not to blame!” Wickham bristled indignantly. “Not entirely, at any rate. She would come with me, the silly chit!”

“Why did you leave your regiment, then, if not for the purpose of taking advantage of her?”

“You know very well why,” Wickham grimaced darkly. “I found myself to be quite impossibly in debt. My honour was vigorously called into question by some sniveling brats with quarterly allowances that would set me up for a year. It followed soon after that satisfaction was demanded forthwith. Naturally, I was obliged to leave!”

Darcy’s lips pressed together, stifling a heavy sigh. It was ever thus with George Wickham. “And now what, George? What are your plans?”

“I have not the slightest idea, as yet!” Wickham paused to swallow the last of his glass, then pounded the flat of his hand upon the table table to catch the attention of the slatternly woman behind the bar. “Another round, there’s a dear.” But instead of the mistress a scrawny boy appeared from behind the smoke-darkened bar with the pitcher and carefully filled the glasses with the frothy brew.

“All right an’ tight, govn’r?” he asked with a slow wink only Darcy could see.

“Yes, that will do,” Darcy recognized the urchin Tyke Tanner had designated to shadow him. Good, he thought, Wickham will not be able to simply disappear. The boy pulled on his forelock and retreated to the other side of the tap room.

“I shall resign my commission, of course, but where I shall go or what I shall live on, I can not say.” He pulled a weary face and sipped at the new foam atop his glass.

“And the young person upstairs?” Darcy persisted. “Why have you not yet married her? Although her father may not be imagined rich, he would be able to do something for you!”

"Marry Lydia! Good God!” Wickham looked at him in mock horror.

“You must have some feelings for her, to have engaged her affections so far as to convince her to fly with you.”

“No convincing was necessary, let me assure you,” Wickham took a gulp of his ale. “She was quite happy to go adventuring.”

“Adventuring! Wickham, she is a gentleman’s daughter! She can no more return to her life after this without marriage than…”

“I promised nothing but some fun and a chance to spite those who did not appreciate her lively spirits,” Wickham leaned over the table, his hand tightly gripping his ale. “Any ill consequences may be squarely laid to her folly alone.” At Darcy’s silence, he sat back and took another gulp. “It was never my design to marry the chit!” he grew expansive. “Her family is scarcely rich enough to suit my requirements. Believe me, Darcy,” he raised his glass to him, “I have finally come to see my limitations. My only recourse is to marry very, very well, and that will not likely happen here in England with my debts shadowing me like a hangman. No, I shall have to go abroad. I understand that there are some exceedingly rich Americans who think an English son-in-law is just the thing to add to the respectability of their names.”

“You realize we are very nearly at war with them.”

Wickham shrugged his shoulders. “South America, then, or a rich planter’s daughter in the Indies. It is all the same.”

“I see,” Darcy eyed him steadily and prepared to set out his bait. “What if there were a more immediate source of relief for your present situation. Not as great as a planter’s heiress, by any means, but a comfortable solution.”

The familiar gleam of avarice sprang into Wickham’s eyes. “I might be persuaded, if the solution is suitably ‘comfortable,’ as you say.” He paused, regarding Darcy shrewdly, then asked, “But come now, Darcy; what is your interest in this? How is it that you have become involved?”

There it was, the question he knew would come. Darcy slowly leaned forward, his hands flat upon the table, his eyes holding Wickham’s. “Interest? My interest is simply this: that you cease to be a menace to innocent young women. I kept silent concerning your seduction of Georgianna and in so doing have allowed you to prey upon others. If I had spoken, the girl upstairs—and possibly others—would have been kept safe from your careless use of them. But, I did not speak, and your indifference to the consequences of your appetites has brought the respectability of an entire family of my acquaintance into disrepute. What my silence has effected, I would do what is in my power to put right.”

“What do you propose?” Wickham had not flinched at the recital of his behaviour, but shifted forward to the edge of his chair in anticipation. Darcy sat back and held his peace, allowing Wickham to shoulder the weight of beginning the negotiating. “I suppose that a wedding would be expected,” he advanced cautiously.

Darcy rose. He had Wickham’s attention, and that was all he wished to secure at this juncture. Let him flail about in uncertainty for the present. “I wish to speak to Miss Lydia now, if you please.”

“May I come in?” Darcy inquired gently as Lydia Bennet pulled her eyes away from Wickham’s retreating figure and turned them up to him in confusion. She was so very young. How had this been allowed to happen? Neglect, his conscience answered, a neglect not so very different than yours. “I assure you most solemnly,” he continued, “I mean you no harm, but I should not wish any neighbours you may have to overhear our conversation.”

“If you must,” she replied and motioned for him to enter the tiny room. Inside was only the meanest of bedsteads, a rickety table and lamp, and an equally unstable chair. Clothes, bottles and dishes lay about the place, all in a state of profound disarray. As he turned his regard back down to her, her tense attitude recalled to him Georgiana’s protest that his towering presence was an intimidating one even to onewho loved him. In such cramped surroundings, his height could not help but seem threatening to a very young woman in her circumstances. He carefully lowered his weight onto the chair, composed his face in what he hoped were beneficent lines, and examined his charge.

It was quite apparent that Wickham had done little to see to her comfort. The gown she wore was rumpled and stained, her hair was a tangle. It appeared that she had come with little more than could be packed in a valise. They were, very likely, all but destitute. His hopes for the interview rose. “Miss Lydia, please be at ease. I have not come to offer you an insult,” he assured her. “I come as…as a disinterested acquaintance to ask you to consider the position into which you have been led and to provide a way to return to the anxious bosom of your family with as much honour as may be.”

If it were possible, Lydia’s eyes opened even wider. “What?” she asked, every evidence of astonishment upon her face. “Are you joking?”

“I assure you, I am not,” he replied, surprised by her response but maintaining his equanimity.

“I am to be married,” she informed him smugly. “I shall be Mrs. George Wickham and quite honourably so, if you please.”

“Has a date been set, then?” he asked, his regard steady.

“N-no,” Lydia admitted, turning away from him. “We must wait until some horrible people who are jealous of George can be repaid some trifling sums.” She merely recited the excuse she’d had from Wickham. Poor girl, she believed the wretch. “Really, it is most unfair!” she rounded on him suddenly. “Why must people be so cruel to my poor Wickham?” She looked at him, her eyes accusing. “And you are among them. George has told me!”

“My relationship with Wickham is a long and difficult one, Miss Lydia.’” He shifted his position, the chair threatening to take him to the floor. “My presence here has nothing to do with that, nor any tale of hardship with which Wickham has entertained you.” At his words, Lydia’s chin tilted up in a manner so like Elizabeth’s that his heart nearly seized. He persisted. “Please, hear me. The members of your family are beside themselves with worry for your safety. Since Wickham cannot, as you admit, offer you marriage at this time, why not return to your family until he can come to claim you with all honour?”

“It will not be so very long,” she bristled, “and I do not wish to leave.” Her pose as a soon-to-be-married woman dissolved into girlish intransigence under his piercing regard. “Oh,” she cried, stamping her foot, “why should you be here and say these things to me?” An unhappy thought must have then occurred to her, for she stiffened, her face turning cautious. “Is my father waiting below?”

Darcy allowed a few moments of silence to separate her outburst from his answer. She must understand clearly what little he could tell her. “No, your father is not here. I am here by no one’s urging or plea.”

“Oh,” she breathed out again and shook herself slightly, “well then.” In a moment, she clapped her hand to her mouth, then giggled and hugged herself. “I’ve done it then, haven’t I! Oh, they shall all be green in envy of me, every one! And how I shall laugh!”

“Laugh at the distress of your family and all those who wish them well? For that is what it is, Miss Lydia. They suffer no envy, but fear for you and reproach for themselves.” He searched her face, hoping for some twinge of conscience, but his words had not, evidently, found a home with her.

“It all will not matter a jot when I go home a married woman,” she informed him airily.

“You think not? It would be very strange if that were so, and I assure you that your sisters, Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth, do not regard the matter in such a light.” His statement appeared to give her pause. “You would not wish to live under the disapprobation of two of your closest relations, fine, deserving women, whose chances for an advantageous future would be considerably lessened by such actions on your part.”

Lydia’s lips formed into a pout as her eyes slid away from him. “My sisters! My sisters will do very well, or would if they…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes shifted back to him, now bright with suspicious curiosity. “How do you know of my sisters’ regard or, for that matter, about any of this? Lizzy doesn’t even like you; no one does that I ever heard, except for Mr. Bingley.”

The dart, so inelegantly flung, still possessed a sting. Darcy rose from his seat in irritation with both himself and his antagonist and strode to the window. The child was entirely self-absorbed, dangerously careless, and hopelessly naïve. How was he to make her see the truth of her position? He turned back to her. “You must know that your sister, Miss Elizabeth, was to travel with your Aunt and Uncle Gardiner during the summer.”

“Yes, on a boring trip north,” she sniffed in disdain. “No parties or balls or picnics. Only lakes and mountains and Uncle Gardiner prosing on and on.”

“On their travels,” he continued, “they stopped to view my estate in Derbyshire. It was during their sojourn near Pemberley that your sister received word that you had left your friends and entrusted your future to Wickham. In utter distress at this news, your sister confided her fears to me, and she and her party left immediately for Longborne, your uncle to join your father in searching for you.” He paused and took a deep breath. Here was the difficult part. “My long association with Wickham put me in a better position to find you both; therefore, I resolved to do so and without their knowledge should I raise their hopes but meet with no success.” He stopped. Would she accept his explanation?

“I still can not imagine why you should care to trouble yourself,” she replied tartly. “We will be married—in time. My friends will be happy for me. There is nothing so terrible about that, that you should come here and say that I should leave George?”

“Can you not imagine the precarious position in which this puts the respectability of your family? They will, if they have not already, become a byword in the neighbourhood. Your sisters’ eligibility will suffer considerably, making it even more difficult for them to contract a respectable marriage.”

“Oh, the neighbours!” Lydia stamped her foot. “Old catty busybodies with no use for fun! Who cares about them? I do not!”

“But your sisters—“

“I shall see to getting them husbands, shan’t I? For I shall be married and before them all!”

Darcy held his silence when she had finished. Lydia Bennet was not to be reasoned with or shamed into leaving her illicit lover. She seemed to have no understanding of the consequences of her actions either for herself or her family, nor concern to discover what they had and would cost them. He looked down at the hat and gloves in his hands in order to conceal the unsettling nature of his thoughts. Unlike Lydia Bennet, his sister had known what she was doing and repented of it, if only at the last. This poor child, he glanced up at the bedraggled and defiant girl before him, the flesh and blood of the woman he loved, had no such advantage. How was he to convince her to give up her dangerous toy? He had only one resource left and, thankfully, permission to use it. Still, he would employ it discreetly.

“Miss Lydia, would it influence you in any way if you knew you were not the first young woman George Wickham has convinced to fly with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that I have personal knowledge of another who was deceived by Wickham’s blandishments and promises into consenting to elope with him. It was clear that his reasons for courting her without the knowledge or consent of her relations were not dictated by passion but by economics. She was an heiress, and Wickham was in need of money.”

Lydia’s eyes flew open. “I do not understand you, sir. What has Miss King to do with me? Oh—!” She stamped her foot at him yet again and took a hasty step toward him. “I may not be an heiress, but I know George loves me!”

“Miss Lydia,” Darcy leaned forward earnestly, “Wickham is ever in need of money. He has no profession. He has tried to live by his wits and by chance and failed at them both. He must marry for money; he has no choice.” Compassion welled up in him as he looked down into her set, young face. “You are right; you are not an heiress,” he agreed gently, “and whether he truly loves you or not, for that reason, you must believe me, he will not marry you.”

A flicker of doubt crossed her countenance. Brightness welled at the corner of her eyes. Was it enough? Too quickly, the doubt upon Lydia’s face faded. She hastily wiped at her eyes, and her chin took on an immoveable cast that bore an alarming resemblance to her mother’s. “George will marry me, and that is the end of it! Now, I think you should leave.”

Heaving a quiet sigh, Darcy bowed his acquiescence and turned to go. “Miss Lydia,” he looked back at her from the doorway, “may I leave you my card should you change your mind?” She shrugged her shoulders, which he took for permission; and, laying it on the table, he bowed again and walked from the room. It had been as he feared. The girl would not be dissuaded. He must deal with Wickham.