Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 (24 page)

And then Sergeant Kelly caught sight of my ring--the
claddaugh
ring Edward gave me--and asked if I knew the story behind the design. I shook my head, and Sergeant Kelly said, "Well now, seein' as how I'm an Irishman myself, I can tell you. Two hundred years ago and more, there was a man--Richard Joyce, his name was--one of the Joyce clan, and a native of Galway. He loved a girl, but was too poor to marry her. So he set sail to work in the West Indies, meaning to marry his love when he'd made his fortune and returned. But his ship was captured by pirates on the voyage out. And as for Richard Joyce, he was sold as a slave to a Moorish goldsmith, who taught him the goldsmith's craft. And Joyce, longing for his love, made a ring as a symbol of his love for her--hands for friendship, a crown for loyalty, and a heart for love."

"Now it happened that Richard Joyce was set free. Maybe his master was tender-hearted and let him go, maybe the king demanded he be released, I can't say. But he got his freedom. And the goldsmith--the one who'd bought him for a slave--had such a respect for Richard Joyce that he offered Joyce his daughter and half his wealth if Joyce would be agreeing to stay. But Joyce, he said no, thank you kindly, but he was bound to get back to his home and the love he'd left behind. So he set sail, back to Galway. And his love--she'd been waiting for him, all these long years. Richard Joyce gave her the ring he'd made her, and they were married."

Sergeant Kelly stopped speaking. I raised my hand to brush at my cheek, and realised that I was crying without ever having noticed.

Sergeant Kelly dropped a large hand onto my shoulder and gave me a clumsy pat. "Colonel Fitzwilliam, he'll be fightin' to get back to you just the same way. So you just stay here and talk to him and remind him of why he's got to pull through."

"The surgeon said--" I started to say, but Sergeant Kelly interrupted.

"Bollocks to the surgeon. Beggin' your pardon, miss," Sergeant Kelly added quickly. "The colonel, he's not one to make a song and dance of his feelings. But I saw the look on his face when he'd touch that miniature painting of you, and I heard his voice the few times I heard him speak your name. Whatever Mr. High-and-Mighty-Surgeon says, the colonel knows you're here. You've just got to convince him to stay with you."

Sergeant Kelly spoke with such conviction--he made it sound so sure, so easy. Just before he left the room again, he stepped close to the bed and dropped a hand on Edward's arm and said, "Battle's over, sir. But don't you quit fightin' now."

Tuesday 27 June 1815

This is likely to be another completely disjointed diary entry--because I have been sitting here for the last quarter hour debating with myself whether I even want to write down what happened tonight. But I think I do. There is no one else I can tell.

George Wickham came to the house tonight.

I had been sitting beside Edward all day, holding his hand, talking to him, wiping his face and holding a moistened sponge to his lips, hoping to coax him into drinking a little. Madame Duvalle brought me supper on a tray, but I wasn't hungry enough to take more than a few bites. So I took the food downstairs with me for Mrs. Metcalfe to offer to the soldiers who are recovered enough to be able to eat. And then I went out into the stable yard, meaning to find Sergeant Kelly. Because I was so, so tired--and all but entirely out of hope that Edward might still wake up.

As soon as I stepped out the door, though, a hand clamped over my mouth and I was jerked backwards against a man's body; I could feel his breath, hot in my ear.

My heart seized--and then started to race because the next moment the man hissed at me, "Don't scream, Georgiana." And I recognised George Wickham's voice. Though at first I could not believe my ears.

My pulse was pounding. But I forced myself to nod to show that I understood. And he released me, keeping hold of my wrist but slackening his grip so that I could turn around and face him.

It
was
George Wickham. Sergeant Kelly was nowhere to be seen. But he had left a lantern burning above the stables, and by its light I could see Wickham's face clearly. He looked even worse than he did a year ago, when he came to Pemberley trying to blackmail my brother and me. The boy he once was--the boy I grew up with on my father's estate--is entirely gone. So much so the two--boy and man--seem like two separate people in my memory. Wickham's blue eyes now are nearly lost in pockets of flesh, his once handsome features puffed and coarsened by lines of dissipation and drink.

Even still, I half expected to find he was just part of my imagination, some sign that sitting up night after night being terrified for Edward's life had started me hallucinating. The night back at Longbourn--when Elizabeth told me that Wickham was in Brussels, and warned me that I might see him here--seemed inexpressibly far away. I had not thought of him even once in all the days since we arrived.

The hand gripping my wrist painfully hard was real enough, though, and I pushed the wave of shock back and said, "What do you want here?"

Instantly, Wickham's hand was clamped over my mouth again. He hissed, "Quiet!" And I noticed what I hadn't before: that his eyes were darting nervously back and forth, and that there was a glitter of sweat on his forehead. "I don't want to be seen," he added in the same harsh undertone. "No one can know I've been here."

"Then why come here at all?" Now that I was looking at Wickham more closely, I could see the other signs of fear. The fingers wrapped around my wrist trembled slightly, and when one of the horses in the stables beyond us whickered softly, he started and his head snapped around towards the sound.

But at least the fear left him unwilling or unable to prevaricate or try to spin a lie. He moistened his lips and then said, "Money. I need enough money to get me out of the country. I thought you could give it to me."

I stared at him. And then the pieces assembled themselves in my mind. Wickham was wearing an army uniform--just like so many other young men in Brussels now. But where most of the other red coats you see on the streets are still stained and torn from the battle, Wickham's looked almost new. And he himself hadn't a single wound or mark on him that I could see. Not that that signified, necessarily. I know some men--not many, but some--were lucky enough to come through the battle at Waterloo completely unscathed. But coupled with the uniform, and his patent fear--

"You're a deserter." I heard the words come out of my mouth before I realised I had even decided to speak. I suppose I was simply too tired--and too much infuriated--to check myself. "You ran away from the battle. And now you need to get out of the country before you can be shot for a coward and traitor."

Wickham's face darkened with anger and his jaw clenched. And for a moment I felt another spasm of fear. I was alone with him in the darkened stable yard. And however fallen into ruin he is, he is still both larger and stronger than I am. He must have decided he would get further by trying to charm than to threaten, though. Because his lips stretched into something that tried to resemble a smile and he said, "Please, Georgiana. For old times' sake. We were always good friends. I heard you were in Brussels. But you've no idea how hard it is to get you alone. I've been waiting outside this house for two days now. I haven't even had anything to eat. I thought you were never going to come out." He exhaled a laugh that was even less convincing than the smile and said, "Anyone would think you were a prisoner in there."

That brought it all rushing in on me, harder and more suffocating than ever, of course. I had not left the house at all because I had been sitting day and night by Edward's bedside, watching him die by slow degrees. Die of the hurt he had got in the same battle George Wickham had run away from.

I jerked my hand out of Wickham's grasp--and managed to catch him off guard enough that he had to let me go.

"Get out of here." I spoke the words through clenched teeth.

The anger flashed across Wickham's face again, and his hand shot out, this time settling around my bare throat. "Careful, Georgiana. I could decide to ask less politely."

"And unless you get your hands off me, I could decide to scream. Someone from the house would come out here in seconds. Do you really want to risk anyone else seeing you? Or getting caught here by someone with authority in the army?"

Wickham's jaw clenched. But he did let his hand fall away. His eyes darted around the stable yard again and then he said, his voice half-sly, half-sullen, "There are still stories I could tell about you, you know."

I heard myself laugh. "What? That you tried to seduce me and failed?" And then I leaned forward until my eyes met his and spoke slowly. "The man I love is upstairs in this house, dying. And there is not a single thing I can do to help him. Do you really think you can frighten me?"

Whatever he saw in my eyes made Wickham take a stumbling step backwards. He raised a trembling hand and wiped the sweat from his face. That was when, quite suddenly, I felt a tiny thread of pity start to worm its way into my feelings for him. It was the last thing I had expected to feel. Everything I have written about George Wickham was true--it still is. And to end it all, he had deserted his duty during battle, turned tail and run.

But at that moment I did feel pity for him. How brave are most of us, really, in facing what we most fear? How brave am I? Just the thought of Edward dying makes me want either to scream or to curl up somewhere hidden enough that I can disappear.

"Wait here," I told Wickham. Back inside the kitchen, I found a few apples, a wedge of cheese and a meat pie, and knotted them together in a napkin. I half expected Wickham would have run off--but he was still standing in the stable yard, sweating and shaking, when I came back outside. I suppose he was hoping I might give him money after all. "Here." I put the food into his hands. "Take it and go."

I caught a glimmer of what looked very much like hatred in Wickham's eyes as his hands closed over the bundle. But he turned and walked away without speaking another word.

Just as Wickham left the stable yard, Sergeant Kelly returned; they even passed each other at the gate. "Sorry, Miss Darcy, I just stepped around the corner to the public house to see if there's any news of old Boney."

Napoleon's armies were defeated at Waterloo, but Napoleon himself remains at large; the word in Brussels is that he has fled back towards Paris.

"Did you want something, miss? Or--" Sergeant Kelly went still as the thought struck him, sudden alarm tightening the edges of his mouth. "Or has something happened? Is there any change with the colonel?"

I shook my head quickly. "No, nothing like that. I mean, he's no better. But he's not-- Nothing has changed."

Sergeant Kelly let out a breath. "Well, thanks be to goodness for that, anyway." He rubbed a hand along his jaw and then added, as though as an afterthought, "Who was that man? The one I passed coming in here? He wasn't bothering you, was he?"

"The man?" I looked across the stable yard to the gate where George Wickham had gone out. "Just a beggar. I gave him some food. But I'm sure he won't be coming here again."

Later ...

It is barely dawn. And I am so tired that an hour ago I would have said I couldn't stay awake even a few minutes longer. I am not sure I can now. But I want to write this down--I have to write this down, just so that once I do wake up I'll know that it really happened, that I didn't just dream it all.

After I finished my last diary entry, Edward was still lying exactly as he has lain since Sergeant Kelly brought him back: his face so still and greyish-pale that he might have been an effigy statue carved on a coffin. I touched his hand, and it was cold.

I don't remember very much from when my parents died. It is all such a confused blur of grief, and of course as a child I was not allowed to see them for more than a moment or two at a time. But I do have a knife-sharp memory from when I was six of being taken by my nurse into my mother's room, when she was ill for the last time. My mother was sleeping, and the nurse said we must not wake her, not even to see me, because my mother needed her rest. Which frightened me. So I tried to take hold of my mother's hand, and found her fingers chilly cold. And two days after that, she died.

I suppose that is why feeling the coldness of Edward's hand tonight made something tear inside my chest.

I have been determined all this time not to let myself cry. But tonight I couldn't stop myself. I wrapped my arms around Edward and rested my head against the curve of his shoulder. I still couldn't stop crying, and I could feel my tears soaking his shirt under my cheek.

Sergeant Kelly had said that Edward could hear me. So far I hadn't seen a single sign of that being true. But I waited a moment, feeling the slow, laborious rise and fall of Edward's breath, the thump of his heart. Then I drew in a ragged breath and shut my eyes and prepared to try one last time.

"You can't die, Edward." The house was silent all around us, and my whisper sounded tiny in the shadowy, lamp-lit room. "Do you hear me? When you went away almost the last thing you said to me was,
I swear I'll come back to you
. Do you remember? And I know"--I had to swallow before I could force the words past the tightness in my throat--"you always keep your promises. So I need you to come back to me now. Come back to me, Edward. I love you."

The rhythm of Edward's breathing changed; he gave a kind of ragged gasp. And I felt my heart slam hard against my ribs at the fear that he really was dying, or that in lying down with him I had hurt him somehow. But then his head moved restlessly against the pillow. His eyelids lifted for just a moment, and his lips seemed to shape an unintelligible, silent word.

I sat bolt upright, staring at him. And then I scrambled out of bed and reached for the water pitcher, and raised Edward's head enough that I could hold a cup to his lips. He drank it--he actually drank it. Though the effort seemed to exhaust him, for he sank back onto the pillow and at once was deeply unconscious again. But I had put my hand into his. And before he sank back into sleep, I felt a press of his fingers against mine. Just a brief, light pressure. But I felt it. I am sure of it.