“But those distractions will not overcome me. Not now, for I am resolved to be wise, which is something that I had not been before. Mr. Wickham, I am honored by your proposal, and am very gracious of you considering me.”
“Your voice wavers,” Mr. Wickham pointed out, “and you and I have spoken enough times that we can hear doubt in each other’s voices. Why do I get the sense that you are about to reject my offer?”
“It is because I am. I am obliged to you, beholden to you, flattered beyond reason, but I cannot accept you.”
Mr. Wickham stood up, and I saw his confusion. He turned away from me, took a few steps, turned back and then he turned away once more.
“I see,” he voiced. “And this is all the reply that I am to expect and must take your answer as a gentleman ought. Yet, I do not possess that title; therefore, I have a reason to act as a soldier would. I have a reason to be enraged and have the behaviors of a fighter. Is this what you are, Miss Bennet?”
“What I am?”
“I sacrificed so much, for you. For you, Miss Elizabeth! I gave up an heiress, and all for what? For a woman who rejects me now, due to my circumstances. This is the hypocrisy of the world.”
“You think that I reject you now because of your lacking in wealth?” I responded, enraged, and prepared to unleash my inner disquiet upon him. “Do me no disservice or slander upon my person, Mr. Wickham. Do not flatter yourself while belittling me. For, in doing so, you expose yourself to the world for the very ill behavior that you lay at my feet. Do you think that any consideration could tempt me to accept the man who has lied to me on multiple occasions, flattered me when entertaining another woman’s affections, and then slandered the good name of others?”
When I gave these questions, Mr. Wickham’s face altered, and color drained from his cheeks.
“What are you talking of?” he asked.
“I know the truth, Mr. Wickham. I know how Mr. Darcy never cheated you out of your inheritance. I know how you chose not to take orders and was given compensation for it. Just like I know how the only reason that you returned to take orders was because you gambled away the three thousand pounds that you received. And even worse, I know how you wooed Miss Darcy, so that you could inherit her fortune. I know everything. And I know that you lied to me, in every possible way. Just like I now am aware of the man you are, and that will never be a person that I could ever marry.”
My reports had driven Mr. Wickham quite to distraction.
“Do you still attempt to deny it, Mr. Wickham?” I pursued. “Because if you do, then I shall hate you forever. How could you do it?”
“I never lied to you. Recall that I had said that the living had been left to me in condition only.”
“Stop clinging to your deceptions in the manner of a drowning man grabbing at the surface of water,” I declared. “Do you not see that there is no point to it all? I know everything and no more will I let my blindness hold me down.
“Think of it. The way that you had accosted me when we met, how you had revealed your history with Mr. Darcy—all of it was done in the way of complete indelicacy and impropriety. Then, after all your malicious behavior, you spread the lies about how Mr. Darcy had robbed you, when all along, you had treated him in an infamous manner.” I paced before him.
“You said that, in honor of his father, you would never defy or defame the son, but once Mr. Darcy had left Hertfordshire, you did expose him. Right there, you showed your hypocrisy. How can I marry a man who would destroy the reputation of a man who has done nothing wrong?”
Mr. Wickham looked utterly undone. Then suddenly, bitterness overtook him, and I saw a villainous look in his eye. The turn of his countenance was something that I would never forget. He looked at me as a savage animal that was cornered—for he was. For a brief second, that look frightened me. It was as if I was seeing a horror that lay underneath the skin of a man who was shedding every pretense that he contained.
I shook my head and sighed. “Ah, and right there, that is the first true expression that you have ever given me. Is it not? Now, I am seeing the true man behind all the layers of deception.”
“Miss Elizabeth.”
“Yes?”
“Allow me to tell you my side of the story.”
“You did tell me your side, do you not recall? And it was all lies.”
“Was it Mr. Darcy who told you this?”
“And his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
When hearing the Colonel’s name, Wickham looked as if the wind had been knocked from out of him.
“Yes,” I furthered, “and there is no chance of you denying the veracity of both men. And again, I have posed the question to you, which you have given me no answer. How could you do it? How could you lie? Mr. Darcy never hurt you. You hurt him. You disappointed everyone.”
“Darcy was born fortunate. A fortunate man, indeed.”
“What nonsense is this?”
“He was born with wealth. Do you know what it’s like, Miss Elizabeth? To grow up, so close to a man who would inherit the world and you were the one who had to earn his living. And whatever you did, it would never amount to him. Try living under such a character. Would you not feel your own disposition alter under it? Would your kind nature not darken under the weight of the unfairness of it?”
I could not believe it. I knew his point of view, but despite his thoughts, he did not see that it was something which
