Fuller and Wickham were sitting in the officers’ mess, and Fuller was smiling because, for once in his life, Fortune had shined on him. Not only was he winning at cards, but Wickham and he were still making frequent appearances at the Forsters’ house. All they needed to do in order to stay in the colonel’s good graces was to continue to kiss his wife’s arse.
“Wickham, I can hardly believe we have not had to report for parade for three weeks, all because Colonel Forster’s wife is pregnant and bored. Did I tell you Mrs. Forster slipped a crown into my hand yesterday?”
Wickham said nothing because she had been pressing a sovereign a day into his palm for more than a week.
“With the way she flirts, I can’t imagine what she would be like if she wasn’t expecting. She’s already an irritant to the colonel, but I predict she will become a major annoyance.” Fuller stood up and asked Wickham if he would like to go for a pint.
“I already have plans.”
“Do these plans involve Miss Lydia Bennet?”
“They do. While Mrs. Forster is soaking her feet and whining to her husband about her condition, Lydia and I will be meeting in our continuing effort to get to know each other better.”
“How well do you know her?”
“Not completely. But we are getting there. Slow but steady.”
With Brighton crowded with the various militias and regular army regiments, along with their families and the types of people who had always followed armies throughout the ages, it was easy enough for Lydia to separate herself from her friends and meet Wickham at an arranged spot near the pier. He found her to be silly, uninformed, and undisciplined, but in every other way, quite agreeable.
“You know if Colonel Forster finds out, he’ll have you up on charges.”
“To hell he will,” Wickham said, sitting upright in his chair. “I’ve had enough of the militia. The only reason I am still here is because you and I have made ourselves indispensable to the ladies. For three weeks, we have fawned and cooed and amused. While the regiment practices marching and maneuvers, we are having cake and punch. As soon as I find out that our services are no longer required, I will be long gone.”
“Alone?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Wickham remembered the first time he had kissed her. She had pushed off on him, giving him the usual line that she wasn’t that type of girl, but when he had asked her, “Then why are we meeting in secret under a pier?” she had pulled him back and said no more.
With each meeting, she became slightly more liberal with her favors, and all that was required was for him to speak of marriage. But she had her limit, and she had reached it. As a result, she had become a tease, and he was tiring of it. But there was one reason he continued to meet her.
As a matter of self-preservation, wherever Wickham went, he kept his eyes and ears open. If a merchant started grumbling, he would visit the shop and make just enough payment to keep the owner happy, thus creating the illusion that it was his intention to satisfy his debts. He used the same skills in avoiding angry fathers and brothers of girls he had bedded, and because he was always aware of what was going on around him, he knew that Charles Bingley had fallen in love with Jane Bennet. The romance was of little interest to him. What mattered was that Bingley was a friend of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
It was now in his power to seduce the sister of the woman Bingley wanted to marry. He had begun to make plans in which he would convince Lydia to agree to an elopement, and he would spirit her off to London. Once there, he would persuade her to resign her virginal status, and after that, he would abandon her. Wickham smiled at the thought of Darcy realizing that his old enemy had snuck into his camp and had succeeded in wounding one of his party.
The plan was in place. He was just waiting for the right time to execute it. For the time being, it was necessary to continue courting a sixteen-year-old tease, but there were worse ways to spend an evening.