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chance with his superior officer’s wife (who was of Methodist persuasion, despised music, played nothing but Whist, and, to Wickham’s perpetual misfortune, adored his company). Thus, his evenings of sociability were spent in pointless deliberation of whether to avoid Colonel Sutcliffe’s insufferable wife or his own.
    No happy outcome there. Had it not been so finger-numbingly frigid, Wickham would have simply mutinied for the garden and a smoke. For Lydia’s only merit had been as a temporary romantic conquest. Not particularly pretty, as a maiden she did have a somewhat fetching forwardness that promised she did not hold much prudence of affection. Under the stern fortress of matrimony, however, her desirability to her husband had waned disastrously. She had become the proverbial millstone about his increasingly constricted neck.

    It was ever so cold in Newcastle, even for northern England in the winter. The chill was exacerbated upon Wickham’s realisation that the single reason he had married Lydia Bennet was to solve his most immediate bother, that of an embarrassing shortfall of funds and an unruly mob of unhappy, impatient creditors. Because of Wickham’s tonsorial fetish and relentless wagering, that “bother” reinvented itself four times a year, hence it was creeping upon him again with a vengeance, even in Newcastle.
    Indebtedness had never been much of a barrier to Wickham’s peace of mind so long as he could find one more shopkeeper to dupe into allowing him to purchase on account (although tailors, as a rule, were a mistrustful bunch). But such obligations had landed him in his present ignobly garrisoned regiment.
    As it happened, by the time of his and Lydia’s extended tryst in London, he had left a trail of outstanding bills that was extensive even for him. Moneylenders had him teetering upon the threshold of a sponge house and more than one had a shilling laid down for his arrest, hence debtors’ prison was not a mere threat. Desperation had begun to make a nasty crease betwixt his usually unfurrowed brows.
    Was that not vexation enough, to be confronted in London by an obviously indignant Darcy whilst in lascivious company with the unwed, underage Lydia would have been quite unnerving to any man who valued his bursa virilia . But as a man of considerable practise with confrontation, be it broker or cuckolded husband, Wickham had hastily deduced from the absence of sword and seconds that Darcy was not there to demand satisfaction for some injury. Indeed, Darcy did not intend Wickham mortal harm just then; for what Darcy wanted of him, he needed him very much alive. From an impetus unapparent to Wickham, Darcy had gone to great trouble to find their little Soho love-nest to (of all things!) demand that Wickham redeem Lydia’s virtue through marriage.
    At the time, it had been an utter mystery as to why Darcy sought them out when in the past he had but turned up his nose at Wickham’s numerous amorous indiscretions (except for that unfortunate miscalculation with Georgiana). Then, however, Wickham had not taken time to question. Thrown into a position of negotiation, dickering over specifics took all his concentration. Wickham’s finely honed sense of personal aggrandisement immediately ascertained that, for whatever reason, Darcy would do whatever was necessary to see that the marriage took place.
    Darcy pledged himself to Wickham’s creditors in exchange for a wedding and the promise of settling in a northern regiment with the Regulars. Wickham had jumped at the opportunity (incarceration being a nasty alternative). The puzzle surrounding such an intervention had not truly bedevilled Wickham, however, until he had settled with Lydia at the new post. From the ill-house of vanquishment, Wickham was certain some malevolence had been done to him by Darcy’s hand. But it was nothing at all so covert, the Wickhams soon learnt. For not a month after landing in Newcastle, Lydia received the letter