Mr. Phelps took charge. “Lift him to his feet, and be careful about it,” he ordered. “Jemmy, go for the doctor.You others help Mr. Darcy to my house.”

Two footmen shoved themselves under his arms, arranging them about their shoulders and supporting his weight as they nearly dragged him towards Phelps’s open door. Townspeople scrambled to the bucket brigades to put out the fire. Darcy’s head hung low, and he tried to recover his senses as the servants struggled under his weight. Finally, he forced his gaze towards the gathering crowd across the street. Then, intuitively, his eyes fell on George Wickham, a figure wrapped in a long black cape and sporting a beaver.With a wry smile and a nearly imperceptible salute, he disappeared into the crowd.

Darcy could do nothing more tonight; he stopped Wickham this time; he was lucky. Could he do it again? Could he kill the man who plagued his family? “Come, Georgiana,” he urged, demanding that his body relax back into the arms of the rescuers. Then he allowed the men to help him up the steps to Phelps’s town house.

CHAPTER 1

It took more than a day to explain it all to Georgiana. At first, she did not believe him, but the truth lay all around them. He explained what he knew of her acquaintance with Wickham—how she met the pretender one day in a village shop—how she saw him several times about the estate—how she thought him to be a friend of her brother’s. Slowly, with Darcy’s explanation, Georgiana realized Wickham offered her no future.

His seduction held no dignity. Instead, the man provided a ghastly corruption. He had promised marriage, and Darcy’s darling Georgiana naively thought his to be an honest proposal. The shame she felt at knowing she had succumbed to Wickham’s deception was bad enough, but the truth Darcy later provided of the man’s real reason to target her—he feared might complicate Georgiana’s recovery.