Love Among the Gifted - A Pride & Prejudice Alternative

Chapter Twenty-Five

George Wickham was not enjoying the felicitous existence that he felt strongly he was due. And it had all started so well.

He was born lucky, blessed to be the first in his family to manifest a gift. And what a gift. He was a happy child brimming with beauty and charm. Everyone treated him like a prince. And he lived in a castle, or at least in very near proximity to one. His father was the Pemberley steward and the Squire was so fond of him as to become his godfather. He was a gentleman by law and education; effectively brother to the heir. Young Darcy was Georgie's plaything, who would do anything he asked.

When they started school together, Georgie discovered that almost everyone would do as he asked. Even the teachers could be bent to his whim, as long as he chose his words carefully, listening to the inner voice that told him what to say to get his way. It was an ideal existence. Then things started to change. Over time he noticed that people, Darcy in particular, were becoming more resistant to his charms. Not all people, only those who were around him the longest. By the fourth year, most of his year mates and his teachers accommodated his requests more out of habit than through actual persuasion.

This set the pattern for the rest of his education. He could convince new acquaintances of almost anything, but the longer someone interacted with him, the less effective his gift became. Darcy grew to be completely immune. In university, Georgie made many new friends among the scions of society and new conquests among the fairer sex. Certainly, he also made quite a few enemies among those men with strong wills and sharp wits. As he did not know who these men were before they had already taken offence from his harmless pranks and prevarications. The fact that one of these men was the Dean and one of the ladies was his niece led to the sudden end of his academic career, much to the disappointment of his father and godfather.

The years after leaving university were full of exploits and misadventures. Eventually Georgie's childhood truly came to an end with the death of his father, followed not long afterwards by the passing of his godfather. He knew it was time to put away the toys of childhood and pursue his future. For that he needed funds. Old Mr. Darcy had always intended him for a life in the Church. He had no interest in such an ecclesiastic existence and made a deal with Darcy to produce a tidy sum in return for signing away any rights to the promised living. While he initially convinced a solicitor to take him into training, his goal was to find and marry an heiress or at least a wealthy widow of independent means and no sons.

But time after time, he found that such women usually had some protector that was not above providing Georgie the most painful persuasion to move to a less defended prey. He also discovered that cards, horses, cocks, and dice were all completely immune to his gifts; though he was never convinced that, if he just kept trying, he would not find a way to make them obey his whims. These continued attempts cost him the rest of his inheritance and much more.

Two years before, when he heard the living at Kympton was vacant, he approached Darcy to claim what had been left him. The jackanapes had flat out refused him what his godfather had promised him. This left him with few choices. He took to the road. He found patrons and special friends to keep him in comfort, but eventually his welcome always seemed to run out. Eventually he realized little Georgie needed to return to where it all began and claim all that was meant to be his from the beginning. After all, the old man had loved him much more than that stick-in-the-mud Fitzwilliam. He had a plan. Lovely young Georgianna was a wealthy woman in her own right, but more importantly she was heir to all of the Darcy wealth, if anything should happen to his old friend.

Little Georgiana was a ripe for the plucking, as he had expected. He was one day away from having it all, when that damned dark cloud once again blotted out his bright future. That left him with no choice. He was seriously contemplating exploring the joys of an extended sea voyage, on the first ship he could find, before certain unsavory tipstaffs or bloodthirsty shylocks should find him. Instead it was a Frenchman.