Page 46 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

So that was what they had talked of in the window. Elizabeth remembered Anne putting up her hand, and Mr Darcy falling silent.

“He is,” she said. There was no point in denying it. “Mr Wickham told me a great deal when the militia was at Meryton. He said he was your uncle's godson, and that he had been meant for the church and promised the best living at Pemberley. He said Mr Darcy kept it from him out of jealousy and left him to shift for himself.” She paused. “It was not only his word, either. Miss Darcy spoke of him in the park. She told me he used to lead her round the stable yard on his pony, and cut her a whistle from a willow twig. Then her brother forbade her ever to write to him or receive him, and would not tell her why.”

“No,” said Anne. “He would not. That was for my sake.”

“It was two years ago this autumn. Mama had gone up to town for two days to see her man of business. I used to drive out in my phaeton in the afternoons, if it was fine, as far as the end of the park and back. On the second day Mr Wickham was standing in the lane by the palings, as if his walk had brought him there by accident. I had known him all my life, you understand. We used to be taken to Pemberley in the summers when I was small, and he was always about the place. He said he had business in Kent and could not go by Rosings without paying his respects.”

“And you believed him.”

“I believed every word he said.” Her thin cheeks went pink, but she did not look away. “You must remember, Mrs Darcy, that nobody had ever talked to me the way he did. At Rosings nobody talks to me. They talk about me. You saw it last night. I am wrapped in shawls and told to be quiet, and told this has nothing to do with me. Mr Wickham asked me what I thought about things. He walked beside the ponies and made me laugh. He came back the next day, and after that whenever Mama was away from home, I did not realise it then but he was very familiar with her schedule. He knew when she was away to play cards, for example, and would ask to meet me then. Within a month he had persuaded me that he loved me, that Mama would never agree to it, and that the only thing to be done was to go to Scotland.”

Elizabeth said nothing. Her hands had tightened in her lap.

“I told nobody but my maid. I needed her to pack for me.” Anne gave a small, rueful laugh. “She never liked him. She said he looked at the silver on the sideboard a great deal more than he looked at me, and I was very cross with her for it. I had no idea she had written to Fitzwilliam. He was at Darcy House at the time.”

“He came after you himself?”

“He had ridden most of the night from town. Mama had gone to Dover to visit an old friend. The plan was for Mr Wickham to collect me that day. He had already arrived and was waiting for me at the stables. Fitzwilliam arrived and told me he suspected Mr Wickham of improper motives. He convinced me to allow him the chance to prove it. Thus, he took me to the stables with him and hid me in one of the boxes. Then he confronted Mr Wickham.” Her voice was as hoarse as it had been at dinner, but it did not shake. “I heard all of it. Fitzwilliam asked him whether he loved me. Mr Wickham laughed. He said no man could be expected to love a girl who coughed all through dinner, but that he could love Rosings very well indeed. Then he asked how much Fitzwilliam would give him to go away quietly.”

The trunk had reached the bottom of the stairs. In the hush that followed, Elizabeth heard a chair scrape in the hall below, and a maid laughing somewhere, and all the ordinary noise of a house getting on with its morning.

“I am so very sorry,” she said at last.

“It was a long time ago. He stayed until Mama returned the following day, and she never knew. I told him I could not stand to be at Rosings anymore because the memories of Wickham and because I feared he might return. He told her I looked peaky and needed Derbyshire air. Until last night, I think it was the only argument he had ever won against her. I stayed at Pemberley until the spring.”

“There is a gentleman near Lambton. He is not grand, and Mama would call him a nobody, but he is kind, and he means what he says to me. After Wickham I thought I should never trust anyone again. I was wrong about that.” She went pinker and hurried on. “Fitzwilliam promised to be there when I told Mama. I was to borrow some of his good sense for the day, since I have so little of my own where she is concerned. But you heard them last night. She has not spoken his name since, and she says she never will. I cannot think how it is to be done now.”

Elizabeth hardly heard the end of it.

Mr Wickham had never mentioned Rosings. He had talked of a living and a will, and of Pemberley so fondly that she had been sorry for him. He had not talked of a phaeton in a Kentish lane, or a sick girl's fortune.

At Netherfield her aunt had laid down her napkin and told Lydia that Mr Wickham had never had a good name in Lambton, even as a boy. Elizabeth had put that aside. Her aunt had not lived in Lambton for years, and boys grew up. Now it would not stay where she had put it. It came back to her beside Georgiana's willow whistle, and her two days of tears, and Mr Darcy's closed face whenever the name was spoken. One by one the pieces went into their places. She did not at all like the picture they made.

She had thrown that man at her husband's head. In the carriage on the day after their wedding, she had told him Mr Wickham loved every stone of Pemberley, right up until the day he was driven out of it. Mr Darcy had said nothing to defend himself. He could not, without giving away the young woman sitting on the sofa.

“Mrs Darcy?”

“Forgive me. I was...” Elizabeth stopped. She did not know what she had been. “I was thinking how little I have understood.”

“He would never have told you himself. He would sooner be thought badly of than tell somebody else's secret.” Anne stood, and Elizabeth stood with her. At the door she turned back, with one hand on the frame.

“There is one thing more, and then I shall leave you in peace. Mr Bingley has been like a brother to Fitzwilliam since they were at Cambridge. My cousin does not love many people. But the ones he loves, he will protect before anything else, even if somebody else is hurt by it. I do not say he is always right. I only say that is how he is made.” Her mouth curved a little. “Richard says it is very tiresome to be loved by Fitzwilliam. I dare say he is right. But I was glad enough of it then. And you had some of it yourself last night, I think.”

The door shut behind her with hardly a sound.

Elizabeth did not sit down. She went back to the writing table and looked at the letter to Jane. An hour ago she had not known how to finish it. Now she did not know how to begin. Anne had meant her last words kindly, and they were kind. They were also the very reason Jane had spent a winter in Gracechurch Street waiting for a knock at the door.

At eleven the carriage came round. From the window she watched Mr Darcy hand his cousin in and bow to his aunt, who looked straight ahead. He stayed on the step without his hat until the carriage had turned the corner of the square.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Darcy

“May I speak with you?”

Darcy looked up from Clarendon. He had been on the same page since the tea tray went down, and he could not have said what was on it.

Elizabeth stood in the doorway of the study with a chamber candle in her hand. She had not gone up to bed after all. Her hair was still pinned as it had been at dinner, and she had put on a shawl against the draught in the passage, which Mrs Hobbs had been promising to see to since Michaelmas.