Chapter 4
The past year had not been the easiest of the Darcys’ lives together. Their fourth child, Edward, had given Elizabeth a great deal of trouble before and during his birth. There had been a question, for a day or two, of whether either would survive the experience.
George had settled in well at Pemberley once he grew accustomed to his relations and their routines, becoming William’s constant companion and behaving as a second protective elder brother to Jane and Lottie.
However, while Elizabeth struggled with the later months of her expectancy, the boy had become difficult and defiant.
He quarrelled with his cousins, on several occasions going so far as to deliberately hide or break their favourite things.
Whenever his children became upset by George’s outbursts or his wife fretted over her inability to discover the cause of his anger, Darcy found himself haunted by the spectre of the original George Wickham.
He feared the effect the lad’s presence was having on his own children and their happiness.
Although he had begun, tentatively, to form a bond with his nephew before this change of temper, he now pulled away, wary once more.
Yet when the boy threw a book at his tutor on a day when Elizabeth was laid up ill in bed, it had fallen to Darcy to deal with the situation.
As Mr Brooke showed George into his study and left with a bow, Darcy had wished desperately that Elizabeth had been well enough to assist him in this. He had not felt at all prepared to handle such a baffling situation, and with this child in particular.
He had put on his sternest demeanour and demanded that George account for his poor behaviour.
The lad had refused to speak, but Darcy had been unwilling to give in to his sullenness.
They had sat in determined silence for a full two minutes at least before George’s resolution had crumbled and the whole sorry tale spilt angrily from his mouth.
Some boys in the village, with whom he and William often played when they were there, had taunted George with the claim that his father was a good-for-nothing, a cheater at cards, and a debtor who would surely end in a spunging-house or on the gallows.
He had, it seemed, retorted with the fact that his papa was a soldier bravely serving King and country, but the other boys had only laughed and said that their parents said even the army could not make a good man of George Wickham, and his son would surely turn out just the same.
This had left Darcy impaled on the horns of a new dilemma: he had no wish to further injure the boy, but he could not in good conscience lie to him either.
Haltingly at first, he had explained that years ago, as a young man, George Wickham had done some things he ought not—things that people hereabouts still remembered.
But, he had added, since he had married Mrs Wickham and joined the Regulars, Darcy knew nothing worse of him than that he was not always wise with money.
This account was true enough, in its way, for many—not Darcy himself, but much of society at large—would consider his indebtedness worse than his flagrant infidelities, and in any case, he would never say a word of that to the boy.
“I hope,” he had told George, “that your father has entirely repented of his earlier mistakes and means to be the best of men for the rest of his life. But even if that is not the case, even should he rob a bank tomorrow and become an outlaw, that is nothing to do with you. Only you can decide what sort of man you will grow to become, George. If you truly wish to be a good and honest one, then you will be, and all your family will help you when you are tempted to take the easy road, as we all are from time to time.”
He did not know what it was, exactly, but something in what he had said had reached the lad.
George had cried for a few moments and apologised for making trouble, and from that day he seemed to view Darcy himself as the supreme authority on being a gentleman.
He would come to his uncle with his little problems, asking quite solemnly what a good man would do in such a case and imitating in many small ways Darcy’s own mannerisms.
That is not to say that the lad was transformed into an angel, or anything like one.
He was no more a saint than any other young gentleman just turned eight.
He had his tempers and sulks, his whims and fidgets, but the days and weeks after that difficult conversation in the study saw the gradual restoration of the cheerful demeanour of his first season at Pemberley.
Elizabeth said that Darcy had given the boy the gift of security, in the knowledge that his future was his own to determine and that the family loved him and supported him even when he behaved badly.
In the months that followed, the likeness of the elder George Wickham had greatly faded from Darcy’s mind, and now the name conjured first and foremost the image of a most beloved nephew.
A nephew who was presently standing before him and Elizabeth on Christmas Day, awaiting his gift with shining eyes.
Darcy smiled down upon him from the larger of the two armchairs set before the fire and presented him with a small sack tied with a bow of jaunty green ribbon.
Nimble fingers made short work of the tie and plunged inside.
George gaped as he withdrew a gleaming new bridle, his initials carved into the leather. “Truly?” he squeaked.
“You have done excellently in your riding lessons,” Darcy replied indulgently. “And have shown willing to put in the work to become an accomplished horseman. When you advance from the pony to a horse, you may have your own saddle, and we shall have that bridle re-worked to fit.”
George leapt up, vaulted into Darcy’s lap, flung his arms about his neck, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you ever so much, Uncle Papa!” he cried exuberantly, then pelted off to show William his treasure.
Elizabeth regarded Darcy speculatively for a long moment, then, without a word, handed him her handkerchief.