Chapter 5
William had arrived home from his first term at Cambridge late the day before, and over breakfast now regaled them with stories of his friends and tutors and of one younger son of an earl who had attempted to turn Charlie Bingley’s friends against him on the grounds that his father was ‘hardly a gentleman at all, merely the jumped-up spawn of a tradesman’.
“But I told him that Charlie will inherit an estate while he will work for his bread, and he did not like to hear it when the fellows laughed,” William concluded with satisfaction.
“He said something about his father setting an estate aside for him, but everyone knows that Lord Grantley cannot afford to break up his holdings, and no one believed him.”
“Are there very many people there with such opinions?” George asked, brow furrowed with concern. He would follow William to Cambridge in the autumn.
William grimaced but shook his head. “No, not very many. It is not as it was in Uncle Bingley’s day, when hardly anyone of note would associate with those from trade.
It is only the sons of the real sticklers who espouse such nonsense, though they can be a trial—I shall not say they cannot.
But you will have Charlie and me to look out for you, and our friends, too, and Tom will come the next year. ”
“It will be upon us before we know it,” Elizabeth said lightly. “You ought to begin to consider whether there is anything you particularly need or want to take with you, George. I am certain William and your cousin Charles will advise you.”
“With pleasure!” William exclaimed. “We shall have a grand old time, you will see.”
“Actually, Mama, there is something I have been meaning to speak to you and Papa about, regarding my going to Cambridge,” George replied. “Perhaps after the meal?”
Darcy and Elizabeth exchanged a glance. Darcy had no notion what he might wish to say to them alone, and he could only hope George had not suddenly taken against the notion of furthering his education. “We are at your disposal,” he said with tolerable composure.
Ensconced in Darcy’s study after breakfast, George opened with, “I have not forgotten my true parents, and I never shall. I am not ashamed of my origins, except in that I have come to understand they were not the most upright couple.”
Mr Wickham had lasted only nineteen months in Baltimore before being shot and killed for reasons his wife either did not know or chose not to share.
She had elected to remain with some friends in America and soon remarried.
She had never so much as hinted at returning to England or having George sent to her, and her letters, never very frequent, had dwindled until her sisters considered themselves fortunate if one among them heard from her in the space of a year.
“You have been my parents longer than they were, and have done a much better job of it,” he continued with a flash of a cheeky smile.
“I hope that when I begin at Cambridge you will allow me the honour of adding the Darcy name to my own, in acknowledgement of the love and respect I hold for you and all the family.”
Tears were spilling freely from Elizabeth’s eyes, and Darcy’s throat felt unaccountably tight. “Son, it would be my honour to send you out into the world bearing my name.”