15. A Difference of Opinion #2
A fine dark animal stood tethered to a tree a little below the path, cropping at the grass with the patience of one accustomed to being kept waiting.
Elizabeth stopped. No rider appeared at first, but then she saw Mr. Darcy upon the hill above, one boot braced upon a rock, his hat in his hand, staring across the fields with such deep displeasure that even the sheep below might have felt judged had they possessed sufficient sensibility.
Despite herself, Elizabeth smiled.
“So, this is where gentlemen of large fortune come to frighten the countryside.”
Darcy pivoted sharply. The severity of his expression altered when he saw her, though not quickly enough to hide the mood that had preceded it.
“Miss Bennet.”
“I hope I do not interrupt an important quarrel with Hertfordshire.”
He looked down at the fields again. “Hertfordshire has offered sufficient provocation.”
“That is ungrateful. It has provided you with Netherfield, tolerable roads, and an assembly where you were not forced to dance with every lady who wished it.”
“I had forgotten I was meant to be grateful for partial escape.”
“You may begin now. It is never too late to reform one’s manners.”
He looked back at her, and for a moment she thought he might smile. Instead, his face stiffened. “I am not certain reform is so easily accomplished.”
The answer struck too near the subject she had come to discuss.
Elizabeth stepped off the path and came a little nearer, careful of a patch of loose stones. “Then perhaps the attempt ought to be encouraged when it appears sincere.”
Darcy’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are we speaking generally?”
“No.”
His mouth pressed into a flat line. “Then I must beg your pardon. I am poor company this morning.”
“You were poor company yesterday morning as well, though your arrival gave Mama enough material for an hour’s speculation, so the visit was not without benefit.”
“I behaved badly.”
“You behaved alarmingly.”
He accepted the correction with a small movement of his head. “Yes.”
Elizabeth folded her hands before her. “Mr. Darcy, I do not ask out of idle curiosity. Mr. Wickham is much with my family. He is courting my sister. Whatever lies between you cannot be unimportant to us now.”
A bird rose from the hedge and startled the horse below. Darcy glanced toward the animal, then back to Elizabeth, as if the brief interruption had spared him one second and no more.
“Wickham possesses happy manners,” he said. “He can make friends wherever he goes.”
“That is a compliment delivered in the tone of an indictment.”
“He is less capable of keeping them.”
Elizabeth drew in a slow breath. “You imply he is duplicitous.”
“I do more than imply it.”
The bluntness made her lift her chin. “Then say plainly what you mean.”
Darcy moved from the rock, hat still held in one hand. “He betrayed my family in the worst way.”
“Yesterday you said your acquaintance was of some duration. I assumed there had been a quarrel.”
“A quarrel suggests injury on both sides.”
“And you claim there was not?”
“I claim George Wickham has lived by taking whatever affection, generosity, or trust was placed before him and converting it into advantage. How he came to Meryton—how he came to your family—is beyond my comprehension.”
“He came to work for my uncle Philips in July,” Elizabeth said. “My uncle is an attorney in Meryton. Mr. Wickham had studied the law and was seeking a respectable position. He formed an attachment to Lydia after becoming known to us.”
Darcy’s expression hardened. “Miss Lydia Bennet is certainly not his usual target.”
Elizabeth’s brows rose. “Target?”
“He favors wealthy women.”
“That is an ugly word.”
“An accurate one.”
“Lydia has no fortune.”
“So I gathered, which makes his attentions all the more suspicious.”
“Suspicious because he courts without mercenary motive?”
“Suspicious because Wickham rarely acts without one.”
Elizabeth looked past him toward the valley. It was easier than looking directly at him while anger gathered. “You have known him since childhood?”
“Yes. He was the son of my father’s steward.
My father loved him as a second son. He was given opportunities beyond what most men in his situation could have imagined.
I was in my last year of school when Wickham joined me.
He is two years younger than I. At first I thought him amiable, clever, grateful. ”
“At first?”
“He fell in with a difficult crowd. Cards. Debts. Idleness disguised as wit. By the time he came to university, I was nearly finished, and the pattern had not improved. My father saw less than I did, or wished to see less. Wickham could be all charm when it suited him.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
Darcy continued, the words clipped now, controlled but hardly calm.
“In his will, my father left Wickham the preferment of a valuable family living in my gift, when it became vacant. Wickham later declared himself unsuited for the church and asked instead for compensation. I gave him three thousand pounds in exchange for his relinquishing all claim to the living. He had already received a thousand pound legacy from my father.”
“And he claimed he would use the money to study the law,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy’s gaze sharpened. “You know this?”
“Yes. From Mr. Wickham. Also from my uncle, who verified enough of his education to be satisfied. Mr. Wickham is not merely pretending to study the law, Mr. Darcy. He is working in my uncle’s office with the intention, if all continues well, of one day taking a larger part in the practice.”
Darcy made a sound of disbelief.
Elizabeth’s temper stirred. “You may dislike him. You may mistrust him. But my uncle is no fool, and neither is my father.”
“I did not say they were.”
“No, you merely implied that every member of my family has been deceived by pleasant manners.”
“Pleasant manners have deceived wiser people than any of us.”
“That may be so.” She stepped closer before she could talk herself out of it.
“But Mr. Wickham has been among us long enough, and upon terms intimate enough, that the mask you claim exists ought to have slipped. He has made no secret of a difficult past. He has spoken of errors he cannot undo and of wishing to make amends. If his object were deception, why admit fault at all?”
“Because admitting a little prevents inquiry into much.”
“That is clever. Perhaps too clever.”
His eyes flashed. “A few months is hardly time to prove lasting change.”
“And years of dislike may be enough time to make forgiveness impossible.”
He moved away.
Elizabeth regretted the sentence after it left her. “Mr. Darcy—”
“No. You are right to demand explanation.” He faced her again, and there was pain beneath the anger now. “This summer, Wickham was in Ramsgate.”
Elizabeth stilled. “In Ramsgate.”
“Yes.”
“With Miss Darcy?”
She noted the muscle in his jaw working before he replied. “He imposed himself upon my family.”
“You saw him there?”
The hesitation was brief.
Too brief, perhaps, for most people to observe.
Elizabeth observed it.
“No,” he said. “Georgiana mentioned it.”
“Mentioned it.”