Chapter Eighteen
WICKHAM HAD FINISHED his schooling in law, but he had never worked as a lawyer and had no experience or connections in that way.
Even so, he had a diploma and he was a charming sort of fellow, not only with women, but in a friendly way, too.
He also had found that there was something to having a pleasant-looking countenance, that it made things a bit easier for him.
So, he managed to find his way into a job as a law clerk in Edinburgh.
Why he went to Scotland, he couldn’t say.
Maybe he simply wanted to escape his past firmly and totally.
No one knew him in Scotland, and he had no reputation to shed there.
He had never been Darcy’s pet servant boy there, had never been a disgraced man with debts who’d had to leave his rooms and his clothes and his bottles of port.
It was a fresh start.
When he woke in the morning, he had a habit he had formed in the regiment, just after leaving her, after leaving him, after leaving them both.
It always hurt, upon waking, he found, realizing where he was, what he had lost, what he had given up.
It was easy, in the early light of dawn, to concoct a scheme to go back to them both, to kneel and beg for Darcy’s mercy, to ask for a place with him again, a place in his household, a place in his bed.
But by the time the light had spread and the sun was struggling into the sky, Wickham would have remembered everything that had happened again, and he would have remembered the way he had thought it all through, and how it was that there was no way out of it, no way that would not become too painful to bear.
So, he began the practice, which was to simply look about him and to notice what was there.
This was not about being grateful or satisfied with what was there, it was about noticing. It was about looking at all the things that were present, instead of looking at all the things that were lacking.
He had never done such things before. No, he had spent his entire life preoccupied with all the things he did not have. He wanted more. He always wanted more.
Noticing what he had did not cure him of ambition. But it made him behave differently.
He had been reckless before. When a man feels as if he is nothing but empty space, nothing but aching want, he risks everything, not realizing what he loses.
Now, he wanted to preserve what he had.
The rooms in Edinburgh that he rented, they were warm and dry and respectable. The job that he had secured, the wages he earned, the respect from the lawyers he worked under, all of this, he wanted to keep it.
It was cold in the north as fall dragged on. It was cold and grew colder as the breath of winter stole in, making the evenings chilly, the mornings brisk.
He wondered about her sometimes. He was certain she was heavy with his child by now, and he thought about that, about what she must look like as she increased, about the way her body would have changed, about what it might be like to have her with Darcy’s babe growing inside her.
He thought of Darcy, too, thought of so many different Fitzwilliam Darcys he’d known over the years.
The boy Fitzwilliam, legs like a colt, running in the fields outside Pemberley, the youth who had looked at Deborah’s bare skin with awe, the man Fitzwilliam whose face had twisted with betrayal.
You and Gretchen Younge conspiring to use my sister?
He knew that he had left things behind, good things, and he also knew that leaving had marked a departure within him.
He was different now.
Somehow, a change had been wrought in him. He now saw that his belief in himself as a perpetual victim had made him behave in ways that were inexcusable. At the same time, he could not deny that he had been dealt a bad hand.
He was not sure what he would have rathered. To never have been favored by the late old Mr. Darcy or to have had everything lavished upon him, just like Fitzwilliam.
Neither, he thought, sometimes, as he walked the streets of Edinburgh.
No, given the choice, he’d have it just the way it happened. To have tasted it, lost it, lived through losing it, and then learned to live without it.
That made him strong.
Few people had toppled all the way down as far as he had, dusted themselves off and kept going. Most people were ruined by it, frightened after, afraid to try anything again, cowering and taking the scraps they were given.
He had come out of it soberer but wiser. He still knew how to take risks, but he also knew when not to take them.
Scottish law was quite similar to English law, but not entirely the same.
It had its peculiarities, and it was these he must learn to navigate if he was to be allowed to work as an advocate in Scotland, similar to a barrister in England.
He set about making this his goal, to be able to open his own practice here, to settle in, to be his own man.
He would never have an estate like Pemberley and command an army of servants. He would never have access to the income that Darcy had.
But it was true, if he had been a second son, he would not have had any of that either. As a second—or third or fourth—son, he would have likely needed a profession, and law was as respectable as anything. So, in the end, he could look at what he had, not what he was missing.
It was in mid November that a letter reached him. It was from Darcy, and it had taken him some time to locate him. Darcy was seemingly frustrated at the fact he had disappeared.
At some point in the past, Wickham might have taken this badly, raging at Darcy that he was trying to control him or treat him like a servant to be available to do Darcy’s bidding.
But now, he was only touched by it, realizing it meant that Darcy did care about him, that his absence did worry the other man, that they were bound in a way that likely would not actually be severed.
He wrote back to give Darcy his information and told him not to worry, that he was doing just fine, that he would likely be able to represent clients in the courts of Scotland by the new year.
The response came quickly. Darcy must have dashed it off immediately upon receiving it.
He was grandiose in his praise, astonished and pleased.
There were a number of statements to the effect of Darcy having always known that Wickham had it in him, that it was not even remotely surprising he was standing on his own two feet in this way.
There was a time when this would have made Wickham rage, too. He would have thought that all of this would not have been necessary if he would just have been given the same advantages as Darcy. But he now saw something else in it, something that had always been there, he supposed.
It was awe.
Darcy was insulated. He was protected. He never had to stand on his own two feet. There was a big pile of money for him to stand upon. Yes, this all came with its own responsibilities and headaches, but it meant that Wickham was required to brave in a way that Darcy never had to be brave.
He admires me, Wickham thought. In his way, he envies me also.
They were a pair, envying each other.
The letter closed this way. I have not shared your address with Elizabeth, so do not be hurt that she does not write to you.
In truth, she and I are not residing together.
She and my sister have gone to London for the winter, and I have stayed here at Pemberley.
If you were here, I should ask your assistance.
You were always so much better with women in general than I am, and with our Lizzy, you have a way with her I shall never have.
We both miss you, however, know that.
Please continue to write, and to keep me abreast of all your endeavors and triumphs.
Wickham did not know what to make of that.
He had predicted that Darcy would abandon her, but this sounded different. It was not the proud and haughty Darcy hiding some mistake he had made from the world. She was in London. He was hiding in the country.
And then there was Georgiana Darcy to contend with.
What damage had Wickham wrought there, and how could he ever go about mending it?
DARCY FLITTED HERE and there that winter. He spent a fortnight in London to see Georgiana debut in society. She attended her first ball and had a full dance card. The next day, she shut herself up in her room and would not come down to dinner.
“It is all right,” Elizabeth told him, “this is her way. She had a wondrous time, but she grows easily overwhelmed after seeing so many people. She will need a day alone to recover.”
Darcy understood. He often thought that, after a ball or something similar, he might like to hide away for days, but he never wished to be hidden from her.
Elizabeth was planning to host her three youngest sisters, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia, and take them on the rounds in England.
This was really a favor to her mother, insomuch as she was supposed to try to secure them all husbands, but it was not a favor to her mother, in that her mother had wished to accompany them, and Elizabeth had soundly refused this request.
“I thought you could handle just the girls,” she said to him when she found he intended to leave town.
“It is not the arrival of your sisters that means I must depart,” he said. “I have other business, pressing business, that takes me elsewhere.”
“What is it?” she said. “Can you not share at least something of it with me?”
“I have found George,” he said. “In Edinburgh.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “How long ago?”
“Not long,” he said.
“But you concealed it from me?”
He studied his shoes. “I am thinking of trying to bring him back.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“I have…” He touched her face. “I must ask you, I suppose, because I never got your answer, if you would mind terribly having his children.”
She gave him a funny look. “This is, indeed, an odd thing for you to ask, considering you have not visited my bedchamber in what is now a deeply concerning amount of time.”
“We have not been under the same roof,” he said.
“We have, for the past two weeks, husband!”
“Well,” he said, “would you object?”
“I suppose I would not,” she said. “But in truth, Fitzwilliam, if you want my opinion on all of it, I should rather wait. If you are going to bring him back, and it is going to be some mad rush of trying to get me with child right away, and we are going back to all of that… that volatility there is with us—”
“No,” he said. “That is not what I think to do.”
“I miss him,” she said. “And I miss you. And I miss all that passion. But there were other aspects of it that were nothing but pain.”
“If I bring him back,” he said, “we shall not have that between us anymore, I do not think. I think I have seen a way through.”
“All right, then,” she said.
He eyed her. “You are angry with me? I thought you would wish that he—”
“You have known he was there and concealed it from me,” she said. “You are going after him, and you must do it now when I have already committed to spending a month here with my sisters so you must go alone! Whyever would I be angry?”
He nodded, chagrined. “I am sorry.”
She sighed.
“We could all be together, and there are ways to delay either of us getting you with child.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I suppose I know of that. That French letter he had.”
“When was this?” Her husband eyed her. “Did he… before you and I—”
“No, not before,” she said. “But there was a night he came to me.”
He looked away, swallowing. “All this time, you have kept that from me.”
“I suppose I forgot that we were supposed to. It all seems ridiculous at this point. Does it change things for you?”
“Why did you conceal it?” He met her gaze.
“You…” She shrugged. “You were both fragile in different ways, I suppose, and it was on me to keep you both together. He and I both knew you would take it badly. He thought it was because you wanted me to yourself and resented him. I knew it was because you worried that you would never be enough for me.”
His face fell.
Suddenly, she surged forward, seizing his hand. “Fitz?”
He looked up at her.
“Is this why you are going after him?”
“We… this…”
“You are the one who has stopped visiting my bed!” she exclaimed. “I am well satisfied. I have a life I could never have imagined. I am happy, very happy, and I can continue to be happy. Just come back to me. You do not need to go and get him. You are enough for me, more than enough.”
He had needed to hear the words. He lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Oh, Lizzy, you are good to me. Better to me than I deserve, I think.”
“No, of course you deserve goodness, Fitz!”
“I am sorry I stopped coming to your bed,” he said. “It was never about…” He kissed her knuckles again. “I go to get him for myself. I miss him. But for us, yes, for both of us, and for this, for we are better with him in certain ways. There is a fire, Lizzy, and he lights the spark of it.”
She nodded. “True, but together we are enough.”
“It is not because I am insecure in you. But it was true, then, it was.”
“No longer?” She tilted her head to one side. “What changed?”
He let out a breath, thinking of how to explain it. “It wasn’t one thing, I suppose.”
“Many things?”
He made a chagrined face. “Would it be an awful thing to admit that perhaps what changed was the night you showed me how to touch your cunny?”
She let out a burst of surprised laughter. “Oh, that is just like a man, I think.”
He laughed, too.
“I do not like you to go off while I am angry with you,” she said, shaking her head. “I shall endeavor not to be angry with you, Fitz.”
“I likely do not deserve such a courtesy,” he said. “Things have gone a bit awry for us as of late, but I aim to do my best to set it right, my love.”
She nodded. “Do bring him back, Fitz. But I must say, didn’t you send him off because of Georgiana? Will you bring him here now? What of her?”
God in heaven. How had he not thought of this at all in his other scheming?