Chapter Eighteen
They rode out after breakfast, just the two of them.
The morning was bright and cold, the kind of November day that made the Derbyshire hills look sharp-edged against the sky.
Elizabeth rode Jasper, the bay gelding Darcy had chosen for her, and he rode beside her on his tall grey, and they did not speak much on the way.
She could feel him thinking. He had that particular stillness about him that meant something was turning over behind his eyes, being examined from every angle before he committed to a response.
The Wilson farm was north of the river, perhaps three miles from Pemberley, set in a shallow valley with good pasture on either side and a mill stream running through the lower field.
It was well kept. The fences were sound, the yard was clean, smoke rose from the chimney in a steady line that spoke of a household that was up and working.
A good farm. Better than the one the Wilsons had held before, Mrs Reynolds had said.
Good enough to support a daughter, her husband, their child, and any others who might have come along since.
Darcy had sent word ahead, and Thomas Wilson came out to meet them.
He was a broad, weathered man in his fifties, hat in hand, visibly honoured by the visit and slightly nervous about it.
His wife appeared behind him, wiping her hands on her apron, and behind her a young woman with fair hair and a careful face, who could only be Sally.
“Mr Darcy, sir. Mrs Darcy. You are very welcome.”
Darcy dismounted, helped Elizabeth down.
The introductions were made with the easy formality of a landlord who knew his tenants well and respected them.
Mrs Wilson invited them inside. The farmhouse kitchen was warm and scrubbed clean, and there was tea on the table before Elizabeth had finished removing her gloves.
Sally Cooper sat at the edge of the group, quiet, her hands folded in her lap.
She would be about three-and-twenty now, pretty in a subdued way, and she watched Elizabeth warily, as though the interest of her betters had not always been kind to her.
Elizabeth smiled at her and asked about the farm, about the dairy, about the preserves that Mrs Wilson was evidently proud of, and slowly, carefully, Sally’s shoulders began to come down from around her ears.
A boy appeared in the doorway. He was about six, sturdy and fair-haired, with a gap-toothed grin and mud on his knees.
He looked nothing like Wickham, which Elizabeth noted with a relief so sharp it surprised her.
He had Sally’s colouring, Sally’s wide-set eyes, and none of the easy charm that would have marked him out as his father’s son.
“William,” Sally said. “Come and make your bow to Mr and Mrs Darcy.”
William made his bow with an expression of solemn concentration. Darcy looked at the boy, and Elizabeth saw something cross his face that was too quick to name but too painful to miss.
“What a fine boy,” Darcy said. “He looks well.”
“He is a terror,” Mr Wilson said, with undisguised pride. “Runs the dogs ragged. Joseph cannot keep up with him.”
“Joseph is Sally’s husband?” Elizabeth asked, though she knew.
“Aye, ma’am. Joseph Cooper. He is out with the sheep this morning, or he would be here to pay his respects.
A good lad. The best thing that ever happened to our Sally, begging your pardon.
” Mr Wilson glanced at Darcy, and Elizabeth caught something in the look: gratitude so deep it had become part of the man’s bearing, woven into the way he stood and spoke in Darcy’s presence.
William, having completed his social obligations, escaped back to the yard. They could hear him through the open door, talking to the dogs in the earnest, commanding way of small boys who believe themselves in charge.
“He wants a pony,” Sally said, quietly. It was the first thing she had volunteered, and she said it with a small, surprised smile, as though her son’s ambitions still had the power to astonish her.
“Joseph says he is too young. I say he will simply get on one without permission if we do not provide one soon.”
“I suspect you were much like him at that age,” Elizabeth said, glancing at Darcy, and was rewarded with a look from her husband that was equal parts denial and amusement.
“I was an excellent rider from the age of four,” Darcy said, with just a touch of pomposity. “My father put me on a horse before I could properly walk. It is the Darcy way.”
“It is the way of every boy who grows up in the country, sir,” Mr Wilson said, and the ease between them was real, built on years of quiet respect.
“I do know of a good little riding pony who might be coming available,” Darcy noted. “The Cookson boys are rather too large for it now. I shall tell Mr Cookson to bring it by, see if William might like it?”
“That’d be right kind of you, sir,” Sally said gratefully.
Mrs Wilson refreshed the tea, and Elizabeth let the conversation settle into the comfortable talk of farming families: the autumn ploughing, the state of the winter stores, whether the mill would need its wheel repaired before spring.
Darcy talked to Mr Wilson about the fencing on the upper pasture.
Elizabeth sat with Sally and Mrs Wilson, listened to them talk about William’s schooling, conducted at the village school in Kympton three mornings a week by the vicar, and about Sally’s second child, a girl of two who was sleeping upstairs and who was, Mrs Wilson declared, even more of a terror than her brother.
“Two children,” Elizabeth said to Sally. “You are fortunate.”
“I am,” Sally said, and the simplicity of it carried more weight than any elaboration could have.
She looked out at the yard, where William was now attempting to climb a gate while the collie watched with patient resignation.
“Joseph is a good father. William does not know that he is not... that Joseph is not his...” She stopped, and colour rose in her face.
“William is loved,” Elizabeth said kindly. “That is what matters.”
Sally nodded. She did not say anything else about it, and Elizabeth did not press.
But she filed it away: a boy who did not know who his real father was, raised by a man who loved him anyway, in a home that existed because Darcy had built it for them out of the wreckage Wickham left behind.
Wickham, who had left Sally without a backward glance.
Who had moved on to Georgiana, then to Lydia, who knows how many other young women in between, stopping only at Lydia because Darcy had caught up and forced him to marry her.
Elizabeth turned the conversation gently. “Mr Wilson, I have been learning the history of Pemberley’s families since my marriage. Mrs Reynolds has been most helpful, but there is still a great deal I do not know. You have been tenants here a long time.”
“All my life, ma’am. My father before me, and his father before him.”
“Then you knew the old Mr Darcy well.”
The kitchen went quiet. Sally looked down at her hands. Mrs Wilson became absorbed in the tea things. Mr Wilson’s expression shifted, and the ease of the last few minutes gave way to something more guarded.
“I did, ma’am. He was a good master. The best I have known, saving Mr Darcy here.”
“I understand you spoke to him,” Elizabeth said. “Before he died. About the matter of William’s parentage.”
Mr Wilson looked at Darcy. Darcy looked at Elizabeth. She could feel his attention sharpen, but he said nothing, and she was grateful for it.
“I did, ma’am.” Mr Wilson’s voice had dropped.
Sally was staring at the floor, her face flushed.
“I went to the old master about... about the trouble. About Sally. I told him what had happened, and who was responsible. I was ashamed to go, but Sally was starting to show, and I could not leave it any longer.”
“And the old Mr Darcy believed you?”
“At once, ma’am. He did not question it, did not doubt us for a moment. He went white when I told him. White as the wall behind you. He asked me to tell him everything. I did. When I had finished, he thanked me and said it would be dealt with. Those were his words. It will be dealt with.”
“When was this, Mr Wilson? How long before he died?”
Mr Wilson rubbed his jaw. “It was... I went to him on the Tuesday. He died on the Saturday, I believe.”
Elizabeth did not look at Darcy. She did not need to. She could feel the stillness beside her, the held breath, the sound of a man hearing his own history rewritten.
“I have always wondered,” Mr Wilson said, and his voice was rough now, “whether it was the shock that killed him. Whether learning what his godson had done to my girl put a strain on his heart that it could not bear. The physician said it was his heart, and I have told myself for six years that it was not my fault for telling him, that he had a right to know, but I have never been easy about it. If I had gone to him sooner, or if I had waited... but Sally was showing, and I could not wait.”
“You did the right thing,” Elizabeth said. “You must not blame yourself for what happened after.”
“That is what Mrs Reynolds says too, ma’am. She has said the same to me more than once.”
Darcy spoke for the first time in several minutes. His voice was steady, but Elizabeth could hear the effort it cost him. “Mr Wilson. Did my father say anything else to you? About what he intended to do?”
“Only that it would be dealt with, sir. And that he was grateful I had come to him. He shook my hand when I left. I remember that. He was not a man who shook hands with his tenants as a rule, but he shook mine that day, and his grip was fierce.”
Darcy nodded. He stood, thanked the Wilsons for their hospitality, admired the farm once more, and said something kind to Sally about William that made her eyes fill.
Then they were outside in the cold air watching William throwing a stick for the collie as Mr Wilson fetched their horses from the barn.