Chapter 14
The morning was cold but fine, and after breakfast Aunt Gardiner announced that since Uncle Gardiner was wanted in Mayfair again, they might as well walk in Hyde Park.
“You have grown fond of the park, Aunt,” Elizabeth observed as she drew on her gloves.
Her aunt nodded as she tossed a woollen cloak over her shoulders. “I admit that I have grown fond of being out and safely home again before my children finish their lessons. This way they need never know I have been enjoying myself without them.”
They had hurried into the carriage with Uncle Gardiner, who helped them down at Grosvenor Gate and promised to return in an hour.
The ladies picked their way around the construction of the new gatekeeper’s house and strolled for a short time along the broad path when Elizabeth made out a gentleman she recognised.
Mr. Wickham she knew at once, even at a distance, by his easy carriage and blue coat. The woman with him had a small, neat figure and russet curls that peeked out beneath a bonnet of plum-coloured velvet. She was laughing at something he had said.
There was a way some couples had with one another, Elizabeth thought, that revealed a great deal about how they got on with each other. Aunt and Uncle Gardiner were just the same.
Mr. Wickham and his companion were nearly heedless of anything about them. There was a special sort of affection in the way she tipped her head up to speak to him, and Mr. Wickham, for his part, leaned closer so that he might hear her better.
Then he saw them.
“Mrs. Gardiner!” Mr. Wickham called, brightening. “How delighted I am to see you and your nieces. Em, these are the ladies I told you of. She lived at Buxton Place near Lambton some years ago, and I called upon her recently—do you remember my telling you of it? She knew my father.”
“I knew you as well, Mr. Wickham,” Aunt Gardiner reminded him, when he had finished introducing them all to one another.
Mrs. Wickham made a curtsy to Aunt Gardiner that was so brisk it lost any sense of formality. “I have been waiting for an opportunity to be introduced to you all, for my husband cannot stop speaking of your encounter.”
“I told you twice at most,” said Mr. Wickham.
“You told me once and then related the story to three other people in my hearing. That is more than twice. And you did not tell me Mrs. Gardiner knew you as a boy. I intend to quiz her minutely on the topic, for I have my suspicions that you were not at all well-behaved.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Wickham, all injured innocence, “you wound me. Mrs. Gardiner remembers only my virtues, and it would be the height of cruelty to force her to invent the rest.”
He offered Aunt Gardiner his arm with a bow so polished that Elizabeth smiled and even Jane had to stifle a laugh. Then he held out his other arm to Jane, who stepped up to take it.
“Madam,” he said to Aunt Gardiner, “before my wife seeks any evidence you may have against me, pray allow me the honour of securing your protection—and Miss Bennet’s.”
Mrs. Wickham laughed. “Coward.”
“Entirely,” said he, smiling over his shoulder as he gently bore them away. “But you will admit that I am a coward with excellent instincts.”
Mrs. Wickham, thus separated from her real object, gave Elizabeth one frank assessment and slipped an arm through hers as if a friendship had already been agreed upon.
“You are the Miss Elizabeth Bennet who is being marched through Lady Anne’s drawing rooms,” she said.
Elizabeth meant to interject.
“No, no,” Mrs. Wickham said. “Do not be alarmed. I hear a great deal but repeat almost none of it; it is the foundation of my reputation for discretion. How are you finding the campaign?”
“I had not known it was a campaign.”
“My dear, Lady Anne Darcy is the most successful matchmaker in London and has been for twenty years. Wellington could learn a thing or two from her efficiency.” Mrs. Wickham’s eyes were bright with mischief. “You bear it very well, I am told.”
“But neither you nor Mr. Wickham attended that party. How do you—”
“Oh, my husband is quite an intimate with the Darcys. We hear everything.”
While Elizabeth mulled that piece of information over, she said, “I hope you have recovered entirely, Mrs. Wickham. We were told in December that you had a cold.”
Mrs. Wickham glanced ahead at her husband and smiled.
“I had the most uncivil cold, Miss Elizabeth, and George is terribly alarmed by any illness. He was quite overbearing about it, but he has since apologised.” She glanced over at where her husband stood with the others and smiled.
“Do you know, a poor apology is offered once and forgotten. A beautiful apology may be recalled and enjoyed whenever the occasion demands it.”
“That is rather economical—for Mr. Wickham.”
Mrs. Wickham’s laugh was quick and delighted. “Precisely! You are a witty one, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Then I must be careful. People who discover one has wit are apt to expect continual performances of it.”
Mrs. Wickham studied Elizabeth again, more thoughtfully this time. “No, not I. I only begin to envision one’s future.”
“On so short an acquaintance?”
“Oh, I require very little acquaintance when the first impression is sound. I am already thinking of someone who might suit you very well.”
Here was her own tendency to judge upon first impressions turned about on her. Elizabeth assessed Mrs. Wickham with a playful sort of suspicion. “Then I shall endeavour to avoid anything clever. I would not wish to encourage so dangerous a habit.”
“Not at all,” Mrs. Wickham replied, and then asked about Elizabeth’s family.
Soon they had caught up with Mr. Wickham, Aunt Gardiner, and Jane, who had paused to admire the bare branches silvered with frost. Mr. Wickham turned at the sound of his wife’s voice.
“Dearest,” she asked, “have you been improving Mrs. Gardiner’s understanding of you, or merely preventing her from enhancing mine?”
Mr. Wickham reached over and tucked a loose ribbon of his wife’s bonnet back beneath its knot, his fingers a moment at her jaw, and Mrs. Wickham let him, gazing up at him without so much as a blush.
Then, with a smile that was as easy as ever, he drew Aunt Gardiner into a recollection of Buxton Place, and the two of them walked a little ahead, leaving the younger women to themselves.
Elizabeth could not take her eyes from the Wickhams. Their affection was perhaps too openly displayed for her taste, but she could not condemn the feeling beneath it.
She would not wish to be adored in public, but in private she suspected she might like it very well indeed.
If Lady Anne had a match such as that waiting in the wings, she might not object so much to being a part of the woman’s plans.
She did not examine this feeling too closely, for such a match was unlikely for her.
Mrs. Wickham addressed Jane. “Now, Miss Bennet, I have heard Mr. Bingley’s name mentioned more than once of late, and always in connection with your own.”
Jane coloured then paled, and she pulled her shoulders in. Elizabeth was not sure what to make of it.
“Mr. Bingley is an amiable man,” her sister said.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Wickham. “I see you are not quite ready to be teased about him. Let us canvas another subject. Do you enjoy opera, Miss Bennet?”
Elizabeth glanced at Jane and found her colour returning. It made her like Mrs. Wickham even better, that she could speak sportively with her husband and Elizabeth but more gently when necessary.
They had by then drawn near enough to the others for Mrs. Wickham to catch the last of something her husband was saying to Aunt Gardiner. Whatever it was, it made her aunt laugh a little.
“You will forgive George,” Mrs. Wickham said fondly.
“He spends his charms rather liberally, which sometimes alarms those who do not know him well. Most cannot believe a man would be so agreeable without intending to profit by it, but he never does. He has no need.” She smiled to herself.
“I cannot blame them. It took me a year to believe it, for I am a suspicious woman by trade.”
What an interesting statement. “And what is your trade, Mrs. Wickham?” Elizabeth asked, smiling.
“Judging people,” she said simply. “I am uncommonly good at it, but the difficulty is that one never sees oneself half so clearly as one sees everybody else.”
“There is perhaps a lesson in that, Lizzy,” Jane said with no attempt to hide her amusement.
“I have no idea what you could mean,” she replied.
Jane only shook her head.
“Now,” said Mrs. Wickham, “Miss Elizabeth must tell me about Lady Anne’s interest in her, for the tales grow more elaborate each time I hear it.”
“There is very little to tell,” Elizabeth assured her. “Lady Anne merely asks what I read, whether I ride, how I spend my days, and what qualities I most admire in a gentleman.”
Mrs. Wickham laughed. “Only that and nothing more?”
“She has also discovered my opinions on town, the country, large families, quiet households, and the proper distance at which one ought to live from one’s mother.” Elizabeth was being ridiculous now and she knew it.
“And you have discouraged her?”
“With great firmness. I told her I had no intention of marrying this season.”
“Really?” Mrs. Wickham asked. “And what did she say to that?”
“That she had never known such an opinion to survive the right acquaintance,” Elizabeth admitted. Those had not been Lady Anne’s precise words, but it amounted to the same thing.
Both Jane and Mrs. Wickham laughed.
“I must warn you,” Mrs. Wickham said when she had done. “I said nearly the exact same thing the season she matched me with George.”
Elizabeth blinked.
Suddenly Mr. Wickham sang out, “Darcy! Fitzwilliam! I had no idea you meant to walk this morning.”
Greetings were exchanged. The colonel kissed Mrs. Wickham’s hand. “Em. You are blooming,” he said. “Matrimony continues to agree with you, despite your choice of a husband.”
“You should try the institution yourself, Colonel.”