Chapter Twenty-Three
Wickham's Last Attempt
Wickham came to London seeking Darcy.
Darcy had expected something.
Not this.
His valet announced the visitor with visible disapproval. Wickham entered smiling as though they were old friends separated by inconvenience rather than decades of betrayal.
"Darcy."
"Wickham."
"You have made Hertfordshire uncomfortable."
Darcy remained standing behind his desk. "Did I?"
"You know you did. Very clever. Improving your manners before blackening mine."
"I did not invent your debts."
"No."
"Nor your signatures."
"No."
Wickham walked toward the fire. "What do you want?"
"Again, nothing."
"Everyone wants something."
Darcy thought of Elizabeth, his children, one lost life and another begun. "Not always."
Wickham laughed softly. Then he said, "Georgiana."
Darcy went cold.
Wickham saw and smiled. "There he is."
"Do not speak her name."
"Why? Afraid your country friends will learn what happened?"
Darcy crossed the room.
He did not strike him.
It required more than fifty years of maturity.
Barely.
"Georgiana has done nothing shameful."
Wickham's smile faded.
Darcy continued, "If you mention Ramsgate publicly, I will not hide it."
Wickham blinked. "You won't."
"No."
"Her reputation--"
"Will survive the truth better than yours."
Wickham stared.
That was new.
Darcy had once considered Georgiana's reputation too fragile for daylight. Elizabeth had taught him the cruelty of making victims carry secrecy as shame.
"I will tell anyone necessary," Darcy said, "that a fifteen-year-old girl was deceived by a man nearly twice her age who wanted thirty thousand pounds."
Wickham's face changed. "And Georgiana agrees?"
Darcy's jaw tightened. "She will decide what may be said."
There.
Her choice.
Wickham looked uncertain for the first time. "You always were sanctimonious."
"No. I was proud. There is a difference."
"And now?"
Darcy almost smiled. "Still proud. Better managed."
Wickham's eyes narrowed.
Darcy returned to his desk. "If you require money, do not come to me. If you require employment, I will provide the name of an agent who may assist you in finding honest work, but I will not purchase another promise from you."
"How generous."
"It is not generosity. It is the last opportunity I will offer."
Wickham left London within a week.
Reports later placed him in Ireland and then France.
He did not return to Hertfordshire.
Darcy wrote Georgiana afterward, not to frighten her but to tell her what had happened. He asked what she wished him to say if Wickham ever attempted to use Ramsgate against her.
Her reply came two days later.
Tell the truth, if it becomes necessary. I am tired of being afraid of something I did not do.
Darcy sat with the letter for a long time.
Elizabeth found him that evening at Netherfield and read the final line after he handed it to her.
Her eyes filled. "She chose."
"Yes."
Elizabeth pressed the paper back into his hand. "You gave her room to."
Darcy looked at his wife-not-yet-wife and understood again why finding her sooner mattered.
Darcy's decision to be sociable in Hertfordshire did not make him universally beloved, which secretly relieved Elizabeth. She did not want a transformed Darcy who charmed every room. She wanted the man she knew, only without using reserve as a shield sharp enough to wound everyone who approached.
At one dinner Sir William attempted to draw Darcy into a conversation about court fashions. Darcy endured three minutes, then said with perfect gravity, "Sir William, I fear I possess no useful opinion on feathers."
Elizabeth nearly laughed into her wine.
Sir William, undeterred, moved to coats.
Darcy looked toward Elizabeth in mute appeal.
She smiled sweetly and did nothing.
Later, when they walked home with the Bennets, Darcy murmured, "You abandoned me."
"You survived."
"Barely."
"You were kind."
"I was trapped."
Elizabeth looked up at him. "There is a difference between being sociable and enjoying everyone."
"Thank God."
She laughed.
His efforts were noticed beyond Bingley and Georgiana. Mr. Goulding began asking Darcy's opinion on estate matters. Colonel Forster invited him to dine with several senior officers. Even Mrs. Phillips admitted, after much resistance, that Mr. Darcy was "not so stiff as he looks."
That mattered when Wickham's whispers spread.
People did not dismiss Wickham because Darcy was rich. They questioned the story because the Darcy they had met did not resemble the monster described.
Elizabeth saw how reputation worked in reverse. A single insult had once made Wickham believable because Darcy had given the neighborhood no kinder evidence. Now dozens of ordinary civilities protected him better than rank ever could.
"You see?" Elizabeth told him after Mrs. Long defended him against a particularly dramatic version of Wickham's grievance. "Seventeen minutes about a horse were not wasted."
Darcy looked pained. "I feared you would say that."
"You must listen to more horses."
"Cruel woman."
"Improvement requires sacrifice."
Lydia's coming Brighton invitation hovered over Elizabeth long before it arrived. That was the trouble with remembering. An ordinary letter from Mrs. Forster could become a loaded pistol before anyone else knew it existed.
Elizabeth began watching Lydia too closely.
Lydia noticed.
"Why do you keep looking at me?"
"I don't."
"You do. At breakfast. In Meryton. Yesterday when I talked to Lieutenant Carter."
Elizabeth folded a handkerchief. "Perhaps you are interesting."
Lydia snorted. "You used to think I was annoying."
The truth hurt.
"Sometimes I did."
Lydia looked startled by the admission.
Elizabeth continued, "Sometimes you were."
"Lizzy!"
"So was I."
Lydia laughed. "You still are."
"Exactly."
The ease returned, but Elizabeth kept thinking afterward about the line between watching and hovering. She knew the shape of Lydia's old disaster, but Lydia did not deserve to spend a year under suspicion for a mistake she had not made.
So Elizabeth changed strategy. Instead of warning Lydia away from every officer, she invited her on walks where they spoke about attention, attraction, and what Lydia actually wanted from society.
The conversations were rarely profound.
Once Lydia said, "I want everyone to think I am the prettiest girl in the room."
Elizabeth laughed. "Everyone?"
"Most people."
"And if they don't?"
Lydia considered. "Then they have poor taste."
Elizabeth laughed harder.
But another day Lydia admitted, "I hate when Kitty is noticed first."
There was the vulnerable thing beneath the vanity.
Elizabeth did not lecture. "Why?"
Lydia shrugged. "Because I am supposed to be the lively one."
Elizabeth stopped walking.
Roles again.
Jane the beautiful one. Elizabeth the clever one. Mary the serious one. Kitty the follower. Lydia the lively one.
How easily families made cages out of descriptions.
"You are allowed to be other things," Elizabeth said.
Lydia rolled her eyes. "Such as?"
"You tell me."
It took months before Lydia found answers.