9. The Wickham Weight #2
“Not in Derbyshire, for we are starved for novelty. Shall we go inside? I am desperate for tea, and this cake is growing heavy, and I have so much to tell you.”
A maid took the basket, a footman relieved Miss Duntze of her heavy pattens, and inside they went, Georgiana linking her arm through Prue’s with the ease of neighborly friendship while Elizabeth followed, already composing the letter she would write to Jane describing this particular specimen of Derbyshire society.
The morning room received them with buttery sunlight and the promise of hot tea, and Prue settled into a chair with the air of a woman who intended to stay until she had exhausted her supply of conversation or her hostess’s patience, whichever came last.
The cake was cut, the tea was poured, and Prue talked.
She spoke of Lady Cathcart’s pronouncements and Mrs. Powell’s responses, of Miss Entwhistle who had fixed Elizabeth with a remarkably steady gaze during the sermon, “her form of endorsement, I believe, though one can never be certain with Miss Entwhistle; she once stared at a hat for twenty minutes, and we all thought she admired it, but it turned out she was composing a sonnet about mortality.”
“A hat inspired thoughts of mortality?” Elizabeth asked.
“It was a very unfortunate hat, all black crepe and dead birds. One could hardly blame her.”
Georgiana laughed, and Elizabeth found herself smiling despite the strangeness of being discussed like a new species of flora discovered in the Pemberley hothouse.
“My mother reserves judgment,” Prue continued, accepting more tea, “as she reserves everything, but she did concede your bonnet was well-chosen. From Mamma, that is practically an embrace.”
“Then I shall indeed treasure it.”
“You must! And Georgiana mentioned your visit to the modiste in Lambton. Miss Entwhistle observed you through the window for a full quarter hour; she has remarkable stamina for observation, and reported the visit in great detail to anyone who would listen, which was everyone, because what else have we to discuss? The sheep? The weather? We are drowning in sheep and weather, Mrs. Darcy. You are a rescue.”
Elizabeth glanced at Georgiana, who appeared entirely unsurprised by any of this. “Is Miss Duntze always…”
“Always,” Georgiana confirmed. “One learns to swim in the current rather than fight it.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a river,” Prue agreed.
“Refreshing, life-giving, and occasionally prone to flooding. Now, I must ask you something, and I beg you will not think me forward, though I am forward; everyone says so, but this is important.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to what she apparently believed was a level of discretion, though it would have carried easily to the servants’ hall. “Have you found any manuscripts?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Manuscripts?”
“Why, Lady Amelia’s manuscripts, of course!” Prue spoke the name with the practiced ease of someone reciting familiar history, utterly unaware she had just opened a door Elizabeth did not know existed. “You know of Lady Amelia, surely? Thomas’s mother?”
The morning room, so recently warm and companionable, now seemed to have been robbed of its air. Elizabeth kept her teacup steady, though it required more effort than she cared to admit.
“I know very little,” she said. “Mr. Darcy has not yet…”
“Oh, but you must know!” Prue’s eyes went wide with the horror of a gossip discovering an informational void.
“Lady Amelia Apethorpe. Daughter of Lord and Lady Apethorpe, the Earl and Countess of Drake, you understand, very grand and very, very proud. She was a celebrated authoress, published all sorts of essays under her own name, which was thought scandalous, though I thought it rather magnificent. She held the most extraordinary literary salons…”
“In Cheapside,” Elizabeth heard herself say, the words escaping before she could catch them.
Prue’s face lit. “You know of them!”
“I…” Elizabeth’s mind scrambled for purchase, found none, and manufactured one. “My aunt lives in Cheapside. Mrs. Gardiner. She mentioned… literary gatherings in passing.”
“Then your aunt has excellent taste. Lady Amelia’s salons were legendary.
Wollstonecraft sympathizers, terrifyingly clever women debating rights and reading their own verse aloud.
Miss Entwhistle has attended them; being a spinster of advanced age has its benefits, and she reports that Lady Amelia presided like an empress who had traded her crown for a pen. ”
Georgiana had gone quiet, her teacup suspended halfway to her lips. Elizabeth felt her watching but could not look at her, not yet, not while she was still assembling her face into something that did not betray the trapdoor that had just opened beneath her.
Elizabeth had attended those salons. Not often, three times, perhaps four, always through Aunt Gardiner’s connections.
She had sat in those candlelit rooms, listened to verse read aloud, watched a brilliant, laughing woman hold court.
She had not known the woman was Thomas’s mother, but she knew it now.
“I have wondered,” Prue continued, oblivious to the detonation occurring three feet from her seed cake, “what became of her papers. She was writing something extraordinary when she died, a novel, although she was quite secretive about it; she said an earl’s daughter should not reveal such stories.
I should be eternally grateful if you would ask Mr. Darcy where he kept them.
Purely for literature’s sake, you understand. ”
“But why would my husband have her papers?” Elizabeth wondered out loud.
“Since Mr. Darcy took wardship of the child, I assumed he must have taken custody of her effects as well. Her papers, her correspondence, and her manuscripts. The Apethorpes certainly wouldn’t have claimed them, not after the rift. Would you at least ask?”
“I shall,” Elizabeth said, absently, her voice too even and careful. “Though I cannot promise he will welcome the inquiry. He does not speak much of… of Thomas’s circumstances.”
“No, I imagine not, as it must be dreadfully awkward.” Prue shook her head, sympathy and curiosity warring on her face.
“The whole situation, I mean. Lady Amelia refused to marry or return home to her parents, choosing to raise the child alone. And then the accident—the phaeton, you know, how fast she loved to drive. Such a tragedy.”
“A great tragedy,” Elizabeth agreed, because words were required and these were the only ones available.
“What puzzles me—” Prue leaned forward again, her voice dropping to that carrying whisper, “—is why Mr. Darcy took the child at all. Not that it isn’t admirable, but Lady Amelia’s parents are an earl and countess. Lord Apethorpe could have claimed his grandson.”
Georgiana cleared her throat, her teacup clicking on the saucer. “Miss Duntze, perhaps some subjects are better left for another time.”
But Prue, having scented the quarry, could not release it. “I suppose it is only the father being who he is that complicates matters. One understands why the Apethorpes might prefer to distance themselves.”
Elizabeth’s hands found her teacup, her fingers wrapping around the porcelain, as she noted with distant interest that they remained steady.
“The father,” she said. “I wonder…”
“Is George Wickham.” Prue blinked as if it were common knowledge.
“He is Mr. Darcy’s half-brother. His father’s natural son, by the steward’s wife.
Grew up at Pemberley as old Mr. Darcy’s godson, though the name is Wickham, not Darcy, and the distinction is rather crucial.
He is devastatingly handsome, fair-haired, tall, and the most charming man in any room. Had he been legitimate…”
“We do not discuss George in this house.” Georgiana’s voice cut across the room like a blade. She sat rigid, two spots of color burning on her cheeks. “Fitzwilliam does not like it, Prue, and you know that.”
Prue’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “I meant no offense.”
“You gave none. But we do not speak of him. Not here.” Georgiana remained firm, the steel in her voice cutting and clear.
Elizabeth, however, felt the floor vanish beneath her.
Her stomach lurched, and her blood slowed to a chill.
She reached for the teapot—her hands required employment, for if she did not pour tea, she might betray herself in some irretrievable way: a cry, a retch, or the unforgivable request that Prue repeat the name, just to be certain.
But she had heard correctly; she knew she had. George Wickham. Fair-haired, tall, and the most charming man in any room.
The teapot was heavier than it should be. She poured carefully, watching the amber stream fill Prue’s cup, then her own, then Georgiana’s, though Georgiana had not asked. The familiar motions bought her seconds—precious seconds, while the name ricocheted through her skull and found its target.
This was the same George Wickham who had found her in a passage after one of those Cheapside salons, declaring her the cleverest woman he had met in London.
Who had walked with her through the wintry twilight, his voice warm as sweet honey, his smile an open door she had stepped through because she was twenty and no one had ever looked at her like that.
And the same man who had kissed her behind the bookseller’s wall and pressed a ring into her palm, whispering promises she had believed.
And all along, he was the half-brother to the man she had married and the father of the child she had just comforted in the garden.
“Forgive me,” Prue was saying, her voice smaller now. “I forget that parish common knowledge is not household conversation. I only meant—”
“The seed cake.” Elizabeth heard herself speak, marveling at the steadiness of the voice emerging from her throat. “Let us try the seed cake, Miss Duntze, for you brought it all this way.”