Chapter 42 #2
“I will not be insulted in this manner!” Lady Catherine stabbed her cane against the carpet and rose, ready to depart.
Wrayburn’s commanding tone stopped her, “Lady Catherine, you must stay for the complete reading of the will. As a beneficiary, your presence is required.”
She sat back down, glaring at anyone who dared laugh at her expense.
Elizabeth hid her smile behind her hand, elbowing her father when a gleeful noise escaped from him.
Darcy had forgotten this side of his father.
He wished he had been allowed to see it more often.
Elizabeth would have appreciated his humor and taken delight in teasing him.
Darcy could imagine the pair making a game of provoking each other to laugh.
Anne received a landscape painting of an Alpine scene her uncle had purchased on his own grand tour, bequeathed with the expressed belief that she had more adventure in her than circumstances allowed and the wish that she teach her children their father’s language before their grandmother’s opinions. Mr. Schweitzer was pleased.
Mrs. Reynolds received one hundred pounds, Rose Cottage for life, and an annuity of twenty pounds a year to be paid quarterly for her comfort.
Darcy had not known about the cottage. He made a mental note to ensure it was in good repair and properly furnished, though he suspected his father had already seen to it.
The gamekeeper, the cook, the butler, the gardener… his father remembered them all, with the specific generosity of a man who knew their names and what they valued.
“Item.” Wrayburn’s voice acquired a distinct weight.
“To George Wickham, son of my late steward David Wickham, I give and bequeath the sum of one thousand pounds”— Wickham’s head jerked up, a flash of hope flaring in his eyes—”to be paid to him upon his demonstrating to my executors that he has secured respectable employment or entered into an honorable profession befitting the gentleman he was educated to become. ” The flash extinguished.
Richard asked, “Wickham is of age, is he not?”
“He is,” confirmed Wrayburn.
“And has he demonstrated such employment to your satisfaction?”
Looking at Wickham levelly, Wrayburn said with plain finality, “He has not.” Wickham sat very still, his complexion visibly paling as he seemed to calculate the distance between what he had and what he owed and finding the sum untenable.
Wrayburn read on. “This bequest is made not in reward of his conduct, which has been a source of considerable disappointment to me despite the fond hopes I once entertained for his improvement, but in final discharge of any obligation I may have felt toward his late father's memory and in the earnest hope that this provision may yet afford him the means to make something worthy of himself, should he possess the will to do so.”
Darcy looked at Wickham and felt sorrow.
Not sympathy—he was not yet equal to that—but the recognition of what a life built on resentment and presumption had produced.
The man had built his life on another man's inheritance, had spent everything pursuing it, and now sat in the library of the house he would never own and listened to his godfather's measured, final disappointment in him read aloud to a room full of witnesses.
“Should the said George Wickham fail to meet these conditions, or should his conduct continue to prove him unworthy of said trust, then this bequest shall be void and the said sum shall revert to my general estate.”
A silence.
Then Wrayburn set down the final page, aligned it precisely with the others, and folded his hands. “That concludes the last will and testament of George Darcy, late of Pemberley in the County of Derbyshire.”
What followed was not precisely chaos but was a close relation to it.
Lord Matlock rose, muttered something to his wife, and regarded Darcy with residual bluster and the beginnings of what might eventually become chagrin.
Lady Catherine announced that she would require the china service catalogued and wrapped before she departed, and that she would be writing a very thorough letter to her solicitor.
Wrayburn's clerk began distributing sealed packets to the relevant parties, dismissing them as he did so to form a line filing out of the vacating room.
Wickham stood and straightened his coat.
He did not speak to anyone, nor did anyone speak to him.
He walked to the door with what remained of his dignity, which was considerably less than he had arrived with and rather more than he deserved.
Darcy watched him go, certain he would never see him again.
Wickham’s days of freedom were numbered.
Unless he fled the country, his debts would soon land him in Fleet Prison, where his charm would be wasted and his airs would be used against him.
The room thinned. Charlotte whispered something to Elizabeth, pressed her hand briefly, and slipped out to the hall.
Mr. Bennet was the last to leave. He paused at the door and looked back at Darcy.
He opened his mouth to speak. Darcy saw the gentleman’s regret clearly in his expression, but the words would not come.
He shook his head and sighed. Darcy nodded at him.
Their conversation would have to come on another day.
Mr. Bennet sensed it, too. Looking away from Darcy, his gaze settled on his daughter.
He sniffed, his eyes filling with tears before he stepped out and drew the door closed behind him.
The library was quiet. Elizabeth did not move from her chair.
She sat with her hands folded in her lap precisely as she had sat through the reading, and she looked at Darcy across the room with an expression he could not read.
The globe stood between them on its mahogany cradle, the faded oceans catching the light from the window.
Darcy rounded the desk and stopped a careful distance from her—close enough to speak, far enough to satisfy respectability. “Elizabeth.” And then, because he had no prepared speech and no strategy and nothing left to hide, “I owe you an apology.”
She looked up at him steadily. “Yes, you do. I am listening.”