Chapter 1 #2
They would be at Pegwell Bay almost every morning.
Jameson was a marvel. When Darcy asked how on earth he had learnt so much, he just shrugged, modestly, and said, “Your servants do not talk about the family, because they are too well compensated to risk being dismissed, but most servants talk. Some talk far too freely.”
Darcy knew that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was far too young for him to meet and get to know, but when Georgiana woke the next morning and asked if they could go to the Main Sands or Pegwell Bay, as they did most days, he found himself guiding his sister to Pegwell.
He spotted Miss Elizabeth immediately, but he wrenched his eyes away from her and kept his focus on Georgiana and the rock pools they were exploring.
Soon, a man approached. He looked to be, perhaps, five and thirty, and Darcy rose from where he had squatted down and nodded to him.
The man said, “Pardon me for interrupting you, sir, and addressing you without an introduction, but my niece told me just now it is to you that I owe thanks. Yesterday she reported that an unworthy young man had approached her and her sister with honeyed words that seemed to her entirely improper, and she said that you managed to urge him away, warning my servant about the danger he posed. I wish to thank you for doing so.”
Darcy shook his head and said, “You owe me no thanks. I know how odd it is for me to intercede in such a situation, but the reprobate, George Wickham, seemed to be alarming your nieces. I only did what any gentleman would do.”
“My name is Edward Gardiner,” the man said with a shallow bow.
“Pleased to meet you. Fitzwilliam Darcy, at your service.” He nodded his head
Mr Gardiner hesitated, to Darcy’s surprise—he had thought that, having broken with propriety and approached without an introduction, the man would scuttle away as quickly as possible after saying what he had wished to say.
However, Mr Gardiner looked troubled, and he said, “Is there anything I can do to limit my nieces’ danger from Mr Wickham? ”
Darcy said slowly, “I had thought that forewarned was forearmed.”
Mr Gardiner blushed. “Most certainly. I must entreat your forgiveness, again, for so bold an intrusion on the customs of propriety, and I offer my most sincere thanks, once more.” Bowing again, he hurried away, back to his family. But Darcy had seen his continuing disquiet.
Half an hour later, with the tide farther out, Georgiana requested permission to collect shells.
Darcy led her away from the rock pools and, as they walked the damp sand, he was pleased that his sister was thoroughly delighted with the many shells she spotted.
He laughed at her enthusiasm but mandated that she only take one of each sort of shell.
“There are other children at the beach, as you can clearly see,” he said.
Of course she could clearly see the others, and Darcy’s heart clenched as she looked longingly at the two young ladies laughing as their young cousins dug holes and made rather shapeless castles out of the damp sand.
The oldest of the cousins was a little girl who looked to be seven or eight.
She ended up wandering quite close to where Georgiana was attempting to choose her favourite razor clam and whelk.
Darcy leant towards his sister and murmured, “Maybe you should offer the extra shells to her.” He smiled as he saw Georgiana eagerly gather five shells and wordlessly walk a few steps and then hold them out to the little girl.
“Thank you, miss,” the girl said. She held her hands out and allowed Georgiana to empty hers. Closing her fingers over the shells, the little girl ran to her family and said, “Look what that beautiful lady gave me!”
Darcy grinned and turned to his sister. She whispered, “That little girl called me a lady!”
“A beautiful lady,” he said in a low voice.
“I have never—I feel so—” Georgiana floundered, at a loss for words or possibly not able to identify what it was she felt.
“You feel more grown up?” Darcy suggested.
“Yes!”
Miss Elizabeth approached Georgiana, thanking her for the shells.
Georgiana blushed and responded so quietly that Darcy could not hear her words, even though he was only a few feet away.
Then Miss Elizabeth invited Georgiana to join the castle-making project.
Georgiana looked up at him with hope, and Darcy nodded.
He stayed sitting where he was as Georgiana moved away to join the group busily playing with sand. Now, he had to watch Miss Elizabeth in order to watch his sister. He soon began to wonder how he could have found her merely pretty.
Her features were unusual—a delicate and upturned nose, wide mouth, pointed chin.
Her sister, Miss Bennet, had the perfectly symmetrical features, Grecian nose, rosebud mouth, and rounded face shape that society deemed beautiful.
But Miss Elizabeth’s more elfin features were lively and her expression, as he had noted the day before, was ever-changing.
Miss Elizabeth seemed to be in constant motion.
Even though the three young ladies were all sitting on a blanket, Georgiana and Miss Bennet remained in one spot, their skirts carefully arranged, while Miss Elizabeth reached for a bucket, stretched to place a seashell onto a slumping sand tower, tickled one of her cousins, and rose up onto her knees.
Miss Bennet and Georgiana spoke little, and softly, although they giggled a great deal, but Miss Elizabeth spoke often, asking her cousins about battlements and turrets that may or may not have been represented by sand, playfully addressing her cousins as if they were the king, queen, and princess of the magnificent kingdom of Sandelot, pretending to be an evil Sea Witch, bent on the destruction of the 458-room palace, and narrating all manner of derring-do’s the children enacted with shells standing in as characters in a medieval saga.
Miss Elizabeth was far too young for him, but she was also enchanting.
When she walked Georgiana back to him, when the Gardiners made ready to leave, he really saw for the first time Miss Elizabeth’s eyes.
They were beguiling, dancing, sparkling eyes whose colour could not be described with a simple one-word description, such as “brown” or “green,” because they were brown and green and gold, rimmed with navy.
Darcy led his sister back to their carriage, her hand in the crook of his arm, and each of them holding a few of the shells she had chosen for her growing collection at Seaside Cottage.
The moment they reached the cottage, he made his excuses and sat down at the desk in the corner of the parlour.
Even when on holiday with his sister, he had letters from stewards and his man of business to read and answer.
He busily worked until dinner and returned to reading one final report and writing one final reply deep into the night.
Later, although he was very tired, Darcy felt restless and unable to sleep.
In between one of his tossings and one of his turnings, he realised that he felt troubled by Mr Gardiner’s expression as he had left Darcy’s presence.
The man had apparently thought that being forewarned about a rogue like Wickham was not forearmed—and least, not enough.
Sitting up, Darcy remembered the faint impression he had briefly had, at the milliner’s, that Miss Bennet had looked uncertain at whatever Wickham had said, rather than wholly disapproving, as Miss Elizabeth had seemed.
“It is not enough to warn one family,” Darcy thought.
He could not warn everybody in England, after all, and not all girls and ladies believed warnings from others.
When he and Wickham were both at school, Darcy had thought that paying shopkeepers for Wickham’s unpaid bills and making hefty cash payments to the two women and one girl whom Wickham had impregnated were not only the right things to do, but also the only things that could be done.
However, now it occurred to him that his strategy to fix the awful things Wickham had done merely enabled the blackguard to go to new towns and cities, run up new debts, and ruin additional girls and women.
Darcy pressed his hands to his temples. I need to do something about Wickham right now, he decided. Obviously, he could not murder his nemesis, not even in a duel, but….
The next morning, Darcy arranged for Mrs Peterson and three footmen, all of whom were thoroughly warned about Wickham, to accompany Georgiana to Pegwell Bay.
He and Jameson did a less enjoyable outing: they visited every tailor, haberdasher, and linen draper, starting on High Street.
At each establishment, they asked about and paid for Wickham’s debts, collecting signed and dated receipts, many of them with canceled stamps, and in the case of debts over five pounds, asking for more formal letters of acquittal.
They also visited every inn, hotel, pastry shop, confectioner, tavern, and spirit merchant that was along their way, paying those debts as well, and gaining many more receipts.
Darcy had known that Wickham was profligate, but he was deeply shocked to learn that in only a fortnight, the man had incurred five and ninety pounds of debts.