Mr Darcy’s Shadow
Mr Darcy’s Shadow
Longbourn had made a theatre of every feeling. In London, nobody knew enough to watch her.
Gracechurch Street was crowded, noisy, smoky, and never still, yet it was more peaceful to her than her mother’s drawing room.
No one looked up when she was quiet. No one measured her silence against Mr Darcy’s absence.
London was full of strangers. For the present, Elizabeth found that almost kind.
The Gardiners’ house was everything Longbourn was not.
It was smaller, for one thing, and better managed.
The children appeared when wanted and disappeared when necessary, which Elizabeth suspected was entirely Mrs Gardiner’s doing.
Dinner came on time. The rooms were full without being cluttered, warm without being airless.
Elizabeth had her own room, which looked out over the street rather than a garden, and she found she preferred it. The street was always moving. There was always something to look at that was not the inside of her own head.
Mrs Gardiner gave her two days before she asked anything.
On the third morning, before breakfast, Mrs Gardiner appeared in the doorway of the small sitting room where Elizabeth had been making a creditable pretence of reading, sat down opposite her, and poured two cups of tea without speaking.
“The children have been asking whether you will play with them this afternoon,” Mrs Gardiner said.
“I should be very glad to.”
“Good. And how are you?”
“Better,” Elizabeth said. “Genuinely.”
“London suits you.”
“London gives me nothing to perform,” Elizabeth said. “That is near enough for December.”
Mrs Gardiner smiled. “Near enough,” she agreed.
After they finished their tea they went down for breakfast. A letter from Jane was waiting beside Elizabeth’s plate. She knew the hand before she saw the seal properly, and felt, absurdly, both warmed and accused by it.
She opened it over her toast while the Gardiner children argued companionably at the other end of the table about something that had happened to a spinning top.
Dearest Lizzy, Jane had written. I hope London is taking good care of you, and that Aunt Gardiner is not letting you keep too much to yourself. Mama has already begun discussing the breakfast and has opinions about the lace that I believe you will hear about whether you wish to or not.
Mr Bingley called yesterday and stayed two hours, which Mama considered insufficient and Papa considered excessive, and which I thought exactly right. I wish you were here to tell me whether I am being ridiculous.
She was not being ridiculous. Elizabeth could have told her that from Hertfordshire.
I spoke with Charlotte yesterday, Jane continued. She seems very content, which I think is what she wanted. She asked after you with real affection. I believe she misses you, though she would not say so directly, which is very Charlotte.
The banns are to be read next week.
There is no news of Mr Darcy. I did not expect there would be. I hope you are not expecting it either, Lizzy, though I rather think you are.
All my love,
Jane
Elizabeth folded the letter. Across the table, the youngest Gardiner child had resolved the spinning top dispute by the simple expedient of spinning it himself and daring anyone to object. Mrs Gardiner removed it without comment.
Mr Gardiner looked up from his own correspondence. “Anything of interest?”
“Jane,” Elizabeth said. “She is very happy.”
“Good,” Mr Gardiner said, and returned to his letters. Then, a moment later, without looking up, “A correspondent mentions Colonel Fitzwilliam was seen in town last week. Odd time of year for it.”
Elizabeth kept her face entirely still. “Is it?”
“Mm.” Mr Gardiner turned a page. “His regiment is in the north. No particular reason to be in London in December.”
He said nothing further. There is no news of Mr Darcy. No. There was not. No reason that anyone had yet explained.
London had its own version of the neighbourhood.
It was larger, naturally, and considerably less intimate, but Elizabeth had been in London long enough to understand that it operated on the same principles.
People talked. Information moved. And certain names, attached to certain families, carried enough consequence that they circulated whether their owners were present or not.
She heard Mr Darcy’s name for the first time on the fourth day, at a linen draper’s in Cheapside where Mrs Gardiner had an account and a long-standing opinion about cambric.
The woman beside them at the counter was talking to her companion about a young man of her acquaintance who had left for the Continent quite suddenly.
“Mr Darcy,” she said. “Pemberley, you know. Gone to France, I believe.”
Elizabeth looked at a bolt of muslin.
“France?” her companion said. “In the present circumstances?”
“Or Italy. One of the two.”
“Italy, then,” the first woman said, with perfect composure.
Elizabeth set down the muslin. She heard it again three days later, at a circulating library on Cheapside where Mrs Gardiner had a subscription and Elizabeth had been working her way through the shelves with methodical attention. Other people’s stories were easier than her own.
A gentleman was speaking to the librarian about an acquaintance gone north to his estates.
“Mr Darcy of Pemberley,” he said. “Gone up to Derbyshire for the winter, I believe. Some business with the estate.”
Elizabeth looked at the spine of a novel she had no intention of reading. Derbyshire was not Italy. Derbyshire was also not France.
She heard it a third time at dinner. Mr Audley, a friend of Mr Gardiner’s with connections in the legal profession and opinions about everything, helped himself to more port and leaned back in his chair.
“Young Darcy,” he said. “Fitzwilliam Darcy. Pemberley. His guardian has him travelling, I believe. Educational purposes. Germany, possibly. One of the German states.”
“His guardian?” Mr Gardiner said with mild interest, though Elizabeth saw that the information had caught his attention.
“Wickham. Married the sister. Some power under the father’s will until Darcy comes of age, I understand.” He waved his hand. “Unusual, but there it is.”
Elizabeth looked at her plate. Mr Gardiner looked at Elizabeth.
That evening, after Mr Audley had gone, Mr Gardiner found Elizabeth alone in the sitting room. He sat down opposite her.
“Mr Audley was not wrong about the guardianship arrangement,” he said. “A steward’s son made guardian to the heir of Pemberley. By a man who was generally considered a sound judge of character. It is the sort of arrangement that raises questions in business circles.”
“What sort of questions?”
“The sort that men of business ask when an estate of that size has an absent owner and an absent guardian and nobody quite agrees on where either of them has gone. Estates do not manage themselves, Lizzy. Someone is making decisions about Pemberley. The question is who.”
“What do you know of Mr Wickham?”
Mr Gardiner set down his glass. “George Wickham. Son of the Pemberley steward. Grew up on the estate. Married Miss Darcy…”
“Barely more than a girl,” Mrs Gardiner said from the doorway.
Elizabeth turned. Mrs Gardiner came in quietly, closing the door behind her. “I remember the talk in Lambton. I was young myself, and I remember the shape of the talk more than every particular, but Miss Darcy was nineteen, and her brother younger still. People said the marriage came quickly.”
“And the will?” Mr Gardiner asked.
Mrs Gardiner’s expression tightened. “That came quickly too.”
“There were stories,” Mrs Gardiner said. “Nothing one could put a hand on. Only talk. Mr Darcy had been ill. Mr Wickham was much at the house. Miss Darcy was seen less often. Then there was a marriage, and soon after, a will that placed more in Mr Wickham’s hands than anyone had expected.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened in her lap. “Did people object?”
“People talked,” Mrs Gardiner said. “It is not the same thing. Everyone expected Miss Darcy to marry very well. She was beautiful, well-born, connected to half the county worth knowing, and had been presented in London. There was talk of sons of baronets, younger sons of noble families, perhaps someone higher. Then, almost before anyone understood there was an attachment, she married George Wickham.”
“It was not merely that he was the steward’s son?”
“No. It was how suddenly she had gone from one future to another.”
Elizabeth thought about Georgiana at the ball. Hands folded. Eyes lowered. Carefully managing the space between what was expected of her and what had happened to her.
“Was there talk of pressure?” she said carefully. “On Miss Darcy?”
Mrs Gardiner and Mr Gardiner exchanged a look.
“Nothing that could be proved,” Mrs Gardiner said. “Only that she was young, and Mr Darcy senior was ill for longer than people realised, and that Mr Wickham had been at the house a great deal.”
“And after the marriage?”
“After the marriage, people stopped talking. Which is sometimes the loudest thing of all.”
“She has children,” Elizabeth said.
“Two. A girl and a boy.”
“She seems… composed.”
“Yes,” Mrs Gardiner said quietly. “I imagine she does. Her father provided for them. Thornton Hall, about fifteen miles from Pemberley. Comfortable, well-managed. He wished them to be settled nearby.”
“And after his death?”
“After his death,” Mr Gardiner said, “Mr Wickham moved considerably closer. Pemberley itself. The guardian in residence. Making decisions about the estate. About the heir.” He paused. “About everything.”
The fire crackled.
“And nobody questioned it?” Elizabeth said.
“Who was there to question it? The will was legal. The boy was fifteen. There was talk that the Fitzwilliams were displeased. More than displeased, perhaps. But a will may be resented and still be valid.” He looked at his glass. “And Mr Wickham is a very charming man.”
Mr Gardiner leaned back in his chair. “And now we have three different versions of Mr Darcy’s whereabouts, a guardian said to be travelling, a ward said to be travelling, and estate business that must still be conducted by someone.”
“August,” she said.
Mr Gardiner’s eyes sharpened. “What of August?”
“He comes of age in August. Early August.”
“Then,” he said slowly, “there are still some months in which a great deal may be done.”
She was thinking of a ballroom, and a young man’s face as he said, within her hearing, that she was of no consequence to him. She had believed, then, that he had been cruel because it was useful.
Now she wondered how many other useful things had been said, arranged, hidden, and endured. Outside, wheels passed over wet stones. Somewhere below, one of the children laughed and was hushed. London went on moving. Elizabeth sat very still and listened.