Given Lydia’s lifelong preoccupation with herself, Elizabeth found it difficult to believe that altruism motivated her, especially since among the five sisters, they two were probably the least intimate. Elizabeth had possessed little patience for Lydia’s silliness and selfishness before her elopement, and lost all tolerance afterward. She studied her sister’s face to divine her true purpose. “My confinement will not begin for another few months.”
“I thought I could help you prepare. I suppose the baby will need clothes and such.”
If she relied upon Lydia to complete her infant’s layette, she might as well name the child Godiva. “You came to Pemberley to sew?”
“Yes! I have improved at it, you know. I had to tear apart half my gowns this season and make them over because the linendrapers will not let me buy any more material until Wickham pays for what I have already purchased. Wickham says he will, as soon as he has got the money, but in the meantime I could not go to the officers’ balls in last year’s gowns with all the other wives wearing new. Only imagine how everyone would talk! I think their husbands must receive better pay than Wickham, though I do not understand why. He is such a favorite in his regiment. He is always drinking with the other officers.”
No doubt.
“I told him he should just inform his captain that he deserves better pay. It is unfair, you know, not to be able to buy the things my friends do, and never to go to places like Bath. But Wickham will not ask. He says someday we shall have pots of money. But in the meantime it is quite vexing to have Mr. Lynton calling all the time.”
“Who is Mr. Lynton?”
“Oh, someone Wickham knows. I think he loaned Wickham a bit of money. What a horrible little man! I wish he would just leave us alone. Why, we no sooner returned from Jane’s than he was pounding on our door again. I think the best part of visiting you is not having to see him every day.”
At last, they had reached the real motive for Lydia’s visit. Its revelation came as no surprise. The Wickhams had once again landed themselves in financial distress.
She wondered whether Mr. Lynton were a moneylender. Extravagant habits and an immature disregard for their consequences saw the couple constantly living beyond their income, and Lydia had often applied to Elizabeth and Jane for relief. Though Lydia had chosen this life through her own recklessness, Elizabeth did not want her sister to suffer. She would never ask Darcy for money to give to the couple — he had advanced thousands of pounds just to bring about Lydia’s marriage after her scandalous elopement — but she herself made them presents out of her pin money.
The couple’s current circumstances must be bad indeed to send them fleeing to Pemberley to avoid their creditors. Nevertheless, Wickham certainly could not stay, nor did she expect Lydia truly wanted to. In comparison to her usual society, the entertainments of Pemberley would not long satisfy her. Both sisters — not to mention everyone else in the household — would be happier if Lydia returned to the company of her friends.
Elizabeth sighed. “How many pounds do you need this time?”
Darcy did not find Mr. Wickham in the billiards room, nor in the saloon. He found him in the library. His library. As if Wickham’s mere presence at Pemberley were not sufficient insult. This was a trespass not to be borne.
Further, he did not discover Mr. Wickham alone. As Darcy entered the room, a housemaid quickly stepped away from Wickham’s side. She moved too fast for him to determine whether he had interrupted a clinch, but the libertine had obviously been making himself too free with one of the servants. Again.
“Darcy! I had no idea you had returned.” He leaned casually against one of the bookcases and offered an insincere grin. Darcy wanted to strike it from his impudent face.
“Obviously.”
Before dealing with the reprehensible Mr. Wickham, Darcy turned his attention to the housemaid. She was a young slip of a girl, easy prey for a lothario as charming and practiced as Wickham. Darcy’s mere gaze froze her in place.
“What is your name?” he asked.
She required a moment to find her voice. “Jenny, sir.”
“How long have you been employed at Pemberley?”
“I just started this week, sir.”
“Mrs. Reynolds no doubt advised you of the conduct expected from all servants here, but I shall ask her to remind you. If you want to keep your place at Pemberley, I suggest you listen carefully this time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You may go.”
Without another glance at Wickham, Jenny darted from the room. Wickham chuckled.
“Ever the stern master. I see nothing at Pemberley has changed.”
“Including you.”
Darcy had learned, after the fact, that during the period George Wickham had lived at Pemberley, he had seduced several of the female staff. Then, the handsome young rake had merely been the steward’s son — a status that, if higher than that of his paramours, had not been so very elevated.
And he had been a bachelor.
Now, Wickham was — he still recoiled at the thought — a member of the family. Darcy would never countenance a dalliance between him and one of Pemberley’s servants.
Wickham chuckled again. “You frightened the poor girl half to death. We were only talking. I am wed to your wife’s sister now, after all.”
“I hardly need reminding of that unfortunate fact.”
“Come, now. You cannot grudge me the connection you yourself went to such trouble to bring off.”
Darcy reviled George Wickham. The scoundrel tarnished everything he touched, and had any other method existed by which he could have saved Elizabeth’s foolish sister from utter ruin, he would have seized upon it. When he had found Wickham and Lydia unwed and cohabitating in London, he knew that by enforcing the promises of marriage through which Wickham had persuaded Lydia to run away, he was not securing permanent happiness for the bride. He had acted to rescue Lydia from social disgrace and from the danger that would have followed when Wickham eventually tired of her and moved on to his next conquest. Once fallen, she would have spent the rest of her life as the chattel of one rapacious man after another.
He had intervened not for Lydia’s sake, but for Elizabeth’s. At the time, Darcy had possessed no connection to Lydia; he and Elizabeth had not been engaged, nor anywhere close to an understanding. But he had wanted to spare Elizabeth the pain of having a sister so debased, and to salvage her own respectability from the ignominy into which it must necessarily have descended as a result of Lydia’s degradation. One fallen sister would have precluded all the rest from ever marrying well, if at all.
“Sometimes one must tolerate a parasite so as not to kill its host.”
At this, Wickham laughed openly. “Is that what I am? My dear Fitz, I regard myself more as your errant brother.”
“You are far too familiar.”
“Am I? We did grow up together.” He gestured toward the window. “How many hours did we spend angling in that river? Coursing for hares? Shooting? Hawking?” A flash of resentment crossed his countenance. “But I was just a convenient companion, was I not? Someone for Master Darcy to play with when no boys of superior birth offered better company.”
“You have not come here to reminisce — with you, an ulterior motive always exists. What is it?”
“Indeed, brother, your cynicism wounds me. I merely brought my wife to visit her sister.”
“Even were that true, it does not explain your own presence in a house where you know you have no entrée.” Nor how the rogue had gained admission in the first place. “Do not military duties summon you back to your regiment? I know that I, for one, rest easier at night in the knowledge that Mr. George Wickham defends England from invasion.”
“Duty indeed calls. I am afraid I must depart on Saturday.”
“You will depart now. Both you and Mrs. Wickham.”
“But the day grows short.”
“Lambton is but five miles. Stay the night there or continue on; I do not care.”
“We have not ordered a carriage.”
“My driver will convey you to the inn.” The good of the Wickhams’ immediately quitting Pemberley would more than mitigate the evil of suffering them to use Darcy’s private coach.
“You are the soul of generosity.” Wickham bowed cockily. “Until we meet again, then — wherever that might be.”