“There are children in the room,” Darcy repeated.
Sally returned with tea and biscuits. She set them on the table in an unsteady way such that the hot water spouted out of the teapot and onto Colonel Fitzwilliam’s hand. Colonel Fitzwilliam pulled his hand sharplyaway and waved the water off it before sucking on the lightly scalded skin. “Zeus!” He raised an eyebrow at the servant. “Be cautious.”
Sally bowed, cringed, and tried to look small. Colonel Fitzwilliam picked up one of the crackers and took a bite. He grimaced. “Stale. What has happened to this place?”
The poor maid looked down. She was nearly trembling as though Colonel Fitzwilliam was about to shout at her over the badness of the crackers, when in fact his cousin’s question was almost purely directed at Darcy.
Darcy said to Sally, “You may leave—” To Colonel Fitzwilliam he said, “I dismissed everyone who had known about Wickham, but Sally had only been taken on two days before. As I understand it, this is her first position—Where is John?”
“I left your man to sleep in Plymouth. He’d been awake for near a full day when he finally found me. He was quite concerned about you. They’d given him a bad direction in London as to where my business had taken me. Poor fellow had ridden in circles for near two hundred miles.Whereis Georgiana. I am her guardian as well.”
“She went,” Darcy replied, “with Mrs. Wickham to see Mr. Wickham buried.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam glared at Darcy. “You are doing this on purpose, and it is not amusing. And I do not approve.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Darcy asked.
There was no waver in his cousin’s glare. “And what in the name of Zeus, Athena, and the other Gods possessed you to encourage an intimacy between your sister and hiswife?”
“Widow.”
“Jove, man! Do not be stupid.”
“It seemed,” Darcy replied, “to be the thing to do.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam studied Darcy. “Is she pretty—of course she is pretty. A man like Wickham, of course she is a beauty.”
“I assure you; her character is more impressive than her person.”
Before Colonel Fitzwilliam answered again, the door to the drawing room opened, and Georgiana and Mrs. Wickham entered.
Georgiana at first ran towards Colonel Fitzwilliam, exclaiming, “Richard!” But then she stumbled to a stop, looked down, and said, “You know I behaved badly.”
As she did so, both Emily and George ran towards their mother, shouting, “Mama!”Theydid not pause until both children had their arms wrapped around her legs.
Mrs. Wickham picked Emily up, while ruffling George’s hair. As she did so, she looked at Colonel Fitzwilliam with curiosity.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam, madam. Mr. Darcy’s cousin. Mrs. Wickham, I presume?” The officer bowed to her. He offered his hand, and Elizabeth shook it without putting her daughter down.
“Yes. Elizabeth Wickham. Pleased to meet you. I am certain that Mr. Darcy will be glad to have family about as he recovers.”
“Are you? And might you explain howyouended up spending any time around the man who killed your husband?”
Mrs. Wickham shrugged and smiled in that disarming and deeply charming manner she had. “Such things happen—really, I have scarcely any notion of precisely how it happened. Nor about what I am about at present.”
“I did not know how to change a bandage properly,” Georgiana offered, “and Elizabeth changed the bandage to distract herself when she first heard about Mr. Wickham.”
Oh, so she was now ‘Elizabeth’ to Georgiana.
Then after saying that Georgiana pressed her mouth together. She said, “Thank you, Fitzwilliam, for letting me see him buried. I did not enjoy it, but I am glad to have seen him dead. I think it will be easier.”
“Nothing should be easy for you, after all you’ve done,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “I have more than half a mind to take a birch to you, since your brother is in no fit state to do so. The steward’s son! How could you descend so far?”
“He was Papa’s godson,” Georgiana exclaimed. “I know I did wrongly, he abused me and made a fool of me. He lied when he said that he wished to marry me, but I do not—”
“You are the daughter of an ancient family. You have a dowry of thirty thousand, and a position of great respectability. Your grandfather was the earl of Matlock, and you threw it all away on a scoundrel, an adventurer, a worthless person. What have you to say for yourself?”
“Ahem,” Mrs. Wickham said. “It is time for me to change Mr. Darcy’s poultice. We shall absent ourselves for the while.”
