He could not let his cousin throw Elizabeth out.
“I beg you to stay, Mrs. Wickham, and—”
“I do not want pity. I do not want charity. I will not accept it.”
“It is not pity; it is not anything. I promised my father, on the day he died, that I would care for George, for Wickham. It would shame me if you left. I would have every reason to despise myself. I cannot let you be driven away from my residence in righteous high dudgeon. Not when I once made such a promise to my father, and when I have now killed the man I said Iwould care for. I beg you to remain. For however long you wish to stay in Ramsgate.”
Her hard expression softened as he spoke.
He finished, “I must do something. I must do something to find some atonement.”
“Mr. Darcy, I do not exist to give you atonement. Your crime is your own.” She pulled in a deep breath and then let it out. “I’ll go somewhere. Settle upon a new scheme. There is not much value in delaying.”
“Do you mean to determine the course of your future life while walking to the post station?” Darcy replied aghast.
“More or less.” Mrs. Wickham smiled thinly as she rose. “So goodbye Mr. Darcy, and—”
“I beg you. I beg you from the bottom of my heart—let me make small amends for the crime I committed.”
She hesitated. He somehowknewshe desperately did not want to leave right now, taking her children onto the unknown road. He couldn’t let her, even though he could not stop her if she was determined.
This woman deserved better.
“You can have a place where you’ll belong. I see it in you. You are a woman who does what you believe to be right, but you do not want to leave yet, and I do not wish for you to leave. I like George hanging around and bothering me for stories of the duel, your presence has helped Georgiana, and you spoke truly that I need a professional nurse while I recover. I trust you in that role—Georgiana, would you wish for Mrs. Wickham to remain for longer?”
“Yes, very much so,” Georgiana said.
Darcy kept his eyes on Mrs. Wickham’s soft, heart shaped face. “It would not be pity or charity, just—I beg you.”
“Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Wickham replied seriously, “I do not think that you are of a sound mind.”
“No. Not since I first came to Ramsgate. The past cannot be changed. Please, please remain, until I have recovered.”
He tried to urge her with his eyes to trust him.
Mrs. Wickham sighed. She pressed her hands against her face. “I am hardly in a position to refuse an offer of free lodgings. And Iwillask for enough money when the time comes to get to London, or Hertfordshire, or wherever I decide to go by post rather than stage. And, Mr. Darcy, if you wish me to in fact remain and to have ‘a place where I’ll belong’—as if I could ever belong!—convince your cousin to reserve his speculations about my character and ill intentions for when I am not present.”
“I apologize, madam,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said stiffly, “but you ought to not have married a man with such a character if you did not wish for your own character to be mistrusted.”
“Fitzwilliam,” Darcy sharply said to his cousin. “Enough.”
The officer laughed lightly. “That was not a speculation upon her character, but rather an explanation for why such speculations occur.”
Mrs. Wickham looked rather amused by this defense. She looked at Georgiana and smiled at Darcy’s sister. “I dare say only a young fool who believed him to have a good character, and a good heart, and to be a worthy man would decide to marry such a man as Mr. Wickham. I also believe that such silly young girls can grow, and that they should not hate themselves, or consider themselves as having been more mistaken and stupid than they are in fact. I at least hope,” Mrs. Wickham turned back to Colonel Fitzwilliam, “for the sake of your charge, that you can believe that such a mistake can sometimes be made out of naivete without reflecting a really bad character of the person making it.”
“I already know Georgiana. I do not know you.”
“Ah, and you simply assume that I am proof that marrying a Wickham means that one has a Wickham-like character. And you are quite right. As you deduced from my appearance,Ispent my last ten-pound note on an expensive courtesan, even though I had a child at home and a wife heavy with another. I too drink to excess and I gambled ninety of my last hundred pounds away at cards before patronizing that courtesan. Oh, yes, of course,I cannot forget. I too frequently scheme to entrap young girls in bigamous marriages.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam raised his eyebrows. He smiled in a way that told Darcy that he was in fact amused. “I would beg you to inform my cousin about your proclivities; he seems to think you to be much better than that.”
Mrs. Wickham laughed. “Yes, but to inform him of my true character would hardly help me succeed in my wicked and dissolute schemes. But enough—it is time to change the bandage, and if I am not to be sent off, I shall do so forthwith.”
Chapter Eight
Preparing Mr. Darcy’s bandage settled Elizabeth.
Her hands shook when she entered the kitchen. Sally stood by the stove, tending the fire.
