Mr Darcy squinted, and his jaw set. “Perhaps I ought to have interviewed a few more of your references, Mrs Wickham.”
She tilted a beatific smile back up at him. “It is too late now, Mr Darcy.”
He nodded, his eyes drifting disapprovingly back to Lydia before he answered. “So it is.”
“No,Georgiana,Iamafraid it would not be suitable to invite Mrs Wickham’s sisters to tea.” Darcy was speaking through a tight jaw and trying to keep his voice easy at the same time. It was not working.
“Oh, William, I wish you would not call her that. You know how I detest that name,” Georgiana said with a pout.
“I expect she likes it no more than you or I do, but it is her name. What shall I call her instead?”
“Well, I call her Elizabeth when we are together, and she seems to prefer it.”
Darcy scoffed. “It is hardly dignified or respectful for you to be addressing an older widowed woman by her Christian name.”
“What! Older widow? She is only four years older than I, and two months ago she had never even met Bernard. There, do you see? We both always called him by his Christian name.”
Darcy spared his sister a sideways smirk. “Because he preferred it himself.”
“Well,” she sniffed, tossing her head in a manner peculiarly reminiscent of her new companion, “I shall not listen to you regarding Elizabeth.”
“But you will listen where her sisters are concerned. The middle one might not be a disgrace, and there is still the eldest whom I have not met. She may be worth knowing, from what I hear, but inviting one of them to tea becomes an open invitation for all. The two youngest sisters are in every way disreputable and offensive.”
“Why?” Georgiana tipped her head and stared blankly at him in her most challenging manner. “Did one of them try to kiss you? Shout profanities at passing children? Spend the evening at the inn playing cards?”
“They simply do not comport themselves as they ought. That is the end of it.” Darcy turned away as if to quit the room until his sister’s voice stopped him.
“But Elizabeth does.”
His feet stilled. “Does what?”
“Comport herself as a lady. Why, she is everything polite and gracious.”
Darcy narrowed his eyes at the opposite wall, considering her words. “No. She does not comport herself as a ‘lady.’ Her manner is… something else altogether.”
“What do you mean? You cannot think her improper.”
He turned slowly back. “Far from it. But she is no lady. She is… something more than that.”
Five
“Itallstillseemssurreal,” Mrs Wickham murmured—more to herself than to him, he suspected. She stared through the carriage window as they rolled away from the solicitor’s offices, and then she sat back with a dazed expression.
“Perhaps it is a touch novel,” he confessed, “but I daresay you will accustom yourself to the sensation soon enough.”
Her lips parted as she surveyed him. “How so? I never even knew what it was to be a wife, and now I am to learn what it is to be a widow—and a widow with a healthy endowment, besides. It feels unjust, for I have done nothing to deserve this man’s entire inheritance.”
“Trust me when I say that you would not have wished to learn what it would have been to live as Bernard’s wife,” he retorted with a jerk of his waistcoat.
She fell silent, her dark, brooding eyes fixed on the window. Better the window than himself. There was always something frightful about locking eyes with her. His stomach would flutter, his pulse would jump, and his tongue routinely grew barbs it did not normally possess. What was it about her that set him so ill at ease?
It could be that spark in her countenance. Most women—nay, most people in general—had the light and living crushed out of them by the time they had reached their majority. A weary callous grew over their true selves—a certain hardness of feeling and expression that spoke of worldly thoughts and cares. Mrs Wickham’s look was still fresh and honest as a girl, but tempered with… what was that about the edges of her eyes? The soft corners of her voice? Sadness, perhaps, and not a little hard-won wisdom.
“Mr Darcy, is there something wrong with my bonnet?”
He drew a quick breath, snapping from his musings. “Wrong?”
“You were staring in the oddest manner. Should I have worn something more modest? I am afraid I do not know what is suitable for my station as the widow of Mr Wickham.”
