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“Ill-usage? Regrets? Why?” Elliot asked, though he feared it came out almost as a demand. He did not enjoy being given information in little parcels like Mr. Wickham was doing, he preferred to have it all in one quick burst!
“His mother, Mr. Bennet, the late Lady Anne, was one of the best women that ever breathed, and the truest friend I ever had,” Wickham said. “I can never be in company of Darcy without comparing the great divide between the two. Between mother and son.”
Elliot only just contained an impatient sigh. “What sort of divide?”
“His behaviour to myself has been scandalous but I believe I could forgive him for that had he not so thoroughly disgraced the memory of his mother.”
The accusation was so shocking that Elliot’s impatience melted away. He had heard nothing of any scandal attached to Mr. Darcy outside of his own prideful behaviour. But disgracing the memory of a parent…
“What did he do?” Elliot said quickly but Louis chose that moment to turn from the other officer he was sat next to and engage Mr. Wickham in conversation once more. Good manners ensured that Mr. Wickham obliged.
Elliot gritted his teeth in frustration as they spoke about upcoming dinners and possible assemblies, and it was sometime later, after dinner in fact, before Elliot could broach the topic once more. It came from a discussion of Wickham’s role in the militia.
“It was the prospect of constant society, and good society which was my chief inducement to enter the militia,” Wickham said. “I knew it to be a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend Denny tempted me further by his account of how delightful Meryton is and how fine the society.” He sighed. “Society, I own, is necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits will not bear solitude.” He shook his head, the light from the candle glinting off the gold of his buttons again. “I must have employment and society. A military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances have now made it so.”
“What were you intended for?” Elliot asked.
Wickham smiled sadly. “The church ought to have been my profession. I was brought up for the church, and I should at this time have been in possession of a most valuable living, had it pleased the gentleman we were speaking of just now.”
“Mr. Darcy?” Elliot asked, annoyed by strange anticipation that shot through him as he said the other man’s name. Elliot would have to think about that later, not now, but perhaps once he was back home at Longbourn.
“Yes, Mr. Darcy,” Wickham said. “The late Lady Anne bequeathed me that living in her will. She was my godmother, and excessively attached to me. I cannot do justice to her kindness. She meant to provide for me amply and thought she had done it but once she was gone the living was given elsewhere.”
Elliot shook his head. Legal wills could not be interfered with in that way. Society wouldn’t allow it. In fact, it was the job of people like Elliot’s uncle, Mr. Phillips, to ensure it did not happen.
“Good heavens,” Elliot said after a moment. “But how could that be? How could her wishes be so disregarded? Why did you not seek legal redress?”
“There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to give me no hope from law,” Wickham said. “A man of honour could not have doubted the intention, but Darcy chose to doubt it or to treat it as a merely conditional recommendation.” He shrugged. “When the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to hold it, it was given to another man.”
“But…” Elliot shook his head. “Mr. Darcy would not…”
“Darcy did,” Wickham said.
“There is no scandal attached to his name,” Elliot said.
“He is an alpha.” Wickham shrugged again. “Perhaps at some point, when such a dishonour occurs with another alpha, a titled one, he will be publicly disgraced for his behaviour, but it shall not be by me.”
He lifted a hand and brushed away what could well have been a tear. Elliot’s heart gave a little thud. It should have thudded because Mr. Wickham was so very handsome in his sorrow but that was not the reason at all. If anything, Elliot found Mr. Wickham’s handsomeness slightly shallow.
“But what,” he asked after a pause, “can have been his motive? What can have induced him to behave so cruelly?”
“A thorough, determined dislike of me. A dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy,” Wickham said, and his voice was a little firmer now. “Had the late Lady Anne liked me less, her son might have borne with me better, but his mama’s attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood, the sort of preference which was often given me.”
“You would have been companions from childhood, connected together,” Elliot said in a half-whisper as other members of the room were sitting closer by now and Elliot wanted this information kept in confidence. It worried him to think that others would hear this information about Darcy, and it would simply confirm the opinion he had already established here.
Why should that worry Elliot?
Why did it bother him?
“We were born in the same parish, within the same park. The greatest part of our youth was passed together,” Wickham confirmed, though he made no effort to lower his voice. “Inhabitants of the same house, sharing the same amusements, objects of the same parental care. My father began life in the profession which your uncle, Mr. Phillips, appears to do so much credit to but he gave up everything to be of use to the late Lady Anne and devoted all his time to the care of the Pemberley property.” Another sigh. This one slightly dramatic. “He was most highly esteemed, a most intimate, confidential friend. Lady Anne often acknowledged herself to be under the greatest obligations to my father, and when, immediately before my father’s death, Lady Anne gave him a voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that she felt it to be as much a debt of gratitude to him, as of her affection to myself.”
“But this is just so strange,” Elliot whispered. “To ignore one’s parent in such a way? Did Mr. Darcy not have a good relationship with Lady Anne?”
Wickham took a moment before answering. “They were close.”
“Then—”
“It was pride,” Wickham said quickly. “For almost all Darcy’s actions may be traced to pride, and pride has often been his best friend. It has connected him nearer with virtue than with any other feeling. But we are none of us consistent, and in his behaviour to me there were stronger impulses even than pride.”
