Page 73 of Resilience
“What if he grows up to be just like him?”
“He will be your child too,” Elizabeth reminded her sister. “You will be there to teach him to be a better person. I understand from my husband that your late father-in-law was a good and honourable man. Your child need not grow up like his father.”
“What can I give a child? I do not know anything and I do not even have anything left of a family. We are better off if his father stays on the continent forever. My parents are stupid and selfish. I am alone,” Lydia worried.
“You have me,” Elizabeth insisted. “You have Mary, and Georgiana, and Darcy. And just because I have lost Jane, does not mean you might not one day be close to her. Even if you lost everything, Lyddie, you will always have me.”
“I have so much to learn before I have a baby,” Lydia sighed.
Elizabeth squeezed her hand. “We will learn it all together.”
The candles had burned low by the time Elizabeth set aside her book that evening in the privacy of her bedroom with her husband. Darcy stood at the window in his banyan.
“You are worried about something,” she observed gently.
He turned and smiled at her, a faint crease between his brows. “I was considering what would be the best way to say something without troubling you.”
Elizabeth sat up. “Then just say it.”
He crossed the room, then sat beside her and took her hand, his expression troubled but not alarmed. Elizabeth relaxed that it was not something terrible.
“The servants talk, of course, it is inevitable,” he said finally. “Not unkindly precisely, but…freely. And your sister is Mrs. Wickham.”
Elizabeth’s composure did not falter. “We expected it.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Through the staff, the knowledge has reached some of the tenants and villagers.”
Elizabeth nodded. “How do they receive it?”
“Not well,” Darcy admitted. “You know what that swine has cost them. Unpaid debts. Broken promises. Young girls…younger than Mrs Wickham, trifled with…two who died bearing his children on the tenant farms. The manner in which he departed Derbyshire…leaving tradesmen cheated and families embarrassed for having trusted him. The honour of his father gained him the same trust that I enjoy from the good reputation of mine. He exploited it shamelessly.”
Elizabeth’s voice was calm. “They cannot separate her from him?”
“Some can be reasoned with,” he answered. “Some cannot. She bears his name. Through talk of her, Mr and Mrs Blackwell’s and Mr and Mrs Brewer’s grief for their daughters is opened anew.”
“Has anyone spoken out openly?” asked Elizabeth thoughtfully.
“Mrs Reynolds has heard a few unkind remarks from a footman who grew up as the Brewers’ neighbour,” Darcy said. “And there has been talk in the kitchens. Nothing directly to Mrs Wickham. I will not permit that. There has been talk on the estate as well. The steward heard it today on the home farm.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Lydia understands it already, I think. She fears for her child, bearing Wickham’s name.”
Darcy watched her closely. “I was afraid to speak, for fear that this would be upsetting to you.”
“It is,” she confessed openly. “But it is not unjust. They have suffered. We cannot ask them to forget what Wickham did. Nor can we pretend that Lydia is untouched by it. But we can insist upon her safety and dignity here.”
“She will be received with respect in this house,” he insisted. “I will not tolerate anything else.”
Elizabeth moved closer and rested her head against his shoulder. “What shall we do?”
“I will speak to the steward and Mrs Reynolds in the morning,” he said. “And through them, to the tenants and servants most inclined to resentment.”
“We cannot demand their affection.” Elizabeth looked worried.
“No, he answered. “But I can make it known that Lydia is under my protection. That any unkindness toward her will be received as unkindness toward this house.”
Elizabeth looked up at him. “Will they listen?”
“They must, or they will leave,” he vowed.
