Fortunately for Georgie, she’d inherited her father’s good looks and charm, which would be advantageous on the marriage mart. Young men overlooked many detractions if a woman possessed beauty and magnetism. Thankfully, Georgie did not have her father’s poor character and lack of integrity.
“They’re at a garden party with their friends,” Lizzy informed me. “I know you miss them terribly.”
“But it is for the best,” I said firmly, ignoring the painful twinge in my heart as I set a plate of biscuits on the table. “The less associated they are with me and their father, the better for their futures.”
“Actually,” she said after a pause, “that is why I am here.”
“Oh?” The kettle whistled. Lizzy continued talking as I prepared our tea.
“There is a widower, a neighbor in Lambton, who is seeking a wife.”
I set out two teacups. “And?”
“He is very well respected and willing to overlook certain shortcomings.”
I set a steaming cup of tea in front of my sister and settled across from her with my own. I immediately understood her purpose. “You do comprehend that I will never marry again?”
“Not even for the sake of your children?”
“Isn’t it enough that I absent myself from my children’s lives?” As much as I resented Darcy’s supercilious nature, I appreciated all he and Lizzy had done for George, Edward, James, and Georgie. “I allow you to be more of a mother to them than I am.”
“They know you are their mama.”
“I deprive myself of the people I value most in this world to assure their futures. Do not ask me to also throw my life away on another man. I will spend the rest of my years recovering from Wickham.”
George had turned out to be a drinker, liar, and cheat. He ran out on his bills and caroused away from home while I looked after the children.
I learned that, before our marriage, George tried to compromise the daughter of his benefactor, Darcy’s sister, in hopes of getting his hands on her considerable dowry. He was a spendthrift (well, so was I, but I had the excuse of being a hapless girl who knew nothing of finances), an unfortunate habit that left us destitute. The only reason we had a roof over our heads was because Darcy stepped in to pay the rent and continued to do so since Wickham’s demise.
To say that I was relieved when George finally drank himself to death after twenty years of marriage was an understatement. I’d barely been widowed for a year and wasn’t about to give up the newfound freedom that I relished.
“I’ve just gotten out from under one terrible marriage,” I told my sister. “I have no intention of condemning myself to another.”
“But Mr. Wilson is exceedingly agreeable.”
“So was Wickham,” I reminded her.
“You could spend more time at Pemberley if you marry Mr. Wilson,” Lizzy pointed out. “You would see the children far more often.”
“Not necessarily,” I countered. “They are almost grown. It won’t be long before they are wed.” And who knew how their spouses’ families would react to a mother-in-law with a name as disreputable as mine.
My children were born barely a year apart until I learned how to avoid conception. George was twenty; Edward, almost nineteen; James had just celebrated his seventeenth birthday; and, in the fall, Georgie would be fifteen, the same age as I was when I foolishly married her father.
“You would like Mr. Wilson,” Lizzy assured me. “Darcy is very fond of him.”
Which was reason enough for me to avoid the man. Any friend of Darcy’s risked being as insufferable as the man himself.
“He is a bit older,” Lizzy continued, “but he has retained his handsome looks.”
My sister presumed an appealing face was still enough to entice a race to the altar? I wasn’t fifteen anymore. “How old is he?”
“Fifty-five,” she answered, quickly adding, “but he’s still a fine figure of a man.”
There again was the assumption that a physically appealing specimen would be enough for me to willingly become someone’s wife again. “Almost twenty years older than me.”
“And reasonably wealthy,” she added. “He and his first wife had no children. And his property is not entailed.”
Meaning his second wife stood to inherit upon his death. But as pleasant as the thought of never worrying about money againwas, I just couldn’t bring myself to consider being shackled to another man. “I cannot endure another loveless marriage.” A shiver of revulsion went through me. “The thought of a strange old man rutting over me is not to be borne.”
