She stared, and he regretted opening his mouth. Why was he so unguarded around Elizabeth Bennet? He was never at ease around strangers, but he felt awkward around this handsome woman.
“I am surprised to hear that about him. He struck me as a modest man.”
“He has much to be modest about,” he retorted.
Elizabeth gave him an expectant look that said she expected him to elaborate. If saying the truth about Wickham’s vicious propensities would be difficult to admit to his sister, it would be impossible to a woman wholly unconnected to him. But those intelligent eyes of hers were insistent. He must say something.
“Mr Wickham has no profession and no friends to help him. His own choices led him to his current desperate situation, which is that he wants to marry with great attention to money. Your sister will be disappointed.”
Elizabeth watched the girls laugh and skip ahead together before replying. “Wickham has flirted with Lydia and me, and we have no money at all. He knows that. I think he is simply an amiable man, even if he knows his own appeal. He gives his smiles too freely, and it will force Lydia to face her own insignificance.”
She sounded sad, as though she would spare her sister from that trial if she could, even though Darcy could see that would be the only way Lydia could learn anything. “Mr Wickham has eyes for all pretty women, and if they have a fortune, all the better.” He saw his sister coming back toward them, so he lowered his voice and said, “I regret speaking against your mother’s oversight the other night. I suspect you did not need me to tell you that. So I must tellyou, Miss Bennet, do not let your sister dash herself against the rocks of George Wickham.”
Georgiana drew his attention to the fishermen in the bay, and he went to join her.
“This is a severe look, Fitzwilliam. You dislike my friends, don’t you?” Georgiana asked gloomily.
He could not dissemble for his life. He might not like most of them, but he would not forbid the connexion. “I do not object to them so much that I would prohibit your friendship whilst you are in the same watering place.”
“You will make me give them up, won’t you?”
Why did she suddenly assume the worst of him? “I doubt you will see them after the end of September. But I concede that the girlish talk I find noisome and tedious is exactly what a fifteen-year-old needs.”
“I had thought since you spoke with Elizabeth that it meant you approved ofher. She is kind, and observant too.”
Darcy bit back the additional comment that she had low connexions and no fortune. “She is, and if you kept up her friendship and let Miss Lydia’s and Miss Kitty’s fade, I could tolerate that. But I still say she will not end up as well settled as you, and your friendship must ultimately sink. Your station will rise, and hers will at best stay the same, but in all likelihood fall. She has been set up in the world with nothing more than some wit and a pair of fine eyes.”
They completedtheir walk with no apparent fatigue, and Elizabeth and the others were at once delighted and astonished at seeing the shrimps and lobsters taken out of the sea. After they had taken a complete view of the bay, they walked on to Belle Vue, where Georgiana treated them all with shrimps, rolls, and coffee. There would be many cheerful things to report when she wrote in her journal this evening.
It was a pleasant spot, fitted up in a genteel style, and everyone sat outside, eating seafood and laughing and talking. Everyone but Darcy. He sat with them, ate with them, and even talked a little, but he did not join in their hilarity. He soon left them to walk the gardens, and when she saw him stop by the cliff’s edge to watch fishermen at work, she rose to follow him.
She felt compelled to tell him not to concern himself with Lydia. There was no harm in Wickham’s company, even if he had no money.And Darcy had no cause at all to so easily place a kernel of concern and doubt in her heart.
“What do you think of the Belle Vue Tavern?” she asked when she joined him. “I know you are a man above being satisfied, but I challenge you to find fault with such a place.”
“It is a pleasant spot, but one rendered disgusting by the smell and appearance of the remains of all the crabs the visitors eat and thoughtlessly discard.” He gestured toward the tables in the tea garden, and Elizabeth frowned. The disagreeable man was not wrong. Shells were everywhere, crunched underfoot and piling up at an alarming rate. Still, he could try not to be so miserable.
“Will you now complain about how the harmless animals are barbarously boiled to death too?”
Darcy gave a wry smile. “I have no opposition to eating them, just in carelessly discarding the remains of them.”
“You can see my mistake. Since you have been in Ramsgate, you seem to have a propensity to hate everything and everyone.”
He turned away, and she thought she was being dismissed until he said, while he watched a boat in the bay, “I like the enlivening breezes. I enjoy looking at the sea. There is something exhilarating in it that I experience nowhere else.” He turned back to her and said, with a wider smile, “But I can only look at it because I suffer from mal de mer.”
She returned his smile. Darcy had a personality beneath his stern demeanour. Something could actually please him. She entertained a more favourable opinion of him than she had formerly done. “I promise to dissuade our sisters from any boating excursions.”
He nodded his thanks, and she said, quickly before their amity faded completely, “Lydia just wants a little attention, to be distinguished. All girls have the hope of a romance?—”
“Not with Wickham,” he breathed. “But I realise I have spoken out of turn to you in nearly every instance, and we may drop the subject because I have no intention of discussing that man further. You may take my hints of caution and warn your sister or stay silent.”
Darcy was just too severe for his own good. “If your sister is friendswith Wickham, why not mine? My sister is no more susceptible than yours.”
He looked her full in the face. “Is she not? Please, do not provoke me into speaking out of turn again.” She felt ashamed when she thought of how Lydia and even Kitty behaved compared to Georgiana. She was about to leave him when he added, “Hopefully, he tricks no young lady to love him.”
“Your dislike of a poor man makes me wonder why areyounot married?” Darcy’s eyes went wide. If he could say impolite things, even if they were true, then she could be just as bold. “If flirtatious young men with no money shouldnotmarry, then grave young men of fortunemust.”
“Well, I do not expect having to trick anyone,” he said drily.
