Chapter Eighteen
Theyrodeoutafterbreakfast, just the two of them.
The morning was bright and cold, the kind of November day that made the Derbyshire hills look sharp-edged against the sky. Elizabeth rode Jasper, the bay gelding Darcy had chosen for her, and he rode beside her on his tall grey, and they did not speak much on the way. She could feel him thinking. He had that particular stillness about him that meant something was turning over behind his eyes, being examined from every angle before he committed to a response.
The Wilson farm was north of the river, perhaps three miles from Pemberley, set in a shallow valley with good pasture on either side and a mill stream running through the lower field. It was well kept. The fences were sound, the yard was clean, smoke rose from the chimney in a steady line that spoke of a household that was up and working. A good farm. Better than the one the Wilsons had held before, Mrs Reynolds had said. Good enough to support a daughter, her husband, their child, and any others who might have come along since.
Darcy had sent word ahead, and Thomas Wilson came out to meet them. He was a broad, weathered man in his fifties, hat in hand, visibly honoured by the visit and slightly nervous about it. His wife appeared behind him, wiping her hands on her apron, and behind her a young woman with fair hair and a careful face, who could only be Sally.
“Mr Darcy, sir. Mrs Darcy. You are very welcome.”
Darcy dismounted, helped Elizabeth down. The introductions were made with the easy formality of a landlord who knew his tenants well and respected them. Mrs Wilson invited them inside. The farmhouse kitchen was warm and scrubbed clean, and there was tea on the table before Elizabeth had finished removing her gloves.
Sally Cooper sat at the edge of the group, quiet, her hands folded in her lap. She would be about three-and-twenty now, pretty in a subdued way, and she watched Elizabeth warily, as though the interest of her betters had not always been kind to her. Elizabeth smiled at her and asked about the farm, about the dairy, about the preserves that Mrs Wilson was evidently proudof, and slowly, carefully, Sally’s shoulders began to come down from around her ears.
A boy appeared in the doorway. He was about six, sturdy and fair-haired, with a gap-toothed grin and mud on his knees. He looked nothing like Wickham, which Elizabeth noted with a relief so sharp it surprised her. He had Sally’s colouring, Sally’s wide-set eyes, and none of the easy charm that would have marked him out as his father’s son.
“William,” Sally said. “Come and make your bow to Mr and Mrs Darcy.”
William made his bow with an expression of solemn concentration. Darcy looked at the boy, and Elizabeth saw something cross his face that was too quick to name but too painful to miss.
“What a fine boy,” Darcy said. “He looks well.”
“He is a terror,” Mr Wilson said, with undisguised pride. “Runs the dogs ragged. Joseph cannot keep up with him.”
“Joseph is Sally’s husband?” Elizabeth asked, though she knew.
“Aye, ma’am. Joseph Cooper. He is out with the sheep this morning, or he would be here to pay his respects. A good lad. The best thing that ever happened to our Sally, begging your pardon.” Mr Wilson glanced at Darcy, and Elizabeth caught something in the look: gratitude so deep it had become part of the man’s bearing, woven into the way he stood and spoke in Darcy’s presence.
William, having completed his social obligations, escaped back to the yard. They could hear him through the open door, talking to the dogs in the earnest, commanding way of small boys who believe themselves in charge.
“He wants a pony,” Sally said, quietly. It was the first thing she had volunteered, and she said it with a small, surprised smile, as though her son’s ambitions still had the power to astonish her. “Joseph says he is too young. I say he will simply get on one without permission if we do not provide one soon.”
“I suspect you were much like him at that age,” Elizabeth said, glancing at Darcy, and was rewarded with a look from her husband that was equal parts denial and amusement.
“I was an excellent rider from the age of four,” Darcy said, with just a touch of pomposity. “My father put me on a horse before I could properly walk. It is the Darcy way.”
“It is the way of every boy who grows up in the country, sir,” Mr Wilson said, and the ease between them was real, built on years of quiet respect.
“I do know of a good little riding pony who might be coming available,” Darcy noted. “The Cookson boys are rather too large for it now. I shall tell Mr Cookson to bring it by, see if William might like it?”
“That’d be right kind of you, sir,” Sally said gratefully.
Mrs Wilson refreshed the tea, and Elizabeth let the conversation settle into the comfortable talk of farming families: the autumn ploughing, the state of the winter stores, whether the mill wouldneed its wheel repaired before spring. Darcy talked to Mr Wilson about the fencing on the upper pasture. Elizabeth sat with Sally and Mrs Wilson, listened to them talk about William’s schooling, conducted at the village school in Kympton three mornings a week by the vicar, and about Sally’s second child, a girl of two who was sleeping upstairs and who was, Mrs Wilson declared, even more of a terror than her brother.
“Two children,” Elizabeth said to Sally. “You are fortunate.”
“I am,” Sally said, and the simplicity of it carried more weight than any elaboration could have. She looked out at the yard, where William was now attempting to climb a gate while the collie watched with patient resignation. “Joseph is a good father. William does not know that he is not... that Joseph is not his...” She stopped, and colour rose in her face.
“William is loved,” Elizabeth said kindly. “That is what matters.”
Sally nodded. She did not say anything else about it, and Elizabeth did not press. But she filed it away: a boy who did not know who his real father was, raised by a man who loved him anyway, in a home that existed because Darcy had built it for them out of the wreckage Wickham left behind. Wickham, who had left Sally without a backward glance. Who had moved on to Georgiana, then to Lydia, who knows how many other young women in between, stopping only at Lydia because Darcy had caught up and forced him to marry her.
Elizabeth turned the conversation gently. “Mr Wilson, I have been learning the history of Pemberley’s families since my marriage. Mrs Reynolds has been most helpful, but there is stilla great deal I do not know. You have been tenants here a long time.”
“All my life, ma’am. My father before me, and his father before him.”
“Then you knew the old Mr Darcy well.”
