Page 52

Henry considered this objection. “Are there people taller than you?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

Mr. Darcy paused. “I have never counted.”

Henry wrinkled his nose, the very picture of disbelief.

Elizabeth took her chair. “Perhaps Mr. Darcy is only a moderately sized giant.”

Henry brightened. “Yes.”

“I am not certain that improves matters,” Mr. Darcy said in an aside to her as he took the chair next to hers.

She would not smile. “It has satisfied your examiner, however.”

Henry nodded. “You are a”—he sounded out the word—“middle-ing giant.”

“I am relieved we have settled it,” Mr. Darcy said agreeably.

“So am I,” Elizabeth said. “I feared we might be asked to produce a measuring tape.”

Henry immediately turned towards his mother. “Mamma, may I have your measuring tape?”

“No,” Aunt Gardiner said.

Henry accepted this disappointment with surprising ease and went to investigate Edward’s map instead. Elizabeth bent over her work. She had intended to ask Mr. Darcy about Mr. Wickham, but the current ease between them made the prospect more difficult, not less. Should he refuse to speak of Mr. Wickham’s situation again, she would have her answer, and it was not one she wished to hear. Still, she must know.

She was going to require some privacy for this conversation.

A quarter of an hour later, Aunt Gardiner unwittingly solved the problem. When Mr. Bingley returned from seeing his sister, then followed Jane into the small library to inspect a book Uncle Gardiner had mentioned, Aunt Gardiner took the children upstairs.

Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy remained in the drawing room with the door open and voices carrying from the passage. It was not entirely private, but it was enough that a serious conversation could be conducted without an audience.

She set aside her sewing. “Mr. Darcy, may I ask you something?”

His expression altered to something more guarded. “Certainly.”

“It concerns Mr. Wickham.”

For several seconds he said nothing. Elizabeth had expected displeasure. What she had not expected was the immediate caution that replaced it.

“What has he done?” he asked.

“Nothing that I know of.”

Mr. Darcy’s shoulders eased a little, though his face remained grave. “Then what do you wish to know?”

“I was told that I ought not accept his account of your dealings without asking for yours. I know you said you could not speak of it, but perhaps you could address something he said to me . . .” She stopped there, for she had been about to say that Miss Bingley had encouraged her, but the woman had not wished her name to be mentioned. “Something about a bequest being denied?”

Mr. Darcy studied her. “And so you decided to ask me.”

“Yes.”

Something in his stiffened posture made her wish she had phrased it differently, though she could not have said how she could have.

He clasped his hands in his lap and seemed to struggle with himself before he began to speak. “Very well. Wickham was left a thousand pounds in my father’s will, and I was instructed that should he take orders, he was to have a family living when it fell vacant. He took the thousand pounds and relinquished the living in exchange for three thousand more. When the money was gone and the living became available, he demanded it anyway. I refused, and he has since chosen to describe that refusal as a betrayal of my father’s wishes.”