“We had a good time, didn’t we, George?”
“We had the best of times,” he soothed, a man haunted by his actions as he faced the woman who had loved him hardest and longest, who had protected and saved him during the worst of times.
“Do you remember this jewel, my dearest,” the ring was on her finger, as he held her hand, “this little ruby was all we ran away with but look what we built again. What a marvellous time we have had. Thank you, my darlings, for the greatest of adventures.”
Mary Darcy was dead, and the light in Sophia’s heart went out.
It was a year later, when the King noticed how Lady Clarendon-Darcy laughed with the gentlemen of the card table, how she flirted equally with the ladies – flattering and charming everyone sitting there. She was a formidable woman, he thought; the curve of her bosom and the sparkle in her eye caused a burn of lust in him that he had not felt in a while, and he was determined that he would have her. Sophia could see him eyeing her from across the room, but she was equally determined to ignore it, determined to pretend that she couldn’t see the way he looked at her with desire in his eyes.
The touch of the King’s hand under her skirts had made Sophia feel more alive than she had ever done. She had spent the evening flirting with him, pandering to his vanity and looking up at him knowing that he was completed enamoured. She was fully aware of the effect that she was having on this man who was old enough to be her father, this man with the soft fingers that touched and stroked her in places that made her shudder with desire and anticipation.
She surrendered herself to him that cold, unfeeling winter evening, as the ladies of the court were retiring, and the gentlemen roamed the halls looking for sport; as she felt him move inside her for the first time, pushing harder than she had felt before, she grasped for something to hold onto, afraid that she was about to fall off the earth.
Seventeen
The plate landed smoothly on the linen tablecloth, the dull sound of chatter and murmurs, the gentle hum of well-trained waiters going about their business, the familiar smell of her perfume hung faintly in the air.
“I’m sorry it had to be like this.”
“Things like this happen,” he said dismissively.
She was dressed differently, he noticed. No longer the tightly tailored trousers and fitted shirts, but softer linens, gentler fabrics that clung to the curve of her body. On her finger was a ring that he hadn’t seen before – a diamond and rose gold usurper proclaiming victory. He hadn’t expected that she would plan to marry Antoine. Hadn’t expected that their engagement would be announced and official before he had even recovered from the shock of it all. But it had been, and he had to be happy for her, had to be glad that she was moving on.
He knew full well that he was sulking about it, he didn’t want to be here, but his agent had pushed for it, and he was aware of the surreptitious glances over in their direction, the odd tell-tale click-whirr of a camera phone taking a snap. Her hair was different, he noticed; he had never paid much attention to the length or colour of her hair, never made a fuss when she returned home with a new cut, a new colour. The business they were in called for constant changes, constant reinventions. He wondered if this was a fault, maybe he should have, maybe it was the little things that he overlooked that caused the most damage.
“Your hair looks nice,” he said, gesturing to the copper waves.
“Oh,” she sounded surprised. “Thank you.”
The starter was some kind of cheese, whipped to beyond recognition, and a gravelly crushed walnut on the side. She had the salmon, pushed it around her plate. He noticed that she wasn’t actually eating anything.
“How’s work?” She placed her fork down and laced her fingers together.
“Oh, fine.” He placed a forkful of the whipped cheese in his mouth. It was strangely bitter.
“Fine?” She exclaimed with a laugh he knew wasn’t because she was amused. “You’re doing more than fine, Benn. Back playing with the big boys now that you’ve paid your penance.”
There were hardly any secrets in this industry, his fuck ups and disappearing acts on Shellstone and Insanity Circle had caused feathers to ruffle, his stock to plummet. He took a deep breath in, he didn’t seriously think that he had a chance of being selected as Gainsma Quince – the male lead in a new fantasy film franchise that looked set to rival Star Wars – but he had no objections to a two-week expenses paid trip to California. He needed some sunshine and to get away from this country. He didn’t answer immediately, and she pointedly sipped her wine whilst rolling her eyes at him.
“Yes,” he sighed.
“What about the girls?”
“I can take them with me, if you want?”
A laugh escaped from her lips in a huff and she shook her head with what he knew was disappointment.
“Take them to America for two weeks at the start of the school term? Are you mad?”
“Okay then, my mum can come and stay at the house for a few weeks if you need me to have them.”
“Your mother?” She put the fork down on the plate as if it were a loaded gun.
“Yes, my mother. She loves spending time with them…”
“You want to palm them off on your mother? Nice parenting from a man who is hardly in the country enough to see his children as it is.”
“Do you want me to stop working, Maddy? Is that what it is? What do you want me to do?” He said through gritted teeth, aware that other diners on the top of the Gherkin knew who they were, eagerly anticipating one of the blazing public rows that they had been famous for. “Because I keep giving you solutions and you keep throwing them back in my face.”
He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms. For all he had hoped, he knew that they had fallen into their familiar ritual. That this was how his marriage had ended; with passive aggressive comments from Madeleine and petulant defiance from him.
“I have a career as well you know,” she matched his tone with a saccharine sweetness. “Perhaps you could consider someone else for change.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t fucked off with a Frenchman,” his eyes narrowed, but the smile was still plastered on his face, even as the words shot out of him with a stutter. He could feel the tension in every muscle.
“Maybe if you weren’t a fucking alcoholic.”
The sentence landed heavily on the white expanse of linen before them, and then silence. The waiter came, taking away their plates with a slow carefulness as if each piece of crockery were an unexploded bomb. Madeleine smiled amiably at him as he piled the dishes up carefully.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he found he hissed the words, but more for discretion than dramatic effect.
“You don’t even realise, do you?”
She eyed him from across the table, challenging, pushing him, she had always done this.
“Realise what? That my wife was having an affair? Or that she would blame it all on me?”
“You didn’t need to take the fall for it, you know that.”
“No,” he looked up at her slowly, “but you let me.”
“I think I wanted to punish you.”
“It worked.”
She was still staring at him, and he saw the look of pity in her eyes. The sparkles of anxiety shot down his spine, and immediately he reached for his glass, before changing his mind as her words ran through his head.
“You drink too much,” she said. “Far too much now, after your dad…”
“No,” he shook his head stubbornly.
“Benn,” her voice was firm. “You’ve been drunk for the last three years.”
There was something about being told a hard truth by someone who knew your softness. It always hurt that little bit more. She reached her hand out across the table; tentative, creeping, meeting him halfway.
“It was hard for me…walking away from us.”
She knew how hard it would have been for him; coming home to an empty house and empty cupboards, that the sight of the
girl’s bedrooms devoid of trinkets and memories would have ripped him in half. But she knew that she couldn’t’ve stayed, couldn’t keep plodding on with no end to it in sight. He searched her eyes, he deserved some kind of explanation. They had never really spoken about this before. It felt that he went away as a happily married man with two gorgeous girls and a wonderful home, but he returned to a cold, lonely house, with a bottle of whisky calling him from the drinks cabinet.
She took a mouthful of wine, he realised that she was still wearing the bracelet he bought her for their last wedding anniversary. He always thought she hated it, but maybe when he remembered it was how he had pulled it from the box and thrown it at her from across the room.
When he remembered, maybe it was how he had passed out on the couch and woke up hours later to find her cleaning up a shattered vase, glass scattered across the kitchen. When he remembered, perhaps it was how he tried to apologise, and she had lashed out, screaming expletives at him with hot, frantic tears running down her face. When he remembered, it might have been how they had argued in loud, projected voices until Esther came downstairs and begged them to stop. When he remembered, he knew it was how Anya was scared and crying in her bed, and when he tried to comfort her, she had cowered away from him. When he remembered how it was, he remembered why he had forgotten.
“I know you thought it was very heartless of me, Benjy,” she fidgeted with the napkin between her fingers, the use of his pet name hit right in his heart. “If I could go back and change how I did it. I would.”
They stared at each other, two pairs of blue eyes locked together. He turned away, couldn’t stand the tidal wave of memories that washed over him. Those were the ones that hurt the most. The remembrances of how it used to be.
“I wouldn’t want you to, Mads,” he said, concentrating on the little scrap of skin that he was picking next to his thumb. “I deserved it all”
“No,” she said in the soft voice that he hadn’t heard in a long time. “You deserved honesty. You didn’t deserve me running away in the night.”
“I think I did. Can you ever forgive me?” He couldn’t look at her, didn’t want her to see the regret smeared across his face.
She took a deep breath, “when you drink, Benn, you turn into someone else. When you’re you, you’re wonderful and I love- I loved you. So very much. But the person you are when you drink, I didn’t love him. We never knew who was going to be waiting for us when we got home, I never knew who would come back from location and I couldn’t live like that anymore.”
“I am sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she reached across for his hand and held it tightly. “Just get better and find someone to laugh with, someone who makes you happy. We laughed so much, Benn, it was the best of us.”
He would always love her, would always want her to be happy – she had shared his life for more than a decade, she was the mother of his children, but he knew that this was goodbye. It was strange because he thought it would feel as if his heart was being wrenched out, but it was different; more like a wobbly tooth finally falling out. There was pain, but also relief.
“Do you love him, Mads?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Very much.”
“He had better be good enough for you.”
“He is.”
It had hurt, it was still hurting, it was mourning someone who was still alive, the grief felt so very real. She was the mother of his children, the woman who had taught him what love really was.
“I love you, Madeleine.”
“I know, but we both know that it wasn’t the same way anymore,” she said, “it hadn’t been for a long time.”
“I know,” he agreed, “it doesn’t make this any easier.”
He was referring to the meeting they were waiting for. The meeting that would make the end of their marriage official. The meeting that would separate them for good.
It was the end of everything he once held so dear.
“We hold so tight to the wrong things, we forget that there are better things waiting for us,” she had read it that morning on Pinterest. It seemed fitting for this moment.
“It doesn’t mean I’ll love you less.”
“No, but there will be someone who you love more.”
On the table next to them, an overly-perfumed tanned man was clinking glasses with a woman shrieking with excitement over the ring placed on her finger. The room began to cheer for the happy couple who rose to the attention; as they sat back down in newly-engaged glee, Benn realised that they had been the only ones not clapping.
1820
It was June when the news arrived of the death of Lieutenant George Wickham, who had sadly perished at the battle of Waterloo – the Newcastle regiments had suffered the highest casualties of any British troops, with nearly all Officers belonging to it being lost on the day. Darcy was handed the letter by his steward, Willis, absorbed the details of his brother in law’s demise and then mounted his horse to travel to the Wickham household on the far reaches of the estate.
Old Mr Wickham had been a good and honourable man and Darcy’s father, George, had trusted him implicitly – the role of steward was a venerated position in the household, being responsible for the estate in the absence of the master. Wickham’s son may have had ideas above his station and attempted to ingratiate himself in to the higher reaches of society, but his wife, Eleanor, and remaining children were hard working and devoted members of the Pemberley estate and continued to be well-looked after and favoured by the Darcy family. Peter, the second eldest Wickham, worked as an under-butler, whilst his brother David was second coachman. Bridget, the only daughter, had been skilled in sugar craft and had been utilised by Mrs Reynolds and the chef, Mr Artaud, in the kitchens, before marrying a local cousin and raising a family of her own.
Darcy was dreading telling Eleanor that George was not coming home from Waterloo. She had cried something dreadful when he had bought the commission to the Newcastle regiment and now this would destroy her. She was a soft, welcoming woman who had held him as a young man after his father had passed away and he had run away to Paddock Cottage on the edge of the woods to escape his family responsibilities. He had no secrets from Eleanor Wickham. Travelling through Knight’s Low, he felt a small shiver of regret that his last words to George Wickham had been ones of anger, and he wished that things could have been different between them.
Raised almost as brothers, he had been closer to Wickham than anyone else in the world, and they had grown together, firstly as boys, and then as young men. It had been George Wickham who had travelled with him to Cambridge as they studied together, he was always more daring – always wanting to drink a glass more, ride a little harder, study a little less – at the end of their second year it was clear that his friend was not destined for the Church as their fathers had decided. Darcy would have assisted Wickham in any profession that he desired. He knew that his own fortuitous situation in life was based upon the luck of his birth and wanted to do anything he could to help his friend and brother find success.
Darcy had an easy going and loyal nature, it was true that he could be obtuse and distant with those he did not know, and he was quick to judge people based on initial impressions, but he was fiercely devoted to those he loved. It was this that made the continual betrayals by George Wickham especially difficult to bear. Firstly, he ran up debts in Darcy’s name with local innkeepers and merchants – resulting in Darcy receiving a beating one evening when returning home to his lodgings. Wickham had laughed jovially upon seeing his friends bloodied face and ripped coat, before flouncing out of the door with a young lady of questionable reputation on his arm.
But it was after the death of George Darcy that Wickham’s behaviour escalated. Darcy - grieving, scared, drowning under the weight of the responsibility of the huge Darcy estates and the guardianship of his sister – gave in to his friend, lending him large sums of money and paying for his lodgings and bills. Wickham genuinely cared for Darcy, but h
e cared for himself more. He knew that old Mr Darcy had bequeathed him the living of Kympton – a clergyman! There were a lot of roles that George Wickham could assume, but he was most definitely not a man of the cloth, could not bear the thought of preaching about a non-existent God to a dreary bunch of worshippers before returning home to a less than comely wife and dull children. No, the Darcys had shown Wickham life outside of his social sphere and he knew that he was charming enough, handsome enough and a good enough lover to snare himself a reasonably wealthy widow who could offer him a good life in more respectable society; if not he was sure he could convince an heiress that he was half in love and whisk her off for a wedding in Scotland before she was any the wiser. His was not to be a life left languishing in mediocrity.
Darcy had been expecting the announcement of Wickham’s arrival at the house in Grosvenor Square since nine. He had risen early and dressed suitably, his countenance dominated by grief, his demeanour carrying the weight of his heritage. Wickham believed that being a Darcy was about parties, balls, women and wine – but he forgot that the true inheritance of Fitzwilliam Darcy was being responsible for hundreds of people and a massive estate that encompassed thousands of acres. George Wickham did not understand this because on the days when he had been taken by his father fishing on the river, or swimming in the lake, Darcy had been in the schoolroom on the second floor of the house, learning how to maximise the profits of his estates, how to run a household, manage staff and maintain the general level of comfort and respectability that his family were used to.
Wickham entered the oak panelled room and took a seat without being asked. Darcy visibly rumpled at the polished gentleman before him. He was the same height as Darcy but carried himself with a different air – one of arrogant, but undeserved, superiority. His clothes were always of the finest cloth and he had an aura of one who was comfortably affluent. Darcy himself did not, as a rule. He was shaven and clean, but he had not purchased a new suit since his graduation from Cambridge, and he failed to keep up with the latest fashionable trends, more focused on keeping his affairs in order.
Becoming Lady Darcy Page 27
