Wickham's Diary by Amanda Grange Page A

divine?’
    ‘You look absolutely ravishing,’ I said, and it was the truth.
    She laughed and said, ‘My own darling boy! Now look…’ and she ran across the room, throwing open a box and pulling out a coat, spilling paper everywhere. ‘I have not forgotten you. I have bought something for you. What do you think of this? Will you not look fine?’
    She held it up and I was impatient at once to try it on. It was a red coat made in the hussar style with gold frogging all the way down the front.
    ‘Put it on,’ she said.
    I threw off my old coat and obliged her, admiring myself in the looking glass, for indeed I did look very fine. She stood behind me, saying, ‘You take after my side of the family, Georgie, with your handsome face and your good taste and your love of fine things. You were born to be a gentleman, not the son of a steward.’
    ‘Then why did you marry a steward?’ I asked.
    She gave a sigh.
    ‘If I had had my way I would have married a wealthy gentleman, but my papa disapproved of him and forbade the match. I was all ready to elope, indeed I had already climbed out of the window, but when I found that the man at the bottom of the ladder was Papa and not Tom, I had to climb back up again. He gave me such a scolding, saying that I was far too young for marriage and that Tom was wild and unreliable, but I was sixteen and ready for adventure and I wanted to go to Scotland with Tom. What fun we would have had! And his grandmama would have come round eventually and then after her death we would have had her fortune and just think what that would have meant to us.’
    ‘I wonder you did not marry him a few years later then.’
    ‘Alas! Tom was indeed wild. His family would not let him see the world so he ran away to sea and was washed overboard in a storm.’
    ‘Why didn’t you find another wealthy suitor?’ I asked her.
    ‘That is a very sensible question. You are wise beyond your years, George. Of course I would have found another wealthy suitor if I had had the chance, but my papa sent me into the country to stay with my great aunt because he was afraid I would find someone else with whom to elope. Oh, my dear child, I was so bored! There were no shops, no galleries, no theatres; no park to ride in, nowhere to see and be seen; no amusement whatsoever except for the monthly assemblies in the local town, which were as dull as ditchwater. There were no men there under forty there save for your papa.’
    ‘So that is why you married him. I have sometimes wondered,’ I said, for Mama is like a brightly coloured butterfly and Papa is as sober as a judge.
    ‘That is not the only reason. I also married him because he was a good, sweet darling and utterly devoted to me. And because he had the ear of the greatest man in the neighbourhood, for he had been of some use to Mr Darcy, and I knew that Mr Darcy liked to reward those who had served him well. So I knew that it was only a matter of time until your papa ceased to be a country attorney and became something much better instead. And sure enough, soon afterwards, Mr Darcy made your papa his steward and we came to live here in this dear little house on the Pemberley estate.
    ‘Oh! How happy I was, particularly as I thought it was just the beginning of greater things. But alas! Your papa has no ambition and he was content to remain a steward, looking after another man’s property instead of owning his own.
    ‘But you, George, you will rise to greater things. Such a handsome face, together with such charming manners, cannot fail to win you friends in a position to help you. Indeed, you have already made a useful friend in Fitzwilliam, and that friendship will make life easier for you by and by. In fact, it is already making life easier, for what other boy of your age, without wealthy relatives himself, rides the kind of horse you ride and goes to Eton and is free to run around a house like Pemberley? And the friend of Fitzwilliam Darcy will continue to