The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy by Marsha Altman Page A

fit.”) Aunt Bingley had left her present at the house, to be given to him that day.
    â€œHow many books are you going to get?” his sister said. “You can’t eat them.”
    â€œYou could make furniture from them at this point,” Mr. Bradley said, and slapped his stepson on the back.
    In the afternoon, the Darcys visited. George had already spent time with Geoffrey since the arrival of the Darcys at their townhouse. Geoffrey was adept at using George as an excuse to get out of his lessons. George didn’t mind; he could count the number of friends he had on one hand, and not use all his fingers.
    To his surprise, Aunt Darcy sat with her sister and Mr. Bradley while Uncle Darcy offered to take him out to a club for lunch. He had never been to one before, and Geoffrey rather noticeably expressed his annoyance at not being invited. “Your time will come to eat bad food and watch rich men make fools of themselves,” his mother had said when he complained.
    George knew Uncle Darcy cared about him more than his father ever had and more than Mr. Bradley ever would, and part of him was now old enough to realize why. He had been six when his father died, and unlike his sister, he remembered him and he remembered the funeral. Uncle Darcy had spent it in an armchair because he was too weak to stand and had nearly died of his own injuries in the fatal duel with George’s father. George’s mother had never made any secret of how her first husband had died, and how much Uncle Darcy owed them for “killing my husband.” Thankfully, that had died down when she married Mr. Bradley, because it always brought Isabella to tears of disbelief. How could their father have been a bad man? How could Uncle Darcy have killed him in a duel? George was old enough to remember some details. And Uncle Darcy had never denied it, but never looked pleased when Lydia brought it up. Actually, Uncle Darcy had always looked
horrified, and unconsciously tried to hide his right hand, which bore the scar from the fight. Young Master George was not very talkative, but he was a good observer.
    Despite all the history between them, he saw no reason not to like Uncle Darcy. He liked all of the Darcys, he had decided long ago, despite all of the evidence not in their favor. He closed his ears to his mother’s complaints, though it made him uneasy to do so. But he swallowed these anxieties with the small amount of whiskey offered to him as he sat down at White’s with his favorite uncle.

    Though he still had to return to the Bradley house on Gracechurch Street to reclaim his wife and children, Darcy was relieved that the visit had, so far, gone well. Lydia Bradley had been too distracted by her infant to complain to him. He knew she always applied to her sisters for money (and got it, though in measured amounts), but since Wickham’s death, she had been relentless about hounding Darcy for money. He felt that his debts had been settled; he had paid for the funeral, and had been more than generous in sitting up trusts for both the Wickham children. His financial penance would go only so far. He would not give her access to either child’s account, explaining again and again the nature of a trust fund and how the money could not be gotten at for ten years. But it would fall on deaf ears. So he would sigh and go back to his old habit of ignoring her.
    When Lydia had lived at Longbourn, Mr. Bennet had provided for her, but to an extent she deemed unsuitable (he had apparently learned the lessons of time). It had been a relief for everyone when she married Mr. Bradley. He was a former colonel who had been injured in the battle of Toulouse in 1814, and discharged with an eye patch, thereby escaping the carnage at Waterloo the following year. Aside from his injury reward and retirement pay, he had inherited thirty thousand pounds from his aunt upon her death and quickly sought a bride, and the fact that he did