A/N: This is my first fic - one has to start somewhere - it has not been betaed, but I have tried to ensure that the spelling and grammar is, at least, up to snuff.

A Death in the Family

By Talktidy

George Wickham was dead.

Mr Wickham's death was as ignominious as the life he had led. Drinking himself senseless and inhaling the contents of his stomach had been one of her brother-in-law's more woeful exploits, but one altogether emblematic of his existence. At the time of Lydia's marriage, Elizabeth Darcy had pitied her sister, had wished Lydia had never been obliged to marry such a man. Now, however, when Mr Wickham's injudicious conduct had freed her sister, she had begun to think Mr and Mrs Wickham had deserved each other after all.

George Wickham was dead and there was only so much of her sister's behaviour that Elizabeth could stomach. The heels of her shoes clipped out an aggravated rhythm as she walked the main gallery, blind to the visages of Darcy forbears that watched her progress. Wickham was barely cold and Lydia, playing the grieving widow only when she had an appreciative audience, was already thinking of her future. "Do not look at me like that, Lizzy, I am not yet thirty. I am too young to remain a widow." A request, disturbingly more akin to a demand had followed, that the Darcys fund her being in town that she might attract the attentions of a suitable man and it should be a man of substance, this time. Evidently, the thirteen years of her marriage had taught Lydia the appeal of a red coat had its limitations.

When such importuning had fallen on barren ground, Lydia had owned she would have to wait until her mourning period was over, but that, still, surely her sister could be prevailed upon to do something for her then."

Elizabeth had made a noncommittal sound, too out of sorts to have the patience for argument, but she determined her sister would be packed off to Longbourn as soon as may be; her father would not thank her for the boon of Lydia's company, but she would not subject Fitzwilliam to her sister for longer than she must.

Fitzwilliam disliked Mrs Wickham. Elizabeth knew this, although it was a sentiment he strenuously tried to hide from her. He was always polite to her sister, no matter what provocation Mrs Wickham offered and over the years there had been provocation enough, as there must have been today. Lydia had said something to her husband, she was sure of it, and that he must now be nursing his temper in seclusion, lest he say something rude in response was equally probable. Why that seclusion must be in the attics, however, she was at a loss to know.

It took her longer to find her husband than she thought. Pemberley boasted more than one attic, but at length she found him in rooms above that part of the house that she understood had been her husband's apartments before his father died. At the sound of her feet on the bare floorboards, Fitzwilliam's gaze broke from the object he contemplated in his hands. He gave her a bleak smile and Elizabeth understood.

Fitzwilliam was grieving.

"I had thought that disposed of years ago. When I came to Pemberley, the summer I travelled to the north with the Gardiners, it was on display, but when I arrived as your bride, it was nowhere in sight."

Darcy stared at the miniature in his hands. George Wickham in his prime. "I had Mrs Reynolds move it up here; I do not know why I kept it. After the evils George very nearly wrought upon my family, I have wished him gone many a time, but now find myself apparently unequal to the reality." Fitzwilliam looked up at her. "I do not understand."

"Do you not?" Elizabeth Darcy saw the mask of detachment on her husband's face that might be taken to indicate profound self-absorption in those who knew him ill. She strode towards him and gathered him into a fierce embrace. This is why she loved him. His good opinion may be lost, but he still cared, he could not help it.

"You are the very best of men!"

"Huff! Have a care for my ribs, dearest!" Darcy placed an absent kiss upon her head. "You are biased, I think."

"Yes, yes I am." She drew back within their embrace; she stared into his eyes and swallowed the impulse to demand what Lydia had been about, for she was sure her husband would remain mute on the subject. Like pulling teeth.

"Lydia tells me you have made arrangements for Wickham to be interred at Pemberley." She waited to see if Darcy would contradict this report.

"Not in the Darcy family plot, but, yes."

Elizabeth, quietly astonished at the confirmation, digested this piece of news. "Fitzwilliam, if your purpose is to continue to spare a watchful eye for further mischief from Mr Wickham, I think you need to know that this latest scrape of his, is one he cannot get himself out of."

Darcy snorted and bestowed another brief kiss, this time on her lips. "Folly, no doubt, but his parents are interred here. I know Wickham is beyond ever hurting anyone now." He looked embarrassed at the turn his own emotions had taken; Elizabeth would not have him so, not when it was only the pair of them in each other's company, and gave him an encouraging squeeze. She wondered if Lydia had said something insensitive at the prospect. It would be typical of her sister to attempt to direct other's affairs to conform with her inflated notions of what was due to her. She hoped Lydia had not ventured to suggest to Fitzwilliam that whatever funds Darcy was proposing to spend on relocating her late husband's remains, would be better spent on his widow.

"You know, I came to loathe Wickham well before he attempted to elope with Georgiana." Darcy looked at his wife's perturbed expression and smiled a bleak smile. "And you are wondering if the Master of Pemberley has lost his wits."

"I would appreciate your thoughts, Fitzwilliam." The sight of the miniature had spurred Elizabeth with a desire to see it at the bottom of their fishpond, but now on observing her husband's abstracted air, she wished to understand.

"For a time Wickham wasn't as he turned out. There was a reason my father loved him as a boy. It seems hard to reconcile with the Wickham of later years, but as a child he was actually quite bright and his manners always were engaging; all the more sincere because they possessed the guileless lack of polish of a child."

Fitzwilliam's eyes held the glassy, unfocused aspect of a man lost in remembrance. "But the promise of better in Wickham was never realised on the boy becoming man — a canker set in and the child my father loved died long before my father's own death. I loathed him for the betrayal of what he could have been, as much for the sheer waste of opportunity, as for what I perceived as deceit of my father."

Elizabeth embraced her husband and ran her hand up and down his spine, as though soothing their youngest. "But it is for the memory of the boy that you wish him interred at Pemberley?"

Fitzwilliam sighed. "Strange as it may be, I do mourn his passing, Elizabeth, but I wonder if it is merely that with Wickham's death, another link with my father is gone?"

"And remembrance of happier times?"

"Yes. Perhaps I should take a leaf from your book, dearest, and remember the past only as it gives me pleasure."

"A wise strategy." And then, seeing that Fitzwilliam needed to lay the past to rest, she said, "Tell me of him, tell me of Wickham, when he was a child."

End