CHAPTER 61
After Breakfast
Elizabeth woke to the sound of birds and the weight of Fitzwilliam’s arm about her.
For one disordered moment she did not remember where they were.
The bed was too large, the light wrong, the air too green at the window.
Then Pemberley arranged itself around her: the old chambers, the open curtains, the morning beyond them already carrying the first promise of summer, and the husband asleep beside her with the deep stillness of a man whom exhaustion had conquered where reason could not.
He had not slept easily. Even in sleep, he held her as if some part of him expected the house to take account of what he kept.
But his face, turned slightly toward her, had lost the worst of the previous night’s strain.
There were shadows beneath his eyes, and one hand remained closed upon the sheet, but he slept.
Elizabeth did not move at once.
There was Mr. Grant below, servants to be judged, Mrs. Wickham somewhere in the neighbourhood rehearsing old obligations, Mr. Latham with papers enough to darken the whole morning, and the elder Mr. Darcy lying ill in a room where truth had at last entered by the most inconvenient door.
All of that could wait half an hour.
Fitzwilliam could not.
She lay still until his breathing settled again after some small disturbance in the house, then eased herself carefully from his hold. He stirred, searching for her before waking.
“I am here,” she whispered.
His hand found her wrist.
“Elizabeth.”
“Sleep.”
“I should—”
“You should sleep,” she said. “It is the first sensible thing required of you today, and you may as well begin well.”
His eyes did not open. His fingers tightened once, then slackened.
“Do not go far.”
“No.”
That seemed to satisfy him, or exhaustion did. He slept again.
Elizabeth stood for a moment beside the bed, looking down at him in the room that had known him before she had; before disgrace, before all those years in which he had learned to expect nothing from what should have been his home.
Pemberley might have claims. It did not have the first one.
Evans came quietly and glanced once toward the bedchamber door.
“Mr. Darcy still sleeps, madam.”
“Then the house is not to discover any necessity for him until he wakes. If it does, the necessity may be brought to me and made ashamed of itself.”
Evans’s mouth twitched. “Yes, madam.”
By the time Elizabeth was dressed, the day had fully entered the room.
She chose a morning gown suited to the country but not to idleness, because idleness had clearly not been invited.
Her hair was put up more plainly than Evans liked and more securely than Elizabeth expected the morning to deserve.
In the corridor, a maid was waiting with that particular alertness by which a great house announced that half a dozen people had questions and only one had dared stand closest to the answer.
“Mrs. Reynolds is below, madam.”
“Then she has the advantage of everyone else.”
Mrs. Reynolds was not in the breakfast room, but in a small parlour off the housekeeper’s passage, with a tray of keys beside her and a folded household paper in her hand. She rose at once.
“Mrs. Darcy.”
“Mrs. Reynolds. How has the master passed the night?”
“As well as might be hoped, madam. He slept after midnight. Mr. Grant has sent to say he will attend after breakfast.”
“And Fitzwilliam is not to be disturbed until he wakes.”
Mrs. Reynolds’s expression altered by so small a degree that any person less trained in households might have missed it. Elizabeth did not.
“Yes, madam.”
“He had very little sleep upon the road, and less comfort when he arrived. Mr. Latham may wait.”
“Mr. Latham said as much himself, madam.”
“Then I begin to like Mr. Latham.”
A faint dryness entered Mrs. Reynolds’s face. “He has a plain way with unwelcome facts.”
“That is a promising beginning.”
Mrs. Reynolds looked down at the household paper, then up again. “There are several matters which should be put before Mr. Fitzwilliam when he is able.”
“Then we shall sort them before they reach him. Not decide them,” Elizabeth added, before Mrs. Reynolds could mistake her.
“Sort them. There is nothing more exhausting to a gentleman in crisis than to be handed twelve emergencies, three customs, two old resentments, and one servant’s cousin, all tied together with black ribbon and called duty. ”
Mrs. Reynolds’s composure moved again. This time, relief was nearer the surface.
“That is very true, madam.”
“Good. Then first: the master. Who enters his room?”
“Mr. Grant, myself, Harris, Thomas for lifting when needed, and Mrs. Vale, who has nursed in the house before. No one else without direction.”
“Food?”
“Cook sends it up through Harris.”
“Does Harris answer to you?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Draughts and medicines?”
“Kept by me or Mr. Grant. Mrs. Vale administers only what is written.”
“Letters, notes, messages?”
Mrs. Reynolds hesitated.
Elizabeth waited.
“Formerly, many things came through the steward’s office.”
“Yes. That is what I feared.”
“Since Mr. Wickham’s departure, nothing from that office has gone into the master’s room without my seeing it.”
“Excellent. Continue. No paper goes into the master’s room unless Mr. Grant permits the exertion, and unless you know who brought it.”
“Yes, madam.”
“And Mr. Latham?”
“He has secured what he could: the master’s will and later codicils, the papers concerning Miss Darcy’s fortune, the correspondence between Pemberley and Darcy House, and the keys to the steward’s office.
He is looking particularly for any provision made to the Wickhams, any written instructions concerning Mrs. Younge’s attendance upon Miss Darcy, and any correspondence which passed through Mr. John Wickham’s hands when it ought to have gone directly to the master. ”
Elizabeth paused.
“And the accounts?”
“Rent books, receipts, remittances, wages, disbursements, and tenant correspondence, madam. Mr. Latham says they may tell him where money went, who had the handling of it, and whether any payments were made without proper authority.”
Now the word papers had weight. It was not paper. It was access, memory, money, and all the respectable little doors by which falsehood might have entered the house.
“Has Mr. Latham a clerk with him?”
“One, madam.”
“Then the clerk is not to be left alone in the steward’s office, and no servant attached to the Wickhams is to be near it.”
“Already done.”
“Very good. Now servants attached particularly to Mr. John Wickham, Mrs. Wickham, or their son.”
Mrs. Reynolds did not ask how Elizabeth knew to ask it. That also recommended her.
“There are two in the stables more his than ours,” she said.
“One under-housemaid whose aunt has long served Mrs. Wickham in the steward’s house.
A clerk in the steward’s office who has been very frightened since Tuesday.
And one footman who is loyal to any person who speaks loudly enough of old times. ”
“Then none of them are dismissed today.”
Mrs. Reynolds looked at her.
“Dismissal makes noise,” Elizabeth said. “Noise breeds messages. Today they are simply moved away from family rooms, sickroom passages, kitchens, offices, stables, and letters. Give them tasks where they may be seen, kept useful, and prevented from mistaking curiosity for service.”
Mrs. Reynolds’s hand closed over the folded household paper.
“That is exactly what was wanted.”
“Then we are fortunate that it has been said.”
For the first time, Mrs. Reynolds almost smiled.
Breakfast was laid in the smaller room, not the great one.
Elizabeth approved the decision before she knew she had done so.
No young lady required magnificence before coffee after four days of road, and no gentleman returning from long exile ought to be fed under the inspection of ancestral portraits before he had swallowed his first cup.
Georgiana came down pale but composed, with Kitty beside her and Mrs. Doddridge behind them as if she had merely happened to occupy the precise point at which two young ladies might require ballast. Kitty looked rather awed by Pemberley and rather pleased to be awed, which was an improvement upon being frightened by anything else.
“Good morning,” Elizabeth said. “I trust everyone has slept enough to be civil and not enough to be foolish.”
“I do not know how much sleep makes one foolish,” Kitty said.
“Nor do I,” Elizabeth said. “But I have resolved to suspect any quantity which makes people confident before breakfast.”
Georgiana smiled faintly.
“Has Fitzwilliam—” she began, then corrected herself with a blush. “Has my brother come down?”
“Not yet. He is asleep, and no one in this house is to be so uncivil as to wake him for business before breakfast.”
Georgiana looked relieved before she looked anything else.
“Then he was tired.”
“Very.”
“I am glad he is sleeping.”
“So am I.”
That simple agreement did more than a longer comfort could have done. Georgiana sat, accepted chocolate, and allowed Kitty to ask whether the view from the east side was always so green or whether Pemberley had dressed itself particularly to impress company.
“It is always green,” Georgiana said, after considering the matter. “But it is worse in June.”
“Worse?”
“More determined.”
Kitty looked out. “Yes. I see that. A very decided sort of green.”
Elizabeth left them to that and was rewarded by another small smile from Georgiana.
Fitzwilliam entered not long after, dressed with exactness and looking as if exactness were the only thing holding him upright. His eyes found Elizabeth first. They rested on her for one moment, taking inventory: present, dressed, unhurt, already at work.
“You slept,” she said.
“Not enough, I suspect.”
“Enough to make obedience possible. You may show it by eating.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s brows lowered approvingly over her teacup.
Fitzwilliam sat. A servant placed coffee before him, then food. He looked once toward the door.
“Latham?”
“After breakfast,” Elizabeth said.
His gaze returned to her.