CHAPTER 61 #3
“Send two, if one would be too easily noticed. One for the road, one for the village. They are not to speak to her.”
“No, madam.”
“And any message sent from her house is to be quietly opened, copied, resealed, and sent onward, if it can be done without exposure.”
“It can be done.”
“Good.” Elizabeth turned fully from the door. “Where does she live?”
“In the steward’s house, madam.”
“By virtue of Mr. John Wickham’s office?”
“Yes.”
“Then she cannot remain there.”
Mrs. Reynolds was silent.
“This morning was not a call,” Elizabeth said.
“It was a trial of the lock. She wished to know whether Lady Anne’s name still opened doors, whether old servants still made way, whether illness might do what persuasion could not.
If she remains in the steward’s house, then every Wickham remains within reach of Pemberley by courtesy of her roof. ”
“It will be thought severe, madam.”
“Then we shall be severe.”
Mrs. Reynolds looked up.
“Mrs. Wickham’s family has used my husband very ill.
Her son endangered Miss Darcy. Her husband carried falsehood through this house until Fitzwilliam was cast out of it.
Her cousin, Mrs. Younge, was placed near Miss Darcy and used that place ill.
I do not know yet how much Mrs. Wickham knew, but I know what her remaining here permits. ”
Mrs. Reynolds waited.
“Access,” Elizabeth said. “A note through an old servant. A groom who thinks Mr. George Wickham has only come to see his mother. Mr. John Wickham returning by night to his own house. Small excuses, all made respectable because Mrs. Wickham is still treated as belonging here.”
Mrs. Reynolds’s hand tightened upon the household paper.
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Miss Darcy shall not live beside an open gate because closing it may hurt Mrs. Wickham’s feelings.”
“No, madam.”
“The steward’s house belongs to the office, not to Mrs. Wickham’s injuries. A new steward must have it, or Mr. Latham’s man must have it, or it must stand locked until the estate is safe. But it cannot remain a Wickham door.”
“It may be said that old connexion should have protected her.”
“Blood is a connexion, Mrs. Reynolds. It is not an absolution.”
Mrs. Reynolds was very still.
“If there is a lease, Mr. Latham will find it. If there is a promise, he will read it. If there is neither, Mrs. Wickham has no claim upon the steward’s house except habit, and habit has done quite enough damage here.”
“Yes, madam.”
“If she has goods there, they may be inventoried. If she requires time to remove, it may be measured, not begged for indefinitely. If she has other relations, and I believe she has several, let her try whether they are more willing to be abused. Pemberley has paid its share.”
Mrs. Reynolds did not smile now. The matter was too grave for that. But something steadied in her face, as if a thought long present and long unspeakable had at last been given a respectable voice.
“And Mrs. Reynolds?”
“Madam?”
“This is not chiefly punishment. It is protection. I will not have Miss Darcy made brave in a house that keeps a door open for dangerous men.”
“No, madam.”
By noon, Pemberley had begun, almost imperceptibly, to alter.
No door was slammed. No servant was accused.
No public command announced a purge. Yet a stable hand found himself sent to count harness beyond convenient hearing.
A clerk discovered that Mr. Latham’s man required every drawer in the steward’s office to be sealed before sorting.
The under-housemaid connected to Mrs. Wickham was given linen work under Mrs. Reynolds’s own eye and no errand near the family passages.
Harris received his instructions twice and did not resent them.
Cook was told that invalid trays would be carried only by named servants, and if the master rejected nourishment, the tray was to return with exact report rather than dramatic speculation.
Order, Elizabeth had always believed, was most effective before it became visible to fools.
Fitzwilliam was with Mr. Latham for twenty minutes and came out with the look of a man who had seen the first clean edge of disorder.
Elizabeth did not ask him for details in the passage. She only put a cup into his hand.
“Drink.”
“I have just left Mr. Latham.”
“That is why.”
He drank.
“The will?” she asked.
“Secured.”
“And the Wickhams?”
His face changed.
“Crossed out,” he said. “Every sum. Every provision my father could reach.”
Elizabeth stilled. “In his hand?”
“Yes. Not neatly. Not calmly. Latham says there is a codicil as well, properly witnessed so far as he can presently judge. But the draft—” He stopped. “Their names are crossed out as if the pen had been a weapon.”
“Then he knew.”
“He knew enough to remove what he could.”
“Good,” Elizabeth said. “Then Mr. Latham must preserve both: the legal paper and the anger that produced it.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“And the steward’s office?” she asked.
His expression hardened. “Sealed in part. Not enough. John Wickham handled too much correspondence, too many receipts, too many estate accounts that ought never to have passed through one man’s hands alone.
Latham believes the rent books and remittance records must be examined before anything is moved. ”
“Then the papers are not business,” Elizabeth said. “They are the house’s memory.”
“A badly edited one.”
“Then Mr. Latham must preserve the original before anyone improves it further.”
His mouth softened for one moment, but it did not last.
“There are letters,” he said. “Some in my father’s desk. Some copied through the steward’s office. Latham thinks John Wickham handled too much: estate correspondence, accounts, letters sent between Pemberley and Darcy House, and perhaps old papers touching my own disgrace.”
“Mrs. Younge?”
“Her recommendation is plain enough. Mrs. Wickham recommended her. The question is not how she entered the house, but what instructions she received after my father left London, who saw those instructions before she did, and whether any person besides my father paid, promised, or directed her.”
Elizabeth’s expression sharpened. “So not who paid her wages.”
“No. Those would come properly enough from my father’s account. Latham is looking for anything beyond wages: gifts, irregular sums, forgiven debts, letters, or promises.”
“And reports.”
“Yes. Whether she wrote to Mrs. Wickham, John Wickham, or Wickham himself while she was meant to be attending Georgiana.”
“Then Darcy House must be written to at once,” Elizabeth said.
Fitzwilliam looked at her.
“Mrs. Younge is not to remain there another day. Nor any servant, porter, maid, or messenger whose place depends upon Wickham recommendation. If Mrs. Younge has papers, letters, bills, or keys, they must be secured before she is warned.”
He set down the cup. “Yes. The order must go by express.”
Mrs. Reynolds entered then with Mr. Grant’s written direction in her hand, as if Pemberley had decided to send the proper person before Elizabeth could ask for her.
“Mrs. Reynolds,” Elizabeth said, “who has charge of Darcy House in London?”
“Davis, madam, with the housekeeper under him.”
“Then write to Davis by express. In Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s name and mine.
Mrs. Younge is to be removed from Miss Darcy’s rooms and from the house at once.
Her keys, papers, bills, and correspondence are to be secured before she is told.
No servant recommended by Mrs. Wickham, Mr. John Wickham, Mr. George Wickham, or Mrs. Younge is to carry messages, receive visitors, or approach Miss Darcy’s rooms.”
Mrs. Reynolds did not blink.
“Yes, madam.”
“And if Mrs. Younge protests?”
“Then Davis may hear it from the other side of the door.”
Fitzwilliam made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Elizabeth looked back at him. “No Wickham access. Not here. Not in London. Not through servants, cousinship, pity, old obligation, or a woman with a reticule and a grievance.”
“No,” he said. “No access.”
Elizabeth looked toward the closed door at the end of the passage, though the elder Mr. Darcy was not behind it.
“Detail,” she said, “is often where betrayal prefers to live.”
“Yes.”
“Then Mr. Latham must have the day. And you must have food before he has the rest of you.”
“I am not hungry.”
“That is unfortunate for hunger. It will have to do without encouragement.”
His gaze rested on her. “Elizabeth.”
She knew that tone. He had been struck somewhere old and was trying to stand as if it were only present inconvenience.
She touched his sleeve. “Fitzwilliam, I shall not ask you to feel less. I shall ask you to sit down while feeling it.”
He obeyed.
A little later, before Georgiana’s visit to her father, Fitzwilliam went to her sitting room.
Elizabeth went with him because Georgiana had begun to look steadier when truth came with more than one witness; Kitty remained near the window and showed, by determined attention to a skein of embroidery silk, that she understood she was not needed to speak.
Georgiana rose as they entered.
“Is Papa—”
“Resting,” Fitzwilliam said. “Mr. Grant says you may see him soon, if you still wish it. But before you do, there is something you must know.”
Georgiana’s hands closed together.
He kept his voice very even. “My father says he never sanctioned Mr. Wickham. Never intended him for you. Whatever Mrs. Younge allowed you to believe, whatever Wickham implied, it was false.”
Georgiana did not move.
Then she sat down again, not as if she chose to, but as if her knees had discovered the chair before her pride could object.
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
Her face altered slowly. It was not relief at first. It was the painful failure of a terror that had held itself upright too long.
Elizabeth crossed to her and took the hand Georgiana had not seemed to know she was twisting in her lap.
“Then when you go to him,” Elizabeth said, “you do not go as a girl who has disobeyed. You go as a daughter who was misled.”
Georgiana’s eyes filled.