CHAPTER 63 #3
Mrs. Doddridge folded her work. “Miss Darcy, perhaps we should take his lordship to the other window and discover whether profile improves him.”
Georgiana stood at once. Not hurriedly. Not fearfully. That, at least, was something.
When the door closed behind them, Elizabeth crossed the room.
“What happened?”
Fitzwilliam tried to answer and could not.
She did not ask again. She took his hand.
It was absurd that such a small act could still reach him through so much shock. Or perhaps not absurd. Perhaps all the grand structures of inheritance, houses, fathers, and law were less powerful in the end than a hand offered without condition.
He held it too tightly. Elizabeth did not complain.
“There is an entail,” he said at last. “An old one. Secret, or kept secret from me. This is the last generation in which it applies.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened.
“It did not make Pemberley mine while my father lived. He was master. He had the income. The house. The allowance. The power to admit or refuse, provide or withhold. But he could not make another heir while I lived. Not with no other son. Pemberley was always intended to descend to me.”
“And you were never told.”
“No.”
She absorbed that with a stillness more dangerous than anger.
“He did not disinherit you,” she said.
“No.”
“He made you live as though he had.”
Fitzwilliam looked at her.
The thing was so exactly true that he could not bear it.
“Yes.”
Elizabeth drew him to the sofa, not with force, but with the practical insistence of a woman who had long ago decided that men in extremity should sit before their knees betrayed them. He sat. She remained beside him, close enough that her shoulder touched his arm.
“What else?” she asked.
He told her. Not all at once. Not well. He told her of “son,” and “heir,” and “always.” He told her of the entail’s limits, of allowance and authority and household reception withheld because they could be withheld.
He told her of his father’s admission: anger, guilt believed, repentance demanded for a sin that did not exist.
When he came to Mrs. Wickham, Elizabeth’s mouth grew very still.
“She had been singing in his ear for years,” Fitzwilliam said. “Not accusation. Never quite accusation. Calls. Complaints that were not called complaints. My pride. My coldness. Wickham’s hurt. Lady Anne’s wishes. Old kindness owed.”
Elizabeth looked away.
“What is it?”
“I am thinking,” she said, “that she did not need to accuse you. She taught him how accusation would sound when it came.”
Fitzwilliam closed his eyes.
There it was again. Truth as care. Truth as blade.
“And John Wickham confirmed it,” he said.
“Not the entail. Mr. Latham does not know whether he knew of that. The instrument was with the solicitor, not the steward. But he knew enough. Estate accounts. Correspondence. My father’s habits.
The house. The servants. Where trust lay.
Where anger might be useful.” He drew a breath.
“My father called the earlier things boyish, or pride, or heir’s temper.
I was never asked. Then the larger evidence came, and my denial served the character they had already sold him. ”
Elizabeth’s voice was low. “No wonder your denial failed.”
He opened his eyes.
“They had made denial part of the proof,” she said.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then, because some part of him still searched for order where there could be none, Fitzwilliam said, “For what?”
Elizabeth turned to him.
“If the entail stood,” he said, “if Pemberley must eventually descend as Mr. Latham says, what did they hope to gain?”
Elizabeth gave a short laugh. There was no amusement in it.
“My dear Fitzwilliam—what did they not gain?”
He did not answer.
“Access. Money. Your father’s confidence. The steward’s office. Georgiana’s household. Years in which you could not interfere.”
“They could not make Wickham master.”
“Not by law.”
“Then—”
“Law is not the only way men sit at desks and give orders.”
Fitzwilliam was silent.
“If they did not know of the entail, they may have believed your father could remove you more completely than he could. If they suspected it, they knew enough to be dangerous and not enough to be careful.”
“John Wickham did not have the entail.”
“No. He had nearly everything else.”
“Not the law.”
“The accounts. The servants. The correspondence. Your father’s ear. Georgiana’s companion. And you, absent and misinformed.”
He looked away.
“Had George Wickham married Georgiana while you remained discredited and ignorant of your standing, who would have stood between him and this house? Your father, already taught to distrust you? Mr. John Wickham, steward and adviser? Mrs. Wickham, invoking Lady Anne at every convenient turn? Mrs. Younge, managing Georgiana’s conscience?
The law may have named you heir one day, but the law does not fetch a gentleman from London and put the keys in his hand. ”
“You think they meant to keep me ignorant even then.”
“I think ignorance had served them too well to be surrendered from delicacy.”
He almost smiled, and could not.