CHAPTER 63 #4
“They might have produced a paper,” she continued.
“Your forged signature has served them before. Why should it not serve them again? A letter saying you had no wish to return. A memorandum entrusting temporary management to your sister and her husband. Something proper enough to stand for a week, a month, three months.”
“No respectable solicitor would accept such a thing without examination.”
“Then they would not seek the most respectable man.”
Despite everything, the answer was so immediate, so Elizabeth, that he almost smiled. This time, it came a little nearer to surviving.
“Solicitors are men, Fitzwilliam. Some are honourable, some are cautious, and some are very much obliged to the person who pays them. There will always be a man who looks at an absent heir, a frightened sister, a husband already in the house, papers apparently signed, and fees properly offered, and says the matter may stand until further inquiry.”
“Mr. Latham would have objected.”
“Yes. So Mr. Latham was the difficulty they had not yet solved.”
He turned to her.
“A man may be dismissed. Or made to appear partial. Or old. Or obstructive. Or too attached to your interest to be trusted with Georgiana’s.
Mrs. Wickham need only produce some cousin’s acquaintance, some convenient man of business with a good coat and a better appetite for fees, and everything becomes temporary. ”
“Temporary,” Fitzwilliam repeated.
Elizabeth’s mouth curved, without mirth. “Everything convenient begins as temporary.”
Fitzwilliam leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. He felt suddenly, violently tired.
“They believed they had more time,” Elizabeth said after a moment.
“Yes.”
“Until your marriage.”
He looked at her.
“Until your marriage,” she repeated. “Until your father began to inquire because you had a wife who could not be placed inside the old story. Until Georgiana had seen me, and had a card, and knew there was a door not opened by Mrs. Younge. They had been seasoning the dish for years, and then they were forced to serve it half-cooked.”
This time he did laugh, once, roughly, because the image was hideous and exact.
“Forgive me,” Elizabeth said. “It is an ugly comparison.”
“It is a just one.”
“They rushed her. That is what gave them away. Patient fraud may look like family duty. Hurried fraud looks like coercion.”
Fitzwilliam covered his face with one hand.
Elizabeth did not speak. After a moment, her hand came to his wrist, light but certain.
“They did not fail because the plan was foolish,” she said. “They failed because the final step was attempted before the earlier lies had finished their work.”
“And because of you.”
“No.” Her answer was immediate. “Because Georgiana ran.”
“To you.”
“Because you had already been worth trusting,” Elizabeth said. “Do not give me what belongs to you.”
He lowered his hand and looked at her.
There were many things he might have said.
That she had saved Georgiana. That she had saved him.
That Portman Square, with its absurd dog and its fierce housekeeper and its mistress who turned affection into food, rooms, letters, and rules, had been the first place in years where he had not been measured against lies.
He said none of it. Speech seemed too poor for the work.
Elizabeth touched his face.
He closed his eyes.
The relief was immediate and humiliating, and she, being merciful, did not notice it aloud.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said, “if you cannot bear to stay, we do not have to.”
His eyes opened.
“No,” she said, before he could answer wrongly.
“Listen to me. You owe him nothing that requires you to be broken twice. Georgiana can come with us if that is settled. Mr. Latham can write. Bell can report. Mrs. Reynolds can govern the house better than half the gentlemen in Derbyshire. Mr. Grant can bully your father into broth without our assistance. If remaining here costs too much, we shall go home.”
“Home.”
“Portman Square,” she said. “Ours.”
He looked past her to the window. Beyond it Pemberley lay brilliant in the afternoon light, broad lawns and old trees and stone that had endured every folly committed in its name. He had loved it before he knew loving a place could be used against him. He loved it still. That, too, was an injury.
“I do not know yet,” he said.
“Then we shall not decide it today.”
“My father asked me to stay. As son. As heir.”
“Then you may decide whether those words are strong enough to stand upon.”
“They should be.”
Elizabeth’s eyes were very gentle. “Many things should have been.”
He bent his head.
She kept his hand in hers.
“If you cannot remain, I will go with you,” she said. “If you believe you are needed here, I will stay with you. But it shall be your decision, Fitzwilliam. Not Pemberley’s. Not your father’s. Not Wickham’s last theft from you.”
For once, she did not urge him to eat, write, sleep, walk, or answer a paper. She only remained beside him, her hand in his, while Pemberley waited outside the window, at last forced to be something less convenient than an inheritance and something more difficult than a home.
It had been meant for him.
It had not been made his in life.
And for that hour, with Elizabeth’s fingers steady in his, Fitzwilliam allowed himself to understand that staying would not be the same thing as forgiving, and leaving would not be defeat.