CHAPTER 67 #4
Mr. Latham, with tact at last perfected, bowed and withdrew to prepare his drafts. Bell had not been admitted to the sickroom, but he waited at the end of the passage, hat in hand. Mr. Latham murmured something to him, and both men disappeared toward the estate office.
Elizabeth stood beside her husband in the quiet.
“You are angry,” she said.
“Yes.”
“With him?”
Fitzwilliam did not answer at once.
“No,” he said at last. “Not just now.”
That was all, but she understood the size of it.
The effort had cost him. George Darcy had chosen concealment of the sum, and yet not protection of the thief.
He had refused public humiliation, and yet made the severance plain.
He had not defended Wickham. He had not called Fitzwilliam harsh.
He had not asked for gentleness toward the family that had used his gentleness as cover.
It was not reparation.
It was more than nothing.
Elizabeth, who had been standing too long, became suddenly conscious of the passage, the warmth, the weight of her gown, and the unreasonable wish to be alone with her husband before any other person in Pemberley required sense of her.
Fitzwilliam looked down at her at once.
“Enough,” he said.
“I did not say anything.”
“No.”
“That is becoming an insufficient defence.”
“It has not yet failed me.”
“It is failing you now.”
“Then I shall retire it after you are seated.”
She would have argued, but she found she had no wish to win.
That, too, was alarming.
He took her to the small sitting room again, closed the door, and returned to her with water before she could point out that she had not asked for any. She drank it because refusing would have required more theatre than dignity.
When he sat beside her, not too close, she put the glass down and covered her face with both hands.
“That was a great deal of numbers for one morning.”
“And people.”
“People are worse than numbers.”
“Usually.”
She lowered her hands and looked at him. His face was tired now that no one else could see it. Not defeated. Not even unhappy in any simple way. Only stripped of the particular discipline the morning had required.
She wanted to put her hand against his cheek.
The wish was so immediate and so tender that it embarrassed her.
Instead, she said, “Do you remember when your father first called on me in Portman Square?”
“I remember very little of that interview with comfort.”
“I told you afterwards that he had the air of a man asking to be cheated.”
For a moment, Fitzwilliam only looked at her.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
It was not a large laugh. The day had not earned that. But it was real enough to ease something in his face, and Elizabeth felt an absurd triumph out of all proportion to the joke.
“Do you think I inherited the air?” he asked.
Elizabeth considered him with great seriousness.
“No. You are much harder to cheat.”
“That is a relief.”
“Though not impossible.”
His brows rose.
She slipped her hand into his. “I did lure you home.”
For a moment his amusement altered into something quieter.
“Yes,” he said. “You did.”
“I am not sorry.”
“Nor am I.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it, and Elizabeth, who had intended to be clever, found herself absurdly glad that he had understood her.
There were still papers waiting. The Wickhams would not vanish merely because Pemberley had withdrawn its name. The law could pick up only pieces small enough to make outrage look extravagant.
But Fitzwilliam was beside her.
Her body was changing.
She no longer doubted there was a child. The suspicion would not retreat merely because she did not name it too plainly; the fact was gathering itself quietly beneath all the other facts of Pemberley.
She had known for days. Perhaps longer. She had merely been waiting for certainty to become brave enough to speak.
“Fitzwilliam,” she said.
He looked at her immediately.
“I am certain now.”
All amusement left his face.
Not at once, not like a lamp blown out, but as if some other feeling rose through it and made laughter unnecessary.
“Of the child?”
“Yes.”
The words changed the room more completely than ten thousand pounds had done.
His hand tightened around hers, then loosened at once, as if he feared even joy might hold too hard.
“Elizabeth.”
“I know,” she said, though she did not know what he meant. She only knew that his voice had made her feel the truth more strongly.
He bowed his head over her hand and kissed it.
Not ceremoniously. Not as a gentleman in a drawing room, but as a man who had found, in the midst of ledgers and injuries and insufficient law, something too serious for speech.
She had thought she might cry.
Instead she felt strangely calm.
The papers remained elsewhere now: more than ten thousand pounds visible in pattern, small charges separately provable, justice reduced to columns, cost, and consent. Mr. Latham would write. George Darcy would sign. Pemberley’s silence would no longer shelter Wickham.
But for a little while, Fitzwilliam held her hand as if no sum had ever been more important than what she had just told him.
And Elizabeth, who had spent the morning resenting every evidence of her altered state, let herself lean toward him.
Only a little.
Enough.