CHAPTER 68 #3
Elizabeth’s colour rose. Fitzwilliam moved half a step before he knew he meant to do it.
Lady Catherine saw it.
“Yes,” Lady Catherine said. “I mean Mrs. Darcy. You appear to have made yourself very much mistress here.”
Fitzwilliam had prepared several answers.
His father gave him no opportunity to use them.
From the upper landing came the slow sound of a cane.
Every person in the hall turned.
The elder Mr. Darcy stood above them with Mr. Grant on one side and Mrs. Reynolds on the other, though neither appeared pleased by the arrangement.
He was dressed properly, if more heavily than the day required, and his face was pale beneath the effort of standing.
His right hand gripped the cane. The other rested briefly on the rail before he began the descent.
Fitzwilliam was across the hall before anyone else moved.
“This is not necessary,” he said quietly.
His father looked at him.
“It appears to be.”
Mr. Grant muttered something that did not sound medical.
Lady Catherine recovered first.
“Brother, you should not be standing.”
“No,” said the elder Mr. Darcy. “Yet here we are.”
That, at least, was familiar enough to silence her for three steps.
They brought him not into the drawing room but into the morning room nearest the hall, because Mrs. Reynolds had already anticipated disaster and prepared the least unsuitable battlefield.
The curtains were drawn against the worst sun.
Chairs had been arranged without crowding.
Water stood near the seat his father took with controlled irritation.
Mr. Grant remained by the door with the air of a man collecting future grievances.
Fitzwilliam stood beside Elizabeth. Richard stood near the mantel. Lord and Lady Matlock sat. Lady Catherine did not sit until his father looked at her chair and said, “Catherine.”
She sat.
No one mistook it for obedience to anyone else.
His father took a moment before speaking. The effort of descent had marked him. His breath was controlled, but not easy. Fitzwilliam felt the old helpless fear rise, sharp and useless, and pressed it down.
His father looked first at Lord Matlock.
“You have been misinformed.”
Lord Matlock inclined his head. “We came to understand matters.”
“You came after hearing Mrs. Wickham,” said his father.
Lady Catherine leaned forward. “She had every right—”
“No,” said his father.
The word was not loud. It was the old voice, diminished in force but not in command.
Lady Catherine stopped.
His father’s hand tightened on the chair arm. “My son did not take command of this house. I asked him to remain.”
No one moved.
“His wife did not bar Mrs. Wickham from me,” his father continued. “I did.”
Lady Catherine’s face changed. “You were ill. You cannot have known what was done in your name.”
“I know it now,” said his father.
“You have been kept from her.”
“I ordered her kept from me.”
Lady Catherine looked as if language itself had betrayed her.
His father turned his head slightly toward Elizabeth.
“Mrs. Darcy did what the house required when I could not do it and others had neglected it.”
Elizabeth became very still.
Fitzwilliam felt, rather than saw, what that sentence cost her. Praise was one thing. Public vindication from his father, before those who had come prepared to condemn her, was another.
His father’s gaze moved back to the others.
“What has been done here has been done with my knowledge, my request, or my consent,” his father said. “If you wish to dispute the arrangements, dispute them with me.”
Lord Matlock was grave now in a different way.
“What has Mrs. Wickham done?” he asked.
Lady Catherine exclaimed, “Matlock!”
He did not look at her.
His father leaned back slightly. For one moment his eyes closed. Mr. Grant took a step forward. His father opened them.
“Before my seizure, I had begun to examine what I ought to have examined years ago.”
Lady Catherine frowned. “Examine what?”
“The charges laid against my son,” said his father.
Fitzwilliam went still.
His father did not look at him.
“Not all could be found again,” his father said.
“Some were old. Some had been made of whispers, not papers. But what could be traced did not hold. Men spoke differently when Mr. Wickham was no longer standing between them and Pemberley. A debt was not Fitzwilliam’s.
A witness had repeated what he had been told, not what he had seen.
A letter had passed through hands that should have warned me from the beginning. ”
Lord Matlock’s face altered.
“I could not prove every accusation false,” his father said. “But every accusation I could test failed. And every failure led me nearer the same family.”
Lady Catherine said sharply, “The Wickhams?”
“The Wickhams,” said his father. “John Wickham supplied authority. Margaret Wickham supplied injury. Their son supplied the conduct he wished attributed to mine.”
Fitzwilliam had known himself innocent. He had lived on that knowledge until it had become a poor substitute for justice. Hearing his father say it before them all did not restore the years. It only showed, with painful exactness, how many years had been available to lose.
His father’s voice roughened. “George Wickham sought to persuade my daughter that marriage to him was expected of her.”
Lady Matlock’s hand tightened in her lap.
Richard’s face went hard.
Lord Matlock said nothing.
“She was led to believe,” his father continued, “that such a marriage would please me. That I desired it. That resistance would be disobedience.”
“No,” Lady Catherine said at once. “That cannot be. George Wickham is—”
“My godson,” said his father. “Yes. I know what he is.”
Silence followed.
The word godson had once been a shield. Now it sounded like evidence against the man who had offered it.
His father said, “He sought to make my trust in his father into a command over my child.”
Lady Matlock closed her eyes briefly.
Lord Matlock looked older.
Lady Catherine shook her head. “Mrs. Wickham cannot have known that.”
His father’s mouth tightened.
“John Wickham robbed this estate for more than twenty years.”
The room seemed to lose air.
Lord Matlock stared at him. “Robbed?”
“Over ten thousand pounds proved to my satisfaction. More suspected.”
Lady Catherine rose halfway. “Impossible.”
“Sit down,” said his father.
She did, but not because she accepted it.
His father’s right hand trembled once on the chair. He closed it slowly.
“Enough is proved for me,” he said. “Whether it is enough to satisfy a court without making Pemberley a public spectacle is another question. I will not buy humiliation merely to have strangers count my losses aloud. Do not mistake that for doubt.”
Lord Matlock’s face had become very still.
He understood. Not everything, perhaps. Not yet the whole architecture of Wickham’s usefulness, not the twenty years of familiar remittances, not the shape of the theft hidden inside improvement. But he understood enough to see ruin where Lady Catherine saw only contradiction.
“Ten thousand,” Lord Matlock said quietly.
“More,” his father answered. “But ten is enough for family feeling.”
Fitzwilliam looked at his father then.
The old man did not look back.
Lady Catherine’s colour had risen. “I do not believe Margaret Wickham party to such things. You must be mistaken in her. She is our own blood — Lady Anne’s, mine, Matlock’s. A Fenwick connexion is not to be treated like a servant dismissed for pilfering.”
His father’s eyes moved to her.
“A servant dismissed for pilfering would have done less damage.”
Lady Catherine flinched with outrage.
“She has used that blood,” his father said. “She used it to enter where she should not have been trusted. She used Lady Anne’s name in my house until I mistook the echo for duty. If you cannot see it, then you are where I was.”
His breath caught. He mastered it.
“I do not recommend the place.”
No one spoke.
Lady Matlock looked at her husband. The look was brief, but Fitzwilliam saw it: horror, calculation, and the first edge of fear.
Lady Catherine did not see. Or would not.
“Mrs. Wickham came to me in distress,” Lady Catherine said. “I will not condemn a female relation because you have been persuaded against her by people who profit by her removal.”
Fitzwilliam felt Elizabeth move beside him. Not forward. Only a minute straightening, enough to tell him she had felt the insult and chosen, for now, not to answer it.
He wished to answer it. He wished, with an old and violent clarity, to put himself between Elizabeth and every family judgment that had arrived too late, too proud, and too eager to believe harm of him.
His father spoke first.
“Who profits?”
Lady Catherine’s eyes flashed. “Do not pretend not to understand me.”
“I ask because understanding has lately proved expensive,” said his father.
Richard looked down.
Lord Matlock said, “Catherine.”
“No,” said Lady Catherine. “I will speak. Mrs. Wickham was born a Fenwick. She has claims upon our protection. If Pemberley has forgotten what is due to old connexion, Rosings has not.”
Something moved through the room.
Fitzwilliam felt it before he understood it. Elizabeth’s hand, at her side, closed. Richard’s head lifted. Lady Matlock’s face sharpened.
His father said, “You have received her.”
“I have given shelter to an injured relation,” said Lady Catherine.
“At Rosings?” his father asked.
“Where else should she go, when turned from the house she served?”
Fitzwilliam looked at Richard. His cousin’s expression had changed. He understood enough.
“Is she there now?” Fitzwilliam asked.
Lady Catherine turned on him. “I do not answer to you for the ordering of my household.”
Lord Matlock said, “Catherine. Answer him.”
Lady Catherine’s colour rose. “Yes. She is at Rosings.”
“And Anne?” Fitzwilliam asked.
“Anne is at Rosings, of course.”
His father closed his eyes briefly.
Then he said, “You have left Rosings undefended, and Anne in it.”
Lady Catherine stared at him. “Undefended? My servants are there.”