Chapter Three #3
“That was fair Miss Morland,” Mr. Tilney said. “And I agree with my brother; surely I cannot have been the only person alone at the time.”
“I was playing cards in my suite of rooms with Rushworth, Bertram, and Willoughby,” Sir Edward volunteered. “Darcy joined us for a while, but he left about a half hour before the shots were fired.”
Elizabeth was standing near enough to Mr. Darcy to look at him with amazement. “You played cards with my uncle?”
“I did not wish to slight him by refusing,” he said softly, before addressing the group. “After I left them, I penned a letter to my cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam; I dispatched it mere minutes before I heard the gunshots. Someone in the stables might verify that the messenger left the castle.”
“Well, I have said where I was; my niece and her friends can tell you that they saw me go into the passage out of amusement and curiosity, quite by accident,” Lady Susan said.
“My hair is still damp from the bath,” Sir Walter Elliott said. He turned and examined his reflection in a mirror by the window, making fastidious little adjustments to himself.
“I was with Mr. Parker, discussing some plans for Sanditon,” Miss Denham said.
“Yes, I am sure you were,” the captain spat with an air of implication. “I know all about your schemes and plans in Sanditon.”
Mr. Tilney looked over his shoulder. In the adjoining dining room, Mrs. Clay and Mrs. Younge were clearing away dishes for the dinner that Elizabeth feared would not be happening.
“Come in here, ladies, if you would. You were both very distraught a short while ago; I wonder you should resume such menial tasks just presently.”
Mrs. Younge gave Mr. Darcy a wary glance before saying, “I will admit that we were listening. We are both very curious to know what has happened.”
“As if you are so innocent,” Captain Tilney said. “Perhaps we have found our culprits, Henry. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my father’s jilted lovers and former informants, who have all been telling tales on you.”
Emma looked at Mrs. Younge with wide-eyed panic, and her lower lip began to tremble as if she would weep. Lady Susan stepped forward and struck the woman. “Awful witch, do you know how much you have cost me?”
Mrs. Younge glared back at her. “More than what you’d have spent if you paid me the wages owed to me, I daresay.”
Lady Susan rounded on Mr. Tilney. “What can you be thinking, having these horrid women in your home? It is even madder than inviting us here, having them around in our presence!”
“I confess I had meant to keep it a secret,” Mr. Tilney said with a heavy sigh. “Those of you who know Mrs. Clay were welcomed by Mrs. Younge, and vice versa. But whatever they have done in the past, they wish to help.”
“Help your father to a bullet or two, perhaps,” Miss Denham hissed, giving Mrs. Clay a chilling glare.
“I’ll not deny we had reason,” Mrs. Younge said. “We all had reasons. The general made us both promises – the same promises, until we found out about one another. He just used us as spies, and I’m not proud of it. But I cared for George Wickham, and I’d never have hurt him.”
“I’ll not be noble and say I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” Mrs. Clay said in a pose of defiance.
“I’ve had a harder life than you lot, and I sold your secrets.
But I was all for keeping quiet if it confounded the general’s schemes, and Henry’s a good lad.
Whoever says he had something to do with it is dead wrong. ”
At the back of the room, Emma gave a little laugh that turned into a cough. She met Elizabeth’s eye and mouthed the words dead wrong?
“All of you have servants here, who’d have seen us attending to housekeeping matters for Henry,” Mrs. Younge said.
A peal of thunder rolled overhead, seeming to rattle the very walls of the room. The candles flickered.
“So Darcy and Sir Walter were both alone at the time of the murder,” Mr. Bertram mused. “And both of the Tilney brothers. For what it’s worth, I doubt any of you are the culprits. It would not make sense.”
“It does not make sense for anybody to kill my father,” Mr. Tilney replied.
Elizabeth gave Cathy a gentle nudge. “Say what you told me downstairs.”
Cathy furrowed her brow for a moment, then nodded. She stepped toward Mr. Tilney. “You said this morning that you do not know all of our secrets, but that some amongst us deserve to be given over to the magistrate.”
Lady Susan snorted. “Can he see the future?”
“Of course he did not know this would happen, but it made me realize that some of these secrets I know nothing about must be worse than others.”
“Listen, I think she is quite right,” Mr. Rushworth said. “Whoever has the most damning secret is sure be the culprit.”
“Yes, my dear,” said his wife. “Miss Morland’s notion sounds very clever now that a man has explained it to us.”
“There may be some truth to that,” Captain Tilney said. “I know what you all are hiding, and I can think of two or three amongst you who would desire a more final way to silence my father.”
“Have a care, Fred,” Mr. Tilney said. “If father was silenced, do not make yourself a target.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Mr. Bertram said. “If it will help others be more forthcoming, I shall tell you all what the general knew of me. I have no acquaintance with either of these ladies, so I cannot think how the general knew of what happened in Antigua.”
His sister Mrs. Rushworth gasped. “What happened in Antigua?”
He let out a heavy sigh before addressing the room.
“I visited some holdings of my father’s last summer in the West Indies, and I was quite appalled by the conditions of the laborers there, the slaves.
I discovered myself to be a most avid abolitionist, as anybody might if they had seen what it was like.
During our visit, the plantation was burned to the ground, and I was complicit in the scheme.
I made sure that my father and I were able to flee to safety, but I am responsible for the complete loss of the place, though I am not at all ashamed that his slaves were able to escape to freedom in the ensuing ordeal. I would do it again.”
“You are fortunate that yours is a secret that paints you in a favorable light,” Emma said mournfully. Captain Tilney sneered at her, as if there were something for which he wished to make her feel very small, and she shrank back against Harriet once more.
“I had not read your dossier,” Mr. Tilney said to Mr. Bertram. “I hope it will not cost you your inheritance.”
“I wish I was noble enough not to desire such an ill-gotten fortune,” Mr. Bertram replied. “At any rate, there now, I have said it, and perhaps others may choose to be forthcoming.”
“And these dossiers? Why not just have a look at them, if you have not read them all,” Sir Walter suggested.
“I should not wish to for all the world,” Cathy cried. “To know such things seems far too perilous.”
“My secret pertains to my poor mother, and I shall never betray her,” Mr. Rushworth. “She has been a widow since I was born, and perhaps she made some errors and miscalculations in the running of our estate, but… oh, tell them, Captain. It cannot be so very bad.”
“I wonder if the captain does know all, else he might simply say which two or three people here in particular who could easily commit a murder,” Mrs. Clay said.
At the same moment, Lady Allen stood up and announced, “I am Miss Morland and Miss Smith’s mother.”
Elizabeth looked between her two new friends in astonishment, the resemblance between Cathy and Harriet now seeming so marked that she wondered how she had not known at once.
Emma smiled at Harriet. “Lady Allen? I always knew it must be someone grand.”
Cathy ran to her. “How can this be?”
“I was betrothed against my own inclination to old Sir James,” Lady Allen said, looking exceedingly agitated.
“I was in love with another man, the son of a wealthy merchant, but my father was determined to have a title for me. Edward was so handsome, and well favored at court, and we wanted to run away together. I was already with child, and Edward had gone to India on business with his father. I thought I could say the babe was my husband’s, but we had not yet consummated the marriage before Sir James was called away on business abroad.
He had not yet returned when I gave birth to twin girls in secret.
Mrs. Morland was my only friend when I left Devon to go to Gloucester, and she had offered to take the child, to say she had borne twins when she delivered her own babe.
But she could not take both, for triplets would be too remarkable.
My cousin Mrs. Goddard in Surrey had just opened a school for girls, but she could not afford the expense of two infants, and so each of them took one of my dear girls. ”
“I never knew,” Sir Edward said with tears in his eyes. “When I saw Miss Morland I suspected, but Miss Smith, too!”
Lady Allen moved closer to him as he looked between Harriet, Cathy, and Elizabeth. “They are all very like you, Sir Edward.”
He took her hand in his. “I have a title, now, Margaret.”
Cathy and Harriet went toward their parents, and the four of them all studied one another with high emotion until the captain interrupted. “This is all very charming and sentimental, but my father is dead! Perhaps I ought to risk my neck and start saying names.”
There was a tremendous crashing sound and white light lit the room, as if lighting had stuck very nearby. Sir Walter let out an undignified yell as he moved away from the window, and Mrs. Rushworth clung to Mr. Crawford for a moment before recollecting herself.
And then something began to nag at Elizabeth as her uncle and Lady Allen stared at her. “You said they are all very like him, not that they are both very like him.” At her side, Mr. Darcy drew protectively close to Elizabeth, which sent a chill down her spine. If her fear was true….
“My first and only love has been braver than I,” Sir Edward said. “I knew nothing of Margaret’s girls, but she knows that I had another child before I met her. A child that was raised by my sister.”
Elizabeth staggered backward, nearly colliding with Mr. Darcy, who attempted to brace her with his arms. But she could not look at her uncle, could not bear the curious stares of so many strangers as she faced this shocking truth, and she fled into the dining room, where she burst into tears.
There was uproar in the parlor behind her, but Elizabeth paid it no heed as she braced herself with one hand on a chair, gasping for breath as she sobbed into her other hand.
She had feared her uncle was hiding far worse, yet she was incapable of any relief at such a moment.
And to make matters worse, Mr. Darcy had followed her into the dining room.
“Forgive me,” he said, offering her a handkerchief. “Is there anything I can get for you? Some wine perhaps? Or if you prefer privacy, I can ask my valet to stand guard outside your chamber for safety.”
For a moment Elizabeth could scarcely comprehend his words. She just stared at him, silently sharing the incomprehensible horror of all that had gone awry. And then she was overpowered by her feelings, and lost all possession of herself.
Mr. Darcy frowned in the flickering candlelight, and to her supreme astonishment, he took her in his arms. Elizabeth tensed and he loosened his grasp, but after a moment Elizabeth could only relax into the warmth of him as her body wracked with sobs.
“Papa is my father. I love him, he is my Papa,” she cried.
“Of course he is,” Mr. Darcy said softly. “Bingley’s letters are full of what a clever, kind, and amusing fellow Mr. Bennet is. You are every bit his daughter.”
Elizabeth recollected the handkerchief he had pressed into her hand, and began to dab at her face as she leaned against Mr. Darcy.
She still despised him, naturally, and she was bitterly aware of having given him another reason to think her ridiculous.
Even so, she was so bowled over at discovering that her uncle was her father, and that she had two entirely new sisters. Any port in a storm, she told herself.
“Please do not tell Miss Bingley,” she sniffled.
Mr. Darcy’s broad chest rumbled with laughter. “You have an uncanny talent for saying the last thing I would ever expect, Miss Bennet.”
Elizabeth found herself laughing along with him, rather wildly as she imagined him making haste to pen a letter full of gossip for his feather-headed friend. “Good Heavens, I suppose it may make quite a scandal for me. You ought to be demanding the return of your poor handkerchief.”
She pulled away from his embrace to offer him the crumpled thing. He laughed at the pathetic handkerchief in her hand before reclaiming it.
“I never thought to ask who my mother is,” Elizabeth murmured. Her mind was full of the look between her uncle and Lady Allen as they fussed over Harriet and Cathy. It was as if she had been thrust into an entirely new family, and in the midst of a grisly mystery.
And then there was a scream from the parlor, and they both glanced to the doorway in alarm. Mr. Darcy stepped toward the parlor, only to stop abruptly. “It has gone dark,” he said.
The whistle of wind blended with various shouts and cries, and Elizabeth heard Cathy call out, “The wind blew open the windowpane and snuffled out the candles.”
Elizabeth retrieved the single taper candle that still burned in the center of the dining table. She and Mr. Darcy returned to the parlor and halted when her candle illuminated the body of Captain Tilney sprawled across the floor, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.