Eighteen
The carriage arrived at half past ten, earlier than anticipated, and the household held its breath.
Darcy stood in the entrance hall, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression carefully neutral.
Beside him, Barton had achieved a state of professional composure so absolute that he might have been carved from the same marble as the floor.
The footmen flanked the door in perfect symmetry.
Mrs Hatfield hovered at the base of the stairs, her keys silent at her waist, her face betraying nothing.
They had prepared. They had drilled. They had done everything short of conducting military exercises in the corridor, and still Darcy felt the tension coiled in his shoulders, the familiar state that accompanied every encounter with his aunt.
The carriage door opened and a footman handed her down.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh ascended the steps of Darcy House as though she owned it.
She wore black silk, as she had done since Anne’s death, a perpetual mourning that served double duty as armour.
Her posture was rigid, indicating that she had never once doubted her right to command any room she entered.
Her eyes swept the entrance hall in one efficient circuit: the marble, the flowers, the arrangement of staff, the nephew waiting to receive her.
“Fitzwilliam.” She offered her cheek. He leaned to kiss it, tasting powder and disapproval. “The journey was abominable. The roads north of Kent have deteriorated since my last visit. I shall write to someone about it.”
“I am sorry to hear it, Aunt. I trust you are not too fatigued.”
“I am never fatigued. Fatigue is for people who lack purpose.” She handed her gloves to Barton without looking at him. “Where is the child?”
No enquiry after Georgiana, whose wedding had ostensibly occasioned this visit. No greeting for the household, no pause for refreshment after four hours in a carriage. Lady Catherine had come for one reason, and she would not be delayed by convention.
“Anne is in the nursery, Aunt. I shall take you to her.”
“See that you do.”
He led her up the stairs. She climbed with an unhurried pace, her black skirts whispering against the carpet.
Darcy matched her stride, his mind running calculations: Elizabeth would be there.
She had been warned, naturally, but the carriage had arrived earlier than expected, and sending a maid ahead would have raised questions he was not prepared to answer.
Elizabeth would handle it as she handled everything. But the thought of his aunt’s eyes on her, his aunt’s tongue—
He set his resolve and kept climbing.
The nursery door stood half-open. He could hear Elizabeth’s voice within, reading aloud about a princess and a tower, the cadence rising and falling with the drama of the tale.
Anne’s interjections punctuated the narrative: Why did she not simply climb down?
Did no one think to bring a ladder? This princess is not very resourceful, Miss Bennet.
Lady Catherine stopped in the doorway.
Elizabeth sat in the low chair by the window, the book open in her lap, Anne perched on a cushion at her feet.
The morning light caught them both—Elizabeth’s dark hair, Anne’s blonde curls, the easy intimacy of a scene that had been repeated a hundred times over the past three months.
They did not notice the observers. Elizabeth turned a page and Anne leaned forward to see the illustration.
“You.” Lady Catherine’s voice cut through the room like a blade. “Elizabeth Bennet.”
Elizabeth’s head came up. Her expression flickered in surprise, then recognition, and then nothing. The blankness settled over her features with the speed of long practice, a mask Darcy had watched her don when the world required her to feel less than she did.
She rose from the chair, setting the book aside. Her curtsy was perfectly precise, unhurried, calibrated to the exact depth required for the aunt of her employer. Not a fraction too deep, not a fraction too shallow, which would have invited censure.
“Lady Catherine. Welcome to Darcy House.”
Lady Catherine’s eyes travelled over her.
Darcy watched his aunt catalogue every detail: the dove-grey gown, modest but well-made; the simple arrangement of her hair; the absence of jewellery; the posture of a lady who had been raised to grace drawing rooms and now occupied nurseries.
The fall from gentlewoman to servant, written in fabric and position.
His aunt’s mouth curved—not in a smile, but something colder. Satisfaction, perhaps, or vindication.
“Miss Bennet.” The name dripped with condescension. “I had heard the Bennet family had encountered difficulties. I did not realise the extent of them.”
“Life takes unexpected turns, your ladyship.”
“Indeed it does. I recall you had opinions, Miss Bennet. Many opinions, on many subjects. I hope your circumstances have taught you the value of discretion.”
Elizabeth’s chin lifted a fraction. Darcy saw the spark in her eyes, the old defiance, the refusal to be cowed, and his chest swelled with equal parts pride and fear.
She would not retreat, never that. But Lady Catherine collected slights the way other women collected china, and she never forgot a debt.
“I have learned a great deal in recent years, your ladyship.” Elizabeth’s voice was mild, pleasant, giving nothing. “I am grateful for every lesson.”
The words were perfectly polite. The subtext was not.
Lady Catherine’s eyes narrowed. She heard it—she was too shrewd not to hear it—but she could not strike at what she could not prove. Elizabeth had offered courtesy wrapped around steel, and there was nothing to grasp.
“Hmph.” Lady Catherine turned her attention to the child, dismissing Elizabeth as one dismissed a piece of furniture that had served its purpose. “Anne. Come here.”
Anne had risen from her cushion. She approached her grandmother with the measured steps she had been practising all week, her hands folded at her waist, her expression solemn.
She stopped at the appropriate distance and executed a curtsy that would have satisfied the most exacting dancing master in London.
“Good afternoon, Grandmother. I am very pleased to meet you.”
Lady Catherine stared down at her.
“You may call me Lady Catherine,” his aunt said. “Grandmother is a title that must be earned.”
Anne absorbed this without flinching. “Yes, Lady Catherine.”
Elizabeth gathered the book, the cushion, a slate and chalk from the low table.
Her movements were unhurried, professional, betraying nothing of what she must be feeling.
She caught Darcy’s eye as she moved to the door, a glance so brief it might have been accidental, but he read it clearly: I am leaving. Watch over her.
He gave the slightest nod.
Elizabeth passed Lady Catherine without a word, without a curtsy. She had already curtsied, and to repeat it would have been excessive. She slipped through the door and was gone, her footsteps fading down the corridor.
Lady Catherine did not watch her go. Her attention had fixed on Anne with an intensity that made Darcy’s skin prickle.
“Sit,” his aunt commanded, gesturing to the window seat. “Let me look at you properly.”
Anne sat, folded her hands in her lap and raised her face to the light, patient and composed, a portrait of childish obedience.
Darcy remained by the door. He would not leave his daughter alone with this woman. He would not leave her undefended, no matter what blood they shared, or did not share.
Lady Catherine lowered herself onto the opposite end of the window seat, her black skirts pooling around her. She reached out and took Anne’s chin in her fingers, turning the small face towards the light.
Darcy watched his aunt’s composure begin, very slowly, to crack, because the child’s face was a stranger’s face.
He had known this would happen. He had prepared for it, in the abstract way one prepared for battles that could not be avoided, by acknowledging the terrain, calculating the risks, bracing for impact.
But watching it unfold was different. Watching Lady Catherine’s fingers tighten on Anne’s chin, watching the recognition bloom in his aunt’s eyes, watching her confront the evidence of a scandal she had buried with her own hands, it was something preparation could not soften.
Anne held still under the examination. She was accustomed to adults studying her, commenting on her features, remarking that she did not much resemble her father. She had learned to endure it with patience. She understood, on some instinctive level, that certain questions were not to be asked.
“You have your mother’s chin,” Lady Catherine said. The words came slowly, as though she were testing them for truth and finding them wanting. “The shape of it, the stubbornness.”
“Did my mother have a stubborn chin, Lady Catherine?”
“She had a stubborn everything. It was the only strong thing about her.”
Anne considered this. “Miss Bennet says stubbornness is determination with poor manners. She says I have a great deal of determination.”
“Does she indeed.”
Lady Catherine’s thumb moved across Anne’s cheek, tracing the line of her jaw. Her gaze was fixed on the child’s face with an intensity that bordered on hunger. She was searching, cataloguing, looking for something that was not there.
Darcy knew she was looking for the narrow, delicate features of Anne de Bourgh, preserved in miniature. The echo of her daughter, the continuation of her bloodline, the proof that something of Anne had survived what had taken her.
She would not find it.