Eighteen #2
Anne’s hair was blonde, curling softly around a face which was round where her mother’s had been narrow.
Her eyes were blue, but not the pale, watery blue of the de Bourgh line.
They were a vivid, striking blue that belonged to a man Lady Catherine had never known.
The child was beautiful. She was healthy, clever, and beloved.
She was everything Anne de Bourgh had not been, and Lady Catherine was staring at her as though she were a letter written in a language she could not read.
“You do not have her eyes.” Lady Catherine’s voice had gone strange, flat and distant, as though she were speaking from very far away. “I had hoped—but no. These are not her eyes.”
“What colour were my mother’s eyes, Lady Catherine?”
“Green. Like mine.” Lady Catherine released the child’s chin. Her hand fell to her lap, and Darcy saw, with a jolt of shock, that it was trembling. “She had my eyes, my colouring, and none of my constitution. She was ill from the day she was born. I thought—I believed—”
She stopped, the silence stretching taut and terrible.
Anne waited. She was six years old and she did not understand what was happening, but she understood that something was wrong.
She understood that the tall woman in black was upset, that the air in the room had changed, that her father was standing very still by the door and watching with an expression she had never seen before.
“I am sorry my mother was ill,” Anne offered, her voice small but steady. “Papa says she was very brave.”
Lady Catherine’s head turned sharply towards Darcy.
“Brave,” she repeated. “Yes. I suppose she was brave. She bore her circumstances with more dignity than I credited her for. She married where she was told, she carried her child, and died without complaint.” Her voice hardened.
“Bravery and obedience look remarkably similar, Fitzwilliam, when a woman has no other choice.”
Darcy said nothing. There was nothing to say. His aunt was not wrong.
Lady Catherine turned back to Anne and studied the child silently again.
“You have a ring,” Anne said, pointing to Lady Catherine’s hand. “It has a picture on it.”
Lady Catherine glanced down at her own finger, as though she had forgotten what she wore.
The ring was heavy, gold, set with a garnet carved with the de Bourgh arms. She had worn it since her marriage, since she had become the mistress of Rosings Park and the keeper of a legacy that now rested on the shoulders of a child who did not share her features.
“It is a crest,” Lady Catherine explained. “The de Bourgh crest. This ring belonged to my husband’s mother, and her mother-in-law before her.”
“It is very beautiful.” Anne leaned closer, examining the carved stone with genuine interest. “The lion is roaring. Is he angry?”
“He is proud. Lions are always proud. It is their nature.”
“Muffin is proud too. He is my horse. He is made of wood, but he has a very proud expression. Papa carved him.”
Lady Catherine’s gaze lifted to Darcy again. This time there was no accusation in it, only a weariness that sat strangely on her imperious features.
“Your father,” she said slowly, “carved you a horse.”
“When I was a baby, before I could remember. But Papa tells me the story. He says he did not know what else to do with his hands while he waited, so he carved. Muffin was the result.” Anne’s face brightened. “Would you like to meet him? Muffin, I mean. He is very well-mannered. He does not bite.”
Lady Catherine stared at the child.
Then, so quietly that Darcy almost missed it, she said: “Yes. I should like to meet him.”
Anne beamed. She slid off the window seat, took her grandmother’s hand and tugged her to the corner where Muffin stood guard over a fortress of blocks.
Darcy remained by the door. He watched his aunt lower herself onto the floor, her black silk pooling around her, her dignity set aside with visible effort.
He watched Anne introduce Muffin with the solemnity of a formal presentation, explaining his history, his temperament, his preference for apples over carrots despite being made of oak.
He watched Lady Catherine listening with rapt attention.
Her hand rested on the wooden horse’s mane, and her face held an expression Darcy had never seen before.
One of grief and loss. And beneath it, fragile and uncertain, the first tentative stirrings of affection for a child who was not what she had expected, but who was all she had left.
Darcy turned away. Some moments were not meant to be witnessed, some griefs too private for even a nephew’s eyes. He stepped into the corridor and closed the door softly behind him, leaving his aunt and his daughter alone with a wooden horse and the ghosts of everyone they had lost.
Dinner was a performance, and Darcy performed it badly.
The table was set for four: himself, Lady Catherine, Georgiana, and Richard, who had arrived in the late afternoon with the evident purpose of providing reinforcement.
The empty chair at Darcy’s left sat conspicuously vacant, and he found his eyes returning to it with a frequency that bordered on compulsive.
Elizabeth had excused herself with a note, delivered via Alice, explaining that she thought it best to dine in her room given Lady Catherine’s presence.
She did not wish to raise questions or cause difficulty.
She was thinking of the household, of propriety, of all the sensible considerations that a governess ought to think of.
He had allowed it, because she was right. And still the empty chair accused him with every course that was served and cleared.
“The soup is adequate,” Lady Catherine pronounced, setting down her spoon. “Though the seasoning is timid. Your cook requires firmer direction, Fitzwilliam.”
“I shall convey your assessment, Aunt.”
“A household reflects its master. Timidity in the kitchen suggests timidity elsewhere.”
Georgiana caught Darcy’s eye across the table, her expression carefully neutral but her eyes bright with suppressed amusement. Richard, beside her, was studying his wine glass, determined not to laugh.
The meal continued. Lady Catherine held forth on the wedding preparations.
The flowers were acceptable, the music selections adequate, the guest list longer than strictly necessary but not offensively so.
She had opinions on Georgiana’s gown, on Lord Lofton’s family, on the sermon the rector ought to deliver.
Darcy listened and responded where a response was required. He performed the role of dutiful nephew, but beneath the performance his mind was going through the same fixed point: Elizabeth in her room, eating alone.
Georgiana excused herself early to attend to final preparations for the morning, and Richard escorted her out, leaving nephew and aunt alone.
Lady Catherine did not speak immediately.
She turned her glass in her fingers, watching the candlelight fracture through the crystal.
Her face was unreadable, the imperious mask firmly in place, but Darcy had spent enough years studying his aunt to recognise the calculation beneath it.
She was choosing her approach, selecting her weapons.
“The child is healthy,” she said at last. “That is something.”
“She is rarely ill.”
“Her mother was never healthy. From infancy, one complaint after another. The physicians were useless, naturally. They always are.” Lady Catherine took a measured sip of port. “I had hoped... but it does not matter what I hoped. The child is what she is.”
Darcy refused to be drawn into that particular conversation, not tonight, not ever. The fiction of Anne’s parentage was a wall they had built together, he and his aunt, and neither of them would be the first to breach it.
“Georgiana’s match is advantageous,” Lady Catherine continued, changing the subject abruptly. “Lord Lofton’s family is respectable, his fortune sufficient, his character reportedly sound. She has done well. The Fitzwilliam name will be honoured.”
“Georgiana is very happy.”
“Happiness is a secondary consideration. Duty is primary. She understands this, I trust.”
“She understands that she is marrying a man she loves, who loves her in return. I consider that the primary consideration.”
Lady Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “Love. A word much abused by the young and the foolish. Love fades, Fitzwilliam. Duty endures. A woman who marries for love and finds herself disappointed has only her own expectations to blame. A woman who marries for duty and finds contentment has exceeded her requirements.”
Darcy thought of his own marriage. The cottage in Cornwall, the silent meals, the separate beds, the mutual agreement to endure without pretence. Anne de Bourgh had married for duty, and she had died without contentment, without love, without anything but the relief of ending.
“This family has weathered scandal before,” his aunt continued.
Her voice had dropped, the lecturing tone disappearing.
“We have survived whispers and speculation and the vultures who circle when great houses stumble. We have survived because we protect each other. Because we do not give reasons to our enemies, and we conduct ourselves with discretion.”
“I am aware of our family’s history, Aunt.”
“Are you?” She set down her glass and focused on him with an intensity that made his skin prickle.
“Then you are aware that discretion is not merely a virtue. It is a requirement. It is the price of the position you hold, the name you carry, the legacy you will pass to your daughter, whatever her origins.”
Whatever her origins. The closest she had ever come to acknowledging the truth aloud, and she had done it as a weapon, a reminder that she held knowledge that could destroy them both.
“I am aware, Aunt.”
“Good.” She reached for her glass again, her movements unhurried, her point made. “Then we understand each other.” She let a moment pass, then lifted an eyebrow. “The governess,” she said. “Miss Bennet. She is satisfactory?”
Darcy’s pulse quickened, but he kept his voice even. “She is excellent. Anne has flourished under her care.”
“I recall her from Rosings. An impertinent girl. She had opinions above her station and no hesitation in expressing them.” Lady Catherine’s mouth curved, the expression too sharp to be called a smile. “I trust employment has improved her manners.”
“Her manners require no improvement, Aunt.” The words came before he could weigh them, quiet but certain. “They never did.”
Lady Catherine went still.
The silence that followed was charged, watchful, the hush that preceded storms. His aunt studied him across the table, her eyes sharp as cut glass, and Darcy felt her cataloguing every nuance: the warmth in his voice, the immediacy of his defence, the slight tension in his shoulders that betrayed more than he had intended.
“Indeed,” she said softly. “How curious that you should say so.”
He did not respond. Any response would be evidence; any defence would be confession. He offered nothing.
Lady Catherine rose from the table. “It is late, and tomorrow will be long. I shall retire.” She paused at the door, her hand on the frame, and looked back at him.
“Fitzwilliam. I have given you counsel tonight. I suggest you heed it. Discretion is not optional for men in your position. It is survival.”
She swept out. Her footsteps faded down the corridor, measured and unhurried, and Darcy remained alone with his thoughts in the dining room.
His aunt suspected. He had seen the recognition, the calculation in her eyes. She did not know the extent of it, not yet. But Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a woman who collected ammunition before she fired, and she had just added a new piece to her arsenal.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew Elizabeth’s note. He unfolded it, read the familiar handwriting, traced the curve of her letters with his thumb.
I thought it best.
She had been right. It had been best, and still he ached with the wrongness of the necessity of pretending that she was only what she appeared to be.
He folded the note and returned it to his pocket, counting the cost of discretion.