Chapter Twelve #2
He does not shout. He never shouts. But when I said something about the butcher’s bill he went very quiet and looked at me and his eyes went FLAT, like there was nothing behind them at all, and I thought for just a moment that I did not know him.
Only a moment. Then he smiled and said he was sorry and kissed my cheek and was all kindness again.
But I did not sleep well that night and I have not slept well since.
I do not mean to worry you. I am sure it is nothing. He is under a great deal of strain with the money and everything. I should be more patient. Please do not tell Mama. And please do not tell Darcy.
Elizabeth read it through twice. She folded it, put it in her pocket, turned to Darcy, who was watching her across the table. “Lydia sends her love.”
After breakfast, she gave the letter to Kitty without a word. Kitty read it in the morning room, standing by the window where the light was good, and when she finished she looked up and her face was white.
“His eyes went flat,” Kitty said. “Like there was nothing behind them. And then it all passed over.”
“Yes.”
“That is how George Darcy described him. When Wickham agreed to everything and smiled and was the boy he remembered. The charm that switches on and off.”
“Yes.”
Kitty folded the letter along its creases, slowly, carefully, as though it were something fragile. “She says she is sure it is nothing.”
“She is sixteen and she doesn’t know what she is looking at.”
“No. But we do.” Kitty handed the letter back. “What are you going to do?”
Elizabeth put the letter in her pocket, beside the notebook she kept there now, the one filling up with evidence that proved nothing and meant everything.
“I’m going to talk to Darcy,” she said. “About Lydia. Not about the rest of it. Just about Lydia.”
“She said not to tell him.”
“I know what she said. But I’m already keeping too many secrets from my husband, and this one is better not kept. He needs to know what Wickham is doing to her. If there is anything to be done about the money, Darcy is the one who can do it.”
“That is managing a murderer’s comfort.”
“Yes. Until I can think of something better, that is exactly what it is.”
She found him in his study after luncheon. He was at his desk, going through the estate ledgers. When she came in he set down his pen and looked at her. “It was the letter, was it not?”
Elizabeth stopped in the doorway. “How did you know?”
“Because you read it at breakfast, your face changed, you have been somewhere else ever since. Kitty has been watching you the way she does when something is wrong. You have come to find me in my study in the middle of the day, which you do when you have something to say and are not sure how to say it.” He paused.
“I am not as unobservant as you seem to think, Elizabeth.”
“I have never thought you unobservant. That is rather the problem.”
His mouth twitched at the corners. Not quite a smile, but the beginnings of one, the first easing she had seen in his face in days.
The strain of keeping George Darcy’s secret, on top of her own secrets, was putting a pressure on their marriage that was rapidly becoming unbearable.
She could not wait much longer, but first; first she had to try to secure her sister’s safety.
“Lydia asked me not to show you this,” Elizabeth said, taking the letter from her pocket. “But I think you should read it.”
She handed it to him and sat in the chair across from his desk and waited.
She watched his face as he reached the passage about the card game, the debts, the temper.
She saw the moment he read the words his eyes went flat, because his jaw tightened and something cold and hard settled behind his own eyes, something that was not surprise.
He set the letter down.
“She is afraid of him,” he said.
“Yes. Though she doesn’t yet know she is.”
“She says please do not tell Darcy.“ He looked at the letter, then at Elizabeth. “And yet you are showing me.”
“Because I am your wife, she is my sister, and I won’t keep this from you. I have too much on my mind already, and this is something you need to see.”
She had almost said it. I am keeping too many secrets.
She had caught herself, barely. She saw from the flicker in Darcy’s expression that he had heard the stumble, registered the sentence she had started but not finished, chosen not to press.
The restraint was becoming its own kind of language between them, a grammar of silences and near-misses that said more than the words themselves.
“His debts,” Darcy said, after a moment. “If I were to settle them again. Quietly. Through a solicitor, so that Wickham did not know the source. It would ease the pressure, at least for a time.”
“For a time. He will accumulate more.”
“He will. He always does.” Darcy was quiet, looking at the letter on his desk.
Elizabeth could see him turning something over; the same deliberate process she had watched him apply to estate problems, tenant disputes, every difficulty that came before him.
“I could arrange a quarterly allowance, paid through the solicitor. Enough to keep him afloat. Not enough to fund his worst habits, but enough that the debts do not become desperate. It would be a leash, not a cure, but it would keep him manageable.”
“You would do that. For Wickham.”
“I would do it for Lydia. And for you.” He looked at her steadily.
“I know what he is, Elizabeth. I have known since we were boys. He is a man who takes what he wants and discards what he does not need, and he has never once, in all the years I have known him, shown remorse for anything he has done. I do not say this to frighten you. I say it because I need you to understand that whatever you are working through, whatever it is you are not yet ready to tell me, I am not coming to it blind. I know what Wickham is.”
The words hung between them. Elizabeth looked at her husband, at this man who was offering her exactly what she needed: money for Lydia, patience for herself, the unspoken assurance that when the truth came he would not be as shocked as she feared.
She wanted to tell him everything. The pull of it was so strong that she could feel the words forming, the whole of it; ghosts, murder, foxglove, his father’s ghost sitting in her parlour with rage burning behind his eyes.
She did not say it. Not yet. But she leaned forward, took his hand across the desk, held it. “Thank you.”
Darcy lifted her hand to his lips and lightly kissed her knuckles, and for a moment the distance between them was not a wall but a window, something she could almost see through to the other side.
“When you are ready,” he said.
“Soon,” Elizabeth said, promising herself just as much as him.
Kitty was waiting in the morning room. She looked up when Elizabeth came in, read her face. “He is going to help.”
“He is going to settle the debts and arrange a quarterly allowance. Enough to keep Wickham afloat.”
“Good.” Kitty paused. “And the rest?”
“Not yet. But soon. I told him soon, and I meant it, Kitty. I can’t keep this up much longer. He knows something is wrong and he is being so patient about it that it is worse than if he demanded answers.”
Kitty’s expression changed. She crossed the room and closed the door.
“Elizabeth. You almost told him. Just now. I can see it on your face.”
“I didn’t tell him.”
“But you wanted to. You were sitting across from him. He was being kind, steady, offering to help with Lydia, and you wanted to tell him everything.” Kitty’s voice was low, urgent.
“You can’t. You want to tell Darcy, who will go after him the moment he knows, and what do you think Wickham will do then? What do you think he will do to Lydia?”
The words hit Elizabeth like cold water.
“He killed a man who threatened to cut him off,” Kitty continued. “A man he supposedly loved. Lydia is a sixteen-year-old girl he married because he was paid to. If Darcy confronts him, if Wickham feels the trap closing, do you truly believe Lydia is safe?”
Elizabeth sat down. She had not thought of it that way. She had been so focused on the impossibility of telling Darcy about the ghosts that she had not considered what Darcy would do with the information, what Wickham would do in return, who stood closest to the blast.
“I need to get her out first,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Before anything else. Lydia has to be safe before we move against him.”
“Yes.” Kitty’s voice was fierce. “You need to get our sister away from a murderer before you hand your husband a reason to go to war with one.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Then Kitty said, more gently, “Georgiana asked me this morning if her father’s ghost wants to see her.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes.
“I told her I couldn’t see him, so I didn’t know. She accepted it. But she is going to keep asking, Elizabeth. She is patient, she is clever, she has nothing else to think about now that Mrs Annesley is gone. She is going to work it out.”
“I know.”
“So whatever you are going to do,” Kitty said, “you need to do it before Georgiana gets there on her own. And before you crack and tell your husband. Because once you tell Darcy, everything moves, and it will move faster than any of us can control, and Lydia isn’t safe, Lizzy. She is married to a murderer.”
Elizabeth could see the fear on Kitty’s face; the fear for the sister who Kitty had, after all, always loved best because she and Lydia were so close in age.
Elizabeth was afraid for Lydia too, but not in the way Kitty was.
She thought how she would feel if it was Jane in such a position, and nodded.
“I’ll figure it out, Kitty. In a way that protects Lydia first and foremost. I promise.”