Chapter Fourteen
Lady Matlock proposed the walk herself, on the third morning of the visit, and Elizabeth did not have to manufacture a reason or steer the conversation toward it.
She simply appeared at breakfast in a walking dress and sensible boots, announced that she intended to see the grounds properly, that Elizabeth would accompany her, that everyone else could amuse themselves for the morning.
“I have been cooped up in a carriage for two days, a drawing room for two more, and I require air, exercise, and intelligent conversation, preferably in that order,” she said. “Elizabeth, you will oblige me.”
It was not a question. Lady Matlock did not ask questions when she already knew the answer.
They set out through the garden door, past the rose garden where Georgiana and Kitty’s restoration work was beginning to show results, the bindweed cleared, the beds edged, the first signs of order emerging from what had been years of neglect.
Lady Margaret Darcy was sitting on her bench beneath the old climbing rose, smiling at the newly tended beds with the same serene contentment she always wore; if a ghost could look pleased, Lady Margaret looked pleased. Lady Matlock paused to look.
“This was Anne’s,” she said. “She spent whole mornings here. She said it was the only place at Pemberley where she could hear herself think, which I took to be a comment on her husband rather than the house, though I never said so to her face.” She touched one of the bare rose stems, gently. “Who has been working on it?”
“Georgiana and Kitty. They found a portrait in the gallery that shows how it looked in the last century, and they are trying to restore it.”
“Good.” Lady Matlock withdrew her hand and walked on. “Anne would have liked that. She would have liked your sister too. Kitty has something of Anne’s quality about her, that quiet attention to things other people overlook.”
Elizabeth filed that away. It was not the first time someone had compared Kitty to Lady Anne; Mrs Reynolds and Nana had both made remarks to that effect, and the comparison was becoming more interesting each time.
They walked in silence for several paces, along the path that led toward the south border and the lime walk beyond it.
The morning was cold and bright, the kind of late October day where the sky was high, brilliantly blue, the light making everything sharp.
Lady Matlock walked briskly, her stride long and sure.
The spectral gardener was on the lime walk as they approached, inspecting the trees with an expression of deep personal betrayal, but he withdrew to the hedge as Lady Matlock bore down on the path, and Elizabeth could hardly blame him.
“Now then,” she said, when they were well clear of the house. “I have several things to say to you, and I prefer to say them where we will not be overheard, because some of them concern your husband and I find it easier to speak frankly about family when the family in question is not listening.”
Elizabeth braced herself.
“First. You are doing well. Better than well. The household is in excellent order, Mrs Reynolds adores you, and Georgiana is happier than I have seen her in years. Whatever you are doing, continue.”
“Thank you.”
“I am not finished. Second. You must give a ball.”
Elizabeth had been expecting an interrogation. She had not been expecting this. She stopped mid-stride, stared.
“A ball?”
“A ball. A proper one. You are the new mistress of Pemberley, and the neighbourhood expects to be entertained. It is not optional, Elizabeth; it is part of the position. Every new bride at a great house gives a ball within the first few months of her marriage. It announces her, it establishes her, it tells the county that Pemberley is open and thriving and that the Darcy family is moving forward. If you do not do it, people will talk, and they will draw precisely the wrong conclusions about why.”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Elizabeth said, which was true. A ball had been the furthest thing from her mind, wedged as it was between a murder investigation, a ghostly household, a sister married to a killer, and a husband she was lying to.
“Of course you had not. You have been busy learning the house, adjusting to your new life. I respect that, but the adjustment period has a limit, and society is less patient than you might wish. I suggest early November. Lord Matlock and I will still be here, which gives you the weight of the family behind you. I shall help with the arrangements, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Elizabeth said, hearing the word come out rather faintly.
“Three hundred guests, I should think. The principal families of Derbyshire, certainly, and the nearer families from the neighbouring counties. The Matlocks will write to our connections. Darcy will invite the local gentry. And you,” Lady Matlock looked at her with an expression at once commanding and kind, “will invite your family. Your mother and father, if they will come. Your other sisters. The Bingleys.”
The Bingleys.
Jane.
Elizabeth’s breath caught, and for the first time since Lady Matlock had said the word ball, she felt something other than dread.
Jane could come to Pemberley. Jane, who had read the coded letter, who understood what Elizabeth was facing, who could not see the dead but had always known, always been the steady ground beneath Elizabeth’s feet.
Jane, whom she needed with an urgency that was becoming harder to conceal.
“The Bingleys, yes,” Elizabeth said. “I should like that. Jane, my eldest sister, Mrs Bingley; she would come early, I think. To help with the preparations.”
“An excellent idea. I remember Jane from the wedding; she is a lovely girl, and a sensible one. She will be a great help to you.”
They had reached the lime walk. The trees were bare now, their leaves stripped by the October winds, and the path stretched ahead of them long and straight, the view of the grounds beyond blurred by a faint mist that clung to the lower ground.
Lady Matlock was quiet for several paces. When she spoke again, her voice had changed. The briskness was still there, but beneath it was a note Elizabeth had not heard before, careful and private.
“I have another matter,” she said. “Less pleasant than the ball, though that is perhaps not saying much, since the ball appears to have alarmed you considerably.”
“I’m not alarmed. I am merely... recalibrating.”
“A good word.” Lady Matlock glanced at her.
“Mrs Reynolds tells me you have been asking about the family. About the history of the house, the Darcy line. She mentioned it to me because she was glad of it; she thinks it shows you care about the family you have married into, and she is right. But she also mentioned that you have been asking specifically about George. About his last days.”
Elizabeth kept walking. She kept her gaze fixed ahead, her expression serene, and did not let her step falter.
“I have,” she said. “It seemed right to understand what happened. Darcy does not speak of it easily, and I did not want to press him. Mrs Reynolds was kind enough to share what she remembered.”
“Yes. She remembers a great deal, Mrs Reynolds.” Lady Matlock paused, and when she continued, the performance had fallen away entirely.
What was left was a woman who had lost her closest friend to illness and her friend’s husband to sudden death, and who had been carrying her doubt alone for six years.
“George was not an old man, Elizabeth. He was two-and-fifty. He was not ill. He rode every day, he managed the estate himself, he was vigorous and sharp and in full command of himself. Then one evening he went to bed and did not wake up. We were told it was his heart. We accepted it, because what else could we do?”
“What else indeed?” Elizabeth said, carefully.
“I had been visiting for a few weeks, before he died. Did you know that?”
Elizabeth shook her head, a little surprised. Nobody had mentioned that, not George or Nana or even Mrs Reynolds.
“I left, oh, three days or so before his passing. He had become quite agitated, which was unlike him. George was always the calm one, the steady one; it was Anne who felt things keenly, and George who held everything together. But that visit, something was wrong. He was distracted. Short with the servants, which he never was. He said something to me about his godson, Wickham.” Lady Matlock frowned, reaching for the memory.
“I cannot recall the exact words. Something about being disappointed, about discovering something, I do not know. I did not press him. I assumed it was the old business, the tension between Wickham and Fitzwilliam. I knew George favoured Wickham too much and that it caused friction. I thought he was simply coming to terms with what everyone else could already see.”
“That Wickham was not worthy of his favour?”
“That is an interesting way to put it.” Lady Matlock eyed her curiously.
Elizabeth wondered if she knew about Wickham’s marriage to Lydia, how that had come about, or even about Ramsgate and Georgiana.
“I meant, that it was unwise and unkind to favour his godson over his son. Whatever George thought about Wickham, it was Fitzwilliam who was his son, and his heir.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth murmured.
Lady Matlock stopped walking and turned to face Elizabeth.
“And then George died. Wickham was at Pemberley when it happened, which I did not think anything of at the time, because Wickham was always at Pemberley, in and out as though he owned the place. The physician said it was his heart. Lord Matlock arranged everything. Fitzwilliam came home. We buried George beside Anne, the world continued, and I never said a word to anyone about the feeling I had that something was not right.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth asked.
“Because what would I have said? A feeling? A sense that things did not sit well? That is not evidence, Elizabeth. That is a woman’s intuition, and I learnt a long time ago that a woman’s intuition, however accurate, carries no weight in a man’s world unless she can back it with facts.
I had no facts. I had only a dead friend’s husband, a physician’s verdict, and a feeling that I had buried because feelings were not enough. ”
“Feelings are not nothing,” Elizabeth said. She heard the echo of what she had said to Mrs Reynolds, knew that she was not the first woman in this house to feel the truth and be told it did not count.
Lady Matlock looked at her thoughtfully. “No,” she said. “They are not. Which is why I am telling you now, because you have been asking the same questions I never dared to ask, and I think you deserve to know that you are not alone in finding the answers uncomfortable.”
They stood facing each other on the path, and the mist moved between the trees, and Elizabeth thought about what it would mean to bring Lady Matlock into the full truth.
Not yet. Not without more tangible evidence than she currently had.
But the door was open, and Lady Matlock had opened it herself, and that mattered more than Elizabeth could say.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “For telling me.”
“Do not thank me. I should have said something six years ago. I should have asked the questions and demanded the answers and not let the world tell me that a feeling was not enough.” Lady Matlock’s voice was steady, but her eyes were bright.
“If you find something, Elizabeth, if your questions lead somewhere, promise me you will not make the same mistake I did. Promise me you will not stay silent.”
“I promise.”
Lady Matlock nodded once. Then the performance returned, the armour she had worn for thirty years, bright and impenetrable, and she said, briskly, “Good. Now. The ball. The ballroom must have new candles in the chandelier, which will need a good cleaning. The floor must be polished, then chalked. We shall need to discuss the supper menu with Mrs Reynolds, and I have strong opinions about the music, which you will hear whether you wish to or not.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“Excellent. Then we understand each other.” Lady Matlock took Elizabeth’s arm, and they walked back toward the house together as the morning sun broke through the mist, and Pemberley gleamed ahead of them in the sharp autumnal light.
Elizabeth wrote to Jane that afternoon.
She did not use the code. She did not need to, because this letter was simple and true and contained nothing that needed hiding: come to Pemberley. Come early, before the ball. Come as soon as you can. I need you here.
She sealed it and gave it to the footman for the afternoon post, and felt, for the first time in weeks, that the ground beneath her had firmed.
Lady Matlock’s doubt was not evidence. Her memories were not proof.
But they were confirmation, from a living woman, that the unease Elizabeth felt was not hers alone, that the questions she was asking were the right ones, that when the time came to act she would not be acting alone.
She had thought, walking back to the house with Lady Matlock’s arm through hers, about what else the Matlocks might do.
Lady Matlock had influence. She had connections, social authority, the kind of power that opened doors and rearranged lives without anyone quite noticing it had happened.
Could she be persuaded to take an interest in Lydia?
To invite her for a long visit, perhaps, or to find some pretext for separating her from Wickham for a time?
But every version of the plan collapsed under its own weight.
Lydia would not leave Wickham willingly; she was sixteen, married, still half in love with the idea of being in love.
She would resist any interference. Wickham would see through any pretext in an instant and charm his way around it, or simply refuse, and a refused invitation from Lady Matlock would raise exactly the kind of questions Elizabeth could not afford to answer.
To explain why Lydia needed rescuing meant explaining what Wickham was, what he had done.
Elizabeth had promised Kitty she would not do that until Lydia was safe.
The logic was circular and merciless: she could not save Lydia without revealing the truth, and she could not reveal the truth without endangering Lydia.
So. The money, for now. Darcy’s quiet allowance, keeping Wickham comfortable, keeping Lydia fed and housed and out of the worst of it. It was not enough, but it was what she had.
The ball she could manage. She had Nana, Mrs Reynolds, now Lady Matlock. Between them Pemberley would be ready. And Jane was coming.
Jane was coming. Everything would be easier after that, and somehow she would find the courage, the words, to tell her husband the truth.