Chapter Nineteen #2
“I mean Mr Wickham, yes. I told George repeatedly that his attachment to that boy was misguided and would end badly. He refused to hear me. He said I was jealous of a motherless child, which was offensive, and that I did not understand the bond between them, which was patronising. We quarrelled. I told him he would live to regret it.” She paused.
“He did not live to anything, as it happened.”
“Anne told me you once said he died because he would not listen.”
Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “I shall have to speak to my daughter about discretion. I do not care to have my words repeated to all and sundry.”
“She did not repeat them indiscreetly to all and sundry. She repeated an observation her mother made, because I asked her about her uncle, and she answered honestly. As I am asking you now.”
“And what exactly are you asking, Mrs Darcy?”
“Whether you believe your brother-in-law’s death had anything to do with George Wickham.”
The silence that followed was long. Catherine looked at Elizabeth with an expression that was not anger, not quite. It was closer to appraisal. She was weighing Elizabeth, measuring her, deciding what she was worth.
Then the calculation gave way to a harder look, one that Elizabeth recognised a moment too late as the coldness of a woman who has decided to attack rather than answer.
“I think,” Lady Catherine said, “that you are remarkably skilled at asking questions and singularly poor at attending to what is happening under your own roof.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You ask me about George’s death. You ask about Wickham. You busy yourself with history, tenants, matters that are not, frankly, your concern, while your husband conducts his affairs beneath your nose and you do nothing about it.”
Elizabeth felt the ground shift under her feet. “I do not know what you mean.”
“I mean the Wilson family, Mrs Darcy. I mean the farm your husband gave them, the money he settled on the child, the visits he has been making to that household for six years. I mean the boy they named William, after him, because Fitzwilliam was too grand for a tenant farmer’s bastard.”
Elizabeth stared at her.
“My dear Mrs Darcy.” Catherine’s voice was soft now, soft and terrible, dripping with a sympathy so false it curdled in the air between them.
“I feel it is my duty to tell you, since nobody else appears willing to do so. That child is your husband’s.
Darcy has been supporting him since birth, visiting the family, ensuring they want for nothing.
He took you there yesterday, I am told. Introduced you to the child.
You sat in that kitchen, drank their tea, and did not see what was right in front of you.
The boy is fair-haired, I understand. As Darcy was, as a child. ”
The fury came so fast it blinded her.
It was not the cold, controlled anger Elizabeth had felt before, the careful strategic fury she had used against Lady Catherine at Longbourn.
This was something hotter, something that rose from her chest and flooded her face and made her hands shake.
Not because she believed a word of it. Not because there was the smallest doubt in her mind about her husband, or who the real father of Sally Wilson’s child was, or the real reason that child had been named William.
Her rage rose because this woman, this poisonous, spiteful, meddling woman, had taken Darcy’s kindness, his quiet, years-long care of a family who were his responsibility and a girl who had been wronged, and twisted it into something foul.
Had taken the best thing about him and made it ugly.
“How dare you.”
Her voice did not sound like her own. It was low and shaking, and Lady Catherine blinked at it.
“How dare you speak of my husband in that way. You know nothing of what you are saying. Nothing.”
“I am trying to help you, Mrs Darcy. A wife ought to know...”
“You are not trying to help me. You are trying to wound me, because you have never forgiven Darcy for marrying me, and because you cannot bear that he is happy, and because you would rather believe your own nephew capable of fathering a child on a seventeen-year-old girl than admit that you do not know what you are talking about.”
Catherine’s face went white. “You are hysterical.”
“I am furious. There is a considerable difference.”
Elizabeth was on her feet. She did not remember standing. Nana was in the room too, she realised, standing beside the mantelpiece with an expression of such concentrated outrage that the air around her seemed to crackle.
“The viper,” Nana said. Her voice was low, almost a hiss. “The absolute viper. She dares...”
Elizabeth could not respond to Nana. She could not look at her.
She kept her eyes on Lady Catherine, who was looking at Elizabeth with an expression of cold satisfaction.
Catherine was not dismayed by Elizabeth’s anger.
She was pleased by it. She had wanted a reaction, and she had received one, and she was filing it away.
Emotional. Unstable. Unable to govern herself.
Elizabeth saw it, saw exactly what Catherine was doing. She could not stop herself, because the anger was real, it was righteous, and she could not tamp it down without pretending that Catherine’s accusation did not matter, which it did, because it was a slander against the man she loved.
“I will not discuss this further,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was steadier now, though her hands were not. “You are wrong. You are profoundly, viciously wrong, and if you repeat this accusation to anyone, I will make certain that Darcy and Lord Matlock know exactly what you have said.”
She left the room before Catherine could reply. She walked quickly down the corridor, through the entrance hall, past a startled footman. She ran up the stairs, into her parlour, closed the door, pressed her back against it, stood there breathing until the shaking stopped.
Nana came through the bookcase. Her face was terrible.
“That woman,” Nana said. “That poisonous, conniving...”
“Nana.”
“She has a spy in this house. A traitor. Someone told her about the visit. Someone told her about the child. Someone is feeding her information, and she is using it to...”
“I know.”
“I will find out who it is. I will haunt every servant in this house until I discover which of them has been carrying tales to that woman, and when I find them...”
“Nana. Stop.“ Elizabeth pressed her hands flat against the door behind her. “I need to think about what just happened, what it means, what Catherine will do next. I can’t do that if you are listing the people you intend to haunt.”
Nana stopped. But the fury did not leave her face. It settled there, hardened, became fixed.
“She slandered this family,” Nana said. “She slandered my boy. She sat in his house, accused him of fathering a child on a tenant’s daughter, and she did it to hurt you. I will not let it stand.”
Elizabeth looked at her. “What do you mean, you will not let it stand?”
Nana did not answer. She turned and walked through the bookcase, and was gone.
That night, Lady Catherine had a terrible time of it.
Elizabeth heard about it the following morning, from Mrs Reynolds, who had been roused twice in the night by Mrs Jenkinson, Lady Catherine’s companion, who reported that her ladyship’s rooms were intolerably cold, that the fire would not stay lit, that the doors would not remain closed no matter how firmly they were latched, and that Lady Catherine was certain she had seen a portrait on the wall move.
“I checked the rooms myself, ma’am,” Mrs Reynolds said. “The fire was drawing perfectly well. The doors were sound. I could find nothing amiss.”
“And the portrait?”
“It is a landscape, ma’am. A view of the south meadow. It has hung in that room for forty years and has never, to my knowledge, moved.”
Elizabeth allowed the slightest hint of exasperation to enter her tolerant expression. “I am sure Lady Catherine was simply overtired. She has been keeping later hours than she is accustomed to at Rosings, I think.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mrs Reynolds paused. The pause itself suggested she had her own theories about the blue rooms and their nighttime disturbances, and that she was keeping them to herself.
Elizabeth found Nana in the portrait gallery after breakfast. Nana was standing before Lady Anne’s portrait, arms folded, looking extremely pleased with herself.
“You can’t terrorise the guests,” Elizabeth said.
Nana turned to her with an expression that could have curdled milk. “She is not a guest. She is an invader. And I did not terrorise her. I merely ensured that the blue rooms were somewhat less comfortable than usual.”
“Nana.”
“She accused my grandson of debauchery in his own house! To his wife! She deserves far worse than a cold room and a creaky door.” Nana sniffed magnificently.
“She deserves to be dealt with carefully, not frightened into leaving before I have got what I need from her. She knows something about George’s death, Nana.
She all but admitted it yesterday, before she changed the subject.
If you drive her out of Pemberley with your haunting, I lose the chance to find out what it is. ”
Nana’s expression shifted slightly. Not chastened, exactly. Nana did not do chastened. But the strategic argument had landed where the moral one had not.
“One night,” Elizabeth said. “You have had your one night. Now let her sleep, and let me work.”
“I make no promises,” Nana said. But she unfolded her arms, which was as close to agreement as Elizabeth was likely to get.
George Darcy found her in her parlour that afternoon. He had been quiet all morning, absent from the rooms Elizabeth moved through, and when he appeared he did not pace. He stood by the window, looking out at the November grey, and his face was grave.
“I heard what Catherine said to you,” he said. “About Fitzwilliam and the Wilson child.”
“Everyone dead in this house has heard by now, I suspect.” Elizabeth smiled wearily. “I’m only glad that there is no one among the living who can hear Nana apart from me.”
“She is still furious. She has recruited the maids from the east corridor and Miss Pardoe, and they are debating whether to extend their campaign to Catherine’s dressing room.
” He paused. “Miss Pardoe’s contribution, as I understand it, is to sit in Catherine’s room and stare at her.
She has not closed her book for anything in sixty years, so the fact that she is willing to put it down for this should tell you the depth of feeling involved. ”
“I told her to stop.”
“She will not stop. You know that. Nana does not stop when she is angry. She redirects.” George turned from the window. “But that is not what concerns me, Elizabeth. Catherine is not merely annoying. She is dangerous.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sure you do. Catherine has always believed that she should have had charge of this family after I died.
She expected Fitzwilliam to marry Anne, and she expected to control Pemberley through her daughter.
Your marriage ended that possibility, and she has never forgiven it, and she will not rest until she has found a way to undo it or to punish you for it. ”
“She can’t undo my marriage.”
“She can make your life difficult. She has connections, influence, the ear of people who matter. And she now believes, wrongly, that Fitzwilliam has a bastard child, which she will use against him if it suits her purpose. The accusation does not need to be true to do damage. It only needs to be repeated in the right drawing rooms.”
Elizabeth felt cold. She had been so focused on her anger, on the injustice of Catherine’s accusation, that she had not thought clearly about the practical danger. Catherine was not merely spiteful. She was strategic.
“What do I do?”
“Tell Darcy. Tell him what Catherine said, and let him deal with his aunt. He will be angry, and his anger will be useful, because it will force Catherine to defend herself rather than attack you. And while she is defending herself, you may find an opening to ask your questions again.”
Elizabeth nodded. She would tell Darcy tonight. She would tell him what Catherine had accused, and watch his face, and let his anger do its work. And somewhere in the chaos that followed, she would find out what Lady Catherine knew about the death of George Darcy.
But first, she had to make sure Nana and her minions did not burn down the blue rooms.