Chapter Twenty-Four
Elizabeth woke on the morning of the ball feeling as though she had not slept at all.
She had, a little; Darcy was already up and gone when she opened her eyes, which meant she had slept through his rising. But her body felt heavy and wrong, as though something was sitting on her chest. She pressed her hand flat against her breastbone and breathed, and the pressure did not ease.
The house felt it too. She could tell the moment she put her feet on the cold floor and stood.
The vibration from last night was still there, that faint hum in the stone and the wood, and it was stronger now.
Her skin prickled as she crossed the room to ring for her maid.
She told herself it was the ball. Three hundred guests, the first entertainment she had hosted as Mrs Darcy, the county watching and judging.
Of course she was nervous. Of course her stomach was turning over. That was all it was.
She did not believe herself for a moment.
She was in the ballroom with Mrs Reynolds, reviewing the chalk pattern that had been painstakingly laid down in the design Nana had spent three days perfecting, when Jane appeared in the doorway.
“Lizzy. You need to come to the study.”
“What has happened?”
“Lady Catherine has just gone in there with Darcy. Lord Matlock is there too. Georgiana heard raised voices and came to find me.”
Elizabeth set down her list. Her hands were unsteady, which she told herself was the ball, and which she knew was not. She had been fighting nausea since breakfast and had eaten almost nothing, and the wrongness in the house was pressing on her like a headache.
She could hear Catherine before she reached the study door. She was not shouting. It was worse than shouting: she was speaking in the low, measured voice she used when she believed herself to be delivering an unassailable truth.
The study door was ajar. Elizabeth reached to push it open, but Nana was there, blocking the gap, shaking her head. She was tempted to walk straight through Nana, but instead she stood still and watched through the narrow space between the door and the jamb.
Darcy was standing behind his desk. Lord Matlock was by the fire. Lady Catherine stood in the centre of the room, her back straight, her chin raised, a piece of paper held in her hands.
“I have made enquiries,” Catherine said.
“I have observed. I have listened. And I tell you, Fitzwilliam, as your aunt and as someone who has the interests of this family at heart, that your wife is not well. She talks to empty rooms. She has been seen in the long gallery past midnight, speaking to no one. She pauses in corridors and moves her lips as though in conversation with a person who is not there. The servants have noticed, Fitzwilliam. They whisper about it. Mrs Reynolds protects her; loyalty misplaced. Your sister and Miss Bennet cover for her; youth and sentiment. The facts are the facts.”
Catherine looked down at her paper. “On Tuesday she was observed speaking in the entrance hall with no one present. On Wednesday evening she paused in the portrait gallery and addressed the empty air. On Thursday she was seen emerging from a passage behind a bookcase that no living person in this house knew existed.”
She turned to Lord Matlock. “Henry, you were there yesterday. We went to the ballroom looking for Margaret, and the maids were scrubbing the floor. Margaret and Elizabeth were there together. They saw us coming, walked towards us, stepped around the maids. Elizabeth stepped around nothing. She swerved to avoid a spot on the floor where nobody was kneeling, as though she could see someone there that the rest of us could not. Margaret noticed it too. I saw her face.”
Lord Matlock said nothing, but Elizabeth, watching through the gap, saw his expression shift.
He had noticed. He had put it aside, because he was a kind man and because he liked Elizabeth, but he had noticed.
She had done it; she had stepped around Sarah Dunn without even thinking about it, because she had always felt that it was rude to just walk straight through ghosts, just as she had allowed Nana to block her path a moment ago.
She had not even thought of how it might look to observers.
Catherine pressed on. “She has been asking about your father’s death, about Wickham, about matters that are years buried and best left so.
She has drawn your uncle and aunt into her obsession.
She has acquired knowledge of this house that she could not have gained by any natural means.
And I believe, Fitzwilliam, that she is suffering from a disorder of the mind that requires medical attention before it becomes a public scandal. ”
The room was deathly silent.
“You have the legal authority to act,” Catherine said. “A husband may commit his wife on the recommendation of a physician. I know Dr Grieve in Bakewell personally, and I am certain he would...”
“You will stop speaking now, Aunt Catherine.”
Darcy’s voice cut through Catherine’s speech like a blade.
He came around the desk, and Elizabeth could see his face through the gap in the door.
His jaw was set, his eyes flat and cold.
“You have spent weeks in this house spying on Elizabeth, undermining her, telling her lies about my character in some dreadful attempt to drive a wedge between us, and now you stand in my study and tell me to lock her away. On the basis of what? That she talks to herself? That she asks questions you find inconvenient? That she discovered a passage in a house she is mistress of?”
“The pattern of behaviour is...”
“The pattern of behaviour is that of an intelligent woman exploring her new home and trying to understand the family she has married into. The questions she has asked about my father’s death are questions that should have been asked six years ago, by anyone with eyes to see, and the fact that nobody asked them is to our collective shame, not hers. ”
“Fitzwilliam, I implore you...”
“My wife is not mad. She is not unwell. She is the finest person I have ever known, and I will not entertain this accusation for one moment, from you or from anyone else.” He stepped closer to his aunt, looming over her, and Catherine flinched at the expression on his face.
“After the ball, you will leave Pemberley. You will not return. Anne will remain here with us, and she will go to London for the Season with Georgiana and Kitty, as has already been arranged. You will not interfere with her plans. You will not write to her instructing her to return to Rosings. You will leave my wife and my household in peace from this moment forward, or I will see to it that you are the one committed to an asylum. This, I promise you.”
Catherine’s face had gone the colour of chalk. “You cannot bar me from this house. I am your aunt. I am...”
“You are a woman who has just asked me to imprison my wife.” Darcy’s voice was deadly quiet.
“You have forfeited every claim you ever had on my loyalty or my patience, and you will leave this house the morning after the ball. I am only permitting you to stay that long because it is widely known you are here already, and I will not have Anne whispered about because her mother was publicly ejected from the house before the event.”
“Brother,” Catherine said, turning to Lord Matlock. “Surely you see...”
“I see a great deal, Catherine.” Lord Matlock’s voice was heavy.
“I see a woman who has tried and failed to destroy her nephew’s marriage by every means available to her, and who has now resorted to a weapon so contemptible even I am shocked you would stoop so low.
I will not support you in this. I will not support you in anything, until you have made a full and sincere apology to Mrs Darcy, which I suspect will take you some considerable time.
Even if she accepts your apology, I very much doubt your nephew ever will, and frankly, nor should he.
I could not forgive you if you said something so terrible about Margaret. ”
Catherine was shaking, but Elizabeth could see from her expression that it was not with fear. She was shaking with utter fury.
“I am trying to protect this family,” Catherine said. “I have always tried to protect this family, and I have been repaid with ingratitude and...”
“Mother, stop.”
Elizabeth had not realised Anne was in the room. She stood up from a chair half-hidden behind Lord Matlock, pale, thin, her hands clasped in front of her. She had come to a decision, Elizabeth could see, and she would be as resolute in it as her mother had ever been about anything.
“Stop,” Anne said again. “You must stop, now.”
Catherine turned to her daughter. Her face crumbled. Not into tears; Lady Catherine de Bourgh did not crumble into tears. But the mask came off, and what was underneath was the bewilderment of a woman who has just been struck by the one person she never expected to oppose her.
“Anne...”
“You are wrong, Mother. You are wrong about Mrs Darcy. You are wrong about this family. You have been wrong for a very long time, and I cannot listen to it any more.” Anne’s voice was unsteady, but she did not look away.
“Mrs Darcy has been kind to me. She and Darcy have offered me a life I did not think I would ever have. You are trying to destroy the woman who made that possible, because you cannot bear that she has what you wanted for me, and I will not be part of it.”
Catherine stared at her daughter.
“We will discuss this privately,” Catherine said. Her voice was barely audible.
“There is nothing to discuss. I love you, Mother. But you are wrong.”
Catherine left the room without another word. She walked past Elizabeth as though she did not see her, her back rigid, her face a mask again, and the sound of her footsteps receding down the corridor was the loneliest sound Elizabeth had ever heard.
Nana laughed.