Chapter Twenty-Six
Pemberley blazed with light.
Every chandelier was lit, a white beeswax candle burned in every candlestick, and the ballroom threw back the light from a hundred surfaces: the crystals overhead, the gilt frames on the walls, the tall windows that showed nothing now but the reflection of the room itself, doubled and glittering, as though there were two ballrooms, two crowds, two orchestras playing the same music.
The chalk pattern on the floor was crisp and white beneath the dancers’ feet.
The lilies by the entrance filled the air with scent, just as Nana had wanted.
The curtains were drawn back to the precise degree Nana had specified, though there was no moonlight yet to show the grounds; the moon would rise later.
When it did, the west windows would frame the lake and the parkland in silver.
Pemberley would earn every compliment its guests could give it.
Elizabeth stood in the receiving line beside Darcy and smiled until her face ached.
Three hundred guests filed past. She greeted each one, remembered their names, said the right things, because Lady Matlock had drilled her, Mrs Reynolds had briefed her, Nana had spent a hundred and thirty years preparing for this evening.
Georgiana and Darcy stood on either side of her whispering occasional reminders.
Lady Ashbourne came early, leaning on her granddaughter Clara’s arm: a tiny, sharp-eyed woman who looked Elizabeth up and down and said, “So you are the one who tamed Fitzwilliam Darcy. I did not think it could be done.” Elizabeth said she had not tamed him so much as reached an understanding that he was not allowed to bark or bite, and Lady Ashbourne laughed, a dry, crackling sound, and moved on.
Darcy stood beside her and greeted everyone with composed formality.
He had been raised to this and while he would never delight in large social gatherings, at least this one was where he felt most comfortable, with the guests of his own choosing.
His hand found the small of Elizabeth’s back between greetings, a touch that said: I am here.
She leaned into it and did not care who noticed.
Lord Matlock stood with Bingley, who was telling him a story that required extensive hand gestures and was making Lord Matlock laugh despite himself.
Lady Matlock moved through the guests, steering conversations, making introductions, managing the evening as she had managed evenings for thirty years.
She caught Elizabeth’s eye across the room and gave her a small nod of approval.
Georgiana danced. She danced the first set with a young man from one of the Derbyshire families whom Lady Matlock had selected for the purpose, and she danced it beautifully, her face flushed, her shyness forgotten in the music.
Kitty danced too, radiant in white muslin, pursued by two young men who were competing for her attention with a fervour that she was handling with a dignified grace that made Elizabeth fiercely proud of her little sister.
Anne de Bourgh stood at the edge of the ballroom with Clara Ashbourne, the two of them talking quietly.
Anne began laughing at something Clara said, her face open and unguarded in a way Elizabeth had never seen from her before.
Lady Catherine was there. She stood near the refreshment tables in her black bombazine, her back to the wall, her face set.
She did not approach Darcy or Elizabeth.
She spoke to those who spoke to her, and she was civil, because three hundred people were watching and Lady Catherine de Bourgh would not give Elizabeth Darcy the satisfaction of seeing her crumble in public.
She was staying for Anne’s sake, and everyone in the room knew it, and nobody mentioned it, because that was how these things were done.
Jane watched Elizabeth from across the room and Elizabeth felt the warmth of it.
Jane had dressed her. Jane had done her hair, because Elizabeth’s maid was competent but Jane was better.
Jane had looked at her in the mirror and said, “You look like the mistress of Pemberley.” Elizabeth had said, “I look like a woman who has been crying for three hours.” Jane had said, “Both can be true,” and handed her a cloth soaked in cold-cucumber-water for her eyes.
Bingley was everywhere, delighting everyone, because Bingley’s good nature was so infectious.
Caroline performed elegance near the pianoforte, her cream silk dress glowing in the candlelight.
She had positioned herself where she could be seen to best advantage and was conversing with a knot of local gentlemen with determined charm.
She intended to make the evening count, Elizabeth could see.
She looked at Darcy several times with her head raised regally, as though willing him to look at her.
See what could have been, Caroline obviously wanted to tell him.
See what you could have had. I could have been mistress of Pemberley, if only you had not been taken in by a country chit’s fine eyes.
But Darcy never so much as glanced in Caroline’s direction.
And the ghosts were there.
Elizabeth saw them the moment she entered the ballroom.
Every one of them. The gallery above was packed: spectral figures from every era of Pemberley’s history, crowded together, watching.
Sarah Dunn stood at attention near the entrance, her scrubbing forgotten, her face bright with excitement.
Mr Graves had abandoned his post at the front door and taken up a position at the foot of the staircase to the musicians’ gallery, in full livery, as though he were on duty for a ball that had happened several lifetimes ago.
Mrs Alcott stood beside him, for once not bickering, the two of them united.
The ghost children, Edmund and Charlotte, peered through the gallery railing, wide-eyed.
Miss Pardoe had left her library. Elizabeth had not thought that possible.
In all the weeks she had been at Pemberley, Miss Pardoe had never once ventured beyond the library door.
But here she was, hovering near the entrance to the ballroom, her book still clutched to her chest, looking around at the crowd with a slight smile on her face, as though she was rather enjoying the spectacle.
George Darcy stood at the far end of the ballroom. He was not pacing. He was still, watching his son, his daughter, his house full of light and music. His face was so full of loving pride it hurt Elizabeth’s heart that Darcy and Georgiana could not see it.
Nana was beside Elizabeth. She had been beside Elizabeth all evening, a constant presence, and for once she was not criticising. She watched the guests arrive, the dances begin, the supper tables fill. She said, several times, “This is what Pemberley is meant to be.”
Elizabeth danced with Darcy. They opened the ball together, as was expected.
The musicians played a minuet. Darcy led her through it with the same steady, careful attention he brought to everything.
Elizabeth forgot, for the length of one dance, about ghosts, murder, Wickham, Catherine, the strange pressure that had been sitting on her chest all day.
She forgot it all. She danced with her husband in a room full of candlelight.
Three hundred people watched them and saw what Pemberley’s new mistress was: a woman who belonged here, who was worthy of her place.
Who loved the man beside her and was loved in return, whose ball was, by any measure, a triumph.
Nana, watching from beside the refreshment table, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and if Elizabeth noticed, she had the good grace not to mention it.
The terrace doors opened just as the first dance ended.
Elizabeth did not see them open. She felt them, the rush of cold November air into the warm ballroom, the murmur of the nearest guests as they turned toward the draught.
She was standing with Darcy at the edge of the dance floor, still flushed from the minuet, her hand on his arm, and she turned with everyone else.
Wickham walked in.
He was in regimentals, because of course he was, the red coat that had charmed Meryton and dazzled Lydia and hidden the man beneath it from everyone who should have seen the truth.
Lydia was on his arm, loud and overdressed in a gown too daring for her age, too bright for the occasion.
She was beaming, thrilled with herself, thrilled with her entrance, thrilled to be at Pemberley.
“Surprise!” Lydia said, to nobody in particular and everybody at once. “We came! Wickham said we must come, that Darcy would want us here, and so here we are!”
Elizabeth’s hand tightened on Darcy’s arm. She felt him go rigid beside her. His jaw locked. His breathing changed.
Then the temperature dropped.
It dropped so fast that Elizabeth’s skin prickled and her breath clouded, and the guests nearest the terrace doors shivered and pulled their wraps tighter.
The candles nearest the doors guttered, flames bending sideways as though a wind had blown through the room, except there was no wind.
The terrace doors were now closed behind Wickham. The cold was not coming from outside.
George Darcy was moving.
Elizabeth saw him cross the ballroom in three swooping, impossibly long strides, and he was behind Wickham, close behind him, so close that if Wickham had been able to feel the dead he would have felt George’s breath on his neck.
George’s face was terrible. Elizabeth had seen his anger before, his grief, his bitter frustration.
This was none of those things. This was the face of a man looking at his own murderer, and the hatred in it was so concentrated that the air around him warped, the candle flames nearest him bending away as though repelled.
“George,” Elizabeth said. She said it under her breath, barely moving her lips. “George, wait.”