Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Darcy arrived at breakfast first, as he always did. Coffee, black, no sugar, strong enough to stand a spoon in, and the paper, which he spread beside his plate just as he liked it. Elizabeth was rising earlier these days, and she was not fatiguing as easily either. He expected her shortly.
His wife had come very near to him yesterday.
She had put her hand on his chest and he had not moved.
He was still, this morning, trying to decide whether that had been wisdom or cowardice.
She had tipped her chin up to look at him and he had wanted to kiss her.
Not a delicate wish, either, not the polite species of inclination a gentleman permitted himself in a breakfast room.
He had wanted to set down his coffee, take her face between his hands, and kiss her until neither of them was entirely certain where they were. He had wanted, quite badly, to close the arm that had come up without his sanction and keep her exactly where she had placed herself.
He had not done it. He was proud of not having done it, in the peculiar, exhausted way a man is proud of discipline that has cost him something.
The arm had lowered. The coffee had remained in his hand.
She had stepped back, and he had let her.
Waiting for her was becoming excruciating. But he would wait.
Because this choice had to be hers.
She entered the room a quarter of an hour after he had, in a morning gown of cream muslin, her hair pinned without fuss, a letter already in her hand. Her sister Jane’s, probably, or her father’s. She sat, poured her tea with milk and no sugar, and opened the letter.
“Good morning,” she said cheerfully.
“Good morning,” he replied.
He had not anticipated that the simplest, most unremarkable moments of domestic life, the clink of a cup against a saucer, the rustle of paper, the way she tipped her head slightly to one side when she read something that amused her, would become the best part of his day.
He had not expected that he would spend his mornings watching a woman read her correspondence and feeling that the room was exactly as full as it ought to be.
But lately, the room had been getting fuller.
Georgiana appeared at half past seven. She had been arriving earlier each morning as well, by increments so gradual that Darcy had not noticed until the pattern was well established.
Three weeks ago, she had breakfasted at nine.
Last week, half past eight. This morning she was through the door before Elizabeth had even finished her first cup, plans already forming.
“Elizabeth, I have had the most wonderful idea. There is an exhibition of watercolours at Somerset House that is very fine, and we could walk through the park on the way, and stop at the linen-draper’s because I have been meaning to match that gown—”
“Good morning, Georgiana,” Elizabeth said with a smile.
“Good morning.” Georgiana sat and helped herself to toast. “Brother, you do not mind if I rob you of your wife for the morning?”
“Have you finished your studies?”
“Everything on your list.” Georgiana beamed at him.
He would need to make that list longer.
“Elizabeth?” Georgiana asked. “What do you think about the watercolours?”
Elizabeth glanced at him across the table.
It was a brief look, almost too quick to catch, a silent question she would not voice in front of his sister.
He gave her the smallest nod, because what else could he do?
He could hardly say: Yes, I mind. I have been wishing to ask about the Brunton.
Absurd. He was not a man who sulked because his sister wished to visit an exhibition.
“The watercolours sound interesting,” Elizabeth said, and Georgiana launched into a description that lasted through two cups of tea and the entirety of Darcy’s paper. When they rose from the table, Elizabeth went with his sister, and the breakfast room was left to him.
He was not jealous of his fifteen-year-old sister. He refused to be jealous of his fifteen-year-old sister.
The ladies arranged for the carriage, he ensured they had two sturdy footmen with them, and then he went to his study.
The letter arrived at half past ten, brought by a courier Tracy did not recognise.
Darcy examined it before breaking the seal. The hand on the direction was unfamiliar—a clerk’s, most likely, hired at a posting-house—and the seal was plain.
He dismissed the footman, closed the study door, and broke the wax.
Three sheets inside. The first was Fitz’s hand, spare as a field dispatch, five lines:
W’s letter intercepted by my man at the Somers Town lodging. Enclosed unaltered. Do not respond. Do not inform E or G until we have the full picture lest they inadvertently give something away. I am tracing Y’s movements and her contacts. Meet me Thursday. Burn this after reading but keep his.
R.F.
The second letter was in a spare but feminine script.
Colonel,
I have not waited for your instructions to begin, as you will soon understand.
The woman who drew me from the baths has been identified.
Susan Crale, formerly of the milliners nearest the high street, dismissed in July for pilfering.
She was observed in conversation with Mrs. Younge on at least two occasions prior to the incident and confessed it all to me.
She wanted money, and she took it—her younger brother was the boy who summoned Mr. Darcy.
Their parents are both dead, so they were in want of the funds. They are willing to speak with you, though I suspect it will not be without cost.
I know what happened last month and what did not, and I have made certain the right people know it too.
The version of events now circulating here is that Mr. Darcy had been courting Elizabeth since before her arrival, that Elizabeth had befriended Georgiana at his encouragement, and that it was I who raised concerns about Mrs. Younge’s conduct to Mr. Darcy, whereupon he investigated, found much to displease him, and dismissed her without a reference.
I have insinuated this to the three women in this town most reliably positioned to accurately repeat it, and I intend to keep saying it to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen.
The woman with the extraordinary bonnet from the church congregation has been particularly helpful.
She knows everyone and cannot keep a secret, which in the present circumstances makes her invaluable.
I have told her only what I wish repeated, which is, I find, a very satisfying arrangement.
I trust you will deal with Mrs. Younge appropriately in London.
She will, however, find Ramsgate less than hospitable, and anyone who moves from Ramsgate to town for the season should arrive with the proper understanding of the event.
I cannot do the same for those who have already left here for town. That I must leave to you.
You will forgive my initiative. My husband always said I was better deployed in motion than at rest, and the ensuing years have not proved him wrong.
M. Morgan
Darcy set the letter down. He barely knew Mrs. Morgan.
He had been grateful for her competence, had relied upon her judgment in the early days of the courtship performance without quite acknowledging how much.
He had not thought of her since they came to London, beyond a vague instruction to Elizabeth to forward her his thanks when she wrote.
And yet Mrs. Morgan had been working on Elizabeth’s behalf without waiting for a request or direction, and she had accomplished a great deal.
She had identified the woman who had drawn her from the baths and the boy who had drawn him in, had assembled and deployed a plausible counter-narrative, had recruited the church bonnet woman to disseminate the new tale, and had written to Fitz, who could add this knowledge to the whole of his work.
He folded the page carefully and picked up the third and final missive.
It was only a little longer than Fitz’s had been and was in a hand Darcy knew.
This hand had penned requests for recommendations, for loans, for assistance.
Never anything given, not even congratulations, without some sort of calculation, some hoped for gain.
And yet George Wickham’s handwriting was as fluid and charming as his conversation.
My dear Graves,
I have not forgotten you, though I confess your last letter was rather more impassioned than the sum warrants. Patience, my friend. I am engaged in a matter of some delicacy which will shortly resolve itself to the satisfaction of all parties, yourself included.
I am currently attending to certain arrangements. An associate whose knowledge of a particular family’s private affairs has created opportunities that a man of enterprise would be foolish to ignore.
You may expect payment in a month’s time. I have never yet failed to land on my feet, and I do not intend to begin now.
Your servant, etc.,
G.W.
Darcy set the letter on the desk.
He had known George Wickham since they were boys, had watched him charm every tutor and servant and visiting relation with an ease that Darcy had envied.
Wickham made people feel as though they mattered to him.
It had taken Darcy years to understand that it was all a charade, that this was not generosity but technique.
It had been a blow to realise that the warmth in Wickham’s smile reached no deeper than the muscles required to produce it.
The man was nothing but appetite and the cold, precise intelligence required to feed it.
The letter to Mr. Graves was merely Wickham writing to a creditor he did not respect, and in that carelessness the form of his scheme was visible: an associate whose knowledge of a particular family’s private affairs. The associate was clearly Mrs. Younge.