Restitution #7
“Oh my goodness, really? I only asked because I disliked the look of her when we came in, and I could see you were enemies. I mean, clearly, you are Jane’s favourite, and yet Mrs Kerridge put you at the back when you all greeted us.
Well, that and it was a joke of my father’s—that Bingley and Jane were far too agreeable not to be cheated. ”
Heart pounding in her chest, Sarah licked her lips.
In truth, the last few weeks had nearly been enough to make her give notice and try somewhere else, so what did she have to lose by confiding in Mrs Bingley’s sister?
Hesitantly, she said, “We… that is, me and Robson, the footman, we suspect she and Mr Heaver, the butler, are up to something.”
“Hmm… Wage fraud, do you suppose? Have you asked my sister what she thinks she pays you?”
Sarah looked scandalised. “No, ma’am! I wouldn’t dare!”
“Really, whyever not? Ah, well, never mind. So, what do you think it is?”
“Well,” said Sarah, the relief of talking making her reckless, “Mr Robson reckoned it was buying extra and selling it off. But he followed Mr Heaver about and couldn’t catch him moving any goods. So I said…”
“Colluding with the merchants!” Mrs Darcy said, her face lighting up. “Of course! Nothing to sell because it never comes, then they just split the overage when it’s paid each quarter… Very neat.”
Shaking her head, Mrs Darcy rose suddenly, and Sarah was struck by how very tall she suddenly seemed. Perhaps she was, or perhaps that energy of hers lent her a kind of glamour.
“Well, we need proof. A ledger or something. We can compare what they order with what’s charged. Have you looked?”
“Well… no, I was waiting for Robson, but he’s been on a special errand and…”
“Well, I’m here now, so you need not wait.
We…” Something seemed to occur to her. “Hmm. We should not unmask it all before the party. It’s my sister’s first as hostess, and it would disrupt everything rather, would it not?
But nothing to say we cannot gather evidence.
In the morning, when Mrs Kerridge and the butler are busy, we could create a diversion and grab a ledger.
I can just ask for you tomorrow to help me dress. ”
Sarah could only nod. Mrs Darcy smiled reassuringly.
“Do not worry, nothing bad can happen to you. I’ll back you, and my sister will never dismiss you!
If there’s no foul play, why, it’s only the officious Mrs Darcy up to her usual tricks and, if Mrs Kerridge finds out about your involvement and makes your life a misery, only give notice and come to us at Pemberley. ”
Sarah nodded again and found, as though by magic, that she could smile again. Elizabeth raised both her arms and stretched like a cat.
“Goodness, this is exciting, is it not? It even makes me feel some affinity with my mother; she has always loved this sort of thing.”
Jane emerged from her bath wrapped in a dressing gown.
She was surprised to see her husband pacing the floor of her bedroom, his collar open, the top buttons of his waistcoat undone.
Even so slight a hint of undress in the master was enough to send the maid, Mary, running for the door like a startled hare. It closed behind her.
“Good evening, Charles,” Jane said, smiling at him. “I was rather hoping you would come to me tonight. Why do we not…?”
“My dear,” he said, not looking at her precisely, but at some spot past her left shoulder, “I… I’ve been thinking about it and…
I mean… while I’m sure I’m very grateful for all you’ve done, and I know, the expense and so on, but I really think…
I really think we ought to cancel tomorrow.
Illness, maybe. Everyone will understand.
Darcy and Elizabeth and Georgie can remain, of course, and, I don’t know, a…
nice quiet picnic, just the five of us…”
Jane was silent, watching him carefully. His movements were quick, his breaths coming fast.
“You want me to call it off,” she said at last. It was emphatically an observation, rather than a question.
He nodded. “Yes, I… I’m sure you would have done marvellously my dear, and arranged all sorts of things, it’s just…”
“I have,” Jane said, not with ill-usage, merely a statement of fact.
It was true. It was a shame Robson had not returned in time, but that had always been a long chance.
Meanwhile, she had hired musicians, actors for a summer masque, and a specialist in the realm of desserts who would supplement Cook’s genius with meringues, syllabub, and a whole temple of Diana done in marzipan.
All could be cancelled, of course it could.
And yet Jane felt again that her tendency towards inaction, which everyone supposed to be a failing in her, was, in moments like this, her greatest strength.
She laid a hand on his shoulder. He stopped but did not look at her.
“I have heard you ask, my dear. I could call it off. I do not wish you to be distressed. But I think, in this, you need me to disregard what you have said.”
A spasm passed over Charles’s face, like the shadow of a cloud passing over a sunlit meadow.
“I am always disregarded,” he said, with a savageness that shocked her. He looked at her at last, his eyes not those she knew. “I might expect such a speech from Caroline or Louisa, but not from you.”
It hit her like a blow, his first real, intended unkindness to her. The tears sprang at once to her eyes. She couldn’t stop them.
“I will never lie to you, Charles.” She reached up to touch his cheek.
“I will not ever say I agree with you when I do not. I know you have your reasons for feeling as you do. And I know that, if I do as you ask, you will find it as hard to forgive me as to forgive yourself. Fate has been so kind to me that I fear there is some terrible balance that must one day be redressed. Perhaps there is, my dear, and God save us then. But I can no more prevent that reckoning than I could have conjured up my good fortune. Least of all by denying those who love me their chance to show me their esteem.”
Charles swallowed, his hand moving unconsciously to his waistcoat pocket, where one might keep a watch.
She could see him trying to stoke up his anger again, to feed his grief and guilt into the embers of it, but it would not catch.
Slumping as though suddenly weary, he walked the few steps to her bed and sat, forearms resting on his knees.
She stayed standing, not sure she should forgive him yet so far as to embrace him.
He sighed and raised his head to look at her.
He was again himself. He smiled lopsidedly at her.
“I knew from the moment I saw you that you were the most beautiful person I had ever met. But now, I think you are also the wisest, my dear. You are right. Of course, you are right. And I am really nothing more than a child still, sometimes. And sometimes I wonder whether my father ever did find me in the linen cupboard to bring me back to the party. Or if all my life since then has been just the dream of a nine-year-old boy.”
Jane sat beside him. She threaded her arm through the crook of his and laid her head on his shoulder.
“My apologies, my dear. I will do better,” he said.
They sat like that for a time. Then, from far away down the stairs in the cavernous hall, came the dignified chimes of the clock. They counted in silence and, when the twelfth echoed through the house, Jane kissed him tenderly. “Happy birthday, my dear.”
It was nearing luncheon, and all had gone well thus far.
Jane stood on the terrace and cast a hostess’s gaze over the proceedings.
The musicians were playing, and the flowers standing the heat tolerably well.
There was no shortage of wine, and the table was immaculately laid just inside the French doors, silver and crystal glittering in the midday sun. It did not, thus far, look like rain.
Charles was in excellent spirits, flitting from one group of old friends to another with that ease that was his own special gift.
He had even been delighted with the masque, though all the wretches had done was drone a few lines and turn on the spot with puzzling slowness, mournfully sounding their tambourines. She would not be engaging them again.
As she joined the Darcys, a deep explosion like the report of a cannon rang out; distant, but not too distant.
Jane worried for a moment that it was an exacerbation of the trouble from earlier.
There had been some sort of small fire in the kitchen this morning, which had seen Mrs Kerridge rushing furiously about trying to work out the cause.
The soldiers present—and there were plenty, Darcy’s cousin Fitzwilliam among them—fell silent, reached for swords that were not there, and turned their heads like pointer dogs to the origin of the sound.
Somewhere in the direction of the West Lodge, out across the park.
Then it came again, much closer, the shockwave making the windows of the house rattle in their frames. All conversation stopped, and the musicians halted with a squeal. Then people were pointing, and Jane saw the remains of a shower of red sparks above the canopy of the trees lining the drive.
Around the corner came a thoroughly disreputable carriage, drawn by two wild-eyed horses who jigged and shied so much that the vehicle swerved this way and that, scattering gravel and swaying alarmingly.
Standing on the box, knees bent as he held the reins, was Robson.
And on the roof, setting a burning slow-match to the butt of another firework, was a dark-haired man in a shell pink coat covered liberally in gold ornamentation.
The flare went off with a hollow ‘thunk’ as it left the tube and burst overhead in a shower of sparks with the loudest explosion yet.
In the ensuing silence, someone dropped a glass.
The man leapt down onto the gravel with a crunch, rolled acrobatically and, rising, spread his arms wide.