CHAPTER 23 #2
“Mr. Beaker will assist with the accounts,” she continued, “but I do not want every difficulty answered only by what he remembers. Nor every title by what Mr. Hartwood has always known. They have served Mrs. Marwood faithfully, and me since. I do not doubt that. But too much has depended upon particular people knowing particular histories.”
Darcy understood at once.
Mrs. Marwood’s fortune had not been carelessly kept.
It had been personally kept: guarded by Mr. Hartwood, remembered by Mr. Beaker, governed once by Mrs. Marwood’s own formidable attention.
Mr. Marwood had laid foundations; Mrs. Marwood had built upon them with energy and appetite; faithful men had preserved what they could.
But preservation was not the same thing as system.
Memory, even honest memory, grew fragile when too much had been entrusted to it.
Miss Bennet was not correcting neglect.
She was trying to replace memory with method.
“There is money enough sitting idle,” Elizabeth said, almost impatiently, “for sensible purchases where purchase would prevent future confusion. I would rather use it to make the management clear than leave every difficulty to be explained by someone’s recollection.”
It was the only direct reference she made to the fund behind the work, and Darcy was grateful for it. More would have invited impropriety. Less would have made the purpose smaller than it was.
He looked again at the Manchester Square papers.
He had known she was rich. In the abstract, he had known it for some time.
A house in Portman Square, London properties, Mr. Hartwood’s caution, Mr. Beaker’s deference, the quiet confidence with which tradesmen were employed and paid — all these things had told him enough.
He had known she possessed more than comfort.
It was another thing to see the scale of her responsibilities unfold by boxes.
Not display. Not luxury. Not consequence.
Roofs. Leases. Repairs. Clear agreements. Shops, passages, old allowances, small rights no one had troubled to define because the people who understood them were still alive to be asked.
A woman eager to dazzle would have spoken of income.
Miss Bennet handed him leases.
“And if Mr. Terling and I find anything that troubles us?” he asked.
“Then I hope you will say so.”
“I shall.”
The answer was too small for what he felt.
She had not merely given him another task. She had placed in his hands a portion of the world she was trying to govern: shops, agreements, old habits, future purchases, and all the quiet complications by which property became either shelter or trouble.
He could promise her very little. Not ease. Not certainty. Not that no danger attached to his name. Not even, yet, the full explanation of his own circumstances.
But this, at least, he could promise.
“Thank you,” he said.
Elizabeth looked up. “For the papers?”
“For trusting me with them.”
She did not answer at once.
He allowed himself the rest before caution could make him retreat.
“I cannot promise that the matter will be simple,” he said. “But I shall be careful of it. I will work hard to protect your interests in the best way I can.”
Elizabeth’s expression changed — not softened exactly, but steadied, as if some anxious part of her had been met without being named.
“That is what I hoped,” she said.
The words were quiet. They struck him with more force than praise.
For a moment neither of them moved. The library held its warmth around them: the fire, the papers, the tea grown cooler in its cups, Mrs. Doddridge’s needle moving steadily near the window.
Pom-Pom, restless under the burden of other people’s seriousness, rose from his cushion, stretched with elaborate delicacy, and then settled again with his back to them.
Elizabeth looked away first.
“You see,” she said, “even Pom-Pom thinks we should return to shops.”
“I have no wish to oppose him.”
“No. He is increasingly influential.”
They bent over the papers.
Elizabeth showed him the order Mr. Beaker had used in the abstracts.
Darcy asked two questions about repair reserves and another about a long-standing allowance to one shopkeeper for a back passage which might or might not belong to the premises at all.
Elizabeth did not know; Mr. Beaker suspected; Mr. Hartwood would have to discover.
The work was real, and therefore safer than the silence which had preceded it.
Yet the safety was not complete.
Every packet she gave him was less a favour than a question: what will you do with what I place in your hands?
He wished, with a force that startled him, to answer well.
The clock struck five before either of them seemed to notice.
Elizabeth looked up first.
“We have exceeded the hour.”
“So we have.”
“The custom is young,” she said. “It must not be overstrained.”
“No.”
He closed the Manchester Square box, though not before taking out the first bundle of leases she had indicated for immediate review.
“I shall begin with these, speak with Mr. Beaker, and write to Mr. Terling.”
“Thank you. And Numbers Seventeen and Eighteen?”
“I shall send him the instructions tonight. Respectable tenants. Plain terms. No privileges without writing.”
“Very good.”
Mrs. Doddridge folded her work, which in Mrs. Doddridge’s language suggested that the audience was concluded.
Darcy rose.
Elizabeth did also.
For a moment, neither spoke. It was not the painful threshold of Christmas Day. It was not the cold exactness of his last unannounced call. It was something narrower and steadier: a room, an hour, a task completed, another given.
“I am glad Cotton Lane progresses,” she said.
“As am I.”
“And that Thursday survived its beginning.”
“With more strength than I had any right to expect.”
She understood him. He saw that she did.
She did not answer the feeling. She only said, “Then we shall try it again next week.”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “Next week.”
She gave him her hand, briefly, properly. He took it with the care he had learned from too much wanting and too little right.
Pom-Pom, now fully awake, gave a quiet bark from the hearth.
“I believe,” said Elizabeth, “he approves the adjournment.”
“Or objects to it.”
“With Pom-Pom, those are often the same thing.”
Darcy left Portman Square with the first Manchester Square bundle beneath his arm and the taste of tea still warm upon his tongue.
He had come wanting the hour to mean something.
It had.
Not because Miss Bennet had restored the old ease, nor because she had given him more warmth than prudence allowed. She had not. But she had trusted him with work that mattered, and he had answered with the only promise he had any right to make.
He would protect her interests.
It was not all he wished to offer.
It was what he could give.
Thursday at four had begun.