CHAPTER 62 #2
Any confirmed discrepancy would earn a gratuity if it led to correction, recovery, or preserved evidence.
A larger gratuity would be paid where a discrepancy led to the recovery of estate money or proof of unauthorised payment.
No man would be rewarded for suspicion, gossip, or malice; only for entries proved against books, receipts, letters, or witnesses.
A false accusation made maliciously would be dismissal without character.
A proven attempt to conceal a discrepancy, once discovered by another, would be dismissal without character and notice to any future employer.
“No man is to be paid for malice,” Elizabeth said. “But no man is to lose by honesty either.”
Mr. Latham nodded. “Very good.”
Darcy watched her across the table. She had not slept enough.
He knew it by the faint shadow beneath her eyes and the way she had twice lifted her hand to the back of her neck when she thought no one observed her.
Yet her mind moved through the broken estate as if disorder had lines visible to her alone.
He was grateful.
The gratitude was so strong that it hurt.
He had lived too many years with men who had benefited from his silence, his restraint, his unwillingness to plead innocence where innocence should have been known.
Now Elizabeth was doing the hard work of refusal.
She was closing doors to people who had made connexion a claim and access a habit no one was meant to question.
She did not ask him to forgive what had injured him merely because those who had done it were accustomed to being forgiven.
“Fitzwilliam?”
He realised she had spoken to him twice.
“Yes.”
“The written order for Bell. It should come from you.”
“Of course.”
“Not from me. I may draw the shape, but Pemberley must hear your voice in it.”
That, too, struck him.
Not because she was right, though she was; but because she had not mistaken usefulness for authority. She would not take what should be his, even to save him labour.
“I will write it now.”
“Good,” she said. “And after that, you will eat something.”
Mr. Latham turned a page as if he had not heard.
Mrs. Reynolds did not even make the pretence.
Darcy wrote the order.
Before the ink was dry, Mrs. Wickham sent in her name.
He looked up.
Elizabeth did not. She was reading over the proposed memorandum for Bell.
“Mrs. Wickham asks particularly for Mr. Darcy,” said the footman, who had the uncomfortable expression of a man who knew every word in the sentence might be wrong.
Elizabeth’s pen paused for less than a breath, then continued.
Darcy rose. “I will see her in the library.”
Elizabeth looked at him then.
He did not need her to speak.
“I know,” he said quietly.
She inclined her head and returned to the memorandum, but he saw the small easing of her shoulders.
Mrs. Wickham was already in tears when he entered the library.
It was not that he doubted the tears. Tears could be real and still employed. She stood near the chair by the hearth, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, her cap slightly displaced as if grief had made a martyr of muslin.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, “I am sorry to trouble you at such a time, but I am driven to it.”
He closed the door.
“Mrs. Wickham.”
“Your wife has been monstrous to me.”
For one moment Darcy felt nothing but a cold, astonishing gratitude.
Elizabeth had been called monstrous for doing what should have been done years ago: drawing a boundary where indulgence had masqueraded as kindness.
“No,” he said. “My wife has been correct.”
Mrs. Wickham’s handkerchief trembled. “I am to be turned from my home.”
“The steward’s house was attached to your husband’s office.”
“It has been my home for many years.”
“Mr. Latham has found no lease or binding promise. Your husband has been dismissed from that office. The notice has been served. The house returns to the estate.”
Her tears faltered.
“Dismissed?”
“Yes.”
“But surely—after so many years of service—”
“Because of your husband’s conduct,” Darcy said, “you are no longer welcome upon this estate.”
She stared at him as if some old agreement had failed without warning.
“I have always considered myself attached to this family.”
“I will not recognise in you any claim of relation. Neither will my wife.”
Her face went white, then flushed.
“Lady Anne would never—”
“Do not use my mother’s name in that injured voice again.”
Silence fell with a force greater than anger.
Mrs. Wickham lowered the handkerchief. For the first time since she entered, her expression was not grieved but bare.
“Mr. Darcy—”
“No,” he said. “You will remove from the steward’s house. Your goods may be inventoried and sent after you with proper care. No incivility will be offered. But you will leave Pemberley, and you will not call here again.”
“My husband—”
“Your husband has run away in disgrace and has not been heard from since. If you discover his direction, madam, I beg you will inform us at once, so that he may answer Mr. Latham’s inquiries and, where the evidence requires it, a magistrate.”
Mrs. Wickham stared at him.
“Until then, he has no office, no confidence, and no house upon this estate.”
She drew herself up, gathering what dignity remained to her and arranging it over resentment.
“I had hoped better from you.”
Darcy opened the door.
“That hope was misplaced.”
Mrs. Wickham left him without another curtsey.
He stood in the library after she was gone, his hand still upon the door, and felt no triumph. Only a grim quiet.
It was easier, he discovered, to refuse when one had at last ceased to believe refusal was cruelty.
When he returned to the small sitting room, Elizabeth was not there. Mr. Latham had taken the memorandum, Mrs. Reynolds had gone to send for Bell, and the room had already begun to alter from council into execution.
Good, he thought.
Then, unexpectedly: Too good.
Pemberley had found her useful and would devour usefulness if permitted. He knew that now. It was what great houses did when left to themselves.
He went back to the steward’s office, but before he reached the door, Mrs. Reynolds appeared at the passage end. She carried no household paper this time, but a folded note.
“Mr. Darcy.”
He stopped.
“Mrs. Reynolds?”
“Mrs. Darcy directed that any message sent from Mrs. Wickham’s house should be noticed before it was delivered, if it could be done without exposure.”
Darcy’s attention sharpened. “And one was sent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To Mr. John Wickham?”
“No, sir.” Mrs. Reynolds crossed to him and offered the folded copy. “To Mr. George Wickham. In London.”
For a moment the house was very quiet around him.
“The original?”
“Gone on, sir. Mrs. Darcy said Mrs. Wickham was not to be warned. Mr. Latham’s clerk copied it before the boy left Lambton, sealed it again, and let it pass.”
Of course she had.
Darcy opened the copy.
The Darcys have arrived and taken the whole management of Pemberley into their own hands.
Mrs. Darcy has ordered me from the steward’s house, and Mr. Darcy supports her.
Your father cannot assist us. I must come to London and find you.
Perhaps the Earl or Lady Catherine may yet reason with them, if you can reach them before every door is closed.
He read it twice.
Not because the words were difficult, but because they were not.
Mrs. Wickham had not written to her husband. She had written to her son. She had named London, Lady Catherine, the Earl, and every old authority that might be made to rattle at Pemberley’s doors before the locks were set.
Elizabeth had not merely closed a door. She had listened to hear where the next knock would fall.
“Does Mrs. Darcy know?” he asked.
“Not yet, sir. She had gone upstairs when the copy came.”
“Good. Let her rest if she is resting.”
Mrs. Reynolds looked at him, only briefly.
“Sir.”
There was something in the syllable: not surprise, exactly, but recognition.
Darcy folded the note. “Send word to Mr. Latham. The direction in London is to be copied separately. I will decide what may be done with it after I have considered whether following Mrs. Wickham to London will lead us to more than intercepting her at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the Earl and Lady Catherine are not to be written to by anyone in this house without my knowledge.”
“No, sir.”
Mrs. Reynolds remained.
Darcy looked at her. “Was there anything more?”
“No, sir.” She paused. “Only—Mrs. Darcy is uncommonly capable for so young a lady.”
Darcy looked down at the copied note.
“Yes,” he said. “She is.”
“And very decided.”
“Yes.”
There was no disapproval in Mrs. Reynolds’s voice. If anything, there was relief: the cautious relief of a woman who had watched old doors stand open too long and had seen, in one morning, that the new mistress of Pemberley knew how to close them.
Darcy understood the relief. He felt it himself.
“Mrs. Darcy has been of the greatest service, sir.”
“She has.”
The answer came at once. Too easily.
Mrs. Reynolds curtsied and withdrew.
Darcy remained where he was, the note still in his hand.
Of the greatest service.
Yes. Elizabeth had been of service since the hour she entered Pemberley. She had defended his sleep, governed his father’s sickroom, steadied Georgiana, refused Mrs. Wickham, ordered watches, closed London, set the steward’s office into motion, and made a wounded house begin to obey itself again.
She had been married to him barely two months.
Two months, and she had already stood between Georgiana and ruin, between his father and his own disorder, between Pemberley and the Wickhams, between Darcy himself and the old habit of yielding too much strength to old wounds.
She had done it brilliantly.
That did not make it fair.
He looked toward the steward’s office. Behind that door lay ledgers, rent books, receipt stubs, broken habits, suspected servants, frightened clerks, and enough work to occupy him until midnight if he were foolish enough to mistake exhaustion for duty.