CHAPTER 63 #2
“Mr. Latham has the papers from the estate office. Bell can oversee what is immediate under proper limits. Mrs. Reynolds understands the house and has authority enough to make disorder difficult. Mr. Grant governs your recovery. Georgiana is safe for the moment, and if you wish it, Mrs. Darcy and I can assume her care while you recover. She may return with us to Portman Square and remain there until you are well enough to decide what is proper.”
The old gentleman stared at him.
“We need not remain at Pemberley if our presence is not desired,” Fitzwilliam said. “The first danger required me to act without asking. That condition has altered. If I am to stay, I must understand in what capacity.”
The question entered the room and changed the air.
Mr. Latham lowered his eyes. Mr. Grant became very still.
George Darcy’s mouth worked. No sound came. For one moment Fitzwilliam thought the question had been too much, and felt guilt rise at once, useless and bitter.
Then his father forced out, “Stay.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him. “As what, sir?”
His father shut his eyes.
The room waited with him. Mr. Grant’s hand moved once toward the bed, then stopped. Mr. Latham lowered his gaze, as if the question had no legal decency and every moral right.
“Son,” George Darcy said at last.
Once, that word would have answered everything.
Fitzwilliam heard himself reply, quite calmly, “That was not a place permitted me.”
His father flinched.
It was small. Fitzwilliam saw it. He wished he had not.
The next word cost the old man more.
“Heir.”
Fitzwilliam did not move.
The word seemed to belong to another room, another man, another history in which fathers did not turn their sons out under the authority of lies.
“Am I that?”
Mr. Latham looked up then.
George Darcy’s eyes closed briefly, then opened with visible effort. “Always.”
The silence that followed was worse than any denial could have been.
“Pemberley.” His father swallowed. “Meant for you. Entail. No power to—” His face twisted. “No other son.”
Mr. Latham came a little forward. “Mr. Darcy, if I may.”
George Darcy’s eyes moved to him; it was as much permission as he could give.
“There is an old entail affecting Pemberley,” Mr. Latham said.
Fitzwilliam turned to him. “An old entail?”
“Yes, sir. Not commonly discussed, and not, I believe, made known to you. This is the last generation in which this particular limitation applies. It will not bind Pemberley indefinitely. But while it applies, it is decisive.”
He paused, not as if he lacked words, but as if he disliked the use to which they must be put.
“Your father remained master here. He held the income, the house, the allowances, the personal provisions, and the power to admit or refuse you during his lifetime. But he could not make another heir to Pemberley while you lived. Not under that entail. There being no other lawful son, the estate was always intended to descend to you eventually.”
“And I was never told.”
Mr. Latham’s face tightened. “No, sir.”
Fitzwilliam looked back at his father. “You knew this.”
George Darcy’s hand trembled against the counterpane.
“You knew it,” Fitzwilliam said again, and still his voice did not rise.
“Angry,” his father said. “I was angry.”
“At what?”
His father’s mouth pulled with effort. “You.”
Fitzwilliam felt the word, though it was no surprise.
“I thought—guilty. Proud. Unrepentant. Would not confess.” His breathing shortened. Mr. Grant moved, but George Darcy forced the next words through before he could be stopped. “I meant you to feel it.”
That entered Fitzwilliam cleanly, like cold.
“I see.”
“No.” The word came with unexpected force, and cost him. He shut his eyes, mastered a breath, opened them again. “No. You do not.”
Fitzwilliam’s hand closed once at his side.
“Teach,” George Darcy said. “I thought to teach you.”
“There was no lesson to teach.”
His father’s face changed.
“No,” he said, scarcely audible. “Not for you.”
No triumph came. No vindication. Only the dull, astonishing fact that the truth had arrived years after it could have saved anyone.
Fitzwilliam heard himself ask, “Was I such a poor son?”
Mr. Latham’s head lifted.
George Darcy stared at him.
“Had I shown such a character,” Fitzwilliam said, “that Mr. Wickham’s lies were believable?”
The question seemed to strike harder than accusation. Perhaps because accusation would have allowed defence, and this did not.
His father’s eyes filled with something Fitzwilliam refused to name.
“No,” George Darcy said.
“Then how?”
His father’s gaze moved to the window, as if the answer lay not among the papers but in all the years before this one.
“Not one lie.”
Fitzwilliam waited.
“Years,” George Darcy forced out.
The room went very quiet.
“Little things,” his father said. “Nothing one could seize. You were proud. George was wounded. John was concerned. Margaret—”
“Mrs. Wickham,” Fitzwilliam said.
His father’s eyes closed once.
“Always calling. Always grieved. Never accusing. Not plainly. Lady Anne would have wished kindness. Old obligations. Poor George. Your severity.” His mouth twisted. “She made doubt easy.”
Fitzwilliam could not speak.
He remembered her visits now differently: the soft face turned toward his father, the lowered voice, the air of not complaining while every word offered itself as grievance.
Mrs. Wickham had never needed to cry scandal.
She had only needed to be disappointed, gently, often, and where his father could hear.
“She did not accuse,” George Darcy said, with difficulty. “Not plainly. She made me—ready for it.”
“And John Wickham?” Fitzwilliam asked.
“Confirmed.” George Darcy’s mouth twisted. “Smoothed. Concerned. Always concerned.”
“With proof?”
“When proof came.”
“When proof was made,” Fitzwilliam said.
His father shut his eyes.
“Why was I never confronted?”
The answer did not come at once.
“Boyish,” George Darcy managed at last. “I thought—youth. Pride. Heir’s temper. Nothing to—” His voice failed.
“Nothing to answer,” Fitzwilliam said.
No one corrected him.
George Darcy’s eyes fixed on his again. “Then papers came. Debts. Women. Signatures. John swore—” His breath caught, and anger, shame, illness, and old habit all crossed his face together. “You denied. I thought denial pride.”
“I had done nothing.”
“I know.”
The words were too late.
George Darcy’s eyes shut as if the admission had exhausted him more than the stroke. “I was the fool.”
Mr. Grant came forward then, and this time no one opposed him.
“That is enough.”
It was not enough. It was more than enough. It was years too late and would never be enough.
Fitzwilliam bowed to his father because there remained forms even where affection had failed. “I will not press you further.”
His father’s hand moved once, weakly, as if he would stop him.
Fitzwilliam did not wait to know whether the gesture meant apology, command, or need.
Mr. Latham followed him into the adjoining room and closed the door softly behind them.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then Mr. Latham said, “I am sorry.”
Fitzwilliam turned.
It was not a phrase solicitors used often, not if they were wise. Mr. Latham looked as if he had chosen it despite knowing its inadequacy.
“I do not know what to do with that,” Fitzwilliam said.
“No.”
The honesty was almost a kindness.
Mr. Latham rested one hand upon the locked case.
“There is more to examine. The altered provisions, the codicil drafts, the personal settlements, the allowances formerly directed, and whatever estate papers Mr. John Wickham may have prepared, altered, or caused to pass without scrutiny. But the central point is as I said. The estate’s eventual descent was not at your father’s free disposal. Much else was.”
“Enough.”
“Yes,” Mr. Latham said. “Enough to injure you very severely.”
Fitzwilliam looked toward the closed door.
“Did John Wickham know of this entail?”
“I cannot say that he did.” Mr. Latham answered carefully, as a man relieved to have one point upon which caution was honest. “The instrument creating the entail was not in the steward’s office.
It was kept with my firm, as it ought to have been.
Mr. John Wickham came into service after your father had already taken control of the estate.
He knew the rents, accounts, tenants, repairs, disbursements, correspondence, and all the daily machinery by which Pemberley functioned.
He may have suspected limits upon your father’s power.
A steward who has served long may suspect much. But suspicion is not knowledge.”
“No.”
“I need the drafts,” Fitzwilliam said. “All of them.”
“You shall have them under my eye.”
“And any claim from Mrs. Wickham?”
“Will come through me, if it is a legal claim.”
“No payment.”
“Not without review.”
“No servant dismissed merely for being deceived.”
Mr. Latham’s eyes sharpened. “No.”
“But any servant who continues to carry messages—”
“Mrs. Reynolds will have the authority to remove them from trusted duties at once. Dismissal, if required, may follow with evidence.”
Fitzwilliam nodded.
A new thing settled inside him: not peace, not even resolve, but shape. He had asked in what capacity he remained. The answer had been given, and it had not healed him. It had only made evasion impossible.
He found Elizabeth in the small sitting room adjoining their chambers.
She was not alone. Kitty was there, very earnestly attempting to draw Pom-Pom in a position Pom-Pom had abandoned five minutes earlier.
Georgiana sat beside her with a pencil in hand and more colour in her face than she had possessed the first night at Pemberley.
Mrs. Doddridge, sewing by the window, saw Fitzwilliam first.
Elizabeth looked up.
One glance was enough. Her expression changed, not dramatically. Elizabeth did not waste feeling in display. She only rose.
“Kitty,” she said, “I believe Lord Pomington has been insulted in the matter of his left ear.”
Kitty looked down at the drawing. “It is not so very unlike.”
Georgiana, after a moment, said, “It is a little broad.”
Pom-Pom sneezed.