CHAPTER 67
The Cost of Proof
By the beginning of July, Elizabeth had ceased pretending that uncertainty was caution.
Her gowns still concealed what there was to conceal, provided Evans was sensible, Mrs. Reynolds kept fires unlit, and no one expected her to endure a room after the sun had found it.
Mrs. Doddridge still spoke of comfort, never expectation.
No one had told Georgiana or Kitty anything, and therefore they continued in the happy belief that Mrs. Darcy had developed, all at once, a principled objection to hot rooms, rich sauces, and being asked questions before breakfast.
But Elizabeth knew.
The knowledge had not arrived like news.
It had accumulated: in the altered fall of a morning gown, in the tyranny of dry toast, in the sudden offence of gravy, in the humiliating tenderness that seized her when Fitzwilliam’s hand rested on the back of her chair, as if that hand had become a matter of private consequence to the nation.
She was not ill. She had made this clear so often that Mrs. Doddridge no longer answered it.
She was only altered.
That ought to have been a manageable distinction.
Elizabeth had managed many alterations in her life: houses, fortunes, guardianship, marriage, relations who required tact, men who required contradiction, and one estate which seemed determined to fling its grievances through every door at once.
Yet this alteration had the disadvantage of residing in herself.
It could not be sent to Mr. Hartwood, argued down by Mr. Beaker, or arranged into columns for Samuel Terling.
It followed her from room to room.
She grew warm too quickly. She tired before she had finished being useful.
She cried, once, because Georgiana played a difficult passage badly and then, with great courage, played it better.
She had been cross with Kitty’s ribbon for nearly half an hour and could not defend the feeling by any principle of taste.
Pom-Pom had taken to lying near her feet with the solemnity of an animal appointed by Parliament to observe her condition.
Worst of all, Fitzwilliam’s departures had become noticeable.
Elizabeth had never disliked solitude. She liked a room when it was her own. She liked time in which no person required her face, her opinion, or her temper. Marriage had not, she hoped, made her foolish.
And yet, if Fitzwilliam rose from the breakfast table with a paper in his hand, some part of her attention went with him before her body did.
She wished to know whether he had eaten.
She wished to know whether he had slept.
She wished, with an indignity no education had prepared her for, to put her hand through his arm and keep it there.
This was not dependence.
She was very firm upon that point.
It was only that independence had lately become more comfortable when he was in the room.
The discovery was mortifying.
It was also, though she would not have confessed it aloud, rather pleasant when he obliged her by being there.
He had learned, since the morning of the ledgers, to be present without announcing the sacrifice. That made it worse. A man who fussed might be resisted. Fitzwilliam did not fuss. He merely arranged himself against inconvenience until inconvenience, finding no one to quarrel with, withdrew.
The small sitting room chosen for that morning’s conference proved it.
The windows were open to the shaded side of the house.
The papers had not been permitted to colonise every table.
A chair had been set for her where the air moved gently but did not draught.
There was water within reach, and a plate of plain biscuits, set down with such innocence that Elizabeth had no one to accuse.
Mr. Latham was already there when she entered with Fitzwilliam. Bell stood by the side table, hat in his hands, looking older than he had two weeks before. The two clerks had been banished; or rather, Fitzwilliam had discovered that some conclusions required fewer witnesses.
Elizabeth was grateful for that.
She was also angry with herself for being grateful.
Mr. Latham rose. “Mrs. Darcy.”
“Mr. Latham.”
His eyes passed over her face with a professional quickness too polite to linger. He knew nothing, she thought. Then she saw that he had placed the heaviest packets on the table nearest Fitzwilliam, and only one neat paper before her chair.
Perhaps men of law knew more than they said.
Or perhaps every person in Pemberley had entered into a conspiracy to make her comfortable without allowing her the satisfaction of refusing comfort.
Fitzwilliam drew out her chair.
She sat because standing would prove nothing except that she was obstinate, which was not new information.
Mr. Latham waited until Fitzwilliam had taken his place before he opened the matter.
“I have prepared the comparison you requested.”
The words were simple. The room seemed to gather itself around them.
Fitzwilliam’s hand rested on the table near hers, not touching. Elizabeth looked at it once, then looked away before wanting became visible.
“And?” he said.
Mr. Latham unfolded the first sheet.
“The conclusion is graver than our first estimate.”
Bell made no sound, but the hat in his hands altered shape.
Mr. Latham continued, “Taking the ten years for which comparison is clearest — rent increases, works charged, timber sales, allowances, improvements, new land brought into use, and extraordinary costs — I believe the loss exceeds ten thousand pounds.”
Elizabeth had expected a large sum. She had not expected the room to change shape when it was spoken.
More than ten thousand pounds.
Not lost in one reckless speculation. Not squandered openly. Not taken by a man desperate enough to leave a wound behind him. Siphoned. Fed upon. Gathered in handfuls from the ordinary life of an estate until the whole became monstrous.
Fitzwilliam said nothing.
That silence troubled her more than anger would have done.
Mr. Latham did not spare him by pausing long.
“It may be more. The earlier books are less complete, and some of the patterns were already established before the decade I have used. But I would not state a higher figure with confidence.”
“Across how many years?” Elizabeth asked.
“Mr. Wickham has been steward here above twenty years,” said Mr. Latham. “The earlier ledgers do not bear comparison so cleanly, but they show the same habits in smaller form.”
“Smaller theft?” Elizabeth said.
“Smaller, or less confident. At first one might call it laxity. Then custom. Then abuse. In the later books, it is system.”
Fitzwilliam looked at the paper. “He grew bolder.”
“Or safer,” said Elizabeth.
Mr. Latham looked at her.
“He learned what would not be questioned,” she said.
The words settled with more force than she had intended. Bell’s jaw tightened. Fitzwilliam did not look at her, but his hand shifted once on the table, a small movement that told her he had felt it too.
Twenty years.
John Wickham had not only stolen from Pemberley.
He had studied it. He had learned the habits of its master, the softness of its trust, the places where an expected sum was more welcome than an examined one.
He had not begun by carrying away ten thousand pounds.
He had begun by discovering what could be missed.
Mr. Latham laid another paper apart from the rest.
“The schedule shows the mechanism more plainly than the ledgers. It does not set one improvement against one charge. That would be simpler than Mr. Wickham allowed. It gathers the year’s increases — renewed leases, fields improved after drainage, land brought into better use, timber sales, rents raised where productivity rose — then sets against them the extraordinary charges. ”
Elizabeth looked down at the columns.
The exact figures mattered less than the motion. The first rose. The middle rose to meet it. The last remained comfortingly familiar.
“He did not prevent Pemberley from improving,” she said slowly.
“No,” said Mr. Latham.
“He let the improvement be seen,” she said, “and kept the profit of it from being felt.”
Bell muttered something very low.
Fitzwilliam was still looking at the paper.
“And what,” he said, “can be charged cleanly?”
Mr. Latham’s expression altered by the smallest degree.
There was the answer, then. Not in his words yet, but in the face of a careful man who disliked the work of disappointment and meant to perform it honourably.
“There are several charges we may bring,” said Mr. Latham.
“More than three. The false ditch, the duplicate roof charge, the widow’s allowance if she will speak, certain labour entries, certain receipts that cannot be reconciled.
But none of the clean matters is large. Most are beneath fifty pounds; some much beneath it. ”
Bell’s hat gave a soft crack in his hands.
Elizabeth looked at Mr. Latham, then at Fitzwilliam.
For a moment no one spoke.
The absurdity of it was so great that her mind refused it.
Ten thousand pounds visible in the pattern; fragments small enough to put before a court only with witnesses, copies, explanations, and patience.
Each piece capable of dissolving into old habits, steward’s discretion, bad copies, misremembered labourers, and missing receipts.
It was monstrous, and yet on paper it had the appearance of pettiness.
That was the insult.
Mr. Wickham had not only stolen money. He had stolen proportion.
Fitzwilliam leaned back slightly. “So the law will not proceed against the fraud as a fraud.”
“Not conveniently. Not as one whole injury,” said Mr. Latham.
“We may understand it as one fraud. The law will ask us for acts: this entry, this receipt, this man paid or not paid, this charge made twice, this allowance withheld. The scheme is whole only when the books are compared across years. A court will not punish a comparison. It will require particulars.”
“Then the very method that makes the theft large makes it difficult to prosecute.”