CHAPTER 67 #3
His eyes moved to Fitzwilliam first, then to Elizabeth, then to Mr. Latham’s packet.
“So,” he said. “More.”
“More shape, sir,” said Mr. Latham.
George Darcy’s mouth tightened. “That is a lawyer’s answer.”
“Yes, sir.”
The faintest sound escaped Fitzwilliam. It might, in a kinder room, have become laughter.
Elizabeth sat where Fitzwilliam placed her. She wondered whether George Darcy noticed that his son did this as naturally as breathing now. She hoped not. She hoped he did. The contradiction made her head ache.
Mr. Latham set the first sheet before George Darcy.
“This is not a list of charges,” he said. “It is a comparison.”
George Darcy looked down.
“The left column shows probable estate yield after improvements, renewals, purchases, and rents raised upon better land. The middle column shows extraordinary charges entered under Mr. Wickham’s management. The last shows the net sum remitted to Pemberley.”
George Darcy’s eyes moved slowly down the page.
“These remittances are familiar.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They are regular.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Latham did not move to the next explanation.
Elizabeth almost admired him for it. He let the page do the ungentle work.
George Darcy looked again.
His finger moved to the first column.
“This rises.”
“Yes,” said Fitzwilliam.
George Darcy’s finger moved to the second.
“And this rises after it.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Latham.
George Darcy said nothing for so long that Elizabeth became aware of every small sound in the room: the paper shifting beneath his hand, the faint movement of Fitzwilliam’s breath, the rustle of leaves outside the open window.
At last George Darcy sat back.
“He gave me what I expected.”
No one answered quickly enough to soften it.
Elizabeth looked at him and felt, unexpectedly, pity.
“Yes,” she said. “And took what you did not.”
George Darcy’s eyes moved to her.
She did not lower hers.
For a moment, old pride came into his face — not anger yet, not denial, but the reflex of a man who disliked being seen too clearly by a woman young enough to be his daughter and new enough to his family to have any claim upon mercy.
Then the pride shifted.
Not vanished. George Darcy’s pride, Elizabeth suspected, would outlive several governments. But it moved aside enough for comprehension.
“He improved the estate,” George Darcy said.
“Yes,” said Fitzwilliam.
George Darcy looked down at the schedule again.
“And stole the profit of improving it.”
“Yes.”
His mouth twisted. “A clever steward.”
Fitzwilliam’s hand, at his side, closed.
George Darcy saw it.
“So,” George Darcy said, his voice hardening, “you may be spared the trouble of defending his character to me.”
Fitzwilliam’s face changed.
Elizabeth, watching him, understood that some wound in him had expected the defence even now, though no one had spoken it.
Mr. Latham put down the supporting sheets.
“The difficulty, sir, is not belief. It is proof in useful form.”
George Darcy’s laugh was short and ugly. “Useful to whom?”
“To prosecution,” said Mr. Latham. “To recovery. To public consequence.”
“Public,” George Darcy repeated.
Mr. Latham did not soften. “The loss visible in the pattern exceeds ten thousand pounds. There are several charges that may be brought, but they must be brought as particular acts, not as the whole design. Most are small. Many are under fifty pounds. Each would require proof of its own.”
George Darcy stared at him.
“Fifty.”
“Some less, sir.”
George Darcy’s face darkened. Elizabeth saw anger come then, clean and violent. It was almost a relief. Shame alone would have been too heavy a thing to witness.
“Ten thousand pounds,” he said, each word bitten off, “and you give me fifty at a time.”
“I give you what a court is most likely to hold,” said Mr. Latham. “Not what he took.”
George Darcy’s hand moved toward the paper, then closed on the arm of the chair instead.
No one spoke.
Beyond the glass, Pemberley lay bright, broad, and indifferent to discovery.
Elizabeth thought of the schedule in George Darcy’s hand: the rising yield, the rising charges, the steady remittance.
She thought of twenty years of a man standing beside his master, useful enough to be trusted, trusted enough to steal, and clever enough to make his usefulness the proof of his worth.
At last George Darcy said, “No prosecution.”
Fitzwilliam looked up.
George Darcy did not look at him. “Not because he is spared.”
Mr. Latham waited.
“Because Pemberley is not to be dragged through every dinner table in Derbyshire while we prove fifty pounds here and thirty there, and pay lawyers to make my folly legible.”
Mr. Latham bowed his head. “There are several charges which may be brought, sir.”
“And none worth the spectacle.”
“Not if recovery is the object.”
“It is not,” said Fitzwilliam.
George Darcy looked at him then.
“No,” he said. “Consequence is the object. Then consequence he shall have.”
He pushed the schedule slightly away, as if distance might help him command the matter.
“No credit. No reference. No authority. No tenant, tradesman, bank, or agent is to accept his name, his order, his paper, or his memory as Pemberley’s. Mrs. Wickham has no claim upon this house. None. Through your mother, through old service, through me — none.”
His hand trembled against the arm of the chair. He closed it slowly until the tremor was hidden.
“As for the son, he is not to be accused of what you cannot prove. But he is to have nothing. No comfort. No provision. No introduction. No familiar claim. If any allowance might once have been granted out of duty to his father’s service or regard for old connexion, his father has stolen it from him. ”
Fitzwilliam was very still.
George Darcy’s eyes remained on the schedule.
“I will not provide for a man whose father has already stolen whatever provision duty might have asked of me.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened.
Mr. Latham bowed his head. “I shall draft the notices and private letters accordingly.”
George Darcy’s eyes remained on Fitzwilliam.
“The sum remains private.”
Fitzwilliam said nothing.
George Darcy’s jaw hardened. “The dismissal need not.”
Elizabeth heard, in the difference, the whole compromise.
The county need not know the size of George Darcy’s humiliation. It must know the end of John Wickham’s shelter.
“Silence cannot mean shelter,” she said softly.
George Darcy looked at her.
She had not meant to speak. The words had escaped because they were true.
For one long moment, she feared she had gone too far.
Then George Darcy said, “No.”
He looked back at the schedule.
“No, Mrs. Darcy. It shall not.”
Mr. Grant appeared at the door not two minutes later, which suggested he had been listening for the shape of disaster with more skill than delicacy.
“That is enough,” he said.
George Darcy almost smiled. Almost. “You see, Mr. Latham. There is still one man in the house who speaks as if he expects to be obeyed.”
Mr. Grant did not smile at all. “I expect to be obeyed because I am correct.”
That did make George Darcy smile, though faintly.
It was the first expression Elizabeth had seen on his face that did not seem to cost him pride.
They left him with Mr. Grant and the schedule turned face down beside his chair.
In the passage, Fitzwilliam stopped.
Not long. Only long enough that Elizabeth felt the halt through his arm.