CHAPTER 68 #4
“Your servants obey you,” said his father. “You have told them Mrs. Wickham is to be received.”
“They are loyal to me. They would not act against my knowledge.”
“Nor did mine,” said his father.
The words landed like a stone.
Lady Catherine stood. “You have been ill too long if you imagine yourself master of my house.”
“No,” said his father. “Only chastened enough not to mistake obedience for safety.”
Lady Catherine’s mouth tightened. She looked from his father to Fitzwilliam, then to Elizabeth, as if searching for the person least entitled to defy her and finding too many candidates.
“I will not be instructed by a son who has turned against his family, nor by his wife, nor by a sick man frightened by papers.”
His father’s face changed.
Fitzwilliam moved, but his father spoke first.
“I will not receive the Wickhams,” he said. “I will not recognise them. I will not have them pleaded for under my wife’s name, my daughter’s fear, my illness, or your pride. If you cannot accept that, you may leave Pemberley today and spare yourselves the inconvenience of returning.”
The room was utterly still.
Lady Catherine looked, for the first time, not triumphant or outraged but checked.
Lord Matlock rose slowly.
“We shall not leave today,” Lord Matlock said.
Lady Catherine turned on him. “Matlock!”
“Not until this is understood,” Lord Matlock said. Then, to his sister, “Catherine, write to Rosings.”
“I will not alarm Anne with vulgar suspicion.”
Lady Matlock stood. Her voice was cold. “Then write with authority. But write.”
Lady Catherine’s lips compressed.
His father tried to stand.
Fitzwilliam reached him first. “No.”
For one moment, the whole room seemed to narrow to the old man in the chair and the son beside him.
His father did not resist.
That submission, small as it was, cost more than the speech.
Mr. Grant came forward at once.
“Enough,” he said.
As Fitzwilliam steadied his father, the elder Mr. Darcy looked past him to Lady Catherine.
“If you are right, you lose nothing by removing her,” he said.
Lady Catherine did not answer.
“If you are wrong,” his father said, “you have left your daughter with my mistake.”
That silenced even her.
Mr. Grant and Mrs. Reynolds took him away before the silence could break.
Fitzwilliam remained beside Elizabeth.
He had meant to defend her. He had prepared himself for it: rank, suspicion, insult, family neglect, all of it. He had expected the old labour of standing against accusation with evidence in his hands and no one beside him whose word could make the truth believed.
His father had been before him.
Not when it would have saved years. Not when Georgiana had first been placed beyond him. Not when Wickham’s lies were new and his own denial still raw.
But today.
Today, his father had spent his strength differently.
Elizabeth’s hand brushed his. Not taking it before them all, but finding him for the space of a breath.
Richard crossed the room, his face without humour.
“What should it say?”
Fitzwilliam looked toward Lady Catherine.
She stood rigidly by the chair she had abandoned, her colour high and her mouth set.
“I will not have vulgar alarm raised in my house,” she said.
Fitzwilliam might have answered. Elizabeth might have answered better.
Lord Matlock spoke first.
“Catherine.”
Lady Catherine turned on him. “You cannot believe this.”
“I believe George Darcy has given us cause enough not to be fools.”
“Mrs. Wickham is a Fenwick connexion.”
“So are you,” said Lord Matlock. “Do not make the name an argument against sense.”
Lady Catherine drew herself up.
“You will write to Rosings,” Lord Matlock said. “You will order Mrs. Wickham removed from Anne’s company until this matter is understood. You need not confess yourself mistaken. You need only be prudent.”
“I will not insult a woman under my protection.”
“Then protect your daughter first.”
That struck.
Lady Catherine’s lips compressed.
Lady Matlock said, more quietly, “Catherine, if George is wrong, you may apologise to Mrs. Wickham in a week. If he is right, a week may be too much.”
Lady Catherine looked from her brother to her sister-in-law. For the first time, her certainty seemed to have found no servant willing to carry it.
Richard held out a hand toward the writing table.
“Shall I bring paper?”
Lord Matlock did not look away from Lady Catherine.
“Bring it.”
Fitzwilliam watched Richard cross the room.
Rosings was not his house. Anne was not his sister. Lady Catherine would never have accepted the warning from him alone. Fitzwilliam had been listened to often enough when listening cost nothing.
For once, someone with standing had chosen to use it before the harm was complete.
Lady Catherine sat as if the chair had offended her by being necessary.
Richard laid paper before her. Lord Matlock remained standing. Lady Matlock took the seat nearest Elizabeth, not close enough to presume, but close enough to make it impossible for Lady Catherine to look at Elizabeth again without being observed.
Outside, Pemberley’s summer went on heedlessly: carts, hay, men calling in the yard, the high fields moving under heat. The estate lived, though old connexions had poisoned it. Rosings, far away in Kent, had begun to feel suddenly near.
Elizabeth looked toward the window as if she had followed the same thought.
“She is at Rosings,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“Yes,” Fitzwilliam said.
“With Anne.”
He could not soften it. “Yes.”
Lady Catherine took up the pen.
It was late. It was always late.
But not, perhaps, too late.