XV The Devil She Did Not Know #3
“No exceptions,” Elizabeth read aloud. She set the document on the table. “He will never allow me to see his face?”
“That is correct.”
“Why?” The word came out flat and hard. “What injury requires that his wife never see him? Not in daylight, not by candlelight — never, under any circumstances?”
“I am not at liberty to say.”
“That is no answer.”
“No,” Mr Erskine agreed. “My apologies.”
Mrs Bennet had finally gone quiet at the far end of the room. Jane was looking at Elizabeth with an expression that was impossible to read.
Elizabeth turned back to the document and read on, and with each line the shape of what was being proposed grew clearer and more alarming — not in the manner of a trap being sprung, but in the manner of a room whose proportions one only gradually understands to be wrong.
“The marriage is not to take place under English law,” she said.
“Under Scottish law,” Mr Erskine confirmed. “An irregular marriage, valid by declaration of both parties before a solicitor. Entirely binding.”
“Scottish law.” Elizabeth turned to her uncle. “I am not familiar enough with Scottish law to know what protections it affords a wife.”
“It affords considerable protection,” Mr Erskine said. “The settlement is held independently in trust. It cannot be touched by the baron or by any future creditor of his. It is yours from the moment the marriage is concluded.”
He paused, then went on more slowly. “There is a further point which I am obliged to explain, as it bears on the instrument itself. Under Scots law, this contract is between the two of you. Your uncle is not a party to it. He does not sign on your behalf. The baron contracts with you directly, and your signature is the instrument by which the marriage and the settlement take effect. No third party may give or withhold consent on your behalf. That is the law of Scotland. The baron has caused this document to be drawn under it.”
Elizabeth did not answer at once.
Her uncle had signed for her twice in the last month.
Her father had been dead two months, and she had been, in those two months, a ward, a sister, a daughter, a dependant, a body to be arranged.
This document did not treat her as any of those things.
This document treated her as a person who could, alone, bind herself to something for the rest of her life.
“And if he mistreats me? Have I any recourse under the law?”
“Should either party wish to dissolve the arrangement, a deed of separation may be drawn. At that point, the settlement remains yours in full, and you are free to return to England.” Mr Erskine folded his hands once before continuing.
“A deed of separation is a private instrument. It does not require a court. It requires only that both parties sign.”
“And if he will not sign?”
“That is a question I cannot answer for him. I can tell you that the deed of separation is written into the terms of the marriage at his own instruction. He placed it there, specifying that you may dissolve the agreement after one year.”
He placed it there. A man who had structured his own marriage contract to give his wife a door out. What sort of man would do that?
“Is he dangerous?”
“Miss Bennet,” Mr Erskine said, “I have represented this client for some months. Though I have not met him in person, I have found him, on paper, to be a man of complete integrity and considerable intelligence. I would not be in this room if I had any reason to doubt his character. I cannot tell you more than that.”
“You cannot, or you will not?”
“Both, in this instance.”
A man she had never seen. A house she had never heard of, on a coast she could not picture. Darkness. Alone. Scotland. No family, no face, no certainty of anything except the figures on the page and the word of a Scottish solicitor she had met an hour ago.
She looked up. Jane sat beside her, hands folded, back straight, as she had sat throughout.
Her eyes were swollen. Her face had gone the colour of paper.
Her knuckles, where her hands were clasped, were white.
She met Elizabeth’s gaze. Neither of them spoke.
Elizabeth read everything she needed to read in Jane’s face — the hours it had taken to arrange it, and how little more of them Jane had.
Ten thousand pounds. No Blackwood for Jane. A door that had not existed this morning.
She turned to her uncle, who looked as if he were trying very hard not to influence a decision that was not his to make.
She looked back at the document.
This man, whoever he was, might be just as bad as Sibley. He might be worse in ways she could not yet imagine. That was unknown.
Sibley was not unknown. Sibley’s face when the glass broke. His mother saying one learns to manage it with thirty years of practice and no regret. The next thirty years from the inside of that sentence, and her alone bearing it — not Jane, not her mother, not anyone else.
Better the devil she did not know.
She picked up the pen and signed her name.
“When,” she asked Mr Erskine, “am I expected to depart?”