A Door I Have Opened
XXVI
She had set him up.
He saw it now — saw it as a thing already done, already finished, the move and counter-move laid out before him like a hand of cards he had played the night before without knowing the deal.
Her opening request had been a feint. She had asked the impossible, knowing he would refuse it and knowing the refusal would soften him.
Are you not curious about me? — that had been the gambit.
He had given her the chivalrous answer because it was the only answer he had, and she had heard everything inside it, including the part where the seeing of her was already arranged in his head.
Then the lesser question, which was the question she had been working towards all along. She had timed her please for the moment he would have least defence against it.
He had walked into all of it.
And the worst of it — the part that had kept him at the table since two — was that he had taken her hands and guided them up himself.
He had agreed, with everything he had, to be touched.
And when she had thanked him for the book, his face had betrayed him as if he had been waiting all those weeks for the chance to be thanked.
He had gone moonish under her hands, and she had felt every flicker of feeling he had offered.
He should have been sorry.
He was not. He was sorry that he had risen and fled and left her sitting in the dark with a face she could still feel on her hands and no explanation.
That he was sorry for. The pleasure in being caught at being pleased — no.
He had been hidden for months. He had been visible for one half of one breath, and his body had gone towards it like a creature towards water.
He had underestimated her in Hertfordshire.
He had underestimated her in Kent. He had imagined — he could see now how absurd it was — that this arrangement would be a structure he had built and would hold.
She had walked into it and begun reading him as if he were a book he had imperfectly hidden on a high shelf.
And the only reason she did not have more of him already was that she, for some reason, was biding her time.
He was going to have to think about what to give her, because he could no longer pretend to be in charge of what she took.
Angus brought the Aberdeen packet at mid-morning. Darcy recognised Webb’s hand on the outer fold and broke the seal at the table with the candle still burning from the night before.
He read it once. The blood was loud in his ears before he reached the third line.
I am obliged to report a development I should have anticipated.
The name of Sibley has been in circulation.
The broken engagement, the last-minute intervention, Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s disappearance from London.
The colonel has heard it. I do not yet know the channel, though Sibley has been vocal about his losses and not particular about his audience.
He has said Miss Bennet’s name in several clubs and made no effort to be discreet about his grievance.
Blackwood’s broken engagement has also circulated, which means both sisters feature in the same story, and the colonel is not a man who misses that sort of coincidence.
He came to the Bermondsey address again on Thursday.
He did not ask anything. He sat down, which he has not done on either previous visit, and he said he knew I had been involved in the arrangements surrounding Mr Darcy’s death.
He knew the staged accident was not an accident.
He knew someone had intervened in the Bennet sisters’ situation and that the intervention had originated with me or through me.
He said he did not care what I told him or did not tell him.
He had enough to proceed on his own, and he would do so unless I gave him a reason not to.
He said this without anger, which I found more persuasive than anger would have been.
I told him I could not help him. He said he understood, stood up, and left. He did not thank me.
He will proceed. He has not found the Bennet family. I am watching for any approach to them. But he has the mechanism, and he will not stop.
I await your instruction.
Richard had the shape of it. He had always been going to have the shape of it; it had been a matter of when, and the when was the second week of October.
Elizabeth was in the room below this one with the dog and the books and no idea that her husband’s cousin was in London assembling the evidence of where she was.
He did not know where the Bennets were — the Gracechurch Street address had been shut up since July when Richard encountered Miss Elizabeth Bennet on the steps.
He did not know how Richard had found her in July.
He knew only that Richard had found her, which meant Richard had some prior knowledge of her connections in London, or some thread Darcy could not trace from here.
A man of Gardiner’s former situation would not be impossible to find.
Richard was not a man who found things impossible.
Richard had already decided to go around Webb rather than through him. He did not need Webb. He needed the Bennets, and nothing Webb could do would prevent Richard from finding them.
Which meant the question was not whether Richard would arrive at Auchengray but when, and whether Darcy would have had any warning before he did.
He had three days, perhaps five, before the letter reached Webb. Another three before any reply could come back with Webb’s assessment. Ten days, perhaps, before Richard’s next move would be legible. Possibly less.
He picked up the pen.
Bring him in. Give him whatever from your papers will make him useful in London. Tell him I am alive. Tell him Sterling is the man behind the manifests and that the case will not survive once the clerk is recovered. Tell him I am sorry I could not say it sooner.
Tell him on no account is he to come north.
Whatever he believes about my whereabouts, he is to go on as though he believes it less.
He would be followed; that is the entire point of his being inside the line of enquiry rather than outside it.
I will send for him in due course. Until then, he is in London, where he is most use to me.
I would rather have him inside a door I have opened than at one he has put his shoulder to.