Chapter Three — The Locked Escritoire #4
The company withdrew because there was nothing else permitted.
Yet withdrawal did not restore ease. It carried disturbance into every adjoining room.
Mrs Lyndhurst immediately required tea. Miss Trent asked in a voice scarcely above breath whether she might retire to fetch her shawl.
Mrs Harrow said nothing, but after a few moments excused herself under the pretence of a headache.
Elizabeth watched her go toward the music room rather than the stairs.
She waited. Patience, though not always natural to her, had become more useful than haste in houses where everyone was watched.
Mrs Lyndhurst spoke anxiously of thieves.
Colonel Avery said again that thieves took silver.
Felix attempted to reassure everyone that the household would soon discover the explanation.
Lady Ashbourne remained in her sitting room with Mrs Clary.
Darcy stood near the window, apparently looking out, though Elizabeth suspected he saw very little of the lake.
After a decent interval, Elizabeth slipped away.
The music room was empty except for Mrs Harrow.
She stood beside the pianoforte, one hand resting upon the closed lid, her face turned away from the door.
The room looked different in morning light.
Less golden, more exact. The shelves of music seemed orderly but old; the harp in the corner faintly melancholy; the escritoire visible through the open adjoining doors like a thought no one had managed to exclude.
From here, Elizabeth could see the threshold of Lady Ashbourne’s sitting room, but not the desk itself.
A useful room, she thought, for seeing without being seen.
Mrs Harrow turned when she heard her. Her expression altered briefly—not alarm, but the reflexive calculation of a woman who had learned that any approach might carry a purpose.
“Forgive me,” Elizabeth said. “I did not mean to intrude.”
“People rarely mean to intrude,” Mrs Harrow replied. “It happens all the same.”
The answer was not rude. It was weary. Elizabeth liked her better for it.
“Then I shall make my intrusion brief, unless you prefer solitude.”
Mrs Harrow looked at her for a moment. “Solitude is sometimes only a room in which one’s thoughts become louder. I am not certain I prefer it.”
Elizabeth came a little farther in. “You were distressed.”
“I believe everyone was distressed.”
“Not in the same manner.”
A faint, sad amusement touched Mrs Harrow’s mouth. “You observe closely, Miss Bennet.”
“I have been accused of it.”
“And do you deny the charge?”
“No. Only the implication that it is impolite.”
Mrs Harrow looked down at her hand upon the pianoforte. “In some houses, observation is treated as impoliteness because it comes too near truth.”
Elizabeth waited. She had learned that questions, in the first minutes of confidence, often frightened more than they opened.
After a pause, Mrs Harrow said, “I do not know what letters have been taken.”
“I did not suppose you did.”
“Did you not?”
“No.”
Mrs Harrow looked at her sharply then, as if trying to determine whether generosity had been offered or trap laid. “That is kind.”
“It may be premature rather than kind.”
This drew a real, though very small, smile. “You are honest.”
“When safe.”
“And when unsafe?”
“More selectively honest.”
Mrs Harrow’s smile faded. She looked toward the adjoining room. “There are letters in many houses that ought never to have been written. There are others that ought never to have been kept. And some that were kept only because destroying them would have been another form of betrayal.”
Elizabeth felt the weight beneath the words. “Do you think Lady Ashbourne’s missing letters are of that kind?”
“I do not know.”
“But you fear it.”
Mrs Harrow’s hand tightened upon the edge of the pianoforte. “Fear is perhaps too strong a word.”
“What word would you choose?”
She considered. “Recognition.”
The answer settled between them.
Elizabeth spoke gently. “Mrs Harrow, have you enemies?”
Mrs Harrow’s gaze returned to her face. There was no melodrama in it, no theatrical suffering, no appeal for sympathy. Only a guarded dignity, worn thin by old experience.
“Enemies,” she said, “sounds very grand. I have no fortune worth stealing, no beauty worth envying, no power worth opposing.”
“Those are not the only reasons people are disliked.”
“No.” She looked again toward the escritoire beyond the room. “There are those who prefer me absent.”
“From Silvermere?”
“From any place where certain memories might become inconvenient.”
Elizabeth did not press. It cost Mrs Harrow something to say even this much, and Elizabeth respected the cost. “I understand.”
“I doubt it.”
“Perhaps not fully. But enough to know that absence is often demanded of women when explanation would trouble men.”
Mrs Harrow looked at her then with something like surprise, and for the first time the careful mask of her face loosened. “You speak as if you have seen it.”
“I have seen variations.”
“Then you know that staying is not always courage. Sometimes it is only having nowhere else one can bear to go.”
Before Elizabeth could answer, footsteps sounded in the corridor. Mrs Harrow’s expression closed at once. Mrs Lyndhurst appeared at the door with Miss Trent behind her.
“My dear Mrs Harrow,” she cried softly, “there you are. We have been quite anxious. Your headache, I fear?”
“It is improved, thank you.”
“Oh, I am relieved. Such a morning! One’s nerves are not always equal to unexpected disturbances, especially where old papers are concerned. Miss Trent, do remind me later to look through my own writing desk. One cannot be too careful.”
Miss Trent’s eyes went to Mrs Harrow for a fleeting instant, and Elizabeth could not decide whether the look contained fear, pity or warning. Perhaps all three.
Mrs Harrow inclined her head. “Indeed.”
The moment was broken. Elizabeth left soon after, carrying more questions than answers.
She found Portia Vale in the corridor outside the library, standing before a small cabinet of porcelain with the air of someone resisting the urge to break it. The sprig of lilac from the garden had been tucked into her belt. She looked at Elizabeth without surprise.
“You have been speaking to Celia.”
“Mrs Harrow,” Elizabeth said carefully.
“Celia, to those who knew her before everyone learned to lower their voices around her name.”
Elizabeth paused. “You know her well?”
“No. I know of her. In families, knowing of someone is often more dangerous than knowing them.”
“That sounds like experience.”
Portia gave a short laugh. “It is chiefly poverty. One learns a great deal by not being important enough for people to be cautious before speaking.”
Elizabeth stood beside her, both of them ostensibly admiring a porcelain shepherdess whose expression of painted innocence seemed ill-suited to the conversation.
“Mrs Harrow was connected to your family?” Elizabeth asked.
“To my uncle Edmund. Felix’s father.”
“The gentleman in the gallery.”
“The handsome one who looks as if he died regretted by everyone and owing nothing to anyone.”
Elizabeth glanced at her. “And did he?”
“Die regretted? Yes. Owing nothing? Certainly not.”
Portia’s mouth tightened. “Sir Edmund died with many accounts unsettled and many people eager to settle them in the most convenient way. That generally means the truth was asked to leave by the servants’ entrance.”
Elizabeth felt interest sharpen into attention. “Was Mrs Harrow one of those people?”
Portia looked toward the library door, then back. “Celia Harrow was one of the few who lost more by silence than speech.”
“That is a curious phrase.”
“It is a curious family.”
“Does Mr Felix Vale share your opinion?”
“Felix shares whatever opinion is most useful at the time. It is one of his talents.”
Elizabeth smiled slightly. “You do not admire your cousin.”
“I admire him exceedingly. One should always admire efficient machinery. One need not embrace it.”
Before Elizabeth could ask more, Felix himself appeared at the far end of the corridor. Portia’s face changed—not with fear, but with irritation sharpened by caution. She turned at once toward the porcelain cabinet and lifted one shepherdess as though she had been considering it all along.
“Portia,” Felix said, approaching, “my aunt has been asking for you.”
“How alarming. Did she say why?”
“She wishes to know whether you have written to Mrs Bellamy about the subscription.”
“Then my aunt must be desperate indeed, if she trusts me with benevolence.”
Felix’s smile did not alter. “Your handwriting is better than your manners. We must employ your strengths where we find them.”
Portia set the porcelain figure down with slightly more force than necessary. “And you, Felix, are a model of being employed everywhere.”
He laughed, but there was a warning in it, however well wrapped. “Miss Elizabeth will think us a quarrelsome family.”
“Miss Elizabeth thinks,” Elizabeth said, “that families who never quarrel are more alarming.”
Felix looked at her with renewed interest. “You continue determined not to be reassured.”
“I find reassurance more persuasive when not so frequently offered.”
“Then Silvermere has failed you today.”
“On the contrary. It has become more instructive.”
Portia made a sound suspiciously like laughter. Felix bowed, still smiling, and escorted his cousin away.
Elizabeth remained a moment in the corridor.
The house around her seemed unchanged: polished floors, pale walls, paintings, flowers, silence.
Yet something had shifted. The locked escritoire had broken more than a brass fitting.
It had disturbed the agreement by which everyone at Silvermere pretended not to notice what they noticed too well.
Darcy found her there.
“You have discovered something,” he said.
She turned. “You begin abruptly, Mr Darcy.”
“You looked as if a polite beginning would waste time.”
“That is either a compliment to my expression or an insult to your manners.”
“Perhaps both.”