Chapter Five — Mrs Harrow’s Silence #3
Jane looked up. He was not rescuing her loudly. He was offering escape without spectacle.
“I should like that,” she said.
Mrs Gardiner smiled. “By all means. I shall join you presently.”
Bingley offered Jane his arm. She took it. They left the room not as lovers fleeing observation, but as a gentleman and lady taking air. It was perfectly proper. It was also, Jane understood, deeply kind.
Darcy, who had been with Lady Ashbourne and Felix in the library, encountered Bingley later near the west corridor, after Jane had returned to Mrs Gardiner and Bingley’s composure had begun to give way beneath the weight of feeling restrained.
“Darcy,” Bingley said, “I wish I could simply ask her and be done with all this.”
Darcy looked at him. “Ask whom?”
Bingley gave him a look of exasperation so unlike his usual good humour that Darcy’s mouth almost softened. “Do not be obtuse. It does not become you.”
“No. I imagine it would be wasted effort.”
Bingley paced several steps, stopped, and lowered his voice.
“Jane is being pressed on every side. Kindly pressed, which is almost worse. Mrs Lyndhurst speaks as if affection were a public road and everyone had a right to travel over it. Lady Ashbourne watches. Everyone watches. And now this business with Mrs Harrow—this old scandal—this letter. I can see Jane being made uneasy by it all, and I want only to take her away from it. To say what I ought to have said long ago, to make everything certain.”
Darcy was silent for a moment. “Would certainty remove her uneasiness, or only yours?”
Bingley stopped.
It was not sharply said. That made the question more difficult to resent.
“I hope both,” he said at last.
“Marriage should not be used as rescue unless the lady has asked to be rescued.”
Bingley looked at him, chastened but not offended. “I know. Or I am learning it. She stopped me yesterday.”
Darcy’s gaze moved to him.
“Not unkindly,” Bingley said at once. “No, not unkindly at all. She said some things were too precious to be hurried by opportunity.”
“She was right.”
“Yes. She usually is.” Bingley drew a breath, then gave a rueful smile. “It is a difficult thing, Darcy, to love a woman enough to want certainty and then discover that love requires waiting because her peace matters more than one’s relief.”
Darcy looked toward the window at the end of the corridor. Beyond it, the lake shone beneath a pale sky. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I imagine it is.”
Bingley, absorbed in his own feeling, did not hear all that lay beneath the reply. Darcy did.
Meanwhile, Felix became more present everywhere.
He was in the hall when Mrs Clary passed with a list of household tasks, and he paused to ask whether the servants had been too unsettled by the previous day’s discovery.
He was in the library when Lady Ashbourne wished for a particular key, and though she found it herself, he knew where it ought to have been.
He was in the drawing room when Mrs Lyndhurst wondered whether any outsider could have approached the music room windows.
He suggested that perhaps the thief’s object had not been Mrs Harrow at all, but Lady Ashbourne—some old malice against the house, some servant dismissed years before, some village grievance, some foolish attempt to alarm a widow known for preserving correspondence.
Each possibility was reasonable enough in isolation.
Together, Elizabeth saw, they formed a mist.
He was always ready with an alternative explanation just before a sharper question might be asked.
He regretted Mrs Harrow’s distress but warned against assuming the letter had been altered.
He deplored speculation but supplied enough material to keep it active.
He hoped Lady Ashbourne would not overtax herself, and by hoping it aloud reminded everyone that she was a woman under strain.
He spoke of his father with touching regret, of old family stories with reluctance, of Silvermere’s peace with devotion.
He appeared helpful from every angle. Elizabeth began to think that was precisely the difficulty.
Innocence, in her experience, did not usually require such perfect positioning.
Portia Vale found her in the afternoon near the lower end of the gallery, where Elizabeth had paused again before Sir Edmund’s portrait.
“You stare at him as if he might answer,” Portia said.
Elizabeth turned. “Would he?”
“Only if the answer were charming and false.”
“That is useful information.”
“It is family information. Less respected, but generally more accurate.”
Portia came to stand beside her. The portrait, in afternoon light, looked younger than it had before. Sir Edmund Vale appeared almost gentle if one did not look too long at the mouth.
“Your uncle was much admired,” Elizabeth said.
“Men who owe money often are, until the bills come due.”
“And did his?”
“Some. Not all. That is the art of dying at the proper moment.”
Elizabeth looked at her. “You speak very plainly of him.”
“I was not old enough to be charmed by him and not rich enough to be asked to forgive him.”
That, Elizabeth thought, was perhaps the clearest social position from which to see accurately.
“Mrs Harrow told me Margaret Ellery discovered something regarding a settlement,” she said.
Portia’s expression changed. Not surprise. Confirmation.
“So Celia has begun speaking.”
“A little.”
“Good. Though speaking late is punished almost as much as speaking early.”
“What do you know of it?”
Portia folded her arms. “Only pieces. My mother was meant to have money settled upon her. Not a fortune, but enough. It never came. There were explanations—investments, delays, an error in the papers, Sir Edmund’s illness, Lord Ashbourne’s trustees, some promise that all would be corrected.
Nothing was corrected. My mother died dependent.
Felix inherited confidence. I inherited excellent reasons not to trust family arrangements. ”
“And Margaret Ellery?”
“She was in the household when certain papers went missing. Then she went missing, too. A very efficient tidying of difficulties.”
Elizabeth looked at the portrait again. “You think Sir Edmund diverted the money.”
“I think Sir Edmund spent what he could reach. I think others decided it was easier to call a poor woman ambitious than a dead gentleman dishonest. I think Felix knows more than he says and less than he fears. And I think Lady Ashbourne has spent years mistaking family dignity for moral repair.”
“That is a great deal of thought.”
“I have had little else to inherit.”
Elizabeth liked her very much in that moment.
Portia lowered her voice. “Felix has been uneasy for weeks. Letters from a solicitor. Questions about old accounts. A legal review, perhaps. I do not know. But he has watched Celia since she arrived as if she were not a guest but a document he had not yet found a way to burn.”
Elizabeth felt the phrase settle. “Does Lady Ashbourne know?”
“Lady Ashbourne knows everything in the manner most convenient to her conscience.”
Before Elizabeth could answer, footsteps sounded, and Portia stepped back as if the conversation had never occurred. Darcy appeared from the library corridor, carrying a folded paper. Portia nodded to him and left without explanation.
Darcy watched her go. “Miss Vale has been informative.”
“Exceedingly.”
“Willingly?”
“Not exactly. She speaks as if silence offends her, but trust alarms her.”
Darcy considered this. “A reasonable position in some families.”
“You have learned something?”
“A little.” He glanced toward the library door.
“Lady Ashbourne allowed me to compare the paper from the music-room letter with several older pieces from the same period. The stock is consistent with her late husband’s and Sir Edmund’s correspondence.
The hand resembles Sir Edmund’s, but I am not satisfied. ”
“With the resemblance?”
“With the completeness of it.”
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “How Darcy-like.”
He looked at her.
“To distrust completeness,” she explained.
“In this case, yes. The letter appears too useful. Its age gives it authority; its phrasing directs suspicion; its discovery ensured an audience.”
“And yet?”
“And yet Lady Ashbourne is guarded. She says the stolen letters came from a period surrounding her husband’s final illness and Sir Edmund Vale’s death. She does not say why she kept them.”
“Family affection?”
“Perhaps.”
“Family fear?”
“Perhaps.”
“There is that word again.”
“It remains useful.”
Elizabeth walked slowly beside him along the gallery. “Lady Ashbourne knows more than she says.”
“Yes.”
“But she may not know the use to which her silence is now being put.”
Darcy’s gaze moved toward Sir Edmund’s portrait. “That is possible. Silence, once established, is rarely obedient to its first purpose.”