Chapter Eight — Lady Ashbourne’s Terms
Lady Ashbourne’s private sitting room had been made, Elizabeth thought, not for comfort but for remembrance.
This became clearer to her now than it had upon the morning when the forced escritoire was first discovered.
Then, the eye had gone naturally to disorder: the splinter near the lock, the papers lying where papers did not belong, the small violence made larger by the very perfection of its surroundings.
Now, with the room restored as far as restoration could be managed, Elizabeth saw what the disturbance had interrupted.
It was a room arranged less for daily occupation than for the preservation of carefully governed grief.
The walls were papered in a pale dove colour that might once have been fashionable and now seemed chosen because it did not offend memory.
The furniture was elegant, spare and old, with little of the softness by which other women might have tried to console themselves.
A narrow sofa stood near the hearth, but its cushions were so perfectly placed that one could hardly imagine anyone sinking into them with fatigue.
A small work table held an embroidery frame, the pattern half-finished and perhaps long abandoned.
On the mantel stood two miniatures: one of Lord Ashbourne in youth, handsome in the formal manner of men painted before time has had the insolence to contradict admiration; the other of a woman with Lady Ashbourne’s eyes but a softer mouth, perhaps a sister, perhaps some beloved relative whose likeness had survived when her voice had not.
Beside the window, in a small cabinet with glass doors, were correspondence boxes, tied bundles of paper, a few sealed packets marked in a hand so exact it might have been Lady Ashbourne’s own, and one folded black ribbon lying upon a shallow tray.
Nothing appeared carelessly kept. Nothing appeared cherished in the ordinary sense.
The room had the atmosphere of a shrine maintained by a woman too disciplined to kneel.
And near the inner wall, beneath a portrait of Lord Ashbourne in later life, stood the escritoire.
The damaged lock had been made serviceable, but not wholly repaired.
A pale scar remained where the wood had splintered.
Elizabeth found herself looking at it while Lady Ashbourne stood near the hearth, tall by force of bearing rather than stature, her black silk falling about her in austere lines, her pearls resting at her throat like drops of cold light.
The rain had ceased during the night, but the morning remained overcast; the windows held a blurred reflection of the room, so that for a moment Elizabeth saw Lady Ashbourne twice—once in flesh, once in glass, both figures composed, both figures solitary.
“You are looking at the desk,” Lady Ashbourne said.
Elizabeth turned. “It is difficult not to.”
“It has become interesting?”
“It was always interesting, I think. The damage merely made that interest less impertinent.”
Lady Ashbourne’s mouth moved, not quite into amusement. “You have a talent for making impertinence sound like method.”
“I have found method more often forgiven.”
“Not always.”
“No. Not always.”
Lady Ashbourne motioned to a chair. Elizabeth sat. Her ladyship remained standing a moment longer, as if the conversation required height. Then she seated herself opposite with a deliberate grace that did not soften the severity of her expression.
“You have made yourself Mrs Harrow’s advocate,” she said.
Elizabeth had expected the subject and therefore did not answer quickly. “Mrs Harrow appears to need one.”
“Need is not always a sufficient qualification for advocacy.”
“No. But it is a persuasive beginning.”
“Advocacy is dangerous when one knows only fragments.”
Elizabeth glanced, almost despite herself, toward the correspondence boxes. “Fragments are sometimes all women are left with after men and families have finished arranging the official account.”
Lady Ashbourne’s eyes sharpened. “You speak as though arrangement were always dishonesty.”
“No. Only when it requires too many people to forget the same thing.”
For a moment Lady Ashbourne did not reply.
The clock on the mantel ticked with delicate regularity, each small sound seeming to assert that time, at least, remained orderly.
Elizabeth wondered how many conversations this room had heard and preserved by silence.
There were rooms, she thought, that kept confidences not because they were loyal but because no one had ever dared ask them.
“You are young,” Lady Ashbourne said at last.
“I have been told so with increasing disapproval.”
“You take it as criticism.”
“When it is offered as dismissal, yes.”
Lady Ashbourne looked toward the portrait above the escritoire.
Lord Ashbourne’s painted eyes gazed beyond them both, wise with the advantage of being dead and framed.
“There is a kind of courage that belongs to youth,” she said.
“Not because youth is braver, but because it has not yet seen all the forms in which consequence may arrive.”
“And there is a kind of caution that belongs to age,” Elizabeth replied, “not because age is wiser, but because it has learned to call fear experience.”
Lady Ashbourne turned back to her. “Do you intend to win every sentence?”
“No, ma’am. Only to prevent losing the important ones by politeness.”
The faintest breath of a laugh escaped Lady Ashbourne, though whether from amusement or disbelief Elizabeth could not tell.
“I begin to understand,” her ladyship said, “why Mr Darcy listens when you speak.”
Elizabeth felt colour rise, and disliked herself for it. “Mr Darcy has a great respect for evidence.”
“He has a great respect for you.”
That was said so plainly that Elizabeth could not answer it without either denying too much or admitting too much. Lady Ashbourne observed the pause, and for the first time since Elizabeth had entered the room, something like worldly amusement touched her face.
But it vanished quickly.
“We are not here to discuss Mr Darcy,” she said.
“No.”
“We are here because you believe a living woman is being sacrificed to protect a dead man’s respectability.”
Elizabeth did not look away. “Yes.”
The word stood between them, unsoftened.
Lady Ashbourne folded her hands in her lap.
“Sir Edmund Vale was my husband’s cousin, and my sister’s husband.
That connection made him family by law and by affection, though affection was frequently made to labour beyond its strength.
My sister loved him. My husband excused him.
I pitied him. Society admired him. Between those four indulgences, he was rarely obliged to face himself for long. ”
This, Elizabeth thought, was the first honest sentence Lady Ashbourne had spoken of Sir Edmund.
“He was charming?” she asked.
“Very.”
“Loved?”
“Yes.”
“Unreliable?”
“Painfully.”
“Expensive?”
Lady Ashbourne’s face tightened. “Ruinously.”
The word entered the room with more force than a cry would have done. Ruinously. Not imprudently. Not unfortunately. Ruinously.
“He borrowed money repeatedly,” Lady Ashbourne continued.
“From my husband. From friends. From tradesmen who could not afford his custom. From family settlements in forms no honourable man ought to have approached. He expected women to smooth what men had allowed. My sister concealed his embarrassments because she loved him. My husband paid because he disliked scandal. I advised moderation because I had not yet understood that moderation is of little use to a man determined to spend beyond both means and conscience.”
“And you?”
“I preserved peace.”
Lady Ashbourne said the words with such bitterness that Elizabeth did not need to add judgement.
“Was there a settlement?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yes.”
“For Portia’s mother?”
“Partly. There were several connected sums, though the matter was made deliberately difficult by old trusts and family arrangements. A portion had been intended for my sister’s female relations after her marriage—Portia’s mother among them—and another sum was held through a guardianship in which Margaret Ellery’s family had, through a distant connexion, an interest. It was not vast wealth.
That is perhaps why it was so easily stolen.
Great fortunes are watched by lawyers. Smaller protections for women may vanish beneath a gentleman’s need and be called confusion. ”
Elizabeth felt the quiet ferocity of that sentence. “And Sir Edmund took it?”
Lady Ashbourne looked toward the rain-dark window. “He used it. That was the word my husband preferred. Used. Borrowed. Anticipated. Redirected. Every dishonest act becomes more tolerable when one gives it an administrative name.”
“Did Lord Ashbourne know?”
The silence that followed was answer enough, but Lady Ashbourne gave more.
“He knew enough not to ask in the right direction.”
Elizabeth absorbed this. “And you?”
“I suspected. At first no more than that. Papers were delayed. Requests unanswered. My sister became anxious. Sir Edmund laughed too readily whenever money was mentioned. Then Margaret Ellery came to us.”
She rose as if sitting had become intolerable and moved toward the cabinet of correspondence boxes. For a moment Elizabeth thought she would open it. Instead she rested her hand upon the glass.
“Margaret was clever,” Lady Ashbourne said.
“Too clever for dependence. That is a dangerous condition in a young woman without fortune. If she had been rich, her intelligence would have been called distinction. Since she was poor, it became sharpness. If she had been married, her judgement might have been respected within proper limits. Since she was unmarried and reliant upon others, every perception she offered could be dismissed as ingratitude.”
“You liked her?”