Chapter Nine — The Shape of a Forgery #3
“How recently?” Lady Ashbourne asked.
“Impossible to say precisely. But the cut is clean. The leather has not settled around it. It was not done years ago.”
Mrs Harrow’s face had gone white.
“She did hide something,” Elizabeth said.
“And someone found it before we did,” Darcy replied.
The room seemed to darken, though the morning had not changed.
Bingley appeared at the doorway just then, halted by the sight of the whole party gathered around the music cabinet. “I beg your pardon. I was looking for Darcy.”
His gaze moved to Jane, then to the slit volume in Darcy’s hand. “Has something happened?”
“Another absence,” Elizabeth said. “Which is almost as informative as a discovery.”
Bingley frowned, then looked down the corridor behind him. “I saw Vale here earlier.”
Every head turned.
Bingley coloured. “I thought nothing of it. It was before luncheon yesterday, I believe. Or no—after the walk? He was leaving this corridor, near the music room. He said Lady Ashbourne had asked him to check whether the cabinet key was in its usual place. I did not think—”
“You had no reason to think it significant,” Darcy said.
“But it may be?”
“Yes.”
Bingley looked troubled, then steadied. “Then I shall try to remember more exactly.”
Elizabeth felt a rush of affection for him. Bingley’s usefulness lay not in suspicion, but in honest presence. People did not guard themselves around him because they mistook goodness for inattention. They were beginning, Elizabeth thought, to be much mistaken.
The search returned, for a time, to the archive room.
Lady Ashbourne wished to compare the missing green volume with household inventories and music lists, hoping perhaps to learn when it had last been repaired or opened.
The archive shelves were high, and several boxes had to be brought down from the upper tiers.
Mrs Clary sent for a steps, but Elizabeth, impatient and perhaps too determined to avoid feeling the weight of the morning, climbed the small ladder herself before anyone could forbid it.
“Miss Bennet,” Darcy said immediately.
“I am not made of porcelain, Mr Darcy.”
“No one who has heard you speak would suspect it.”
She glanced down at him, amused despite herself. “Then allow me the dignity of usefulness.”
“I have never wished to deny it.”
There was something in his voice that reminded her of their library quarrel, and she softened before she could stop herself. “Only the danger of ladders?”
“Among other things.”
She reached for the box, which was heavier than expected.
It shifted as she drew it forward, and for one sharp instant her foot slipped on the narrow step.
She did not fall. Darcy’s hands closed around her waist before she could do more than gasp, steadying her with a firmness as swift as it was proper.
The box thudded against the shelf and stilled.
For a moment, Elizabeth was entirely aware of him.
The contact lasted no longer than necessity required. Darcy released her almost at once, stepped back, and held out his hand not to take hers, but to receive the box. His face had lost a little colour.
“Allow me,” he said.
Elizabeth handed it down, then descended with more care than she had climbed. Her pulse had become ridiculous. She did not thank him immediately because gratitude, under such circumstances, seemed too formal for what had passed and too revealing for what had not.
When she reached the floor, she said lightly, “You see? I am restored to safety and only moderately humbled.”
Darcy did not answer lightly. “You might have fallen.”
“Many people might do many things. If we organised life around every possible mishap, no one would ever reach the upper shelves.”
“I have seen too often how quickly courage becomes danger when others depend upon silence.”
The words were quiet, meant for her alone. They struck more deeply than she wished.
She looked down at the dust upon her glove, then back at him. “I do not mistake your concern for disrespect.”
His expression changed.
“I am grateful,” he said.
“Though not comforted?”
“No.” His voice was low. “Not comforted.”
The moment held, proper in posture and improper in feeling. Across the room, Jane was examining a ledger with Mrs Gardiner. Lady Ashbourne spoke to Mrs Clary. No one appeared to notice. Elizabeth was relieved and absurdly disappointed.
She turned back to the opened box. “Then let us see whether your alarm has been rewarded.”
It had.
The box contained estate ledgers from the period surrounding Sir Edmund’s final illness.
Most were dull, exact and heavy with columns that would have satisfied any steward.
Darcy turned pages with care, comparing dates Lady Ashbourne supplied.
Portia’s mother’s name appeared once, then not again.
A memorandum referenced a settlement transfer.
Another page noted “temporary accommodation of Vale obligations pending reimbursement.” Elizabeth did not like the sound of that phrase.
It had the odour of theft bathed and dressed for dinner.
Then Darcy stopped.
Between two pages, the binding showed a gap.
A page had been removed.
Not torn out in the old way, softened by time and wear. Removed recently enough that the paper edge within the binding was pale, raw, and clean against the aged pages around it.
Lady Ashbourne stared at it.
“What page?” Elizabeth asked.
Darcy checked the numbering. “The missing page would have covered the quarter in which Margaret Ellery was dismissed and Sir Edmund’s largest debts were reportedly settled.”
No one spoke.
Felix, who had entered quietly during the examination—too quietly, Elizabeth thought—came to the table with an expression of shocked concern. “A page missing? From an old ledger?”
Darcy did not look at him. “Yes.”
Felix leaned nearer. “Surely such damage may have occurred years ago. These books have been moved, stored, neglected—”
Elizabeth looked at the torn edge.
“No,” she said.
Felix turned to her. “No?”
“The tear is fresh.”
Darcy’s eyes lifted to hers. He had seen it too.
Felix smiled faintly, almost pityingly. “Miss Elizabeth, old paper may appear deceptive.”
“Indeed,” she said. “We have lately had ample proof of that.”
The smile thinned.
Lady Ashbourne reached out and touched the ledger, not the missing place but the page before it, as if she might steady the past by laying one hand upon what remained.
“The page,” Darcy said quietly, “would have shown the movement of funds at precisely the time someone now wishes us to misunderstand.”
Elizabeth looked from the fresh tear to the slit music volume, from the altered letter to Lady Ashbourne’s stricken face, from Felix’s polished concern to Jane’s pale compassion.
The shape of the forgery was no longer confined to one letter.
It had been made from paper, ink, fear, silence, music, money and reputation. It had taken genuine fragments of the past and rearranged them into present danger. It had cut away what proved inconvenient and placed what remained where society would do the rest.
And somewhere in Silvermere, someone had torn out the truth just before they could read it.