Chapter Ten — A Reputation Prepared #2
He found Elizabeth in the gallery after breakfast, where she had gone under pretence of admiring the portraits and in truth because she needed a room longer than a breath.
“It is preparation,” he said.
She turned. “Good morning to you also, Mr Darcy.”
He bowed slightly. “Forgive me. Good morning. It is preparation.”
“Yes.”
“Not accidental gossip.”
“No. It is too well timed.”
Darcy stood beside her before Sir Edmund Vale’s portrait. The painted gentleman looked down with the same handsome uselessness as before, a face made for pardon rather than confession.
“Before testimony can be discredited in court,” Darcy said, “the witness is discredited in reputation.”
Elizabeth looked at him. “You think that is what is being done?”
“Yes. Mrs Harrow is not merely being embarrassed. She is being made unusable.”
“Unusable,” Elizabeth repeated, hating the accuracy of it.
“If she can speak to Margaret’s letters, to Sir Edmund’s accounts, to the vanished papers, her testimony matters. If she is first made jealous, difficult, manipulative, dishonest, then anything she says may be dismissed as self-defence.”
“And if Jane stands with her, Jane’s judgement becomes sentimental.”
“Yes.”
“And if I stand with her, mine becomes meddling.”
Darcy’s expression changed, but he did not contradict her.
Elizabeth smiled without amusement. “You warned me of that.”
“I wish I had been wrong.”
“So do I. It would have been a pleasant novelty for you.”
The faintest smile crossed his face and vanished. “Felix may not be acting alone.”
“No. But he benefits most visibly.”
“Perhaps.”
“You are cautious still.”
“Proof is not yet complete.”
“Nor is the campaign against her, I fear.”
They both looked toward the portrait. Sir Edmund’s painted hand rested upon a book, though Elizabeth doubted he had ever been as attentive to ledgers as he should have been.
Darcy said, “I have written to my solicitor in town, and to an acquaintance who knows Mr Grimsby’s practice. If Felix has been corresponding about the Vale estate, there may be confirmation.”
“How soon?”
“Not soon enough.”
“That is usually when villainy becomes most energetic.”
“Yes.”
The gallery door opened, and Felix entered. Whether by accident or design, Elizabeth was no longer inclined to grant him accidents freely.
“Mr Darcy, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, with his usual pleasantness. “Admiring my father?”
“Considering him,” Elizabeth said.
“A more dangerous occupation, perhaps.”
“That depends upon the subject.”
Felix came to stand a few paces away, looking up at the portrait with an expression of filial melancholy so well composed it ought to have been framed beside it. “He was much loved.”
“So we have heard,” Darcy said.
Felix’s smile remained. “And much criticised, I fear. The loved dead are rarely safe from the disappointed living.”
“Nor are the injured living safe from the convenient dead,” Elizabeth said.
His eyes moved to her, and for a moment the polish thinned.
“You have a talent, Miss Elizabeth, for making yourself necessary in other people’s misfortunes.”
The words were almost a compliment. Almost an insult. Their delicacy did not improve them.
Elizabeth held his gaze. “Misfortunes often become clearer when those who profit by them are most eager to call enquiry intrusive.”
Darcy said nothing, but his stillness beside her was support enough.
Felix’s smile returned fully. “Then I must hope clarity proves as kind as it is clever.”
“Kindness is not always the first duty of clarity.”
“No,” Felix said softly. “I begin to see that.”
He bowed and left them.
Only when the door closed did Elizabeth release the breath she had not realised she held.
“He suspects you are close,” Darcy said.
“He suspects I am inconvenient.”
“In some matters, the distinction is small.”
She glanced at him. “That was almost praise.”
“It was entirely praise.”
She looked away before warmth could rise too visibly in her face. “Then pray do not make a habit of such clarity. It may spoil me.”
Darcy’s answer was quiet. “I doubt that.”
Silvermere continued through the morning in pieces.
Lady Ashbourne’s authority remained, but it no longer joined the rooms together as it had done upon their arrival.
Guests spoke in corners. Doors were left half closed and then opened too quickly when footsteps passed.
Servants moved with the nervous care of those who knew a household secret had become a guest secret, and that guest secrets had a way of becoming servant accusations if not handled with sufficient deference.
The house, once so perfectly arranged, had fractured into smaller theatres.
Elizabeth encountered Mrs Lyndhurst near the window of the drawing room, where that lady was engaged in folding a letter which, Elizabeth suspected, had been written with more speed than discretion.
“You have been busy, Mrs Lyndhurst.”
“My dear Miss Elizabeth, not busy. Only answering a friend. These unsettled mornings make one cling to one’s correspondents.”
“Do they?”
“Surely you find it so.”
“I find correspondents very useful when one wishes a rumour to possess legs.”
Mrs Lyndhurst looked offended. “I beg your pardon?”
“Only that it is remarkable how many old rumours should revive at precisely the moment old accounts are under consideration.”
“I repeat nothing unkind.”
“No slander in England travels faster than that which begins with reluctance.”
Mrs Lyndhurst drew herself up. “You are very severe.”
“Only with efficient systems.”
“I do not know what you mean.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Then I envy you the comfort.”
Mrs Lyndhurst’s colour rose. “You imply that I have injured Mrs Harrow.”
“I imply that injury often travels through people who assure themselves they carry only concern.”
“That is unjust.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps not.”
Elizabeth left her before Mrs Lyndhurst could decide whether to be wounded, indignant or frightened. It was not a wholly charitable manoeuvre, but Elizabeth was in no mood to furnish comfortable exits for those who had made cruelty comfortable.
She found Jane and Mrs Harrow in the morning room.
The room had become, by silent agreement, the place where vulnerable truths were least likely to be interrupted by arrangement.
Rain-washed light lay softly upon the faded curtains.
Mrs Harrow stood near the hearth, though no fire burned there.
Jane sat forward in her chair, her face unusually earnest.
“I should go,” Mrs Harrow said.
Jane shook her head. “No.”
“My presence injures Lady Ashbourne. It exposes you to unpleasant notice. It distresses the household. If I leave quietly, perhaps—”
“Nothing will be quieter if you leave,” Jane said.
Mrs Harrow looked at her.
Jane’s hands were folded, but her voice held a firmness Elizabeth had come to recognise with admiration. “If you go, they will say you fled because the accusations were true.”
“And if I stay, they will say I defy propriety.”
“Perhaps.” Jane rose. “But perhaps defiance is sometimes only the name society gives to a woman who remains where she has a right to stand.”
Mrs Harrow stared at her.
Elizabeth, in the doorway, did not move. She had not known Jane had that sentence in her, and yet, now she had said it, Elizabeth could not imagine it belonging to anyone else. It had Jane’s gentleness and Jane’s growing strength, a courage that did not strike but refused to yield.
Mrs Harrow’s face changed. For a moment, she looked very young. “Miss Bennet, why are you kind to me?”
Jane answered simply. “Because I believe you have been harmed.”
“You do not know that I am innocent of every wrong.”
“No.”
“Then?”
“I do not need you to have lived perfectly in order to know you should not be destroyed falsely.”
Mrs Harrow turned away quickly, but not before Elizabeth saw tears come into her eyes.
Bingley had come quietly behind Elizabeth and heard enough.
His expression, when she glanced at him, was no longer merely loving.
It was reverent. He had admired Jane’s beauty, cherished her gentleness, regretted losing her, hoped to win her; but now he seemed to understand something more profound.
Jane’s goodness was not softness. It was principle with a gentle voice.
Elizabeth moved away before she intruded further, and Bingley, after a moment, followed Jane into the room only when Mrs Harrow had recovered enough to receive company.
Later, in the corridor near the west door, Bingley found Jane alone.
“I heard what you said,” he began.
Jane blushed. “I did not know anyone was listening.”
“I am sorry. I did not mean—”
“No. It is well.”
He looked at her with feeling so open and disciplined that the discipline itself became touching. “I once thought goodness meant thinking well of everyone.”
Jane smiled sadly. “So did I.”
“And now?”
“Now I think goodness must include the courage to see harm clearly. Otherwise it becomes only a refusal to trouble oneself.”
Bingley stood silent, moved beyond easy speech. “You are better than I knew.”
Jane looked down. “No.”
“Yes.” He took a breath, and for one dangerous instant she knew what he wished to say. His whole heart seemed to rise toward the words.
But he stopped.
They were in a corridor. Footsteps sounded at the far end. Silvermere’s walls had ears, eyes, interpretations. Jane lifted her gaze to him, and he smiled—not with disappointment, but with promise.
“When I speak,” he said softly, “it will be somewhere worthy of your answer.”
Jane’s colour deepened. “Mr Bingley.”
“That is all I shall say now.”
But it was not all. The unsaid words filled the space between them with such tenderness that Jane had to turn toward the window to master her expression.
Bingley, who had once rushed toward feeling like sunlight toward glass, now stood back and let her have the moment.
It was perhaps the greatest proof he had yet given her.
In the afternoon, Portia Vale found Elizabeth in the little passage beyond the library, where damp light slid over the floorboards and the air smelled faintly of old books and extinguished candles.