Chapter Ten — A Reputation Prepared #3
“You are looking for Mr Darcy,” Portia said.
“I am passing through a passage.”
“Very industriously.”
Elizabeth smiled. “And you are looking for me?”
“I am looking for someone who dislikes Felix enough to be useful.”
“That is a broad requirement. Silvermere may contain several candidates.”
“Most dislike him cautiously. You do not.”
“I try not to spend caution where it earns no interest.”
Portia laughed once, then sobered. “My mother was supposed to receive a settlement after her marriage. Not large enough to make her powerful. Only enough to keep dependence from becoming humiliation. The money never came.”
“Lady Ashbourne has admitted there were unsettled funds.”
“Unsettled.” Portia’s mouth twisted. “What a gentle word. The family said the money had been lost in poor investments. Then in delayed transfers. Then that the matter was regrettable but unprovable. By the time I was old enough to ask questions, my mother was dead, my father had made peace with disappointment because peace was cheaper than legal pursuit, and Felix was being presented as the promising heir of a family whose honour had suffered only from misfortune.”
“You think Sir Edmund used the money to pay gambling debts?”
“I think Sir Edmund used any money near enough to be mistaken for his own. I think Felix knows that if the old accounts are proven false, he may owe what he cannot pay. Worse, he may be revealed as less solvent than he wishes society to think.”
“Does he seek a wealthy marriage?”
Portia’s eyes sharpened. “Felix seeks any future in which admiration arrives before the bill.”
That, Elizabeth thought, was answer enough.
Darcy entered the library shortly after, and Elizabeth joined him there as dusk began to gather.
The library at that hour seemed removed from the rest of Silvermere, though not from its trouble.
The shelves rose darkly; the last light from the windows struck the spines of old books and left the corners in shadow.
A fire had not yet been lit, and the air held the chill of a room too large for comfort once daylight began to fail.
Darcy stood near the table with a letter half written before him.
“To your solicitor?” Elizabeth asked.
“And to a man who knows Mr Grimsby’s office. Lady Ashbourne has given me the name.”
“Mr Grimsby handles inconvenient inheritance matters?”
“Discreet legal matters, I believe.”
“How very useful to inconvenient inheritance.”
Darcy looked up. “Felix has corresponded with him recently.”
“Then there is our ticking clock.”
“Yes. If we can learn what was requested, we may understand what Felix fears.”
Elizabeth told him what Portia had said. Darcy listened without interruption, his face growing graver.
“So,” she said when she had finished, “Felix has created a woman’s scandal to hide a man’s theft.”
“Perhaps his father’s theft. Perhaps his own concealment of it.”
“Society may punish the former more readily than the latter.”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth looked at him sharply. “Do you say that with resignation?”
Darcy’s gaze lifted to hers. There was no resignation in it. There was anger, quiet and controlled, and the force of it altered his whole expression.
“No,” he said. “With anger.”
Elizabeth felt something in her chest answer that anger.
Darcy’s reserve had once seemed to her a wall built of pride.
Now she saw that much of it was containment.
There was feeling in him—deep feeling, moral feeling, fierce when honour required it—but he did not spend it in display.
He held it until it could be made useful.
“I am glad,” she said softly.
He did not ask why. Perhaps he knew.
The house bell sounded distantly for dinner, and they left the library with more understood than spoken.
Dinner began with strained elegance and ended in exposure.
The guests had assembled in the drawing room afterwards when Mrs Clary appeared at the door, pale with distress. She asked for Lady Ashbourne. Lady Ashbourne rose at once.
“What now?” Colonel Avery muttered.
Felix stood too quickly. “Aunt?”
Mrs Clary’s voice trembled. “My lady, forgive me. There has been—something found.”
Lady Ashbourne went very still. “Where?”
“In Mrs Harrow’s room.”
Every person in the room heard it.
Mrs Harrow rose slowly. “My room?”
Mrs Clary looked wretched. “One of the maids went to turn down the bed, ma’am, and found a drawer open. We thought perhaps, after the note—after all that has happened—we ought to inform her ladyship at once.”
“I gave no permission for my drawers to be searched,” Mrs Harrow said. Her voice was quiet, but something beneath it had hardened.
“No, ma’am. It was not meant as a search.”
Felix moved forward, grave with concern. “Perhaps we should not discuss this before everyone.”
“How prudent,” Portia said coldly.
Lady Ashbourne ignored her. “What was found?”
Mrs Clary held out a small packet wrapped in paper.
Lady Ashbourne took it, opened it, and looked down.
Elizabeth saw Darcy’s face change before she saw the contents.
The packet contained copied phrases. Several scraps of paper, each bearing imitated portions of the altered letter: “Mrs Harrow’s silence,” “advantage secured,” “Margaret’s disgrace,” “coldly prudent.” The hand was clumsy enough to look like practice.
Dark ink. Pressed strokes. A little too obvious.
Mrs Lyndhurst gave a soft cry. “Oh, surely not.”
Felix closed his eyes briefly, as though pained by the thing he had perhaps expected all along. “This is very troubling.”
Mrs Harrow’s face had gone white. “I have never seen those papers.”
No one answered quickly enough.
That was the second injury.
Jane moved at once to stand beside her. Bingley followed Jane, not speaking, but his presence now unmistakable.
Darcy stepped nearer to the table, his expression cold and intent.
Elizabeth looked at the packet, then at the faces around the room.
Several guests had seen enough. Not all.
Enough. The seed had been planted before the paper appeared; now the paper only watered it.
“She did not put them there,” Elizabeth said.
Mrs Lyndhurst drew back. “My dear Miss Elizabeth, how can you possibly—”
“Because the evidence is too eager.”
Felix looked at her. “That is an interesting objection.”
“It has been a morning for interesting things.”
Lady Ashbourne held the scraps in her hand, and for once her composure seemed almost unequal to its task.
Mrs Harrow stood very straight. Too straight. “I did not put those papers in my drawer.”
Jane reached for her hand.
Mrs Harrow did not pull away.
But the room had changed. Elizabeth felt it with a dread sharper than anger. The scandal had entered its second stage. Celia Harrow was no longer merely accused of past betrayal, of silence, of old disgrace, of failing Margaret Ellery years before.
She was now accused of present deceit.
And because the reputation had been prepared, the lie had found the room ready to receive it.