Chapter Thirteen — Felix Vale Smiles #2
Celia looked between Jane and Elizabeth. The morning light fell across her face, showing every trace of strain, every cost of composure. “Very well,” she said at last. “I shall stay.”
Felix’s next movement was toward Elizabeth.
He chose a time when the drawing room was reasonably full, but not formal enough to make conversation seem intentional.
Lady Ashbourne was absent. Darcy had not yet entered.
Jane sat with Mrs Gardiner near the window; Mrs Harrow had withdrawn to rest before the evening; Bingley stood near the mantel with Colonel Avery; Mrs Lyndhurst occupied a sofa and appeared eager for any form of refinement that could disguise appetite as manners.
Portia read a newspaper upside down, perhaps deliberately.
Felix approached Elizabeth as she stood near a table of books.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “you have borne these difficult days with remarkable spirits.”
“Have I? I had thought my spirits rather ill-tempered.”
“Liveliness can sometimes be mistaken for temper.”
“And charm for sincerity.”
He laughed softly. “You are determined to keep me humble.”
“I should not presume upon so hopeless an undertaking.”
Mrs Lyndhurst looked up, interested.
Felix picked up a small volume, glanced at it, and set it down again. “I have been thinking how singularly these events must appeal to a mind such as yours.”
“A mind such as mine?”
“Quick, imaginative, unwilling to accept the dull explanation when a more dramatic one may be constructed.”
The room had begun to listen. Elizabeth felt it without turning.
Felix continued pleasantly, “I mean no criticism. Indeed, intelligence must have occupation. But there is danger, is there not, in enlarging a private family matter until every ordinary misfortune acquires the shape of conspiracy? A forged letter, a missing page, an old settlement, a frightened companion, a suffering widow—each may be explained by confusion, yet together, under a lively eye, they become almost a romance of villainy.”
Mrs Lyndhurst’s face shone with restrained agreement.
Elizabeth smiled. “How generous of you to credit my imagination with so much clerical labour.”
Felix returned the smile. “You mistake me. I admire your zeal. But zeal, guided by good intentions, may still be destructive.”
“How true. We have lately seen several examples of destructive good intentions.”
“Then you take my meaning.”
“Not at all. I was thinking of yours.”
Portia made a faint sound behind her newspaper.
Felix’s eyes cooled. “You are severe, Miss Elizabeth.”
“And you are careful, Mr Vale. Shall we each be praised for consistency?”
Before he could answer, Darcy entered.
It was not dramatic. Mr Darcy rarely entered rooms dramatically; he had too much self-command and too little theatrical vanity. Yet his presence altered the balance at once. He came to Elizabeth’s side, not close enough to be improper, but near enough that Felix could not miss the alignment.
“Mr Vale,” Darcy said.
“Darcy. We were discussing Miss Elizabeth’s talent for interpretation.”
“So I gathered.”
“A talent, no doubt, of great usefulness, provided it does not outrun evidence.”
Darcy’s gaze rested on him steadily. “Miss Elizabeth’s judgement has repeatedly proved more accurate than the comfort of those who dismissed it.”
Mrs Lyndhurst looked down at her embroidery. Bingley’s face brightened with admiration. Jane, hearing enough to understand, glanced toward Elizabeth with quiet delight.
Elizabeth did not look at Darcy. She could not.
His words were not affection, not publicly.
They were not declaration. They could be defended as respect for her intelligence, and perhaps that was all anyone else need hear.
But she heard more. He had again placed his authority beside her perception before witnesses.
He did not claim her; he trusted her. In some ways, she thought, that was more dangerous to her composure.
Felix heard it too.
“How fortunate Miss Elizabeth is in such support,” he said.
Darcy’s reply was calm. “Truth is fortunate in support wherever it finds it.”
Felix bowed slightly. “Then I hope truth will reward all its champions this evening.”
He left the room with perfect grace.
When he had gone, Elizabeth turned one page of the book before her without seeing it.
“You are becoming very public in your confidence, Mr Darcy.”
“Should confidence be private when dismissal has been public?”
She looked up then. His expression was composed, but the warmth beneath it was unmistakable.
“You do not make matters easier,” she said.
“No,” he replied. “I had begun to suspect I rarely do.”
She laughed despite herself, and the sound steadied them both.
Felix misjudged Bingley later that afternoon.
It happened near the stables, where Bingley had gone partly from habit and partly because, as he confessed to himself if not yet to anyone else, horses were less likely than drawing rooms to interpret a man’s silences romantically.
He was standing by the chestnut gelding he had used so heroically as a conversational shield the day before when Felix joined him, gloved, smiling and apparently at leisure.
“Bingley,” he said, “a word?”
“Of course.”
“A delicate one, I fear.”
Bingley gave him a look of sincere alarm. “I have not found delicate words improve much by being delayed.”
Felix smiled. “Then I shall be brief. You are a gentleman of warm feeling, and your loyalty does you credit. But continued association with scandal may not be ideal at present.”
“At present?”
“When one is on the verge of an important alliance, appearances matter.”
Bingley’s usual colour rose, but not this time from embarrassment. “Do they?”
Felix, mistaking the question for uncertainty, stepped closer. “Miss Bennet is all goodness, of course. No one would doubt her. But goodness may be drawn into unfortunate causes, and a gentleman who values her future must consider whether it is wise to allow such association to continue unchecked.”
Bingley looked at him for a long moment.
In the past, such language might have distressed him into retreat.
He might have thought of sisters, neighbours, comfort, propriety, the old fear that happiness could be lost by disapproval.
But Jane had changed him, or rather had taught him to become steadier in the very places where he had always been kind.
“Vale,” he said, with warmth still in his tone and steel beneath it, “any alliance worth having must be able to withstand the defence of an innocent woman.”
Felix’s smile faltered.
Bingley continued, surprising himself with the force of his own conviction. “And if Miss Bennet chooses to stand by Mrs Harrow, then I count it another reason to honour her. Not a danger to her happiness.”
“You speak generously.”
“I hope so. I also speak plainly.”
“Yes,” Felix said softly. “I see that.”
For the second time that day, he withdrew having misjudged the person before him.
Bingley remained by the chestnut gelding, feeling both shaken and extraordinarily pleased. When Darcy found him there some minutes later and heard what had passed, he said only, “Well done, Bingley.”
Bingley looked as if he had been knighted.
The afternoon turned to preparation.
Miss Trent was the most difficult part of it.
Elizabeth found her in the small morning room with Jane.
She sat with a cup of tea cooling untouched in her hands, her face drawn with dread.
The decision had been put before her gently, but even gentleness cannot remove the terror of consequence.
She had seen Felix near Mrs Harrow’s room before the planted packet was found.
She knew it mattered. She also knew that speaking would set her word, a dependent companion’s word, against that of a charming gentleman related to the mistress of the house.
“I am ashamed,” she whispered.
Jane sat beside her. “You need not be.”
“I know what I saw. I know I do. But when I think of saying it before everyone, my courage leaves me. Mrs Lyndhurst will never keep me after this. No one will. They will say I was confused, envious, eager to be important. They will say Ruth Ellery filled my head with stories. They will say I am a woman of no consequence trying to make herself one.”
Elizabeth knelt before her, not because Miss Trent was weak, but because she deserved to be met at eye level.
“Courage is not the absence of fear,” Elizabeth said. “It is the moment when fear is no longer permitted to choose everything.”
Miss Trent looked at her, tears gathering.
“You may speak,” Elizabeth continued, “and still tremble. You may tell the truth and still wish you were elsewhere. That does not make the truth smaller.”
“What if I cannot?”
“Then you cannot. We shall not shame you for being afraid.”
Jane took Miss Trent’s hand. “But you will not be alone if you try.”
Miss Trent looked between them, and Elizabeth saw the cost of being asked for testimony when one has spent one’s life learning that safety lies in not being heard.
At last Miss Trent nodded. “I will try.”
“That is enough,” Jane said.
“No,” Miss Trent whispered, gathering herself. “It must be more than enough tonight.”
Lady Ashbourne had her own reckoning in the library with Darcy.
Elizabeth was not present for all of it, though Darcy later told her enough.
Her ladyship stood before the table where the documents had been arranged in careful order: the altered letter, the practice scraps, Margaret’s note, the settlement memorandum, the slit music volume, Darcy’s legal reply, and a folded sheet containing notes on the missing ledger page.
The objects looked almost absurdly small, considering the lives broken around them.
“Will this ruin the family?” Lady Ashbourne asked.
Darcy did not soften the answer. “The family has already been injured by what was done in its name.”
She closed her eyes.
“Exposure,” he continued, more gently, “will only decide whether that injury becomes permanent corruption or painful repair.”