The question demanded the honesty she had requested. He could not dissemble, could not hide behind legal technicalities or protective skepticism. She asked for his truth, and somehow, kneeling here before these graves, he found he could give it.
“No,” he said quietly. “I believe you are exactly what you appear to be—a woman who received information that shattered her understanding of herself, who acted perhaps rashly but not maliciously, and who now seeks answers to questions that may prove unanswerable.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly, as if she had not expected such an admission. “Yet you suspect Martha Wickham’s motives.”
“Entirely. The woman demands that you marry her son as the price of her testimony. That is not the action of a protective savior but of a mercenary calculating advantage.” He paused, then addedcarefully, “And I suspect the Bingleys’ sudden interest in your welfare may be similarly calculated, though on that point I have less evidence and more… intuition.”
“Charles abandoned my sister Jane.” Elizabeth’s voice carried a bitter edge. “I noticed. I simply did not wish to examine the implications too closely.”
“That perhaps he or his family knows more about the past than they’ve let on?” Darcy’s thoughts flickered to the business ventures that had enriched Pemberley after his uncle’s death. The timing now struck him as suspicious, though he couldn’t bear to voice such doubts aloud.
“The thought has occurred to me.” Elizabeth’s eyes softened. “But Mr. Darcy, I assure you, whatever truths we uncover, I shall not condemn the children for their fathers’ choices. You and Georgiana bear no responsibility for actions taken when you were but children yourselves.”
Elizabeth reached out then, her gloved hand covering his clenched fist where it rested on his knee. The gesture was entirely proper, yet it sent awareness singing through his nerves. Here she knelt before her family’s grave markers, yet offered him comfort.
“As do you.” His voice emerged rougher than intended. “Whatever happened twenty years ago, you are innocent of all wrongdoing. Yet you suffer the consequences most acutely.”
She looked back at the gravestones. “I feel the loss most profoundly.”
“Elizabeth.” Her name slipped out unguarded, intimate, entirely inappropriate given their circumstances.
She did not correct him or pull her hand away.
“Fitzwilliam,” she replied, testing his name as if determining its weight and flavor. “We are both remarkably foolish, are we not? Standing on opposite sides of an inheritance dispute, yet kneeling here as if we were… allies.”
“Are we not?” He turned his hand beneath hers, daringly catching her fingers in a brief, improper claspbefore releasing them. “Whatever the legal battles ahead, whatever the investigations reveal, do we not both seek the same thing? Truth. Justice. Understanding of what truly happened?”
“And if the truth makes us enemies?” Elizabeth’s voice carried both challenge and concern. “If I prove my identity and claim Pemberley, displacing you and Georgiana from your home?”
“I believe we can come to an understanding that will not jeopardize either of our positions.” He did not want to make promises, nor was he even sure what he wanted to portray. Only that, whether Elizabeth was his cousin or not, whether she inherited or not, she had become important to him, and well… there were other ways of solving the knotty inheritance issue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MEDDLING MERCENARIES
Elizabeth waited almosta week before she was able to obtain an interview with the Darcy family solicitor, Mr. Blythewood. Sitting straight-backed in Darcy’s carriage, she clutched the portfolio that contained her precious documents. Beside her, Georgiana gazed out the window while Darcy maintained his composure.
He had resisted her inquiry, arguing that Mr. Blythewood represented the Darcy family, only to have Elizabeth counter that she was a family member, or claiming to be. He had been carefully polite after their encounter in the cemetery, their conversation charged with meaningful glances and nothing else. Even Bingley’s attempts at lightening the atmosphere with card games and parlor tricks did nothing to alleviate the careful politeness between them. It was as if Darcy feared he’d been inappropriate and sought to make amends by retreating to formality.
The carriage slowed, drawing up before a modest building of weathered brick. The brass plaque beside the door read:Blythewood & Sons, Solicitors.
Darcy descended first, offering his hand to Georgiana, who stepped down with a light grace. He then turned to assist Elizabeth,extending his hand with such natural courtesy that she accepted it without hesitation. The brief pressure of his fingers around hers sent a ridiculous flutter through her chest that she firmly attributed to nerves regarding the upcoming legal proceedings.
The office interior smelled of leather and paper, with walls lined with bound legal volumes. A reedy, nervous-looking clerk perched behind a desk in the anteroom, his quill poised over an enormous ledger like a bird preparing to take flight.
“Mr. Darcy.” The clerk half-rose, his Adam’s apple bobbing frantically. “And Miss Darcy, of course. And—and the other lady must be?—”
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” Darcy supplied smoothly. “We have an appointment with Mr. Blythewood.”
“Yes, yes of course, sir. He’s expecting you. If you’ll just?—”
The clerk’s words dissolved into a startled squeak as the door behind them burst open with such force that it rebounded against the wall. Elizabeth turned, a sense of dreadful recognition settling in her stomach before she fully registered the voice that shattered the office’s dignified quiet.
“I demand to see this solicitor immediately! I have proof—PROOF, I say—of my daughter’s rightful claim.”
There, in the doorway of Blythewood’s respectable establishment, stood Mrs. Bennet in all her fluttering, strident glory, a travel-worn bonnet perched atop her agitated countenance, one hand clutching a small, worn leather case, the other gesticulating dramatically. Behind her, peering around with undisguised curiosity, Lydia’s grinning face appeared.
“Oh! Lizzy. There you are.” Mrs. Bennet surged forward, engulfing Elizabeth in a cloud of lavender water and maternal fussing. “My dearest girl. Or should I say, Miss Elizabeth RoseDarcyof Pemberley.”
