It is not because he admitted that he found me pretty last night!she insisted to herself.
It couldn’t be, but she found that she warmed to this man chiefly when he seemed human in some way. His indulging in some kind of pleasure, for instance, thinking a woman pretty, having strong tea. His making mistakes or having foibles. It was these things, these hidden things, that made him seem approachable, after all.
He was embarrassed. “I do drink liquor, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, smiling at him. “Well, should we stand about here in the hallway outside of Miss Bingley’s room?”
“Let us go to the library,” he said.
“The library,” she said.
“No one will be there. If questioned, we shall both say we arrived there independently of the other, and all will be takento be innocent. We should have enough privacy there to speak, however.”
“The library,” she said, nodding. “Yes, that’s quite good. And it is just down these stairs here, if I remember correctly.”
The library in Barralds was a thing of splendor, very large, with shelves that reached so high that one needed to use a ladder to reach the books on the top shelves, and these ladders were attached to the shelves, rolling on wheels in grooves, through the room. There were a number of shelves in the midst of the room, too, all full of books. Elizabeth had come here more than once during her short sojourn. It might be her favorite room in the house.
They walked together through the shelves, and Mr. Darcy began to tell her that he had ridden all the way to speak to Larilane that morning, and he recounted to her everything that Larilane had said, and she listened in rapt astonishment, even letting out gasps here and there, especially when Mr. Darcy filled in the bits about the late duke’s delight in cruelty.
Once he was done, it was her turn to relate everything it was that she had discovered that morning from the current Duke of Neithern, including his age, and the madness of his father, and the way he’d been locked away.
They turned this way and that, walking together through the library, talking in low voices.
“There was never another duchess!” said Darcy to her.
“I am coming to this same conclusion, sir,” she said. “But I don’t understand it, I must say, because I cannot think what it could mean.”
“Well,” said Darcy, “we do not know how long it was your mother was married to the duke. Maybe it was long enough for her to have given birth to the current duke, and then she escaped with you in her belly.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“No, the age doesn’t work,” said Darcy. “But that can mean only two things.”
“Oh?”
“Well, yes, either you and the duke are twins—
“Oh, dear, yes, itcouldbe that!” said Elizabeth, hand to her chest.
“No, but that makes little sense,” said Darcy. “Why would she hide you away and let her son be raised as the duke?”
“She thought to protect me, I suppose,” said Elizabeth. “But thatdoesn’tmake sense to me, really, because if she knew he was locked away, then why wouldn’t she take residence there as the duchess and raise me herself, or if there were two of us, raise both of us?”
“Yes, precisely,” said Mr. Darcy. “She would wish to protect both of her children, it seems.”
“There’s more to it, because she had no reason to wish us protected if he was locked away.”
“That may not be true,” said Mr. Darcy, thinking that over. “And anyway, there is the fact that Larilane did things he thinks will endanger him, and I don’t know what they are.”
“You said, just now, it could mean one of two things.”
“Oh, yes, that your mother made it all up, and you were never the child of the duke, but always the child of Larilane.”
Elizabeth blinked. “Well, then where would the current duke have come from?”
“Some other woman,” said Mr. Darcy. “Perhaps your mother even met her somehow, got her story, and pretended it washerstory. She could have used it to deceive Larilane.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, “because Larilane would not be my father, then.”
