Lady Matlock stopped walking and turned to face Elizabeth. “And then George died. Wickham was at Pemberley when it happened, which I did not think anything of at the time, because Wickham was always at Pemberley, in and out as though he owned the place. The physician said it was his heart. Lord Matlock arranged everything. Fitzwilliam came home. We buried George beside Anne, the world continued, and I never said a word to anyone about the feeling I had that something was not right.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth asked.
“Because what would I have said? A feeling? A sense that things did not sit well? That is not evidence, Elizabeth. That is a woman’s intuition, and I learnt a long time ago that a woman’s intuition, however accurate, carries no weight in a man’s world unless she can back it with facts. I had no facts. I had only a dead friend’s husband, a physician’s verdict, and a feeling that I had buried because feelings were not enough.”
“Feelings are not nothing,” Elizabeth said. She heard the echo of what she had said to Mrs Reynolds, knew that she was not the first woman in this house to feel the truth and be told it did not count.
Lady Matlock looked at her thoughtfully. “No,” she said. “They are not. Which is why I am telling you now, because you have been asking the same questions I never dared to ask, and I think you deserve to know that you are not alone in finding the answers uncomfortable.”
They stood facing each other on the path, and the mist moved between the trees, and Elizabeth thought about what it would mean to bring Lady Matlock into the full truth. Not yet. Not without more tangible evidence than she currently had. But the door was open, and Lady Matlock had opened it herself, and that mattered more than Elizabeth could say.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “For telling me.”
“Do not thank me. I should have said something six years ago. I should have asked the questions and demanded the answers and not let the world tell me that a feeling was not enough.” Lady Matlock’s voice was steady, but her eyes were bright. “If you find something, Elizabeth, if your questions lead somewhere, promise me you will not make the same mistake I did. Promise me you will not stay silent.”
“I promise.”
Lady Matlock nodded once. Then the performance returned, the armour she had worn for thirty years, bright and impenetrable, and she said, briskly, “Good. Now. The ball. The ballroom must have new candles in the chandelier, which will need a good cleaning. The floor must be polished, then chalked. We shall need to discuss the supper menu with Mrs Reynolds, and I have strong opinions about the music, which you will hear whether you wish to or not.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“Excellent. Then we understand each other.” Lady Matlock took Elizabeth’s arm, and they walked back toward the housetogether as the morning sun broke through the mist, and Pemberley gleamed ahead of them in the sharp autumnal light.
Elizabeth wrote to Jane that afternoon.
She did not use the code. She did not need to, because this letter was simple and true and contained nothing that needed hiding:come to Pemberley. Come early, before the ball. Come as soon as you can. I need you here.
She sealed it and gave it to the footman for the afternoon post, and felt, for the first time in weeks, that the ground beneath her had firmed. Lady Matlock’s doubt was not evidence. Her memories were not proof. But they were confirmation, from a living woman, that the unease Elizabeth felt was not hers alone, that the questions she was asking were the right ones, that when the time came to act she would not be acting alone.
She had thought, walking back to the house with Lady Matlock’s arm through hers, about what else the Matlocks might do. Lady Matlock had influence. She had connections, social authority, the kind of power that opened doors and rearranged lives without anyone quite noticing it had happened. Could she be persuaded to take an interest in Lydia? To invite her for a long visit, perhaps, or to find some pretext for separating her from Wickham for a time?
But every version of the plan collapsed under its own weight. Lydia would not leave Wickham willingly; she was sixteen, married, still half in love with the idea of being in love. She would resist any interference. Wickham would see through any pretext in an instant and charm his way around it, or simply refuse, and a refused invitation from Lady Matlock would raise exactly the kind of questions Elizabeth could not afford to answer. To explain why Lydia needed rescuing meant explaining what Wickham was, what he had done. Elizabeth had promised Kitty she would not do that until Lydia was safe. The logic was circular and merciless: she could not save Lydia without revealing the truth, and she could not reveal the truth without endangering Lydia.
So. The money, for now. Darcy’s quiet allowance, keeping Wickham comfortable, keeping Lydia fed and housed and out of the worst of it. It was not enough, but it was what she had.
The ball she could manage. She had Nana, Mrs Reynolds, now Lady Matlock. Between them Pemberley would be ready. And Jane was coming.
Jane was coming. Everything would be easier after that, and somehow she would find the courage, the words, to tell her husband the truth.
Chapter Fifteen
Elizabethhadrehearsedtheexact words she would say twice that morning: once in the bath, once walking the length of the portrait gallery after breakfast while Edmund and Charlotte chased each other from end to end and Kitty watched her while making a thoroughly poor job of pretending to examine a painting.
The argument with Kitty had taken most of the previous evening.
“You can’t tell him about his father,” Kitty had said, flat and certain, the moment Elizabeth raised it. They were in Elizabeth’s parlour, the door locked, speaking low. “You can’t tell Darcy that his father was murdered. You promised me, Elizabeth.”
“I know. I’m not going to tell him about the murder. Just about the ghosts. About my gift, about what I am.”
“And not George.”
“And not George.” But even as she said it, the problem took shape. “Except I have to. Kitty, I told Georgiana. She knows her father is here. The moment Darcy knows about my gift, Georgiana will know he is in on the secret, and she will talk to him about it. About their father. I can’t ask her to lie to her brother, and I can’t stop her from speaking to him. So I either tell Darcy about George myself, or he hears it from Georgiana and knows I kept it from him deliberately.”
Kitty stared at her. “Then you can’t tell him at all.”
“I must. Darcy knows I am hiding something, and his patience will not last forever, and I would rather tell him a partial truth than have him discover the whole of it by accident.” She paused. “And Lydia. The money will help, but money is not enough. I need my husband beside me in this, not watching me across the breakfast table wondering what I am hiding. I need to be able to ask him for help, real help, for Lydia, without having to weigh every word for what it might reveal. I can’t do that while he thinks his wife is an ordinary woman.”
“So you tell him about George. And when he asks why his father is still here?”
