The kitchen went quiet. Sally looked down at her hands. Mrs Wilson became absorbed in the tea things. Mr Wilson’s expression shifted, and the ease of the last few minutes gave way to something more guarded.
“I did, ma’am. He was a good master. The best I have known, saving Mr Darcy here.”
“I understand you spoke to him,” Elizabeth said. “Before he died. About the matter of William’s parentage.”
Mr Wilson looked at Darcy. Darcy looked at Elizabeth. She could feel his attention sharpen, but he said nothing, and she was grateful for it.
“I did, ma’am.” Mr Wilson’s voice had dropped. Sally was staring at the floor, her face flushed. “I went to the old master about... about the trouble. About Sally. I told him what had happened, and who was responsible. I was ashamed to go, but Sally was starting to show, and I could not leave it any longer.”
“And the old Mr Darcy believed you?”
“At once, ma’am. He did not question it, did not doubt us for a moment. He went white when I told him. White as the wallbehind you. He asked me to tell him everything. I did. When I had finished, he thanked me and said it would be dealt with. Those were his words.It will be dealt with.”
“When was this, Mr Wilson? How long before he died?”
Mr Wilson rubbed his jaw. “It was... I went to him on the Tuesday. He died on the Saturday, I believe.”
Elizabeth did not look at Darcy. She did not need to. She could feel the stillness beside her, the held breath, the sound of a man hearing his own history rewritten.
“I have always wondered,” Mr Wilson said, and his voice was rough now, “whether it was the shock that killed him. Whether learning what his godson had done to my girl put a strain on his heart that it could not bear. The physician said it was his heart, and I have told myself for six years that it was not my fault for telling him, that he had a right to know, but I have never been easy about it. If I had gone to him sooner, or if I had waited... but Sally was showing, and I could not wait.”
“You did the right thing,” Elizabeth said. “You must not blame yourself for what happened after.”
“That is what Mrs Reynolds says too, ma’am. She has said the same to me more than once.”
Darcy spoke for the first time in several minutes. His voice was steady, but Elizabeth could hear the effort it cost him. “Mr Wilson. Did my father say anything else to you? About what he intended to do?”
“Only that it would be dealt with, sir. And that he was grateful I had come to him. He shook my hand when I left. I remember that. He was not a man who shook hands with his tenants as a rule, but he shook mine that day, and his grip was fierce.”
Darcy nodded. He stood, thanked the Wilsons for their hospitality, admired the farm once more, and said something kind to Sally about William that made her eyes fill. Then they were outside in the cold air watching William throwing a stick for the collie as Mr Wilson fetched their horses from the barn.
They mounted in silence. The horses walked steadily, their breath clouding in the cold air, and Elizabeth let the silence hold. This was Darcy’s way. He did not think aloud. He took things in and turned them over and came back with something considered.
“I asked you last night whether you would tell me what you have been building,” he said at last. “This is it, is it not? This is what you wanted me to hear.”
“Part of it. I wanted you to hear it from Mr Wilson, not from me.”
“Why?”
“Because it is his story. And because I thought it would mean more to you, coming from a man who was there, who has carried it for six years.”
Darcy looked ahead at the path. “My father shook his hand. He was not a man who shook hands with tenants. He shook Mr Wilson’s hand because he was grateful, and because he wasashamed that his blindness about Wickham had cost that family their daughter’s honour. And then he sent for Wickham.”
“Yes.”
“And just days later he was dead.”
Pemberley came into view ahead of them, pale stone against the dark November woods. Darcy pulled his horse up and sat looking at it.
“I have spent six years believing my father died without ever seeing the truth about Wickham,” he said. “That he went to his grave blinded by affection. And now I learn he did see it. At the very end, he saw it, and he tried to act on it, and he did not have time.”
“He did not have time,” Elizabeth agreed, and felt the weight of what she was not saying.
They rode on. As they came down the slope toward the house, Elizabeth glanced up at the windows and saw George Darcy standing at the one he always stood at, watching them return. He could not know what had just happened. He could not know that his son, riding beside her in silence, was turning over the same questions that had kept his father’s ghost pacing these corridors for six years. Elizabeth looked away before Darcy could follow her gaze, and the window, when she glanced back, was empty.
At Pemberley, Darcy gave the horses to the groom and went directly to find Mrs Reynolds. Elizabeth followed. She had intended to engineer this conversation herself, but Darcy was ahead of her now, moving with the quiet purposefulness she had seen in him when a problem presented itself and he intended to solve it.
He found Mrs Reynolds in her sitting room, waited for Elizabeth to enter behind him, and closed the door behind them.
