The Bingleys arrived three days before the ball.
Elizabeth had been watching for the carriage on the drive all morning and was at the front door before the footman could announce them, which was not dignified and she did not care. The carriage drew up. Bingley descended first, beaming, ruddy-cheeked from the cold, radiating goodwill like a man who had never once in his life walked into a room and made it worse. Behind him, Jane.
Elizabeth rushed down the steps, across the gravel. Jane was already coming toward her. They met in the middle and held on. Elizabeth pressed her face into her sister’s shoulder and breathed, and for the first time in weeks, the knot beneath her ribs loosened.
“You came,” Elizabeth said, stupidly, because of course she had come, she had been invited, she had written to say she was coming.
“Of course I came,” Jane said, held her tighter, did not let go until Elizabeth was ready, which took rather longer than was strictly appropriate for a greeting conducted in full view of the household.
Bingley, bless him, filled the silence with cheerful noise. He shook Darcy’s hand vigorously, admired the house, admired the November sky, admired the horses being led away, complimented Mrs Reynolds, greeted Kitty and Georgiana with genuine warmth, and generally made himself the centre of uncomplicated pleasure that the household had been sorely lacking. The tension of the past week did not evaporate, but it receded, as tension always did in Bingley’s presence. He was sunshine in human form, and Pemberley needed sunshine.
Darcy, who loved Bingley in the quiet, unexpressive way of a man who does not make friends easily and knows the value of the ones he has, looked genuinely glad to see him. Elizabeth watched them together, Darcy’s reserve softening by degrees, Bingley’s hand on his friend’s arm, and thought: this is what he needs. Someone who asks nothing of him but friendship.
Behind the Bingleys, a second carriage produced Caroline Bingley, Louisa Hurst, and Mr Hurst.
Caroline descended with more flamboyance than grace, glancing over the assembled household with the rapid, assessing eye of a woman who was cataloguing what had changed. Her gaze lingered on Elizabeth just a moment too long.
“Mrs Darcy,” she said, with a smile that was warm on the surface and calculating underneath. “What a pleasure. You are looking very well. Pemberley agrees with you.”
“Thank you, Miss Bingley. You are very welcome.”
Mrs Hurst followed her sister with less theatre and more genuine fatigue from the journey. Mr Hurst made brief greetings and marched straight to the front door, clearly confident that somewhere inside there would be a comfortable chair and a glass of port. He found both within ten minutes and was not heard from again for some time.
“Nana is going to have opinions about Miss Bingley,” Kitty murmured to Elizabeth as they went inside.
“Nana has opinions about everyone.”
“Yes, but she is going to haveparticularopinions about Miss Bingley. I rather wish I could hear them. You must relay some of the highlights to me later.”
Kitty was not wrong. Nana appeared in the entrance hall as the guests were being shown to their rooms, watched Caroline Bingley ascending the staircase, and said, “Oh, she is back. Thank the Good Lord, Fitzwilliam had the sense not to marry that one.”
Elizabeth could not reply. She pressed her lips together and kept walking.
“The dress is too fine for the country, and too thin for the weather,” Nana continued, keeping pace beside her. “The bonnetis London, the pelisse is London, and the expression is pure ambition. She cannot have Fitzwilliam now, so she will settle for the most eligible bachelor she can find in his circle, and she is already measuring everyone to see who stands in her way.”
This was, Elizabeth had to admit, entirely accurate. But she could not say so. Jane was beside her, Bingley behind them, Caroline just ahead on the stairs. The entrance hall of Pemberley was not the place for a conversation with thin air.
“I shall enjoy this visit,” Nana said, with relish. “Miss Bingley always did keep me entertained.”
Mrs Reynolds had the Bingleys in the Chinese rooms, which were the best guest rooms after the blue rooms currently occupied by Lady Catherine, and which Jane declared lovely. Caroline and the Hursts were placed in the west wing, which was comfortable, well-appointed, and as far from the family rooms as could be managed without actually putting them in a separate building. Elizabeth suspected Mrs Reynolds had her own opinions about Caroline Bingley. Mrs Reynolds’s opinions about people were rarely wrong, and she expressed them entirely through room assignments.
Elizabeth and Jane found each other alone that afternoon, in Elizabeth’s parlour, with the door locked.
Jane sat in the chair by the fire and Elizabeth sat on the floor at her feet, because Jane was the one person in the world with whom she did not have to perform in any way. Jane ran her fingers through Elizabeth’s hair, the way she had when they were children. Elizabeth closed her eyes, rested her head against Jane’s knee, let the sheer relief of it wash through her.
“Tell me,” Jane said.
Elizabeth told her everything. All of it, from the beginning. Nana, running Pemberley for a hundred and thirty years. George Darcy’s ghost, growing more insistent as the investigation advanced, pressing her to steer Darcy toward conclusions. The Sally Wilson thread, the visit, Mr Wilson’s testimony, Mrs Reynolds’s corroboration. The timeline: George learning the truth, summoning Wickham, dining with him, dying that night. Lady Matlock’s six years of unease. Catherine’s spy, her vile accusation, the confrontation that followed. Catherine’s own suspicion of Wickham, which turned out to be just a feeling, just certainty without evidence, useless precisely because Lady Catherine was certain about everything, and being right this once did not make her word proof. Darcy reaching the conclusion himself, sitting in his father’s chair in the study, sayingWickham is married to your sister.
Jane listened. She did not interrupt. She held Elizabeth’s hand and let her talk.
“You have been carrying this for weeks,” Jane said, when Elizabeth had finished.
“Almost since I arrived at Pemberley.”
“And Darcy still does not know about the ghosts.”
“No. He knows about Sally Wilson, about the timeline, about Lady Catherine’s suspicions. He does not know that his father’s ghost told me most of it, or that Nana has been helping me since my first week here. He thinks I have been painstakingly thorough, impossibly clever. He does not know I have had help from the dead.”
