She went to him, stood beside him. He put his arm around her without speaking. They looked out at Pemberley together.
“It is strange,” he said, after a while. “Standing here, the evening before the ball, looking out at this view. My mother used to stand at this window. I remember her doing it when I was very young, before a dinner or a party, just looking out, as though she needed to see the grounds one more time before she turned to face the guests.”
“Perhaps she was gathering herself.”
“Perhaps.” He was quiet. Then: “I wish my father had lived to see this. To know you.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened. She pressed her nails into her palms, hard, because George Darcy was here. He was in this house, in these corridors, watching his son. He did know Elizabeth. She thought he liked her, approved of her as Mrs Darcy, though he had not said it in exactly those words.
Darcy looked at her. He did not push. He waited, the way he always waited, with that patient, steady attention that was the best and most infuriating thing about him.
“I wish he could have known me too,” Elizabeth said instead. “I think he would have liked me very much, eventually, once he had got over the shock.”
Darcy smiled. The smile was real. The moment passed, and Elizabeth held on to him and did not let go.
Lady Catherine was watching her.
Elizabeth had noticed it three times that day. The first, coming out of the housekeeper’s room after a consultation with Mrs Reynolds about the table linens. Catherine had been in the corridor, standing with her hands folded, in an attitude that suggested she might have been there for some time. She had said nothing. She had simply looked at Elizabeth with that sharp, assessing gaze, then walked away.
The second, in the entrance hall. Elizabeth had been telling Nana, in an undertone, that the front steps did not need sweeping again before tomorrow because they would be swept in the morning, and had turned to find Catherine by the grandfather clock. Not passing through. Not on her way somewhere. Standing still and watching. How long she had been there, Elizabeth could not tell. Again, she did not speak when Elizabeth caught her watching, only turned on her heel and left.
The third was after tea. Elizabeth had paused in the gallery to murmur a response to George, who had come to tell her that Darcy had finally given up his search of the study and gone to dress for dinner. She had spoken two words, barely moving her lips, and looked up to find Catherine at the far end of the gallery, motionless.
Each time, Catherine had said nothing and done nothing. She had simply been there, observing, and the silence was worse than any accusation. Elizabeth could defend herself against words. She could not defend herself against watching.
“She is doing it deliberately,” Kitty said, when Elizabeth told her. They were in Elizabeth’s dressing room, Elizabeth changing for dinner while Kitty sat on the bed. “She has lost her spy, so she is spying for herself. She is looking for proof that you are unwell, unstable, that you talk to yourself in corridors.”
“I don’t talk to myself in corridors. I talk to dead people in corridors.”
“Which is precisely why you must stop doing it where she can see you.”
Elizabeth thought about this while her maid dressed her hair. Catherine had been quiet, civil, contained since Lord Matlock and Darcy had reprimanded her. Catherine had been regrouping, as George had warned. Now Catherine was watching, calculating, collecting observations patiently and methodically, waiting for the moment that would make it all worthwhile.
She thought, too, about Caroline Bingley. Catherine had seemed to dismiss the idea of an alliance with Caroline after overhearing her insult Anne. But dismissing an alliance was not the same as dismissing a tool. Caroline was unhappy and eager for the attention of anyone who would take her seriously. If Catherine chose to whisper in her ear, to encourage Caroline’s grievances and point them in a useful direction, Caroline would not even realise she was being used until it was too late. Though if the target was Elizabeth, Caroline would likely be more than happy to be used, Elizabeth thought.
Elizabeth resolved to warn Jane. Jane could manage Caroline. But nobody could manage Lady Catherine de Bourgh for long; she was the second most unmanageable person Elizabeth had ever met, after Nana.
Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether Nana would be complimented or insulted by the comparison, so she resolved never to tell her.
That evening, after dinner, Elizabeth excused herself from company after an hour and went to her parlour to review the final arrangements for the ball. The seating for supper, the order of dances, the small details that Lady Matlock had impressed upon her must be right: which dishes must be brought to the refreshment tables first, when to signal the musicians, where to stand when the guests arrived so that the receiving line flowed without awkwardness.
George Darcy was in the room when she entered. He was pacing, but not the way he usually paced. His circuits were short, tight, covering the same six feet of floor. He looked like a man trying to wear a hole through the carpet.
“George?”
He stopped. His face was drawn, his eyes dark.
“The house is wrong,” he said. “I do not know how to explain it. The others feel it too.”
“The others?”
“All of them. Miss Pardoe keeps putting down her book and staring at nothing. The footman in the west wing has been marching the same stretch of corridor since this morning, back and forth, as though on sentry duty. The housemaid who haunts the linen cupboard is crying, which she has not done in years. And the old butler...” He paused. “Graves is standing at the front door and will not move. He has abandoned his preparations for the ball entirely, which is unlike him. He takes his duties very seriously, as you know.”
That stopped Elizabeth cold. She had walked past Graves that morning, drilling his ghostly footmen with the intensity of a man who considered a ball at Pemberley to be a matter of the highest importance. For him to abandon that and take up a post at the front door, unmoving, meant he felt his duty lay elsewhere. Graves had been a butler. A butler’s first duty was the door.
“What does it mean?”
“I do not know. But the house feels different. Heavier.” He resumed his pacing, shorter now, tighter. “I have been dead for six years, Elizabeth, and I have never felt the house like this. Not when Fitzwilliam brought Georgiana home after Ramsgate. Not when you arrived. Not even when Catherine came. This is different.”
