“There is nothing to discuss. I love you, Mother. But you are wrong.”
Catherine left the room without another word. She walked past Elizabeth as though she did not see her, her back rigid, her face a mask again, and the sound of her footsteps receding down the corridor was the loneliest sound Elizabeth had ever heard.
Nana laughed.
Anne came stumbling out of the study, trembling and white, walked right through Nana’s spectral form and almost ran straight into Elizabeth. Elizabeth caught her by the elbows.
“That was the bravest thing I have ever seen,” Elizabeth said.
“I think I am going to be sick,” Anne said quietly. Elizabeth took her to the morning room, called a maid to bring tea, sat with Anne until the shaking stopped. She did not mention that her own hands were shaking too, that the nausea she had been fighting all morning had got worse, not better. The house pressed down on everyone in it, exacerbating every emotion, and only Elizabeth had the faintest inkling that it was even happening.
The ball was to start in six hours.
Elizabeth returned to the ballroom once Anne had settled, and found that Jane had taken charge. The chalk pattern on the floor was finished, crisp white curlicues and garlands that Nana would have been proud of. The flowers were arranged, the glasses being lined up on tables to be filled with the French champagne which would be brought up from the cellars later, the candles being placed. Kitty was directing the placement of additional chairs along the south wall. Lady Matlock was consulting with Mrs Reynolds about which wines to decant first. Even Caroline Bingley had been pressed into service, and was sorting place cards at a side table with an expression of surprised industry, as though she had not quite understood how Jane had managed to make her useful.
Jane looked at Elizabeth and crossed the room.
“You look terrible,” Jane said, quietly enough that nobody else could hear. “What has happened?”
“Catherine tried to have me committed. Darcy stopped her. Anne sided against her mother. It is over.” Elizabeth pressed her hand against her stomach, which was roiling. “Jane, I feel dreadful, and I don’t think it is the ball.”
Jane put her hand on Elizabeth’s forehead. Cool, practical, the same gesture their mother had always used when checking for fever, though Mrs Bennet had always accompanied it with predictions of imminent death. “You are not feverish. Have you eaten?”
“I can’t. My stomach won’t allow it.”
“Nerves.”
“Perhaps.” Elizabeth looked around the ballroom. Sarah Dunn was dusting a picture frame, the same one over and over, repeatedly. Graves had not moved from the front door. The pressure in the house was a constant weight behind Elizabeth’s eyes, and she did not know how to explain to Jane that the building itself felt wrong without sounding exactly as mad as Lady Catherine had just claimed she was. “Jane, I need you to manage the preparations. I can’t do this today. I am sorry.”
“Don’t apologise. Mrs Reynolds and Lady Matlock and I will take care of everything. Go and rest before tonight. You need to be well enough to stand in that receiving line.”
“I won’t rest. Darcy will come to talk to me. He has to. Lady Catherine said things that... he has questions, Jane. He has had questions for weeks, and I have been putting him off, and after what Lady Catherine just did, I can’t put him off any longer.”
Jane looked at her steadily. “Are you going to tell him?”
“I think I have to.”
Jane took her hand and squeezed it, once, hard. “Then tell him. Come find me afterwards.”
Elizabeth went to her parlour. She locked the door. She pressed her back against it and breathed. The house breathed with her, slow, heavy, wrong. Nana drifted through the bookcase, looked at her; Elizabeth shook her head. Nana drifted back out again without speaking. Elizabeth was grateful. If she was going to fall apart, she wanted to do it without an audience, living or dead.
She pressed both hands flat against the door behind her and tried to think. Her skin was clammy. Her stomach lurched constantly. The wrongness in the house was so strong now that the candle on her writing desk flickered without a draught, the temperature in the parlour shifting, warm then cold then warm again, as though the walls could not decide what season it was.
Three hundred people were coming to Pemberley in six hours. She had to be dressed, composed, standing beside Darcy in the receiving line, smiling, greeting the county, being Mrs Darcy. She would have to dance, and make conversation. She had to be well.
She did not feel well. She felt as though Pemberley itself was trying to tell her something, pressing against her with its four hundred years of stone and timber, and she could not hear what it was saying.
Darcy knocked on the parlour door ten minutes later, a distinct firm triple-tap she had quickly learned was his calling-card.
She opened it, and he came in. He closed it behind him and stood looking at her, and she could see in his face that he had come to ask the question he had been carrying for weeks.
“Elizabeth. I have told my aunt she is wrong. I have told Lord Matlock. I have told Anne. I do not believe you are unwell, and I will never believe it, and I will protect you from anyone who says otherwise.” He paused. “But I am not blind. I have noticed things too, Elizabeth. The conversations with empty rooms. The way you know things about this house that you could not possibly know, like the passage from this room to the east wing, which not a soul in Pemberley knew existed, not even me. Thequestions about my father that you began asking before you had any reason to ask them.” He looked at her steadily. “Tell me what is happening. I cannot protect you from what people are saying if I do not understand what they are seeing.”
Elizabeth sat down. Her legs would not hold her. She sat in the chair by the fire and looked at her hands, which were shaking, and thought: this is it. This is the moment I have been dreading.
“Darcy,” she said. “Sit down.”
He sat. He sat in the chair opposite her, the way he had the night she talked to him about Sally Wilson, the night he told her he was tired of carrying things alone.
