Jane was with Lydia. Elizabeth had heard the scream when Lydia was told, a raw, animal sound from somewhere deep in the house. Then Kitty’s voice, low, steady. Jane’s. Then quiet. Kitty had gone to Lydia because despite everything Lydia was still her sister and Kitty would not leave her alone in this. Bingley hovered nearby, trying to help and getting it slightly wrong but meaning every word of comfort he offered, which was Bingley’s way and always had been.
Lord Matlock managed the physician when he arrived, and the removal of the body, and the dozen practical matters that attend a sudden death in a great house. Lady Matlock managed the guests who were staying overnight up to their rooms without delay. Mrs Reynolds managed the servants, who were deeply shaken.
The last carriage pulled away. The entrance hall emptied. The candles that had guttered, blown out, had been relit. Theballroom glowed again, warm, golden, as though nothing had happened. The chalk pattern on the floor was scuffed and stained, the white curlicues smudged by three hundred pairs of feet and one man’s blood. The lilies by the entrance still smelled sweet.
Darcy found Elizabeth in the hallway outside the ballroom. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, her ball gown creased and her hair coming down from the pins Jane had set so carefully. He stood before her, looking at her face. She opened her eyes. Looked back at him.
He knew, she could see it in his eyes. Not the details, of course. Not Sir Roderick, not the push, not the army of spectral Darcys and their loyal-even-after-death retainers who had watched their house deliver its own justice. But he knew that what had happened on that staircase was not an accident, that Elizabeth had seen it, and he knew that she would tell him, because she had promised that he could ask her anything and she would keep no more secrets from him.
“He fell,” Elizabeth said.
“He fell,” Darcy agreed.
“The physician will say he was drunk. The stairs are steep, and they had been well-polished, to look good for the ball. It will be ruled an accident.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Darcy was quiet for a moment. The hallway was empty. The house was quiet, quieter than Elizabeth had ever known it. Even the ghosts were still. Graves had returned to the servants’ hall. Mrs Alcott had gone with him. Sarah Dunn had vanished. The gallery above was empty.
“My father,” Darcy said, and she heard something like fear in his voice. “Was it...”
“No. Your father was on the ballroom floor the whole time. He was standing beside me. He watched, but he did not act. It was Sir Roderick.”
“Sir Roderick?” Darcy blinked, and she could see him searching his memory. “I know that name...”
Elizabeth pressed the back of her head against the wall. “He was Nana’s husband’s great-grandfather, or maybe one or two more greats than that, who was master of Pemberley in the time of Queen Elizabeth. He’d been asleep in the yellow drawing room for as long as anyone can remember. Nana was afraid of what would happen if he ever woke up.”
“And he woke.”
“He woke. He came into the ballroom, went up the stairs, pushed Wickham over the railing. I didn’t think ghosts could touch the living. They can’t, as a rule. Sir Roderick isn’t a ghost who follows rules.”
Darcy leaned against the wall beside her. They stood shoulder to shoulder, both of them exhausted, both of them in theirball clothes, both of them carrying a truth that would never be spoken aloud again after tonight.
“Wickham’s death mirrors his crime,” Elizabeth said, after a long silence. “It looks natural. Accidental. A man who had been drinking, slipping on a steep staircase. Only we know the truth.”
“Only we will ever know.”
“Can you live with that?”
Darcy opened his eyes. He looked at her. “Can you?”
Elizabeth thought about it. She had saidno, stop, pleaseand it had made no difference, because Sir Roderick did not take orders from anyone. She had watched a man die and she had not been able to prevent it and she was not entirely certain, in the darkest, most honest part of herself, that she had wanted to.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I can. I will have to, won’t I?”
Darcy took her hand. He held it against the wall between them, his fingers laced through hers.
“Then we carry it together,” he said. “The way we carry everything else.” He leaned over and kissed her brow, tenderly. “Go to bed, Elizabeth. Sleep. I will stay up and wait for the doctor.”
The house was quiet around them. Somewhere in Pemberley, Lydia was crying. In the yellow drawing room, Sir Roderick Darcy had gone back to his chair, closed his eyes, and slept.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Themorningaftertheball, Pemberley was quiet.
Elizabeth came down early, before anyone except the servants, and found the ballroom doors closed and a maid on her knees in the entrance hall, scrubbing the chalk dust that had been tracked across the marble floor. The house smelled of extinguished candles and lilies. The scuffed chalk pattern was still visible through the open ballroom door when Elizabeth pushed it ajar to look: white curlicues smudged and broken, the stain near the musicians’ gallery staircase dark against the pale wood.
