Page 37 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

He did not say the name aloud. He did not need to. But he found that he was cold all over, in the warm fug of the club, the way he had been cold on the stairs at Ramsgate.

"Whose guest?" he said quietly.

"I do not know. I will find out. I swear it." Aldridge looked as though he might weep. "Darcy, I am sorrier than I can say. It was a stupid, drunken, schoolboy joke, and now look."

"It was a joke," said Darcy. "Somebody else has made it into a weapon. That is not your fault." He shut the heavy book, very gently, and heard the snigger behind him die away. "Find out whose guest he was. And send word to Grosvenor Square the moment you know."

He walked out through the silent room without looking at anyone, and stood on the steps in the thin March sunshine, breathing the cold air of St James's Street as if he had been under water.

When he got home, Elizabeth and Georgiana had gone out to Hookham's. On the hall table, beside the bowl of cards, lay a single note, which had come by hand an hour before. He broke it open.

Lady Castlereagh presents her compliments to Mr and Mrs Darcy, and regrets that the number of her guests on the twentieth being now greater than her rooms can accommodate, she finds herself obliged to withdraw the invitation she had the pleasure of extending on Monday last.

Darcy read it twice. Then he folded it very small, and put it in his pocket, and went up to Elizabeth's green room, and sat down at her desk with the little brown Donne under his hand, and waited for her to come home.

Chapter 11: The First Cut

Darcy House. Tuesday, 17th March 1812, evening

She came in at six, pink from the wind, with two new novels under her arm and Georgiana laughing behind her, and found him sitting at her desk in the dusk without a candle.

She knew at once. He saw her know it. She sent Georgiana up to dress with a light word and a kiss, and shut the door, and came and stood in front of him, and held out her hand.

He gave her Lady Castlereagh's note. She read it by the last of the light from the window, and her mouth went thin, and she gave it back.

"Well," she said. "That was quick."

"There will be others."

"I expect so." She sat down on the arm of his chair, close, her hip against his shoulder. "What did you find at White's?"

He told her. The book. The word in the margin, in a neat hand he did not know. The joke beneath it. The men in the bow window, looking carefully at the street. And the fair-haired stranger at the whist table, somebody's guest, very easy, very charming, who laughed at everything and had grown up in Derbyshire and asked a great many questions about Mr Darcy's wife.

He did not say the name. He watched her face, and saw that he did not need to. She had gone quite pale.

"He is supposed to be with the militia," she said at last. "In Brighton. Colonel Forster sent him there."

"Brighton is sixty miles. A man with a horse and a reason can do sixty miles in a day."

"And a reason." She was quiet for a while. "Fitzwilliam. He could have found the wager in the book. If he was somebody's guest at the club, he could have read it; anybody could. And he could have written to a scandal sheet. He has done worse. But the paper was sent to me, sealed, on the very morning Lady Theodosia called. And Lady Theodosia knew about the snow at Whetstone. And that silly book of manners. And that I—" She stopped. "No. That is not what I mean. I mean, who else knows these things? Who is he talking to?"

He looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"Mr Wickham does not go to Lady Sefton's musicales," said Elizabeth. "He is not invited to Almack's. He cannot know which invitations we have, or who is giving a ball on the twentieth, or what we say to each other at breakfast. He can read a betting book and write a nasty paragraph. But he could not have made Lady Castlereagh withdraw her card by noon on the same day. Somebody in society did that. Somebody who can whisper in the right ears." She drew a breath. "He has a friend. Somebody in our world is helping him."

The room had gone very dark. Neither of them had rung for candles.

"Then we shall find them," said Darcy.

"Yes. We shall." She put her hand on his shoulder, and he covered it with his own. "In the meantime, we are invited to Lady Pembury's on Friday. She has not withdrawn her card. Yet."

"You want to go."

"I want to go," said Elizabeth, "in my best gown, with my chin up, on your arm. Because if we stay at home, they will say we are ashamed. And we are not ashamed. Are we?"

He turned his head and kissed the inside of her wrist, where the pulse beat.

"We are not ashamed," he said.