Page 49 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Elizabeth and Darcy stood in the hall and looked at each other.

"Was that," said Elizabeth faintly, "an apology?"

"I have known her eight-and-twenty years," said Darcy. "I have never heard her come nearer to one."

Outside, the enormous footman was opening the carriage door, very gently, and a small, pale, fair young woman wrapped in several shawls was blinking out at the square, and then at the blue door, and then at Elizabeth standing in it. She had a thin sharp clever face, and a pair of bright hazel eyes, and she smiled, suddenly and crookedly, as though at a private joke.

"You must be the one," said Anne de Bourgh, "who told my mother she was sorry for me. I have been wanting to meet you ever since."

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The letter from Matlock House came while they were at dinner, and Darcy read it at the table, which he never did, because Pearce brought it in on the salver with a face that said it could not wait.

Fitzwilliam,

I have this afternoon received a visit from Lady Sandridge, who, as you know, is one of the Queen's ladies and a very old acquaintance of mine. She came, she said, as a friend, to warn me.

She tells me it has been represented in certain quarters about the Queen that the name of Darcy is at present "much in the newspapers", and that it might be thought unfortunate, at a Drawing Room where the Queen is known to be particular, for a young lady of that name to be presented at such a time. She did not say who had made these representations. When I pressed her, she said only that more than one person had spoken of it, and that there was talk of "some earlier unpleasantness" in connection with Georgiana herself, of which she did not know the particulars and did not wish to.

I need not tell you what that means, or what it could mean, if the particulars were ever to come out.

I have not withdrawn Georgiana's name. I will not, unless I am obliged to. But I think you must be prepared. The Queen does not refuse a presentation; she does not need to. It is enough that the lady who is to be presented is given to understand, very kindly, that she would be wise to wait for another year.

I am sorry. I would have given a great deal to spare her this.

A. M.

He put the letter down beside his plate. He found that his hand was not steady.

Some earlier unpleasantness.

Georgiana, at the other end of the table, was telling Anne de Bourgh about her singing master, pink and animated, happier than he had seen her in a year. She had been counting the days to the ninth. She had had her gown fitted four times. She had practised her curtsey in the hall until Mrs Dawes laughed and Pearce pretended not to. For the first time since Ramsgate, she had been looking forward to something.

Somebody knew. Not everything; not yet. But enough to hint. Enough to whisper earlier unpleasantness in the ear of a lady of the Queen's bedchamber, and let the whisper do its work.

And there was only one man in England, outside this house and Richard, who knew the particulars.

"Fitzwilliam." Lady Catherine's voice cut across the table like a blade. "You have gone the colour of that tablecloth. Give me that letter."

He hesitated. Then, because there was no point in doing anything else, he folded the letter so that only the first two paragraphs showed, and passed it down the table.

Lady Catherine read it with her lorgnette. Her face did not change at all. When she had finished, she folded it again, very precisely, and handed it back, and said, in a perfectly ordinary tone, "Anne, my love, you are looking pale. Georgiana, take your cousin up to the music room and play her something. Mrs Darcy will join you directly."

The girls went. Georgiana cast one anxious look back over her shoulder at her brother's face, and he made himself smile at her, and she went on.

When the door had shut behind them, Lady Catherine laid both her hands flat on the tablecloth.

"Lady Sandridge," she said, "is a fool. She has been a fool since the year 'seventy-nine, when she wore yellow to her own mother's funeral. But she is a fool who stands behind the Queen's chair, and that is a thing which must be dealt with." She looked at Elizabeth. "You did not see the whole of that letter. I am not blind. Something is being said about the child."

"Yes," said Elizabeth quietly.

"Is it true?"

Elizabeth looked at her husband. Darcy looked at his aunt, who had been his mother's sister, and who had never in his life been told anything that she could use to bully him with. He thought of Georgiana's face at the other end of the table.

"Something happened," he said, at last, very low. "Last summer. Nothing that cannot be mended. Nothing she could help. But yes. There is a thing that could be made to look very bad."

He waited for the explosion.