Page 81 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Elizabeth looked down at her sister-in-law. At the white face and the set mouth, and the hand that was still trembling a little at her side.

"Georgiana," she said gently. "Why did you bring it to me?"

Georgiana looked at her. For a moment her lip wobbled, and Elizabeth thought she would cry. She did not.

"Because a year ago," she said, "I would have gone."

The long gallery was very quiet. Outside the window, the sun was bright on the lake.

"A year ago," said Georgiana, "I would have read that, and believed every word, and been so frightened for Fitzwilliam that I could not think, and so proud that Theo had come all this way for me, and I would have put on my bonnet and gone down to the ice house at six o'clock by myself. And told nobody. Because she said not to." Her voice cracked. "I have been sitting on the saloon floor with it in my lap for half an hour. Wanting to go. Wanting so much to believe it was really Theo, really come to help. And then I thought: Elizabeth would not go. Elizabeth would bring it to someone. And then I thought: Fitzwilliam is not in London in danger. Fitzwilliam is in London finding out who wrote those paragraphs. And then I knew." She wiped her eyes fiercely with the back of her hand. "It is not Theo at the ice house. Is it? It is him."

"Yes, dearest," said Elizabeth. "I think it is."

Georgiana nodded slowly. Then she sat down, rather suddenly, on the window seat, as though her legs had given way.

Elizabeth sat down beside her and put her arms round her. Over Georgiana's fair head, she met Mrs Reynolds's eyes. The old housekeeper was standing very straight by the linen press with the book clasped to her chest, and her face had done something extraordinary: it had gone soft, all at once, like wax near a fire.

"Well, Miss Georgiana," said Mrs Reynolds, not quite steadily. "Well. Your mother would have been proud of you this day. And so would your father. And I am."

Georgiana laughed wetly into Elizabeth's shoulder.

Elizabeth held her, and looked out of the window over her head, down across the gardens and the lawn and the long bright sheet of the lake, to the far end of it, where a clump of dark old yews stood close together on a little rise near the water. In the middle of them, half sunk in the bank, she could just see a low stone doorway with a heavy oak door: the old ice house, where the Pemberley cooks had stored the winter ice for a hundred years.

Six o'clock. Alone. Tell no one.

"Mrs Reynolds," she said. "Who has the key to the ice house?"

"I do, madam. There is only the one." A pause. "Why?"

Elizabeth turned her head and looked up at her.

"Because Mr Wickham wants somebody to come to the ice house at six o'clock," she said, "and I think we had better not disappoint him."

#

It was Anne's idea, in the end, and nobody could talk her out of it.

"He is expecting a fair slim girl in a grey pelisse and a close bonnet," she said. They were all in Elizabeth's blue room: Elizabeth, Anne, Georgiana, Mrs Reynolds, James, and Hannah, with the door shut and the linen books still under Mrs Reynolds's arm. "From a distance, in the dusk, under the yews. Georgiana is fair and slim. So am I. Elizabeth is dark. Hannah has freckles and walks like a milkmaid. It must be me."

"Absolutely not," said Elizabeth.

"Miss de Bourgh, your mother would never forgive me," said Mrs Reynolds.

"My mother," said Anne, "sent me here with Mrs Darcy because she said Mrs Darcy had more sense than any young woman she had met since 1774. Mrs Darcy, have you a better plan?"

Elizabeth opened her mouth. She shut it again.

"He will not hurt me," said Anne. "He wants Georgiana alive and willing and a long way from here by morning. The moment he sees my face, it is over. And I shall not be alone." Her thin face was flushed and her eyes were very bright. "I have been sitting in carriages for four-and-twenty years, being carried about and wrapped up and told not to walk because I might die. I climbed a hill on Tuesday. I should like to do something else, before I go back to Rosings and the shawls. Please."

Elizabeth looked at her for a long moment. Then she looked at Georgiana, who was holding out her own grey travelling pelisse, and her close grey bonnet with the veil, without a word.

"James stands inside the ice house door," said Elizabeth slowly. "Before he comes. With the head groom. In the dark. The two London grooms in the yews on the far side. Tom Hollins's father and his brother at the boathouse, in case he runs for the water. And I stand behind the big yew by the path, where I can see everything and reach you in ten steps." She looked at Anne. "And the moment he touches you, the very moment, you scream. Loudly. Do you understand?"

"I have never screamed in my life," said Anne, with deep satisfaction. "I am looking forward to it extremely."

#

At six o'clock the sun was low over the western hills and the whole valley was full of long gold light and long blue shadows. The lake lay still as glass. The yews round the ice house were black against it, close and old and silent, their trunks as thick as a man.