Page 93 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"Believes every word." Richard's voice was flat. "She is very angry with you, Cousin. I have not told her anything. I said I would wait for you, and I have. But it has been very hard to sit at her table and watch Theo weep on her shoulder and say nothing."

Lady Catherine put down her cup with a click that made everyone jump.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Tomorrow morning, Fitzwilliam. At ten o'clock. We shall all go across the square to Matlock House. You, and your wife, and I, and Richard. And the letters." She looked round at them all with her cold grey eyes. "And my brother is going to listen, for once in his life, without talking."

"I am coming too," said Georgiana.

Everybody turned to look at her. She was sitting very straight on the sofa beside Elizabeth, with her teacup in her lap, pale but perfectly steady.

"Aunt Matlock will not believe it," she said. "Not from you, Fitzwilliam. Not even from Aunt Catherine. She has loved Theo since she was a baby." She swallowed. "But she might believe it from me. I am the one Theo swore to. I am the one she wrote to, every week, for five years. I have the letters. And I am the one she—" Her voice caught. She steadied it. "I think I am the one who ought to tell her."

Darcy looked at his sister for a long moment.

Then he said, "Yes. I think you are."

#

Matlock House. Thursday, 7th May. Ten o'clock in the morning.

His uncle's library was a long, dark, handsome room, lined with books that nobody read and portraits of Fitzwilliams that nobody looked at, and Darcy had not been inside it since the day in December when he stood on this same Turkey carpet and told Lord Matlock that he was going to marry Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn, and his uncle had told him he was a fool.

Lord Matlock was standing in front of the fireplace now, exactly where he had stood then: a big, heavy, handsome man of sixty with his sister Catherine's nose and none of her sense. He had his hands behind his back and his chin sunk in his cravat, and he was looking at the little crowd that had come into his library at ten in the morning with an expression of the most profound displeasure.

Lady Matlock sat on the sofa by the window, very upright, in grey silk. She did not look at her nephew. She looked at the carpet.

"Well, Catherine," said Lord Matlock. "You demanded an audience. You have it. I trust this is not about that absurd business in the papers again. I have told Fitzwilliam what I think of the whole affair. If a man chooses to marry to disoblige his family, he must expect—"

"Be quiet, Henry," said Lady Catherine.

The Earl of Matlock stopped, with his mouth open.

"You have been talking since 1759," said his sister, "and in all that time you have never once said anything worth listening to. For the next half hour, you will listen. Sit down."

There was a long, stunned silence. Richard, by the door, made a small choking noise and turned it into a cough.

Lord Matlock sat down.

Darcy took the packet of letters out of his coat, and Wickham's confession, and Samuel Hobb's sworn statement, and the bundle from Mrs Coker's box, and Lady Catherine's Christmas letter from Rosings. He laid them one by one on his uncle's library table, in order. He did not say anything. He had decided, walking across the square with Elizabeth's hand on his arm, that he would say as little as possible. The papers would speak. They were in her hand.

He told it plainly, and briefly, in order: the paragraphs, the payments, the man in the blue coat at Pickering Place. The note in Georgiana's music case. The ice house.

At ice house, Lady Matlock lifted her head for the first time.

"You are telling me," she said, "that all of this was Theodosia."

"Yes, aunt."

"My goddaughter. Whom I have known since the day she was born. Whose mother was my dearest friend."

"Yes."

Lady Matlock looked at him. Her pale eyes were quite cold.

"I do not believe it," she said. "I do not believe a word of it, Fitzwilliam. You have had some malicious clerk forge these. Or Wickham has. He could forge anything; you told me so yourself. You have never liked Theodosia. You have never looked at her. You have been unjust to her for six years, and now you have married a girl who has turned the whole of London against you, and you want somebody to blame, and you have chosen the one person who has been kind to her." Her voice shook. "Theodosia sat on that sofa on Tuesday and wept because you would not let her near Georgiana. I held her while she cried. I will not hear this."

Nobody said anything.

Then Georgiana stood up.