Page 96 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"Horse Guards," he said, handing them round. "I will see to Wickham. New South Wales. I know the man at the Adjutant-General's office. He owes me a vote. It will be done by Saturday." He drank. "And now, Catherine. The girl. Theodosia." His face darkened. "What in God's name is to be done about Theodosia?"

Everybody looked at Lady Catherine.

She had not touched her port. She sat very upright in the good chair with her hands folded on the head of her ebony cane, and her cold grey eyes were very bright.

"I told Fitzwilliam," she said, "when he left London, that when we found whoever it was, he was to leave them to me. Did I not, Fitzwilliam?"

"You did, aunt."

"Then I am claiming my due." She turned to her brother. "Audrey gives her spring ball on the twenty-first. It is the best ball of the Season. Everybody comes. Everybody who has cut Mrs Darcy this spring, and laughed at the Post, and whispered about Georgiana behind their fans. And Theodosia will come. She always does. She will stand at Audrey's elbow in the receiving line in white and silver, as she has every year since she came out, and be charming to all of them." Lady Catherine's mouth thinned. "She will be sent her card as usual. She will suspect nothing. And then she will find out, in front of all those people, exactly what happens to someone who makes a jest of the name of Darcy."

There was a silence in the study.

Darcy found that he did not much like it. He thought of the last letter from the saddle, turned over: I waited six years. They say he built her a door. He thought of a fair head at his aunt's Christmas table, year after year, and a quiet voice he could not remember.

"Aunt," he said slowly. "I do not want her destroyed. I do not want a scene. I do not want to do to her what she did to us."

Lady Catherine turned her grey eyes on him.

"Neither do I," she said, surprisingly. "I am not a savage, Fitzwilliam, whatever my brother may think. There will be no scene. There will be no shouting. Nobody will be humiliated who has not done it to herself." She paused. "But there will be the truth. In front of everybody. In daylight, so to speak, where the whole Town can see it. Your wife said something of the kind to you, I believe. Richard told me. Not on a heath at dawn. In daylight." A faint grim twitch at the corner of her mouth. "She is quite right. It is the only way it will ever be finished."

The study door opened. Lady Matlock stood in it, in her grey silk, with her face still swollen with crying. Behind her, in the passage, Darcy saw Elizabeth, and Georgiana beside her, holding her hand.

Lady Matlock looked round at them all: her husband, her son, her sister-in-law, her nephew. Then she said, in a voice that was very quiet and perfectly steady:

"Theodosia will have her card for the twenty-first. As she has every year. I shall write it myself, this afternoon, in my own hand." She drew a breath. "And, Catherine. Whatever you are planning, I wish to be part of it."

Chapter 26: Unmasked

Matlock House. Thursday, 21st May 1812

Lady Matlock's spring ball had been the best ball of the Season for twenty-two years, and on the night of the twenty-first of May, the whole of the Town came to it, as the whole of the Town always did.

They came up the great staircase of Matlock House between banks of white lilac and hothouse roses, under three crystal chandeliers, in a slow shining river of silk and diamonds and uniforms and feathers: dukes and duchesses, ambassadors, half the Cabinet, most of the Lords. Lady Jersey. Lady Sefton. Mrs Drummond-Burrell, who had cut Elizabeth dead at the Pemburys' in March. Lady Pembury herself, in purple, with her niece. Lady Castlereagh, who had withdrawn her card. Sir Charles Hanley, who would have taken the bet himself for fifty guineas.

And at the top of the stairs, where they had to pass in front of her one by one and make their curtsey, stood Elizabeth Darcy.

She was standing at Lady Matlock's right hand.

It was the place of honour. Everybody in London knew it. For six years, since the season she came out, Lady Theodosia Rowe had stood in that place at her godmother's elbow in white and silver, and smiled, and been charming to all of them. Tonight Lady Matlock had taken Elizabeth by the hand at a quarter to ten, before the first carriage came, and led her to the head of the stairs, and put her there, and said, quite quietly, "Stay here, my dear. Beside me. Whatever happens."

So she stayed.

She wore the white satin that Lady Matlock had sent round that afternoon with no card: a gown so plain and so beautifully made that it must have cost more than her father's income for a year. She wore the sapphire at her throat, and the sapphire on her finger, and Lady Matlock's cashmere shawl over her arms. Her hair was dressed very simply, without feathers. She had looked at herself in the long glass at Darcy House before she came out and had not quite recognised the woman looking back. Then her husband had come up behind her in the glass, in his black evening coat, and put his hands on her shoulders, and said nothing at all, and she had recognised herself at once.

He was standing a little behind her now, at his aunt's other side, very tall, very grave, with his hands clasped behind his back. She did not need to look at him to know he was there.

The river of guests came up the stairs.

She watched them see her. It was the strangest thing she had ever watched. They came up the last steps chattering and laughing, turning their heads to their companions, lifting their skirts, adjusting their gloves; and then they looked up, and saw who was standing at Lady Matlock's right hand, in the place that had always been Theodosia's. And they stopped.

Every single one of them. For a heartbeat, no more. A hitch in the step, a flicker in the face, a glance at Lady Matlock and then back. She saw them understand. Lady Matlock of Matlock House, who had not been known to smile on Mrs Darcy all Season, was standing on the top step of her own staircase with her hand resting on Mrs Darcy's arm. There was no possible way of mistaking what it meant.

And then they had to curtsey to her.

Lady Sefton did it gracefully, with a small rueful smile, as though to say well, I was wrong. Lady Castlereagh did it very correctly and turned pink to the roots of her hair. Lady Pembury did it so low that her purple turban wobbled and her niece had to catch her elbow. Sir Charles Hanley did not seem able to do it at all, and stood gaping on the top step until the people behind him pushed him on.

Mrs Drummond-Burrell came up the stairs talking over her shoulder, laughing at something, and turned, and saw Elizabeth, and stopped dead. Her face went white, and then red, and then white again. She looked at Lady Matlock. Lady Matlock looked back at her, pleasantly, without the slightest expression at all.