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“He sounds delightful,” Elizabeth said, and her voice emerged steadier than she had any right to expect. “Does he visit still?”

The light left Georgiana’s face. She set the doll carefully back on its shelf. “He has not visited since Papa died. Brother did not quite approve of him. He said Uncle Bexley encouraged Papa’s worst tendencies—the spending, the parties, and the terrible debts that still burden Pemberley. But you are here, now, Lizzy, and I know you will help us.”

“How?” Elizabeth wondered at the girl’s naïvety. “My assets are illiquid and tied up in my uncle’s business ventures. My solicitor has not given me a full accounting, but Gigi, I do wonder what you remember about your uncle? Is his portrait in the gallery?”

“Oh, he was a favorite of my mother and my father, but Brother removed his portrait, books, and everything else. Especially after he sold Darcy House in London to settle Father’s accounts with the bank. Uncle Bexley bought it, and Brother said I must never visit, write, or even speak his name in company. I was ten years old, and I did not understand why my favorite person in the world had suddenly become forbidden.”

It could not be mere coincidence—surely not, though believing otherwise invited a most disturbing set of conclusions. Her uncle’s letters had been forwarded from Bexley House.

“What did he look like? Do you remember?” Elizabeth asked, picking up the porcelain doll. It had a beautifully painted porcelain face, brown glass eyes, and real dark hair. The kid leather body wore a cream brocade dress with seed pearls and a beautiful coral necklace.

“He was smart and handsome.” Georgiana tilted her head, blinking. “I cannot recall but that his hair was brown and longer than Papa’s. But he wore the flashiest rings—diamonds from Golconda, he said. I used to watch them flash in the candlelight,” she added, smiling at the recollection. “He said they were an investment one could wear, which made Papa laugh every time.” She turned back to Elizabeth. “Why do you ask? Did you know him?”

Elizabeth gripped the doll a little too tightly as her uncle’s rings flashed through her mind. He claimed to have won one in a card game, and he wore the other on his smallest finger because, he said, a gentleman needed at least one honest stone among his vices.

“Gigi, would you excuse me?” Elizabeth said, her voice calm and collected, as if it belonged to someone else. “I have remembered something I must attend to before dinner. Will you be comfortable arranging the rest yourself?”

“I shall manage beautifully,” Georgiana assured her, already reaching for the next pile of garments. “Mrs. Annesley will help when she wakes from her nap. She sleeps like a stone after traveling, though she would deny it under oath.”

Elizabeth replaced the doll on its shelf and left the room with all the composure she could muster. The moment she reached the corridor, she pressed herself against the wall, breath coming in short, uneven bursts. Uncle Henry was Georgiana’s Uncle Bexley; this was the thread that bound him to the Darcys. All the while, as she confided in him about this inscrutable gentleman—his insult, his disapproval, and, yes, the absurd degree of attention she lavished on her own dislike—her uncle had been quietly laughing and rearranging the pieces.

Your husband’s comfort depends upon your goodwill, and this was by design.

He had arranged things so Darcy could never afford to be unkind to her. Should she tell her husband? But he would be livid—that his well-known honor had been manipulated into marrying her.

Her uncle had known Darcy would never take the easy road, abandoning the marriage and claiming the Bennet fortune for himself. He had wagered on Darcy’s honor, and now her husband was ensnared by the very man he had barred from Georgiana’s company.

Mrs. Reynolds intercepted her on the landing.

“Ma’am, the carrier has arrived from Bristol with the first shipment of Mr. Henry Bennet’s personal effects. Mr. Darcy directed that they be placed in the small sitting room adjoining your chambers. Shall I have them brought up directly, or would you prefer to wait until after dinner?”

“Now, if you please. And Mrs. Reynolds—I shall go through them privately. There is no need for assistance.”

“Very good, ma’am. The second shipment from Bexley House is due in a few days. I suspect you shall have much to sort through.”

The first arrivals were three trunks: one large, battered, and plastered with shipping labels from Bristol and Naples and a port Elizabeth did not recognize; and two medium and well-made portmanteaus, the leather softened to the color of old honey.

Elizabeth locked the sitting room door and knelt before the large trunk first.

Clothes. Beautiful clothes, extravagant clothes, the wardrobe of a man who had dressed to be noticed. Embroidered waistcoats in peacock blue and emerald green. Cravats of finest lawn, still creased from their last wearing. A dressing gown of crimson silk that would have scandalized half of Hertfordshire and delighted the other half.

The medium trunk held personal effects. A tortoiseshell snuffbox. A case of pocket watches, three of them, each more elaborate than the last. A locked journal, the key nowhere in sight. A leather satchel tied with faded ribbon. And a velvet roll, tied with black ribbon, heavy in her palm.

Elizabeth untied the ribbon and let the velvet fall open.

Two diamond rings lay nested in the dark cloth. One held a stone the color of weak tea—champagne, Uncle Henry had called it, won in a card game in Bristol. The other was a clear, sharp brilliant, small enough for a man’s smallest finger.

She set the ring down and opened the satchel with fingers that no longer trembled—the shock had passed through her, leaving behind a strange, crystalline clarity. Inside were papers: letters, receipts, and beneath them, a sheaf of documents that bore the Darcy name in formal script. Promissory notes. Debt instruments. Letters of obligation. The original IOU, written in a hand she did not recognize but bearing a signature she did: George Darcy. The sum was staggering, the terms precise. The date of a bank failure.

Beneath it lay a ledger of quarterly payments, page after page, each recording four thousand two hundred pounds from George Darcy’s estate to the Bexley Trust, bundled with the stewards’ covering letters in varying hands, the most recent in Mr. Miller’s neat, cramped script.

The payments alone would have yielded a fortune to a man clever enough to reinvest them. Her uncle took a debt and built a fortune from servicing it, then left the fortune—and the debt itself—to his niece.

I will not explain the mechanism. Sowerby will, when the time is right, or you will discover it yourself, for you are cleverer than anyone has ever given you credit for.

She did not feel clever, and she needed to tell her husband what she had discovered. He deserved to know the fortune he had married was not a gift from a stranger but a debt he already owed, and she held it all in her hands.

But the study door was closed, and she could hear voices inside, Darcy’s low baritone and Richard’s lighter, quicker cadence. They were no doubt discussing Georgiana and the shared guardianship, the crisis at hand.