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Gardiner sat a little apart from the writing-table. His wife had received Charlotte kindly and then left them, saying that they would be undisturbed. The solicitor put his unopened notebook beside his hat and asked Charlotte what she wished him to understand.

She looked at Elizabeth. There were no answers to be found in her friend's face, only attention, and that was what she had wanted. Her account would have to begin somewhere. She chose the plainest fact.

“My husband is dead. I struck him.”

The solicitor remained still. The room had become very warm, though the fire was low. She placed her reticule on the floor so that she could no longer pull at its clasp.

“He struck Elizabeth first,” she said. “Twice. She was on the floor. Then he turned on me, and she got up to stop him.”

The words brought back the parsonage with a force which made the unfamiliar carpet beneath her feet seem precarious. She had cleaned that room. She knew where the furniture ought to be, what stood on each surface, which patch of the floor showed dust first. Afterwards those ordinary facts had become things men might ask about, and she had been unable to remember them without wondering whether they would condemn her.

Elizabeth moved her hand nearer, but did not take Charlotte's. The solicitor asked whether she could continue. Charlotte nodded, swallowed and made herself do so.

“Elizabeth had picked up the paperweight. He caught her forearm and wrenched it down. It slipped from her hand. I caught it before it reached the floor, and I struck him.”

He asked her to describe what she had seen afterwards, leaving time between the questions. There was no clever phrase which made the telling easier. Her throat hurt by the time she reached Darcy's arrival. He had not seen the blow. He had seen what remained for them to explain.

The solicitor then asked Elizabeth for what she herself remembered. Charlotte listened while her friend described the two blows, intervening, the pressure on her arm and the paperweight falling. Elizabeth stopped where her own observation stopped. She did not claim to know what Charlotte had intended in the instant before striking, or improve the account by making Collins do anything beyond what he had done.

For that restraint Charlotte was grateful. She had feared being helped into a better story, then obliged to defend it as her own.

* * *

The later account took longer than she wished. Darcy's directions, the accident they had agreed to report, Richard's part in moving the body: the solicitor separated each person's actions and asked when Charlotte had learnt of anything she had not witnessed herself. She found it harder to answer those questions. During the violence there had been no leisure to choose her words. Afterwards she had possessed time, and used it to say what she was told.

“Mr. Darcy said he could protect us,” she said. “And the Colonel has been very clear about the danger if the truth became known.”

“There may be danger,” the solicitor said. “But neither gentleman's account of your position is a substitute for advice given on your behalf.”

Charlotte folded her hands. “Can what happened before the blow make a difference?”

“It must be considered. So must the false account given afterwards. I cannot promise what would follow if an accusation were made, and a private consultation does not settle any question a court might have to consider.” He paused, allowing her to receive the unwelcome part before continuing. “I can advise you upon the circumstances you describe. If further opinion is required, we can seek it. You need not accept Colonel Fitzwilliam's personal arrangements as the only means of obtaining help.”

“And marriage?” Charlotte asked. “Would marrying the Colonel alter what happened?”

“It would not change the blow, or the account given of the death. I have heard nothing which makes your accepting his proposal a condition of my advising you.”

The danger remained: a dead man, an account which was not true, and what she and Elizabeth could say of the violence before it. Richard had joined all of that to his offer of a house until refusing him seemed another means of condemning herself. She had been afraid to separate the two.

“Then I may refuse him and still seek advice.”

“Yes.”

It was less than rescue. Charlotte found she trusted it more. The solicitor had offered no house, no marriage and no assurance that gratitude would improve her prospects.

“Will you tell him?” she asked.

“Not upon my own initiative. I am here at your request. We should discuss carefully what may be shared, and with whom, before any step is taken.”

She asked that he write down the account for her advice, and that Elizabeth and Mr. Gardiner might hear it read back. He opened the notebook then. She watched the first line appear and fought the absurd impulse to retract her permission. Once something was written, it seemed to belong less securely to the person who had endured it. Yet the men who held her secret had already made use of the fact that no one else could answer them.

When he read back the account, Charlotte corrected a phrase which made it sound as if Darcy had been present during the attack. He crossed it out and read the altered sentence. Elizabeth's fingers touched hers beneath the table, a brief pressure which asked for nothing. Charlotte kept her hand there until the reading was finished.

Charlotte asked where the record would be kept. The solicitor would seal it with her name upon the wrapper and keep it in his locked desk; no copy was to be sent to either cousin without further discussion with the women. He could undertake its careful keeping, not promise that a written account could never be lost or demanded. Charlotte considered that before agreeing. Richard already knew enough to threaten her. She wanted someone of her choosing to know enough to answer. Gardiner asked how the appointment should be paid for. Charlotte confessed the smallness of the sum in her purse before anyone could suppose it sufficient.

“I can meet the immediate fee,” he said. “There will be no need to send an account to Brook Street.”

“Then please tell me what it is.” Heat rose in Charlotte's face, but she kept her eyes upon him. “I am tired of being protected from the cost of my life.”