“You submit because you are in my house, sir, and because I have not yet decided whether I have been merely deceived or actively robbed. Spare me lectures on propriety until I am certain which injury deserves my attention first. Mrs. Fairfax has her keys. But I want yours. The key.”
For a moment it appeared Wickham might still refuse.
Mr. Darcy said nothing, but the cold steadiness of his gaze made the silence almost oppressive to Wickham.
At last the new vicar reached slowly into his coat and produced the key, holding it between two fingers as though reluctant to surrender not the metal itself, but the last appearance of control. He handed it to Lady Catherine.
She accepted it with cold triumph and immediately passed it to Mrs. Fairfax.
“You will open it,” her ladyship ordered. “I prefer facts to gestures.”
Mrs. Fairfax, whose hands trembled only once, stepped forward and unlocked the door. The latch gave with an ordinary sound so small it seemed almost insulting after so much consequence. Yet when the door opened, no one entered at once. The pause itself was accusation.
Mr. Darcy moved first. It was an excellent room by any ordinary standard—well furnished, comfortably situated, and more than generous for a clergyman whose preferment was still recent. That comfort, under present circumstances, seemed less like hospitality than evidence. The room was orderly—too orderly, Elizabeth would later think when it was described to her—as though care had been taken not merely to keep it neat, but to preserve the appearance of innocence. Writing materials were arranged with exactness upon the desk; boots stood properly cleaned; clothing had been folded with the discipline of a valet more competent than sentimental. Nothing in it belonged to chaos. That, somehow, made suspicion stronger.
Mrs. Fairfax went directly to the bureau and opened its drawers with the practised authority of a woman who had governed households longer than most men had governed themselves. Linen, correspondence, ordinary personal effects—nothing remarkable at first glance. One of the footmen examinedthe wardrobe; the other waited for instruction near the trunk at the foot of the bed.
Lady Catherine stood in the centre of the room like judgement made visible.
“Well?” she asked. “Am I to be informed that my entire household has descended into fiction?”
Wickham allowed himself the smallest smile.
“I should be delighted, madam, if reality were permitted the same defence as suspicion.”
Mr. Darcy crossed to the escritoire and opened it himself. Inside were letters, neatly bundled; a small locked cash box; and, beneath several papers folded less carefully than the rest, Hunsford’s household inventory ledger. He lifted it without comment. Mrs. Fairfax, seeing it, changed colour.
“That should not be here, sir,” she said quietly. “Those papers were kept below.”
Lady Catherine took one step nearer.
“And why,” she asked, each word distinct, “is my parson’s household inventory in your private desk, Mr. Wickham?”
The vicar answered without visible haste.
“Because I was attempting to restore order where none had been properly kept. The former vicar was probably an excellent clergyman, but not, perhaps, a man born for domestic accounts.”
Mr. Darcy, however, only placed the paper aside and nodded toward the trunk.
“That,” he said, “will be opened next.”
The footman bent immediately. Wickham took half a step forward before checking himself, and that single involuntary movement was more eloquent than any denial. Lady Catherine saw it. So did everyone else.
The lid was lifted. At first there was only clothing—carefully packed, suitable enough for travel. Beneath it, wrapped in linen too hastily folded to be accidental, lay two heavy silver candlesticks unmistakably belonging to the smaller drawing-room at Rosings. Under them, a velvet pouch containing cutlery engraved with the de Bourgh crest. Lower still, wrapped in cloth darkened by tarnish, were two pieces of church plate from Hunsford chapel and the gilt frame fittings from paintings recently declared “misplaced” during repairs.
No one spoke. Mrs. Fairfax pressed one hand against the bedpost as though steadiness had become a physical necessity. One of the footmen looked at the floor with the moral concentration of a man determined not to have seen what he had absolutely seen. Lady Catherine did not move at all. The second footman, after a brief hesitation, bent and drew from beneath the bed two framed paintings, both unmistakably from the Hunsford parlour.
It was Darcy who finally broke the silence.
“I think those are the paintings from Hunsford’s parlour. I know those for years,” he said, and his voice was now colder than anger. “So, I believe, the question of privacy has been answered.”
For several moments Lady Catherine did not move, and in that stillness the entire authority of Rosings seemed to gather itself into something far more formidable than mere temper. She looked neither at the silver, nor at the church plate, nor even at the opened trunk itself, but at Mr. Wickham—as though objects, however offensive, were still less insulting than theman who had presumed to place them there in his possession, beneath her roof, and under her protection. The room, though occupied by several people, had become so silent that even the faint movement of the curtains at the open window seemed an intrusion.
When she spoke at last, her voice had lost every trace of heat and entered instead that colder register which, in Lady Catherine, was infinitely more dangerous than anger. Rage might be endured; judgement was another matter entirely.
“Leave the room.All of you.”
No one moved immediately. Mrs. Fairfax lowered her eyes; one of the footmen shifted his weight almost imperceptibly; even Wickham, who had thus far preserved the appearance of composure, seemed uncertain whether the command had been meant to include him.
