“There was a time, I think, when you did not find my company so intolerable. I believed you had feelings for me, my lady.”
“You mistook my favour for surrender, and my loneliness for permission. I trusted you where I trusted no one else, and you repaid that trust by making it ridiculous.”
Wickham said nothing then, because silence had become safer than wit.
Lady Catherine continued, and now there was in her voice something colder still—injured pride, which in her ranked above morality and only slightly below rank itself.
“You have not merely stolen silver. You have made me ridiculous. Do you understand that distinction? You have turned my hospitality into gossip, my judgement into comedy, and my house into a cautionary tale for every dinner table in Kent. Had you stolen only candlesticks, I might have forgiven you sooner. Candlesticks can be replaced. Public absurdity is much more expensive.”
At that, even Wickham’s composure thinned. He folded his hands behind him, less from calm than from the need to keep them still.
“What is it you want, then, Lady Catherine?” he asked, and for the first time the lightness had gone from his voice. “Confession? Repentance? A public humiliation for the moral improvement of the servants? I should like, at least, to understand the ceremony before I am expected to participate in it.”
Lady Catherine looked at him as one might regard an insect that had begun, unexpectedly, to negotiate terms with the gardener.
“No, Mr. Wickham. I want efficiency. You will gather your personal belongings and be gone from this house within the hour. You will take Mrs. Younge with you, together with the stableman you brought here, for I will not have Rosings left to remember either your presence or your arrangements.”
She allowed no interruption, and the force of certainty in her tone made interruption seem childish.
“You will also write, tonight, resigning every expectation connected with Hunsford. You will provide the names of every broker, creditor, and accomplice foolish enough to trust you. And if a single object belonging to Rosings or the parish is discovered elsewhere by surprise, I shall ensure that the magistrate learns your name before the post does. If a constable finds even the shadow of your presence within ten miles of Rosings after tonight, I shall take it as a personal insult and see that you are sent to prison and forgotten there for as many years as the law can be persuaded to provide.”
She let the words settle fully before adding, with terrible calm: “Do not imagine that I threaten for effect. I dislike scenes. I prefer results.”
Wickham looked at her for a long moment and, perhaps for the first time since arriving at Rosings, understood that his charm had entirely ceased to be useful. When he answered, the lightness was gone, and what remained was something colder and far more honest.
“You are remarkably like your nephew, Lady Catherine. I begin to suspect the family resemblance is strongest where neither of you would care to admit it.”
She gave the faintest, iciest smile, and in it there was no triumph at all—only conclusion.
“No, sir. My nephew Darcy still possesses patience. I possess only memory. Do not mistake the difference. One forgives. The other remembers precisely where to strike.”
Lady Catherine looked at him with the finality of a door closing.
“Do not come back, Wickham. Ever. I have endured your presence once. I do not repeat expensive mistakes.”
***
The door to the private chambers reserved to Wickham opened at last, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh emerged with a composure so exact and unyielding that only those who had lived beneath her shadow for a lifetime could have perceived how dearly such a display had been purchased. Her countenance was a shade paler than was customary, and there was in the rigid set of her mouth something so perfectly controlled that it spoke far more of a violent will restrained than of a spirit restored to its former tranquility.
Mr. Darcy, who had been maintaining a vigil near the head of the staircase with an impatience rendered respectable only by his genuine concern, stepped forward the moment she appeared. Mrs. Fairfax stood a pace behind him, grave and silent in her professional capacity, while one of the footmen remained at a proper distance, preserving that careful invisibility expected of domestic staff when the dignity of a great family requires witnesses who possess no outward curiosity.
For a moment, Lady Catherine remained entirely silent, her eyes passing briefly from her nephew to the housekeeper with a peculiar stillness that follows a humiliation too recent and too deep to be named.
“At present,” she said at last, though her voice had lost some of its usual iron, “I find myself somewhat indisposed. It is an inconvenience I do not approve of, but nature rarely consults rank.”
She adjusted the lace at her cuff with hands that did not tremble, though her gaze remained fixed on the air just above Darcy’s shoulder. “I shall retire to my room for the space of anhour, and I require neither the attendance of a physician nor any further argument upon the propriety of the subject.”
“My dear Aunt, I must insist that you allow some small measure of care,” Darcy began, his expression altering at once to one of deep-seated anxiety, yet he was silenced before he could complete the sentiment.
“No,” Lady Catherine said, raising one hand with an authority that, though quiet, was nonetheless absolute and final. “Do not offer me the comfort of your sympathy, Fitzwilliam; I should dislike the sensation excessively, and you would undoubtedly perform the office quite badly from a sheer and inconvenient sincerity of heart. I am not currently dying, I assure you; I am merely profoundly disappointed in my own judgment, which is a far less dramatic illness and one that is generally more curable than the alternatives.”
There was enough of her original dry wit in this statement to permit Darcy a faint, reluctant smile, though the concern in his eyes did not entirely dissipate as he watched her. “If you are certain that you require no immediate assistance from the household, I shall respect your desire for privacy, Aunt,” he replied, bowing his head in acknowledgment of her will.
“I only require a period of solitude, which is near enough to the same thing for our present purposes,” she countered, turning her gaze toward the drawing-room below, where the house seemed to hold its collective breath. “Anne must not be left to the mercy of her own melancholy thoughts, nor to the well-meaning but tedious attempts of Mr. Collins at consolation, which I suspect would finish the destruction that Wickham merely began.”
She paused, drawing a breath that seemed to steady her entire frame before she continued her instructions. “You will go toher at once and reassure her as far as the truth allows; and if Miss Bennet and her father are willing, you might invite them to take some air in the park with Anne and Mr. Collins, for a walk improves almost every family crisis by placing a sufficient number of trees between people and their opinions.”
Darcy inclined his head once more, his mind already turning to the delicate task of managing the effects of such a scandal.
