“It cannot be, for he was not titled when I met him,” Lady Allen said.
“The knighthood was for secreting you away discreetly,” Sir Edward told Elizabeth. “At two-and-twenty, I was feckless and had not yet deserved the distinction.”
Elizabeth blinked in surprise, wondering if this meant that the other royals knew of her.
Cathy giggled with Harriet. “What a life you have had! Partying by the seaside with the royal family!”
“I was favored by fortune,” Sir Edward agreed. “At the end of the summer, of course, we all went our separate ways to begin our lives. I was often occupied in learning the family business with my father, but I saw my friends when they were in town. On one occasion, a dinner Harry gave just after he married the daughter of a marquis, the general brought a guest with him, the newly vested Duke of Clarence, Prince William. He had been away at sea when the royals were in Weymouth, but he had heard of us from his family. He was a fine fellow! Very stylish, so he was very civil to me when he discovered the quality fabrics to be gotten from Gardiner Imports – gifted, naturally, in gratitude for my many invitations to court.”
Cathy and Harriet giggled again, and Lady Allen beamed at Sir Edward. “Another time, we must speak more ofthat.”
He gave an indulgent chuckle. “Naturally, my dear. At any rate, I resumed my acquaintance with Princess Elizabeth while I enjoyed my popularity at court. I had met her in Weymouth, of course, but it was when I returned to London that I really became an incorrigible flirt. I even made the Queen blush a few times!”
“And you had a love affair with her!” Cathy cried.
“I admired her, and thought her a most amusing companion. She is a very free spirit, or she was then, fond of art and food and conversation. She was plump, but pretty, and she was the only woman at court who could turn my flirtation upside down and talk absolute circles around me, which was quite beguiling.”
Behind the ladies, Mr. Darcy gave a little snort of laughter.
“We began our affair in the winter of seventeen-ninety, fueled by my own bravado, I suppose, to see if Icould. There was a great thrill in it, for each of us, and it carried on for months. In the summer she told me she was with child. She was afraid of taking some sort of tonic, as some ladies do in that predicament. I did not wish her to risk her life, feeling myself to blame, and knowing it would make a great scandal. And of course, any child of hers would be of some value, and of delightful character,” he added, giving Elizabeth an affectionate pat.
“When Fanny wrote that she was with child, we contrived that the princess would go away to have the baby in secret, and I had the same notion as Margaret had with Cathy, that my sister would pass Elizabeth off as her child’s twin.”
“Mamma must have despised me, when her boy died,” Elizabeth sighed.
“Since her daughters reached a marriageable age, she has lamented it, but at the time you were a great comfort to her; she nursed you herself,” Sir Edward said. “She favored you even over Jane, for years. She believed the princess would someday do something very grand for you, and perhaps for her.”
Elizabeth frowned. That certainly sounded like her mother. She supposed that as the years went on without anygreat reward, Jane’s beauty seemed more of a prize than a girl of royal blood.
“Your father was offered the same knighthood as me, but declined it for fear of how he would explain his elevation; he accepted a sum that has been set aside for his family in secret,” Sir Edward said, and Elizabeth gaped at him.
“Well! This secret may have condemned me to spinsterhood, but at least it shall be genteel,” she murmured. Mr. Darcy came to rest a hand on her shoulder, then abruptly withdrew.
A moment of pensive silence fell over them, but was soon broken by Mr. Tilney. “My goodness. If I had not read nearly all of this in the dossier, I should feel I had no right to hear your story, sir.”
“Yes, well,” Sir Edward grumbled. “I hope Lizzy will forgive me for telling it before an audience. With so many wild accusations being made, absolute transparency has a certain appeal.”
Elizabeth nodded, for she was far too thoughtful to mind anybody at present. “The dossiers…. I suppose we ought to set about our work.” What she really wanted was time to turn it all over in her mind, but she supposed that would have to wait.
“Perhaps you ladies might begin reading the dossiers and adding to Miss Morland’s notes on the wall. Darcy, Sir Edward, I believe we ought to, er, relocate my brother to the cellar.”
“Could you get more newspapers?” Cathy asked Mr. Tilney. She gestured to a stack they had brought back with them. “We found a room full of old junk, with stacks and stacks of old newspapers. These are from the last few years, and I thought we could examine the scandal pages for any mention of our possible suspects.”
“Vastly clever,” Mr. Tilney agreed. He led the gentlemen from the room to attend to his brother.
Elizabeth felt a sinking in her stomach at this reminder of the dead man in the parlor, and the other two already in the cellar. She shuddered. The ladies settled themselves, and only remarked on Elizabeth’s parentage for another quarter hour before finally opening the dossiers.
The gentlemen soon returned and joined them, some combing over the dossiers, and others the newspapers. A few times, some mention of one of the guests was clipped from the papers, mulled over, and then pinned to the wall. The stack of papers Mr. Tilney retrieved was more than thirty years old and Cathy fretted that these would likely prove less helpful.
“It is rather frightening to learn everyone’s secrets,” Elizabeth sighed. She gave Harriet a reassuring look, for she and Emma had been obliged to share their own secret, which would have come out anyhow. Their companions were shocked, naturally, though Lady Allen confessed she had a school friend with similar predilections, but was a lovely girl, and Sir Edward told them he had once courted an actress who cared only for fine ladies, which only made her more ravishing.
It was perhaps to Emma and Harriet’s advantage that they discovered far more shocking secrets than this. Only a few of the secrets turned out to be innocuous. None of them could fault Tom Bertram for his abolitionist extremism, and the dossiers confirmed that Sir Edward and Lady Allen were hiding nothing worse than their illegitimate children. Mr. Darcy was afforded the courtesy of some little privacy when he recounted his dealings with Mr. Wickham; he did not name his sister explicitly, and referred only to a female relation of whom he was fond.
Cathy laughed as she read one of the bundles of notes. “Poor Sir Walter! His secret is that his wife could not give him children, and faked all of her pregnancies. His daughters were all borne of his mistresses. ‘Tis fortunate for Mr. Willoughby, his heir, that he still could not produce a son!”
“No wonder he flirts with all the ladies,” Emma drawled. “He must still hope to amend that, for he dresses like a dandy twenty years younger – and twenty years out of fashion!”
“That is not the only sordid affair. Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Crawford,” Lady Allen said with a gasp.
