Colonel Fitzwilliam leaned back in his chair. “Excellent. We have had no progress at all, and trouble may be an improvement.”
Mr. Philips pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “Lizzy, there are many dry legal phrases here. You may wish you had stayed with the chocolate.”
“I have lived with my sister Mary’s lectures about Fordyce’s opinions on proper behavior for years. I am not easily discouraged by dryness.”
Darcy held out a hand without seeming to think of it. She crossed to him and placed her fingers in his. The touch lasted only a moment, but it steadied her more than she wished to admit. Then he drew one of the documents nearer and explained what they had found.
It was not much.
The London solicitor’s office had provided copies of George Darcy’s will, two codicils, several letters, and papers pertaining to Wickham’s inheritance. There were signatures enough to compare, though no agreement resembling Wickham’s claim. There was mention of Mr. Alton in one old letter, proving that George Darcy had, upon occasion, used the Derbyshiresolicitor’s services. That, unfortunately, helped Wickham more than it harmed him.
For ten minutes, Elizabeth listened, read, and tried not to feel as though they were searching for a single dropped pin in a field.
The gentlemen had already compared the slant of the handwriting, the shape of the G, the sweep beneath Darcy, the seal, the paper, the witnesses, and the phrasing. Mr. Philips had noted that the wording was peculiar in places but not impossible. Richard muttered that peculiar and impossible were close relations and ought to be treated as such. Darcy said very little. He read, compared, and read again, each silence making Elizabeth’s heart sink lower.
She took up one of the letters from the London packet, not because she expected to discover anything the gentlemen had missed, but because doing something was better than standing there with dread pressing upon her ribs.
The letter was brief, written by George Darcy to his solicitor regarding Wickham’s Scottish estate. Elizabeth disliked the hand at once. There was a boldness to it, a careless confidence that seemed to suit the little she knew of the man. She glanced from that signature to another, then to the supposed marriage agreement.
George Rubert Darcy.
Her eye caught upon the middle name.
She looked back at the letter.
George Rubert Darcy.
Then the will.
George Rubert Darcy.
Then the codicil.
George Rubert Darcy.
Elizabeth frowned.
“Darcy?”
He looked over at once. “Yes?”
“Your father’s middle name. Was it Rupert? With ap?”
Darcy’s brow furrowed. “Rubert. With ab. An old family oddity, I am afraid. My grandparents fancied themselves preserving a spelling from some half-remembered ancestor. It caused endless confusion, I believe, but my father was particular about it.”
Elizabeth looked again at the marriage contract.
“Particular enough to never misspell it?”
“Always,” Darcy said. “Why?”
She turned the paper toward him and placed one finger carefully beneath the signature.
Darcy bent over the page and gave a sharp gasp.
Richard came around the desk, and Mr. Philips stood so quickly his chair scraped against the floor.
On Wickham’s marriage agreement, in a hand very like George Darcy’s, beneath all the vile words that had haunted them for two days, the signature read:
