Page 147 of Faceless

The corner of his mouth altered. It was the first sign she had yet seen that the conversation might end with both of them on the same side of it. He looked at her more directly.

“When did you gain this title, Baroness, and by what name may I call you?”

“We were married on the twenty-third of July. My name before that was Elizabeth Bennet, but you may call me Elizabeth Darcy, if it pleases you.”

His brow arched. “Well, ‘Mrs Darcy,’ we shall see first if the name pleases you. My nephew married you under a false name in Scotland, without informing any member of his family, and you tell me you did not know his name or see his face until approximately a month and a half ago. Have I understood you correctly?”

“You have, my lord. He took considerable pains to ensure I did not, for reasons I am now in some position to appreciate. The deception was not the work of a man indifferent to honour. It was the work of a man who had concluded that his life was forfeit and that mine would be safer in proportion to my ignorance of him.”

The earl wrote something on his paper. “And you have come to me now because that calculation has failed?”

“It has failed because the Home Office has come for him in person, and because I am no longer ignorant of anything that matters. I have come to you, my lord, because I have run out of better options, and because Colonel Fitzwilliam was of the opinion that you would prefer to be asked rather than informed.”

Elizabeth stopped there. She had no desire to improve her case with pleading. In her experience, pleading only encouraged powerful men to think they had granted what in fact they had merely ceased to obstruct.

The earl crossed his arms over his chest and sighed as he scrutinised her. His mouth had fallen into a scowl that was thoughtful rather than fearsome, and one stray finger tapped on the opposite forearm.

At last, he said, “He chose well.”

The tone was so dry, so entirely tactical, that she nearly laughed. “I would not have expected you to approve of me on so short an acquaintance.”

“Make no mistake, Mrs Darcy, it is not your person of whom I approve — my opinion on that point hardly matters now — but my nephew’s choices. A woman who married under ignorance of both name and person is difficult to prosecute as a knowing accessory. A woman whose attachment formed before the discovery is more difficult still.”

“I believe that was among his motives.”

“It was an excellent motive.” He took up the pen again. “Sterling will petition to void the marriage the moment he learns of it.”

She had been bracing herself for a number of things since Inverurie. This was not among them.

“Void it? My lord — on what grounds? It was lawfully contracted. There were witnesses. There is a settlement. There —”

“On the grounds that you were married under a false name, by a man whose true name and rank were concealed from you, which makes the marriage a fraud on its face. Or so Sterling’s counsel will argue. They will not succeed. But the petition will not be filed to succeed.”

“Then what would be the purpose?”

He set the pen aside and looked at her directly. “First, it puts on the public record a finding that my nephew contracted a marriage under a second name. Once that finding exists, every document he signed as Carlisle becomes questionable — every estate transaction, every bank instrument, every contract — and Sterling’s people will move to challenge each one. It lets him attack the whole structure of Darcy’s finances, including the funds that have kept the investigation alive.

“Second, it establishes that Darcy operated under a fraudulent identity, which Crown counsel will use as consciousness of guilt. The defence will say he went to ground because he was wronged; Sterling will offer the false marriage as proof he went to ground because he had something to hide, and that the elaborate deception of a young woman is the work of a conspirator, not a man wrongly accused.

“Third, it ruins Darcy in the public mind before the trial begins. A man who marries a respectable gentlewoman under a false name and hides his face from her for months is a man no London jury will pity, and Sterling would like that ruin in place before a single maritime witness is heard. A treason case is half won in the newspapers and half in the courtroom, and he means to fight both.

“And fourth, which is the most obvious, though probably the least possible, voiding the marriage makes you available.”

Elizabeth’s arms had folded across her chest, but at this, they fell. “Available to whom?”

“To them, madam. If the marriage can be voided — and it is not entirely impossible — you are not the prisoner’s wife. You are a young woman deceived by a fugitive into a fraudulent ceremony, with no spousal privilege of any kind, from whom the Crown may compel testimony on any subject, with no right to refuse. They will put you on a stand. They will ask what you knew and when. They will ask what passed between you on every night you shared his roof. They will ask whether you saw papers in his hand and what you made of them. Every answer that is not exactly what they want, they will treat as complicity; every answer that pleases them, as proof against him. He will lose his wife, his fortune, his name in the press, and his case, in a single instrument. That is what the petition is for.”

She put one hand on the back of the chair beside her. She did not sit. She did not, for the moment, trust her knees.

“It is the marriage that will keep you out of their hands, Mrs Darcy, in every sense that signifies. He bought it for you with those months of darkness. Sterling will mean to strip it off you and use what is underneath. He will not succeed. But the petition will be made, and it will be loud, and we shall have to manage it.”

She made herself speak. “What can be done?”

The earl wrote three lines in a hand so decisive that the pen itself seemed relieved to know what was required of it. “Our best hope is that no one knows of you. But if you had any public presence as the mistress of Auchengray, it will come out — a marriage contracted, a woman living with him — and from there it is a short line to you.”

Elizabeth swallowed as the earl shifted in his chair.

“The Auchengray title is legitimate. The marriage was properly contracted under Scottish law — or so I assume, knowing my nephew’s prudence. An alias may disgrace a man in drawing rooms and newspapers, but it does not of itself dissolve a legal instrument executed with witnesses. I will send for Pemberton this afternoon. He is the best man in London for this, and has owed me a favour since 1809. You have the marriage document?”