Page 166 of Faceless

The younger woman rose, came around the table, and without asking, folded the petition closed and set it aside.

“Then do not waste yours on reading it again.”

“You make that sound easy.”

Georgiana sat beside her. “When I was six, and my brother was seventeen, he decided to teach me chess. I was hardly old enough to remember half what he taught me, but I do remember when he said there are positions in which one must not spend too long admiring the ingenuity of the attack, or one forgets to answer it. He was very tiresome on the subject.”

Elizabeth turned to her. “Did you beat him?”

“After about three years. Once. He did not enjoy it and pretended he did.” Georgiana’s mouth softened. “I miss him very much.”

The plainness of that went directly to the heart.

“So do I,” Elizabeth said.

For a little while, they sat together in the firelight, not speaking. The silence between them had begun to acquire shape — not emptiness, but something inhabited and reliable.

At length, Georgiana asked, “Will you write to him again today?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have been writing every day, but the earl says sending them daily looks too desperate on my part. What I write today will go out tomorrow with tomorrow’s letter.”

“Tell him I miss him.” Georgiana rose. “I shall leave you your silence, since plainly you mean to fill it with my brother and paper.”

When she had gone, Elizabeth drew the writing case towards her and sat, the pen in her hand. The page would have to carry truth without offering too much of it to hostile eyes.

My dearest husband,

Pemberton came today with Sterling’s petition to void the marriage. It is ingenious, offensive, and, I believe, unsound. Your uncle is in a temper that appears to nourish him. I think he has written six letters since four o’clock and damaged two pens in the service of your restoration.

He has also given me work, which I find I prefer to drawing rooms. Hodges and I are to go through every paper you ever entrusted to him, and several you did not. He is, by your aunt’s lady’s-maid’s account, the most discreet man in London, and by his own account merely the most stubborn. I shall not contradict either testimony.

Tomorrow, I call upon Aunt Gardiner. I have not yet seen her, for your uncle has been holding me in reserve, with such success that my own family hear more of me through gossip than my own lips, and probably now believe I have shunned them. I am told I shall be set to work in the City as soon as I have made my first appearance. I confess I find I prefer that prospect to the alternative. I shall be of better use in Coleman Street than I should ever have been in Mayfair, and I would rather be useful than pitied.

Georgiana bears herself well, and has asked me to give her love. I believe she is looking forward to a chess match with her brother soon. Jane bears me with more patience than I deserve. Between them, they prevent me from becoming entirely intolerable to the household, though the attempt is not easy.

I have considered your advice that I should not come again and have rejected it with the seriousness due to a bad argument. This cannot surprise you, as you have now had several months in which to study that defect in my character and ought by this time to know it incurable.

I was glad to see you.

There is no useful elegance with which to write that sentence. I was glad to see you in the light, though the room was hateful and the terms of the meeting more hateful still. I had not known until I saw you in that room how little reconstruction my mind had required of me in your absence. Your face is the most familiar thing in the world to me.

I can feel the line of your jaw beneath my fingertips at any hour of the day without effort. I know the weight of your hand at the small of my back, and the shape of your shoulder against my cheek, and the place under your ear where my mouth has rested a hundred times. I find I should rather be in that cell with you than at Pemberley without you. I should rather sleep on the floor of that cell beside you than in a bed in any other place in England.

Matlock House is an excellent house for sleeping badly in. It is large, orderly, and full of persons who mean well. It has not, in any of its chambers, the one person in whom my heart rests.

I remain, despite Sterling, the Crown, the Tower, and your own poor judgement in wives,

Yours,

Elizabeth Darcy

Darcy received the letter at noon. The warder who brought it in was the older of the two assigned to his passage, a decent man who performed roughness with professional care whenever anyone might be judging him for it.

“From your lady,” he said, placing it on the table beside the untouched broth.

Darcy looked at the seal.

The man, to his credit, left without speaking further.