Page 182 of Faceless

“He must hear it from me. Not from any of you. Not by any letter another hand has touched. I will send for him in the morning, by the way we use, and he will come to me at the new house. After that, he and I will decide together, the way we have not been let to decide together in eleven months. If he says yes, I will send word within the day. If he says no, I will send that word also, and you will let him alone. I want your hand on that.”

“You have it.”

Mrs Marsh set her cup down. Her hand was trembling now in a way it had not trembled when she had come in, which Elizabeth recognised as the small body-honest tremor of having decided to risk something and paying the price of it.

Elizabeth rose. She rose carefully, because the gown was heavy and she did not wish to lose the small dignity she had constructed at the beginning of the interview.

Mrs Marsh rose with her. “I do not know whether to thank you.”

“Nor do I. Perhaps we may decide later whether thanks belong in it at all.”

Mrs Marsh put out her hand.

Elizabeth took it.

She held it longer than the gesture strictly required, because she had decided, in that small extra second, that the recognition between them deserved more than the duration of a polite greeting.

“Jane, will you have Mrs Hatchett tell his lordship that I shall be grateful if he would join us in a quarter of an hour, so that I might explain to him what we have agreed?”

“Yes, Lizzy.” Jane went out.

Elizabeth turned back to Mrs Marsh. “Sit down again. We have a little time before they come. Tell me what your daughter’s name is.”

Mrs Marsh sat a little too heavily. She turned a small, unguarded face to Elizabeth, not having expected to be asked.

“Anne. After my mother.”

“And your son?”

“Thomas. After his father’s father.”

“Then I shall remember them both, Mrs Marsh, and you shall not be kept from them a moment longer than is required to be sure the carriage is ready.”

“Well?” Richard demanded when Elizabeth followed the earl back to the drawing room.

“Tonight,” Elizabeth answered.

Richard exhaled once, hard enough to show how much of the day he had spent thinking of failure. Mrs Gardiner rose from her seat with her hand over her mouth. The earl, standing beside Elizabeth, closed his eyes one instant and opened them again as if granting himself no more than that.

“Good,” Richard said. “Then we move before dark has time to improve anyone’s courage.”

The household altered at once. Orders went out through channels that never used the family name. The earl called for his coachman to ready another carriage. Lady Matlock wrote two notes and sealed them before Jane had even taken a seat. Richard left by the side door with one of the earl’s men.

Elizabeth crossed to the window and was drawing aside the drapes to look at the street, at Mrs Marsh’s figure mounting the earl’s carriage to collect her children in Wapping. She smiled faintly and lifted a hand, and she thought Mrs Marsh’s hand had raised in return just before the carriage door closed.

When Elizabeth turned back to the room, the earl was watching her from his chair by the hearth. “If this answers,” he said, “he will owe you more than any of us can conveniently enumerate.”

“He already owes me the naming of a child and several months of insomnia,” she said. “I am not afraid of increasing the account.”

Before midnight, word came back. Mrs Marsh and the children had been moved cleanly. No disturbance. No alarm. And Anne had particularly liked the lemon tarts Elizabeth had sent along with their carriage.

Elizabeth went to bed with that knowledge under her heart and Darcy’s name on her lips. For the first time in many weeks, action had gone precisely where she meant it to go.

LXVII

I Am Coming First to You

My dearest Elizabeth,