Page 66 of Faceless

He did not know where the Bennets were — the Gracechurch Street address had been shut up since July when Richard encountered Miss Elizabeth Bennet on the steps. He did not know how Richard had found her in July. He knew only that Richard had found her, which meant Richard had some prior knowledge of her connections in London, or some thread Darcy could not trace from here. A man of Gardiner’s former situation would not be impossible to find. Richard was not a man who found things impossible.

Richard had already decided to go around Webb rather than through him. He did not need Webb. He needed the Bennets, and nothing Webb could do would prevent Richard from finding them.

Which meant the question was not whether Richard would arrive at Auchengray but when, and whether Darcy would have had any warning before he did.

He had three days, perhaps five, before the letter reached Webb. Another three before any reply could come back with Webb’s assessment. Ten days, perhaps, before Richard’s next move would be legible. Possibly less.

He picked up the pen.

Bring him in. Give him whatever from your papers will make him useful in London. Tell him I am alive. Tell him Sterling is the man behind the manifests and that the case will not survive once the clerk is recovered. Tell him I am sorry I could not say it sooner.

Tell him on no account is he to come north. Whatever he believes about my whereabouts, he is to go on as though he believes it less. He would be followed; that is the entire point of his being inside the line of enquiry rather than outside it. I will send for him in due course. Until then, he is in London, where he is most use to me.

I would rather have him inside a door I have opened than at one he has put his shoulder to.

XXVII

Not As I Am

The letter came on a Tuesday, with the Aberdeen post.

Jane’s handwriting on the outside, which was ordinary, but something different in the weight of it — thicker than usual, written across in a second hand Elizabeth did not immediately recognise as her mother’s. She took it upstairs and read it in the library with Falstaff’s head in her lap and the October light coming grey through the narrow windows.

Jane first. The usual careful warmth, the news arranged in order of consequence, her mother’s health, Kitty’s new bonnet, Mary’s sermons progressing. And then, in Jane’s most considered hand — the hand she used when she had decided exactly what to say and was saying it as gently as possible:

You will be surprised by what follows, dearest Lizzy, and I cannot pretend it is otherwise. Mama’s note will tell you more than I can here, only know that we are all well and that I hope, or I must believe that she will be happy. She has always been headstrong, and she has chosen for herself, and there is nothing more to be said of it now.

Her mother’s letter was four pages and took considerably less time to read because it said the same thing many times. Lydia was married.

Married! Could Elizabeth believe it — little Lydia, the first of her sisters truly to be married, for of course Lizzy’s wedding hardly counted, none of them had been there to see it, and a marriage one’s own mother had not witnessed was barely a marriage at all — and to such a man, a handsome man, an officer, a man they had all liked very well when he was quartered at Meryton.

It had been sudden, yes, but what was youth for if not suddenness, and Lydia had always known her own mind even if she had not always known how to apply it, and there was the five thousand pounds of course which made everything quite different from what it might otherwise have been—

The letter continued in this vein for the remaining three pages.

Elizabeth read it twice. Then she folded both letters and put them in her pocket, and blew out the candle for dinner.

Angus had told him at noon that he had got down a volume of Paley for the lady from the high shelf in the library, and was the laird wanting it after her, and Darcy had said no, the lady was welcome to it, and had been thinking about Paley ever since.

He knew what Elizabeth would do with Paley. He knew which paragraphs she would mark in her head and how she would deliver them across the table tonight. He took the passage half-impatient for it, and knocked, and went in to the dark.

Two weeks ago, before he had properly found his chair, she had announced that the author of the natural philosophy in the library was a fool.

“He is not a fool,” Darcy had said. “He is merely wrong in print, which is a lesser offence.”

“No, he is wrong in principle. He thinks the accumulation of facts must necessarily produce understanding. By that rule, Mrs MacLeod’s stillroom is the wisest room in Scotland, as it contains more labelled jars than any library shelf and is equally resistant to contradiction.”

He had said the author was making a claim for ordered inquiry, not pantry shelves. She had answered at once that ordered inquiry was only accumulation taught to dress for company, and by the time he had found the answer to that, she was already laughing under her breath because she knew she had struck somewhere live. He had conceded, finally, that accumulation and understanding were not the same thing, merely frequent companions.

He picked up his glass and waited for whatever Paley argument she had spent the day rehearsing.

“I had a letter from my sister this morning,” she said.

Not Paley, then. He set the glass down a fraction less easily than he had picked it up — pleased that she had a letter, and a little disappointed that the evening had been claimed by something other than what he had come for. Both at once. He found himself a little surprised at the disappointment.

“My youngest sister is married.”

“I did not know she was engaged.”