Page 27 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

He was standing. Sixty-three, broad-shouldered, silver-haired, Richard's jaw with none of Richard's warmth. "Sit," he said. It was not an invitation. They sat.

"I have read your letter." He lifted the sheet from his desk between two fingers. "I have also made my own inquiries. Braithwaite will be tried before the House of Lords. Lord Eldon is likely to preside as Lord High Steward. The Attorney General's office is preparing the case, and I am told the evidence is substantial. I am also told that my sister hired the defendant."

Somewhere below, a clock struck eleven.

"Lady Catherine hired Braithwaite to make Elizabeth disappear," Darcy said. "She did not know what he would do. But the connection exists, it is known to several people, and it will come out at trial if it is not addressed."

"Hired him." The Earl's mouth thinned. "I have known Thomas Braithwaite since he was a boy at Catherine's heels. He danced attendance on her for two summers after Sir Lewis died. She called him Thomas at my own table. I took him for a fortune hunter, and I was relieved when nothing came of it." He set the letter down. "It will not come out at trial, because you will see that it does not."

"I cannot suppress testimony, Uncle. Nor would I. Elizabeth was chained in a cellar. Braithwaite branded her with hot iron. He burned a woman alive in her own cottage. He shot Lady Catherine herself to keep her quiet. The prosecution's case is the whole sequence, and the sequence begins with my aunt's hiring."

The Earl's face did not change. It never changed. "Then we manage the story. Lady Catherine is not a defendant. She is a victim. A widow who engaged a man of business for a lawful inquiry, and the man betrayed her and committed horrors she neither ordered nor imagined. She was shot. She nearly died. She is recovering from an apoplexy that has taken her left side and most of her speech. She is the most sympathetic figure in the case."

"There is a difficulty," Darcy said. "She can hardly speak."

"Then the difficulty resolves itself."

"Though she is improving."

The pale eyes moved to Richard.

Richard met them and held. "Jane Bennet has been working with her. Singing. Hymns. My aunt can sustain a melody where she cannot sustain speech, and the singing is rebuilding what the apoplexy broke. She has progressed to words. Mrs. Jenkinson says she practices alone at night."

"A hymn verse is not testimony."

"No. But 'I hired him' is three words. 'He shot me' is three words. If you have ever watched Aunt Catherine fight for a thing she wants, you know the outcome is not in doubt."

The Earl turned to the window. The square below was gray and damp, the trees bare.

"If she gives evidence, she admits the hiring. Before the Lords, the press, and every gossip in London. And the Fitzwilliam name absorbs the damage."

"The Fitzwilliam name," Darcy said, "survives worse than honesty."

The Earl turned back. "Very well. I will speak to the Lord High Steward. If Lady Catherine comes forward voluntarily as a witness for the Crown, discretion will be exercised. She cannot travel and she can barely speak, so her evidence will be a sworn deposition, read to the House by a clerk. I will see the paper before she swears it. No charges for the hiring. Understand me, this is not immunity. No such mechanism exists. But the politics are plain. Prosecuting a paralyzed old woman beside the man who shot her would split the case and make the defendant sympathetic. The Attorney General wants Braithwaite. I will see that he gets Braithwaite, and only Braithwaite."

"And your price?" Richard asked.

"That this family comes out of these proceedings with its reputation whole. The Lydia Bennet matter stays buried. Lady Catherine is a victim, not a villainess. And you, Richard, will stop looking at me as though I am the enemy."

Richard said nothing. It cost him, and Darcy saw what it cost.

"There is one more matter," Darcy said. "Mr. Graves."

"Braithwaite's solicitor. Chancery Lane. No reputation worth the mentioning."

"He has been busy." Darcy laid it out: the unsigned note, the lodgings, the hired carriages, Gardiner's paper trail, the stranger asking after Alban. Then Gill's letter. A solicitor standing in a widow's shop, naming the cost of her lease.

The Earl crossed to his desk, sat, and laid both hands flat upon it. The signet ring caught the firelight. "He went himself?"

"He went himself."

"That is not advocacy. That is an attempt to obstruct a proceeding before the House of Lords, in the chamber where I sit, under procedures I have sworn to uphold." He looked at Darcy. "You want Graves investigated."

"I want Graves stopped."

"I speak to the Attorney General's office tomorrow. If the trail runs where you say it runs, Graves faces charges of his own, and Braithwaite's defense arrives at trial already discredited." A pause. "This is not altruism, Darcy. Graves has treated a peer's trial as a back-alley transaction. I take that personally."

"I know. That is why I brought it to you."