Page 43 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

What is safe: the unsigned note, which Thornton now carries on his person. The earrings, which Fenner overlooked. Wickham's letters. Your uncle's paper trail, in two copies in two houses. And Mr. Collins's diary, now the best-guarded parish record in the history of the Church of England.

What is lost: the locket. I will not pretend it is a small loss. It was his own initial on his own cruelty, and the Lords will not now hold it in their hands.

Thornton is coldly furious, and I find his fury a considerable comfort. He is moving what remains to a place he declines to commit to paper. Graves has made the one mistake I could not have arranged for him. He has made Thornton take it personally. The Earl has been told, and is in a temper. For once it is pointed the right way.

If Graves was busy in London last night, he may have been busy in Hertfordshire too. Write to me the moment you read this, and hold nothing back, because I will imagine worse than the truth. That is the disadvantage of loving you from thirty miles away.

Your F.

Elizabeth read it twice. The morning room was quiet except for the fire and Jane's needle, which had stopped.

"Lizzy."

"The locket," Elizabeth said. Her voice came out level, which surprised her. "Graves bought one of Thornton's own clerks. The locket is gone."

She waited to feel the mist come. The locket had lived in her nightmares alongside the chain and the brand, the little vile thing arriving in its parcel, her own hair coiled behind glass, the engraved B on the case. What object in the world had a better claim on her terror?

The mist did not come. Something else came instead, climbing slowly, and it took her a moment to give it its right name, because it was so much cleaner than fear. "He cut my hair from my head," she said. "He made it into a weapon and sent it after me to my own dressmaker's. And now he has stolen the weapon back, because he knows it hangs him." She looked up at Jane. "He is afraid, Jane! They are afraid. You do not bribe clerks and climb fences by moonlight for a trial you expect to win."

"By moonlight," Jane said slowly. "Last night. The man at the fence."

"The same night his clerk cleared out of his lodgings. Two doors, one hand pressing both." Elizabeth stood and went to the window. Below, in the paddock, Alban was leading Nell along the rail with a rope she did not need, since she followed him regardless. "He tried the evidence in London and the witness in Hertfordshire in the same night. That is not patience. That is a man spending everything before the assizes of his own ruin."

"You sound almost glad."

"Not glad." Elizabeth turned around. "But I have been afraid of that man in the dark for half a year, Jane. It is a strange medicine, learning that he is now afraid of me in the daylight."

She sat down at the writing desk and answered her husband while the anger was still bright enough to keep her pen steady.

You bade me hold nothing back, and I shall not. A man came over the west fence at two o'clock this morning. Nell caught his scent before any of us saw him, and screamed until he fled. Alban is unharmed and insufferably proud of her. Pratt never saw his face, but he was no vagrant.

Mark it, Fitzwilliam. On the same night Graves spent Mr. Thornton's clerk, he spent a man on our fence. He is emptying his purse, and he cannot have much left in it.

Pray tell Mr. Thornton I am sorry for his locket, and sorrier for his clerk. He may add a foal to his arrangements for security, if the Lords permit it. Tell the Earl nothing from me. He would only take the credit.

I am not undone by this news, and I beg you will believe it. Let the locket go. When I stand before the Lords, I shall not need my hair in a case to show them what he is. I carry better proof than that on my back.

Come home when Mr. Thornton can spare you. Nell has eaten a second hat, and I am told only your authority will answer for it.

Your E.

She sealed it and sent it by the fastest rider. Then Elizabeth sat for a while, her hands flat on the desk.

Jane came and stood beside her. Below in the paddock, faintly, they could hear Alban lecturing the foal on her responsibilities.

"There will be more of this," Jane said. It was not a question. Jane's gentleness had never once required her to pretend. "Between now and the trial. He will keep reaching."

"Yes."

"And you will still stand up in that chamber, before all of them, and say what he did."

"Yes."

Jane was quiet a moment. Then she said, "When I sing with Lady Catherine, do you know what she fights hardest for? Not the tune. The tune is easy, the tune carries her. The words. She fights for the words, every night, alone, because the words are the part that is hers."

Elizabeth reached up and took her sister's hand. "They can take the locket," she said. "They cannot take my voice."

CHAPTER 14