Page 53 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"My lords." Lord Bee's voice was smooth and soft. "I will not distress the child with questions. I will only observe that he is six years old, that he has lived these several months as the pet of the Darcy household, fed and clothed and taught his letters at their expense, and that a child so young, so obliged, and so lovingly coached will say whatever the people he loves require of him. I ask their lordships to weigh his years against his words."

The lawyer for the King started to stand, but the man with the white staff spoke first. "The House has heard the boy," he said. "He speaks plainly, upon his oath, of what he saw with his own eyes. His years go to the weight of his evidence, my lord, not to its admission. The testimony stands."

Alban did not understand all the words. He understood the end of it. They were keeping what he had said!

They let him down from the step. On his way past the box he looked up at Lord Bee one time, because Mr. Henson said you should always look at a horse that had kicked you, so it knew you weren't afeared of it. Lord Bee looked back at him with nothing at all in his face.

Nobody escaped Lord Bee. That was what Alban used to think, in the time when he did not talk.

He walked the whole long floor without hurrying, the way Mr. Darcy walked, and at the door he thought: I got 'im again.

Darcy watched the boy out of the chamber, and it took him some minutes to trust his own stillness. Beside him Elizabeth's eyes had the shine of held tears. Neither of them looked at the other, because looking would have finished them both. The trial was not done, and the next witness was already being sworn.

The next witness was Mr. Collins.

Mr. Collins took the oath with both hands on the Book, eyes closed. His solemnity stretched the word "truth" to four syllables. He had a new coat for the occasion. It was not a good coat, but it was new, and he wore it with ceremony.

"You are the rector of Hunsford, in Kent," the Attorney General said, "and the living is in the gift of Lady Catherine de Bourgh."

"I have that inexpressible honor." Collins bowed to the Attorney General, and then, unable to stop himself, to the assembled peerage at large. Three hundred lords received the bow with fixed expressions. "Her ladyship's condescension in bestowing⁠—"

"Quite so. You keep a diary, Mr. Collins."

"A parish diary, sir. I record all visitors of consequence to Rosings, all christenings, all instances of her ladyship's advice, and all repairs to the chancel roof. Lady Catherine herself instructed me in the practice. 'A parish without records,' she was so good as to observe, 'is a parish without memory.'"

The diary was opened at the marked page, and Mr. Collins read out his entry in the voice he saved for second lessons.

"The twenty-eighth of May. A gentleman called upon her ladyship at four o'clock, arriving in a cloak of russet wool of unusual quality, which I remarked particularly, the afternoon being mild for cloaks. He was received in the morning room, which her ladyship reserves for visitors of consequence. The interview lasted very nearly the full hour. I did not learn the gentleman's name upon that occasion." Collins looked up. "I have since learned it, my lords. He is the prisoner. I remember the cloak exactly. I remember thinking that Providence had been generous to a gentleman who could disdain a mild morning."

Braithwaite rose. He was gentler with Collins than he had been with anyone. He meant to turn the man to his own use. "Mr. Collins. You did not hear one word of the substance of this alleged meeting?"

"Certainly not!" Collins swelled with the force of his own rectitude. "Her ladyship's private affairs are sacrosanct. I should no more listen at the morning-room door than I should preach in top boots."

"So for all you know, sir, the gentleman in the cloak came to inquire about a property, a horse, or a subscription to a charity."

"For all I know, my lord, yes." And then, because Mr. Collins had never in his life left well enough alone, because his own importance called to him and he answered, he added: "Though I did observe, as the gentleman departed, that her ladyship shook his hand in the vestibule. I remarked it most particularly. Her ladyship does not customarily offer her hand to visitors of lesser rank. I confess I concluded the gentleman must be a person of quite extraordinary consequence, or else that some very material arrangement had been happily concluded, for her ladyship to be so moved."

The chamber stirred, one long rustle down the scarlet benches, the sound of three hundred men picturing the same thing at the same moment. A handshake in a vestibule. A bargain sealed.

Braithwaite stood quite still for a moment. His own witness had turned on him. "No further questions," he said.

Collins, entirely misreading the stir as admiration, beamed upon the gallery. He gathered his diary to his breast. He bowed to the Lord High Steward and to the Attorney General. With particular reverence, he bowed to the empty throne. Then he processed up the floor of the House of Lords. He fully expected to be offered a bishopric by Friday.

Darcy put his hand over his mouth.

It was not entirely successful. Elizabeth's elbow arrived in his ribs, and he composed himself.

When he glanced at her, her own mouth was pressed into a line that trembled at one corner. She was holding back laughter, but only just. Mr. Collins, of all men, had just done the Attorney General's work for him. Her eyes were wet with mirth and with relief. "Do not," she breathed. "If you laugh, I shall."

"I said nothing."

"Your shoulders said it." Then her fingers found his hand on the bench and gripped it hard. The laughter went out of her face, and something fiercer came into it. Since the first morning, Braithwaite had called her testimony a tale. Now he had drawn the bargain out of Mr. Collins with his own question. "Lady Catherine gave him her hand," she whispered. "He asked the question himself. Let him call that a tale now."

Darcy got his face in order. On the floor below, the Attorney General was conferring with Thornton, and the clerks were writing. In the dock, Braithwaite had resumed his composure. And what had the day given the Crown? A child who saw the fire and had run from it. The boy had stood up on a wooden step in the largest room in England and said so. A fool who saw the handshake, and did not know to this hour what he had seen.

Truth from the mouth of a babe, and confirmation from the mouth of the most tedious man in Kent!

And Mrs. Darter before them both. She had given her evidence the afternoon before, after Elizabeth stood down. A liveried footman had brought the ivory earrings to her shop in a velvet pouch, with no note. A second pouch came later, by the same man. She described him to the House down to his buttons. Then she told them about twelve bolts of silk, opened lengthwise with a knife. "I am a modiste, my lords," she had said. "I know when a thing has been cut to a pattern." Braithwaite had not troubled to cross-examine her.