Page 60 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"You are... a Darcy," Lady Catherine said. "You have been... a Darcy... through things... that would have broken... anyone at this table. The Bible... should reflect this. I wish it... entered. Your full name. In ink." The good hand closed. "Ink... is what lasts. I have... reason to know."

The light lay on the old page. Elizabeth looked at the ruled lines, the column of names marching down a century and a half. Every one of them had been weighed and approved by women like the woman in this chair. Where was her anger? She had carried it for this family's judgments longer than she had carried the brand. A newer, harder one had come on the fifth day of the trial. This woman had said I knew what he was before every peer in England. Not a widow deceived by her man of business. A woman who had known, and hired him anyway, over precedence, and names, and blood.

It was not there. It had gone in the same quarter hour that brought it. Elizabeth had heard I hired a man to ruin a girl, and he ruined me. She had risen and bowed. The anger had left her when she bowed.

What remained was a place, and it was being offered. The offering was costing the proudest woman in England her morning's whole strength. Her ladyship had rehearsed it in the dark, syllable by syllable. Not an apology. Not absolution, asked or given. A place, in ink, in the book that outlived everyone who wrote in it. "I would be honored, Lady Catherine," Elizabeth said.

Lady Catherine nodded, once. The audience had reached the end of what had been practiced. The strength went out of her all at once, visibly. Her ladyship leaned back into the chair and closed her eyes. "Now go," she said. "You tire me."

Elizabeth rose. She curtsied to the closed eyes. By the time she was at the door, the whole warm room was holding its ordinary hush again.

Then the voice came after her one last time, slow, thick, and imperious to the final syllable. "Mrs. Darcy."

"Ma'am?"

"At the ball. They tell me... there is to be... a ball. At last." A pause. "You will wear... something equal... to your circumstances. You are... a Darcy. See that... Hertfordshire... remembers it."

Something equal to her circumstances? Elizabeth stood in the doorway. She thought of the sapphire silk lying in tissue at Netherfield, cut low at the back. She thought, too, of everything her circumstances now were, had been, and would be. Then she smiled at Lady Catherine de Bourgh with her whole heart. "Ma'am," she said, "I intend to."

She went down the great stairs.

Richard was at the bottom, pretending not to have listened at the door and blowing his nose with great ceremony. "Well?" he said.

"I am to be entered in the Bible," Elizabeth said. "In ink! And I am under orders for the ball."

"God help Hertfordshire!" said Richard, and with a laugh, handed her her bonnet.

CHAPTER 23

Kitty was in the Longbourn garden, cutting the last of the winter greenery, when Captain Gill rode up the lane.

They were all home by then. London had emptied itself of Bennets, and Kitty had gone back to her scissors and her vases. She had holly in her basket and ivy over one arm. How did she know the rider before she could possibly have known him? By the way he sat.

He dismounted at the gate and bowed. "Miss Catherine. I have papers for your father. The court-martial is concluded."

"Is it very bad? For Mr. Wickham?"

"It is what he chose, arrived at last. The uniform came off him with full ceremony, and his debts stand to the last shilling. You may tell your sister, if it would ease her, that his charm was entered into evidence and found insufficient."

"I will tell her. She is better. Not mended. Better."

"The slow ones hold," Gill said.

He looked past her then, at the stone urn by the door. She had built the winter arrangement that morning from holly and ivy and dried honesty. The silver discs of the honesty caught what light December offered.

"That is very fine," he said. "Most people would have wanted more color and spoiled it."

"It is only what the garden had left."

"That is what makes it fine. Anyone can make a thing handsome in June." He adjusted the strap of his satchel, which did not need adjusting. "The militia goes to Brighton in the spring. I do not. I have been offered a permanent posting here in Hertfordshire, and I have accepted it."

"I am glad," Kitty said.

It came out plainly, exactly as she felt it. Heavens! She went scarlet to her ears.

"Then I shall endeavor to deserve it, Miss Catherine." The ghost of his real smile arrived and was mastered. "Perhaps, when I next bring papers to your father, you would show me the garden these came from."

"There is nothing in it in winter, Captain."