Page 94 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

She had been sitting on a hard chair by the wall, very small and pale in her grey morning gown, so quiet that Darcy thought his aunt had not even noticed she was there. She crossed the library now, slowly, with something held against her chest in both hands, and stopped in front of the sofa, and knelt down on the carpet at Lady Matlock's feet, the way she used to kneel there as a little girl to be told a story.

"Aunt," she said. "Please. Look at these."

She held out a bundle of letters tied with a faded blue ribbon.

"These are from Theo," said Georgiana. "All of them. Since I was twelve. You have seen her write them. You used to frank them for her, at Matlock, at Christmas." Her voice trembled, but it did not stop. "Please, Aunt. Look at the gs."

Lady Matlock looked down at her niece, kneeling on the carpet, holding out the bundle of letters. For a long moment she did not move. Then, very slowly, as though her hands did not belong to her, she took the bundle, and untied the ribbon.

Darcy picked up the top letter from the packet on the table, the one that said print it on the Tuesday before the Drawing Room, so that she has time to hope first, and crossed the room, and put it into his aunt's other hand.

She looked from one to the other.

The library was so quiet that he could hear the clock on the mantelpiece, and a carriage going round the square outside, and his own heart.

He watched his aunt's face. He watched her read the letter from the packet, and then look at the top letter from Georgiana's bundle, and then back. He watched her eyes go to the gs. Young. Nothing. Longing. Forget. He watched her read the Ramsgate letter again, all the way to the end. The child told me everything, in October, weeping on my shoulder. I swore on my mother's grave. My mother would have laughed. She never cared for Georgiana either.

He watched her read it three times.

Then the letter slipped out of Lady Matlock's fingers onto the carpet, and she put both her hands over her face.

She did not make a sound. She sat bolt upright on the sofa in her grey silk, with her hands pressed over her face, and her shoulders began, very slowly, to shake.

Georgiana was up on her knees at once, with her arms round her aunt's neck. And across the room, Lord Matlock rose from his chair like an old man, and stood looking at his wife, and did not seem to know what to do with his hands.

"Audrey," he said. "Audrey, my dear—"

"She held Georgiana," said Lady Matlock, through her fingers, in a terrible muffled voice. "In my house. In October. In the room next to mine. And swore on Clara's grave. And went and wrote that." Her hands came down. Her face was grey and wet and old, far older than it had been ten minutes before. "And I held her. On Tuesday. On this sofa. While she wept."

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It was Lady Matlock who asked for her. Elizabeth had not expected it.

The men had gone into Lord Matlock's study to talk about Horse Guards and magistrates and what was to be done, in low voices. Lady Catherine had gone with them, on the grounds that nothing sensible was ever decided in a room with only men in it. Georgiana had been taken upstairs by her aunt's maid to bathe her face. And Elizabeth had been about to follow her, when a voice from the sofa said, "Mrs Darcy. Stay a moment, if you please."

So she stayed. She stood in the middle of the long dark library, by the table covered in letters, and waited.

Lady Matlock did not speak for some time. She sat on the sofa with her hands folded in her lap, very upright, and looked out of the window at the square. Her face was blotched and swollen with crying, and she had made no attempt to hide it. Elizabeth thought she had never seen anybody look so tired.

"Sit down," said Lady Matlock at last. "Here. Beside me. I cannot talk to you standing up like a governess."

Elizabeth sat.

"I have been unjust to you," said the countess. She said it flatly, to the window, as though she were reading out a verdict. "From the day you came to London. I was cold to you in this house. I was cold to you in your own. I let it be known, in a hundred small ways, that I thought my nephew had thrown himself away. When they cut you at the Pemburys', I did nothing. When that paragraph about the door was in the Post, I told my husband it served Fitzwilliam right for keeping his engagement from us." She drew a breath. "And every week, she sat on this sofa and told me things about you. Little things. That you had been seen laughing too loud at the opera. That you had told Lady Sefton you thought Almack's a very dull place. That you did not know which fork to use at the Drummond-Burrells'. That Mrs Dawes found you very difficult. Always so sorry to have to tell me. Always so sure it was only because you were young, and from the country, and had never been taught."

Elizabeth said nothing.

"And I believed her," said Lady Matlock. "Every word. Because she was Clara's daughter, and I had held her at her christening, and she had never in her life asked me for anything." Her mouth twisted. "She asked for nothing. That is what I loved in her. And all the while—"

She stopped. Her hands were gripping each other in her lap so tightly that the knuckles had gone white.

"Did she tell you," said Elizabeth gently, "that I played the pianoforte beautifully?"

Lady Matlock turned her head, startled.

"The first time I came here. She said so. To you, in front of me. And I have never played for her in my life." Elizabeth paused. "I thought at the time it was kindness. I think now it was to make me look a fool if you ever asked me to play. Because I play very badly indeed."

The countess stared at her. Then something happened to her face that Elizabeth did not expect. It was not a smile. But the ghost of one crossed it, very briefly, like a bird going past a window.