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His face lost all expression, returning to its most implacable. I realised, then, who the visitor must be. I stood, meaning to excuse myself.
But Mr Darcy came to stand beside me. “Please stay,” he said, as Morton announced Lord Cavendish.
He looked nothing like my imagination had painted him: grey-bearded, portly, elderly and dignified. Rather, he was a short, wiry, restless, soft-voiced man not yet fifty, with a peculiarly penetrating stare. Introductions were performed and he scrutinised me with fixed intensity for a longish moment; I fought the urge to look away.
“Mrs Darcy,” he said at last, “how do you find Pemberley? Are you settling in? I heard you have been away, visiting, an aunt, is it? But of course, we are more remote here, so close to the Peaks. Not everyone can be happy without convivial society.”
“I would be a foolish woman indeed if I could not be happy at Pemberley,” I replied. “But of course, the wife of Mr Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, regardless of any lack of welcome from her neighbours, have no cause to repine.”
He looked a bit startled at this rejoinder, and I was surprised to feel my husband’s touch at my waist—he was so seldom publicly demonstrative.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Well put. I see, Darcy, that you have chosen more wisely this time.”
My brows rose at this obvious disparagement of Anne; perhaps her legendary charm had failed her, for once?
“Have you told her yet what you had in the first one?” Cavendish asked.
“She knows,” he answered stiffly.
“’Tis a fine mess you have landed in this time. Unlucky man! The Scriptures declare you reap what you sow! You sow nothing but trouble! Why is that?” He glared at my husband as if he expected an answer, which irked me.
“‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’,” I quoted mildly. If he was here to accuse with Scripture, I would be happy to argue with him in a language he could understand.
It was his turn to be taken aback, before giving a sharp bark of laughter. “Very well, very well,” he grumbled. “I know you do not deserve it. But Darcy, I cannot stop it. Too many untamed tongues, and what with the latest foolishness from the House of Lords, well…”
“Why should we care if there is an inquest?” I demanded. “Mr Darcy surely has nothing to fear, for he has done nothing wrong!”
He only looked at me sadly. “Of course he has not,” he said. “But what does it matter? I shall hold an inquisition. Evidence shall be presented that a blade, presumably the murder weapon, was found with the body. The blade is engraved with your husband’s initials. It is, by his own admission to me, a blade he once kept in the desk of this very room.”
I froze, not having understood that there was any evidence implicating Mr Darcy. But Lord Cavendish continued speaking, pacing back and forth across the library.
“You, Darcy, will testify that it has been missing for two years, and that you have no idea who took it from your library. Conjecture and rumour shall be presented. I will mention the names of all of the numerous persons, including every single individual who attended the house party during the summer of 1818, the last time Miss Bingley was seen, and who had access to this library, which is kept unlocked. I will call attention to the fact that though the blade was found with the body, due to the state of the corpse, there is no actual evidence proving it to be the murder weapon. I shall point out that it would be a stupid man, indeed, who would bury such incriminating evidence with the body on his own property, when a shrewder one could just as easily have replaced it in his desk drawer. I will emphasise that you were the one who gave orders for your steward, Mr Williams, to dig in the very area where the body was buried. I shall declare a verdict of death by unlawful killing, by a person or persons unknown.”
He stopped pacing and looked at us both. “And it will not matter. You will be beset by conjecture and rumour and innuendo for the rest of your life. Worse, your pretty wife will endure it, and your future children as well. I ask you, Darcy, to tell the truth. Cease protecting a woman who is dead and buried. Sadly, no one truly cares about Miss Caroline Bingley. No one liked her, no one missed her, and that is the hard truth of the matter. They cared for Anne Darcy, and they wonder how she died. Tell them the truth, all of it. Give the world something else to talk about.”
He stared hard at my husband. Mr Darcy’s face had not changed, wearing that same rigid expression he’d worn when putting me in a carriage, sending me away from him against every softer feeling he possessed. Obstinate, headstrong, man.
Lord Cavendish saw it too. He stalked from the room.
