Page 124 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

Elizabeth peered down towards the door, where Edward was pocketing his coins. Then he sat down on the third stair and squared his shoulders while Lord Nelson climbed to his shoulder and batted at his hair.

She turned and fled back towards the drawing room before she laughed aloud and spoiled the whole.

Her aunt met Lady Anne, said everything proper, and was then conveniently summoned to the nursery. Then the door was shut, and Elizabeth was alone with the kindest and most dangerous woman in London.

“Miss Elizabeth,” she said without preamble, “I have come to beg your pardon.”

Elizabeth had not expected an apology, not really. She had settled it weeks ago that Lady Anne would not consider one owing. She had thus resolved to remember the past only as it gave her pleasure. But the lady had now asked for her pardon outright, and Elizabeth was not prepared with an answer.

Lady Anne spared her the trouble of finding one. She sat very straight, her hands unmoving in her lap, and continued speaking.

“I wished to match you as an apology for the way my son had treated you in Hertfordshire. It was easy enough to arrange, as your sister required time with Mr. Bingley to decide whether they were well suited. But I did not ask you if you wished for my help, and I realise now that I ought to have.”

Elizabeth had declined any help, but Lady Anne did not seem to recall that.

“Had I listened to my son and allowed him to go about his own business without interference, your courtship might have proceeded in a more usual fashion. It was a very great mistake, and I must own it.”

The memory of her time in London rose before Elizabeth’s eyes for a moment, the entire crowded, tangled length of it. It would have been easy to say something light and move past what had occurred, but it would not have been the truth.

“Lady Anne,” she said slowly, “I will not pretend there is nothing to forgive. But when I think of this winter, what I shall remember most is how kindly you welcomed my sister, my aunt and uncle, and me, when no one else in your position would have done so.”

She paused. This was the woman who had raised Mr. Darcy, who had helped make him the man that he was—the man that she loved.

“You have my pardon,” Elizabeth said. “And I am glad to give it.”

Lady Anne released a breath before she answered. “Thank you, Miss Elizabeth. You are more generous than I deserve.” She rose. “I shall not presume upon you by overstaying my welcome.”

Elizabeth rose, and Lady Anne strode purposefully to the doorway, where she hesitated and turned back.

“You will do it yourself one day, you know,” she said. “You have the eye for it. I watched you dispose of Miss Grantley in under a minute.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to explain about Mr. Fulford and the harbours of Brazil, and then did not.

Lady Anne nodded once. “My son tells me that the toll is doubled for repeat visitors,” she said. “I shall come prepared next time.” Then she was out of the room before Elizabeth had finished her curtsy.

Mr. Darcy had told her that his mother won her arguments by leaving the room. It appeared she surrendered them the same way.

Elizabeth sat down. In the almost four months she had been in town, she had watched Lady Anne arrange dinners, teas, and other entertainments. There had been no concealment in any of it. Nobody accepted a card for one of her evenings without knowing precisely why they had been asked, and feeling honoured by the great matchmaker’s condescension.

This morning that same woman had paid a boy his toll, climbed the stairs of a house in Gracechurch Street, and begged pardon of a country gentleman’s daughter when she was under no obligation to do so.

Elizabeth suspected she had just received the greatest compliment the lady knew how to pay.

She told Mr. Darcy the whole of it when he arrived later, from the small guard on the stairs to his mother’s surrender, expecting to divert him.

He smiled, but only a little. He turned his signet ring once around his finger and for a moment, did not speak. “She is a great deal of trouble,” he said at last. “But I would not have her a particle less so. I very nearly lost her once, and I have never since been able to stay truly vexed with her for long.”

Elizabeth was all attention.

“It was in the spring, in the year one. I was seventeen, planning to leave for Cambridge in the autumn.”

The year one. Her aunt had used those very words to her once, months ago. Lambton was very anxious for her in the year one, she had said, and Elizabeth had not known what she meant.

“It began as a sore throat,” Mr. Darcy went on. “The physician called it an ordinary inflammation and insisted that his draughts would bring the swelling down. She did not improve, and his advice did not change. Another few days under the physician’s care, and my mother would have died.”

“But she did not.”

“She did not. She lived. Because of George Wickham.”