Page 29 of Shadows Of Rosings Park: Part 2

"Her suspicions are specific, Fitzwilliam. She connects our engagement to Collins's death. She connects your involvement to the Colonel's. She is building a case."

"She's writing a letter. There's a considerable difference." He leaned against the corner of the escritoire, arms folded, the posture of a man settling in for a conversation he has anticipated and prepared for. "Lady Catherine possesses neither the evidence nor the temperament to pursue her suspicions through the courts. Her concern is family dignity, not justice. She wants me to recant, not confess."

"And when you don't recant?"

"She'll bluster. She'll threaten. Eventually she'll arrive at Pemberley and deliver her displeasure in person, which she would have done regardless of any suspicion regarding Hunsford, because I have married a woman without fortune, and that is an offence my aunt considers far more serious than accessory to homicide."

Elizabeth stared at him. The dry precision of the analysis, the casual ranking of social transgression above violent crime, was so perfectly Darcy that she couldn't decide whether to laugh or throw the inkwell at him.

"You're remarkably composed for a man whose aunt has just accused him of concealing a murder."

"My aunt has accused me of poor judgment in marriage. The murder is an insinuation, not an accusation. I do not respond to insinuation."

"And what of the insinuation itself? If Lady Catherine suspects — if she communicates those suspicions to others⁠—"

"She won't." His voice was certain. Not the certainty of hope, the certainty of calculation. "My aunt values the Darcy name above all other considerations, including truth. She will no sooner publicise her suspicions than she would advertise the family's debts, were we to have any. Silence is her native language where scandal is concerned."

He was right. It would have been simpler if she could dismiss him as a fool or a brute whose judgment was as poor as his morals. Using intelligence in the service of coercion did not make the judgment less accurate.

"I should like to write to Charlotte," she said, changing course.

"Richard is arranging for Charlotte to stay in London. You may write when we reach town. If circumstances allow a visit, Richard or I will remain nearby."

"As though Charlotte and I might plot revolution over tea and biscuits."

"The history of revolution," Darcy replied, "suggests it often begins with precisely such gatherings."

She turned to him. His mouth betrayed restrained amusement; the man behind the mask had made a genuine joke. Its perfect timing should not have been possible in one who had just locked a drawer on his wife.

"There's another matter," he said, the humour already retreating behind the wall. "I believe it might benefit you to keep a journal."

"A journal."

"A private record. Genuinely private — I won't read it."

The offer was so unexpected that Elizabeth could not immediately respond. After weeks of reading her correspondence and restricting her movements, this sudden grant of privacy seemed either a trap or a gift.

"Why?"

He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice had changed, the controlled register giving way to something less certain.

"You think more clearly than anyone I have known. I wouldn't see that altered."

He said nothing more. No explanation followed. He straightened from the escritoire, his hands at his sides, and let the offer sit between them, and Elizabeth understood, not from his words, which were spare, but from what he had not said: that Darcy was afraid. Not of her. Of what he was doing to her. And that fear, unexpressed, inarticulate, visible only in what he withheld, shifted something in the wall she had built to contain him.

"I shall consider it," she said.

That evening, the Bingleys came for dinner. Darcy had insisted they receive guests before departing for London, hospitality chosen for a purpose. Bingley radiated warmth and plans for Netherfield, every improvement a declaration of his intentions toward Jane. Caroline arrived sharpened to a fine point.

"Mrs. Darcy." The name was a blade wrapped in silk. "Marriage appears to agree with you."

"It agrees with me admirably, Miss Bingley."

Caroline's eyes swept Elizabeth's person, gown, jewellery, bearing, looking for cracks. Finding none, because Elizabeth had spent her entire engagement learning to be crackless.

The dinner was civil. The conversation was careful. Darcy observed Bingley's transparent happiness with something that might have been affection, the muted warmth of a man who recognised genuine feeling and could not produce it himself. Or perhaps merely could not produce it in any language Elizabeth could read.

During the second course, Caroline turned to Darcy. "Mrs. Jenkinson's letters have grown most fanciful since Anne returned to Rosings. Lanterns beside churchyards, servants abroad at impossible hours. I told her grief must be breeding spectres in Kent."