Page 63 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Elizabeth kept walking. Her knees had begun to shake. She did not let them stop her until she was out of the gate at Grosvenor Place, and in the square, and up the steps, and inside the blue door. Then she sat down on the bottom stair in the hall in her bonnet and pelisse, and began, rather to her own surprise, to laugh and cry at once.

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Darcy heard her from the study: a sound in the hall that he did not recognise at first, high and broken, like a bird in a chimney. Then Hannah's voice, frightened, and James's, and he was out of his chair and through the door before he knew he had moved.

She was sitting on the bottom stair in her bonnet and pelisse with her gloved hands over her face, and her shoulders were shaking, and for one appalling moment he thought she was hurt. Then she lowered her hands, and he saw that she was laughing. And crying. Both at once, helplessly, with the tears running down her face and her mouth curved up at the corners.

"I tore it up," she said. "Fitzwilliam. I tore it up in his face. And threw it in the Serpentine." She hiccuped. "I think a duck ate some of it."

He was on his knees on the marble in front of her. "Tore what up? Who? Elizabeth—"

"Mr Wickham."

The hall went very quiet.

Hannah told most of it, in the end, because Elizabeth was laughing too hard to talk and then crying too hard, and Hannah had been there and had seen it all and was bursting with indignation. The path by the water. The new coat and the gold pin. The letter, in your hand, sir, or near enough to fool a body, and what it said. The five hundred pounds. And the mistress reading it, calm as you like, and saying something about ninety-three love letters, and tearing it into pieces the size of a sixpence, and letting them go on the wind like snow.

Darcy listened with his hands on his wife's knees, kneeling on the marble floor of his own hall, in front of his butler and two footmen and a lady's maid, and did not care who saw.

When Hannah had finished, he did not say anything for a long time.

Elizabeth had stopped laughing. She put out one hand, and touched his face, the way she had on their wedding night, as though it were something precious that had been lent to her.

"I knew it was not you," she said. "I want you to know that. Not for one moment. Not even the moment it takes to draw a breath. The first time, with the paper, I was frightened for a heartbeat. This time I was not frightened at all. I looked at it and I thought, he has never once in his life called Lord Aldridge Ned. And then I thought, I have ninety-three letters. And I was only angry."

He turned his face into her palm and closed his eyes.

"There is something else," she said, more quietly. "Tell him the rest, Hannah. What Mr Wickham said as we walked away."

Hannah's freckled face went red with fury all over again. "He said, sir, bold as brass, she said you would do that. My patroness. She said you were too proud to pay." She sniffed. "Patroness. Like a lady in a play."

"She," said Elizabeth. "He said she."

Darcy opened his eyes.

He had been angry many times in the last month. He had been angry at White's, looking at the word won in the margin of the betting book. He had been angry enough to break a chair. He had been angry on his knees in his sister's bedroom, holding her while she shook. He had thought he knew the whole length and breadth of his own anger.

He had not known this.

This was not hot. It did not make him want to shout or smash anything. It was very cold, and very quiet, and very clear, like the air on the tops of the Peak in January. It went through him from head to foot and left him perfectly steady.

Wickham had stood in the Park, in a coat bought with somebody's gold, and put a forged letter into his wife's hands, and tried to make her believe he had married her for a joke. He had watched her read it. He had waited to see her face break.

And she had torn it up and let the wind take it. And he had said, she was quite right about you.

Darcy stood up. He lifted Elizabeth to her feet and untied her bonnet strings himself, very gently, and took off her bonnet and gave it to Hannah, and kissed her forehead. He saw her look up at his face, and he saw her see something there that made her own face change.

"Go up and rest, my love," he said. "Hannah, take your mistress up. Have them bring her some tea."

"Fitzwilliam—"

"Go up." He kissed her forehead again. "I will come to you in a little while."

She looked at him for a moment longer. Then she went, slowly, looking back at him from the landing.

When she was out of sight, he turned to Pearce.

"Where is Colonel Fitzwilliam?"