Page 39 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

The sickroom was warm. Lady Catherine sat propped against the pillows, left side slack, right hand a loose fist on the counterpane. Mrs. Jenkinson sat by the window with mending, composed as a woman who had been a target that morning and bore no grudge.

Lady Catherine's eyes found him the moment he entered, and they were sharp. Whatever the apoplexy had taken of her body, it had left her mind whole. She tracked him across the room, her opinion forming before he opened his mouth. Dinner guests at Rosings had known that look.

"Aunt Catherine." He pulled a chair to the bedside and sat. Standing would have been a soldier addressing a patient, and he had come as a nephew. "I need to tell you what has been arranged."

He told her plainly, without softening, because she had never in her life wanted information softened and he would not insult her by beginning now. Braithwaite tried before the Lords. Lord Eldon the likely Lord High Steward. The evidence substantial: the locket, the earrings, the unsigned note in Graves's hand, Gardiner's paper trail, and now a parish diary that placed Braithwaite at Rosings on a recorded date. Elizabeth would testify. Alban would testify. Mrs. Darter, whose silks Graves's man had slashed with a knife, had vowed to walk to London barefoot if she must.

"The price," Richard said, "is a sworn deposition. A clerk takes it down at this bedside and reads it to the Lords, since you cannot travel. My father has the wording ready. That you engaged Braithwaite as a man of business, to inquire into Mrs. Darcy before the marriage. That you did not commission the abduction. That you did not know what he would become. And that when you confronted him at the folly, he shot you."

Her right hand had been clenching through the whole of it. Not distress. Concentration.

"The Earl's preference is to say you are a victim. A grieving widow betrayed by a man she trusted. The sympathy of the chamber would be yours. But the words must be sworn by you. No one can swear them for you."

He stopped, and waited.

Lady Catherine's mouth worked. The right side of her face pulled against the dead left. "No."

Richard waited. "No, you will not give evidence?"

Her good hand struck the counterpane once. "Not... his words."

"Then whose?"

"Mine."

"And what are yours, Aunt?"

She looked at him a long moment. Then she closed her eyes and turned her face to the wall. Half her body was gone, and she could still dismiss a man from her presence.

Richard sat back. Good God, he had briefed generals who told him more!

Mrs. Jenkinson's hands had stopped on the mending. Anne, in the corner, did not look surprised at all.

He got down from the chair and knelt by the bed. Richard took her right hand, the one that could grip. "Then it will be yours, Aunt. Whatever it is."

Her hand tightened on his. She did not open her eyes.

His father had struck his bargain for a quiet invalid who would sign a clerk's paper. And what would he receive instead? Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The Earl did not like things he could not control.

Footsteps in the corridor. Darcy appeared in the doorway, still in his traveling coat, dust on his boots. He had ridden through the night, then. Elizabeth's letter about the diary would do that to a man. His face said he had heard at least the end of it. He looked at his aunt and did not speak.

Anne rose, went to the bed, and smoothed the counterpane over her mother's other hand, the one that could not grip. "When Mrs. Darcy gives her evidence, I will be in the gallery beside her," she said quietly.

Her mother's eyes opened. "No." A breath. "Not... well... enough."

"I am well enough."

"Anne—"

"You do not get to decide what I can bear, Mama. Not anymore."

Mother and daughter looked at each other. Lady Catherine's face worked. Across it went something Richard had never seen in twenty years of family dinners and Rosings visits. Not the condescending approval she usually dispensed. Respect. The earned kind. "Stubborn... girl," Lady Catherine half slurred, half sang.

"I learned from someone," Anne said. She did not smile, but her eyes were bright, and she stood on her own two feet without swaying.

Mrs. Jenkinson took up her mending again. As she did, she caught Richard's eye. In the look was twenty years of quiet knowing. She had watched these women longer than any of them. She was not surprised.

Richard rose, knees aching, and joined Darcy. They stepped into the corridor, the door pulled to but not quite shut. "She will not swear my father's words," Richard said.