Page 54 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
“How do you know Mrs Darcy had very little money?” Darcy asked in surprise.
Longman just stared at him. “The date of her departure. If she had any money, she would have been gone after the Matlocks.”
Darcy did not like the sound of that but could not argue with the reasoning.
They both looked at Bartlet, who took several more puffs on his pipe, then carefully got up, walked to a shelf on the back wall, and returned with a bottle of whisky and three glasses. Without a word he poured two fingers in each and handed them out. “I believe I can shed some light on that.”
With that he held up the glass suggestively and raised a loud toast. “To strong women!” Then they clinked glasses and drank the liquid in one gulp.
Bartlet gasped from the burn. “Mrs Darcy did not speak of her situation much, but I pulled a few things from between the lines, as they say. You put some onerous restrictions on her, did you not?”
“Much to my shame, I did.”
“Did the restrictions include your library?”
Surprised, Darcy thought about it a minute. “I prohibited her from reading anything on the black shelves. You know the material from your last visit.”
“Yes, the black shelves. Do you have any idea how many law books arenoton the black shelves?”
“Not really,” Darcy answered in confusion.
“Seventeen.”
“And?”
“And Mrs Darcy read relevant sections of all of them, several times.”
Darcy sat back, trying to work out what that meant. He was simultaneously annoyed that Bartlet was unwilling to speak plainly, which left him feeling like a not particularly bright schoolboy, but also impressed the man was making him think instead of handing him the answer on a platter. His mind had never been quite as sharp after typhus, but he thought that some time being instructed by these two men might be the tonic to get him back on track.
He finally said, “She would have read all about the marriage laws, and a woman like that—”
“—would be horrified,” Bartlet finished for him.
Darcy nodded grimly. “Yes. According to the law, I have complete control over her life, and she had no reason to believe I would use that power wisely or kindly.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Bartlet, though the exclamation seemed more to Darcy like what a very kind tutor would give to a not very good student who needed some encouragement, which was not exactly earned, but useful for motivation.
“I suspect that is not everything. Let me think—”
Darcy spent a few minutes ‘thinking,’ which to a casual observer might look an awful lot like drinking another whisky with two men, and he finally slapped the table, and exclaimed, “Loopholes!”
Bartlet smiled. “Precisely! Now, pretend you are Mrs Darcy, a self-described obedient wife.”
Darcy snorted. “She would have said that ironically, if at all.”
“Oh, she said it,” Longman added, and when the other two looked at him, he said, “Not to me, of course. She said it to the earl, and before you ask, I was not eavesdropping. She told it to Omega, and she did not seem to mind that I heard.”
“I suspect that was a message to me.”
“Or not. Perhaps it was just what it sounded like. She wanted to speak to someone who would not judge, and nothing fills the bill like a horse or a dog.”
All three nodded, so Darcy thought a moment. “She would find a way to do something I expressly forbid, but in a way that could not be called disobedience.”
Bartlet slammed the table in turn, shouting, “Exactly!” with force proportional to the combination of the size of Darcy’s epiphany and the whisky they had consumed.
He looked at Darcy and decided to take pity on the young man, whose heart seemed to be in the right place, though at the wrong time.
“She met several gentlemen from neighbouring estates, along with their wives and daughters, as well as tradesmen, whom she treated the same. Some of those men were in town looking for rare editions. You forbade her fromreadingthe books on the black shelves, correct?”
