Page 9 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

Lowe has been my man for nine years. He is small and gray and silent, and he has the gift, invaluable in a valet, of looking at a thing without appearing to see it.

He looks at the floor without appearing to see it.

"I did not ring, Lowe."

"No, sir. Mrs. Jenkinson begs to know whether you mean to walk the floor until morning. Her room is beneath yours. She says it is like sleeping under a regiment."

"Tell Mrs. Jenkinson I beg her pardon."

"I have taken the liberty of bringing coffee instead, sir. It seemed more useful than an apology." He sets the tray at my elbow. "Shall I take these away?"

"Burn them."

"All of them, sir?"

"Every one."

He begins to gather them without a word. I drink the coffee. It is scalding and very strong, and it is the first kindness I have had since teatime.

"Lowe."

"Sir."

"You were married once."

He straightens, a crumpled sheet in each hand. "Eleven years, sir."

"When you had been in the wrong, how did you tell Mrs. Lowe so?"

If he finds the question strange from a man who has never in his life asked his valet anything but the whereabouts of a boot, he does not show it.

"Briefly, sir," he says. "And with flowers."

"And if a man had a great deal to say?"

Lowe's eyes travel, without appearing to, to the written sheets at my elbow. There are already six of them.

"Then the flowers had better be very large, sir."

I very nearly laugh. It catches somewhere in my chest and does not come out.

I pick up the pen again, and put it down. I have written about Wickham's living, and his three thousand pounds, and his debts. I have not written about Ramsgate.

"Lowe. Suppose there were a thing a man had told no one. A thing that was not his alone to tell. And suppose the telling of it might prevent a harm to someone."

Lowe considers this. "Is it a large harm, sir?"

"It might be."

"And is the person to be told likely to repeat it?"

I think of her face in the parlor. Furious, and white, and absolutely certain she was right. Ready to defend a man who did not deserve it, because she believed he had been wronged.

She is a great many things. She is not a gossip.

"No," I say.

"Then I should think, sir, that you have answered yourself, and are only asking me so as to have someone to blame."