She took him to the library. She laid out the cataloging notebooks on the table, all four of them, and opened them to the relevant sections. She showed him the dated entries, the itemized descriptions, the careful notation of every document she had handled, and every decision she had made about its classification. He stood over the table and read. He didn't skim. He actually read with the focused attention of a man who understood documents and what they contained. When he looked up, his expression was clear and certain.
"These are not financial records."
"No, they are not."
"They're exactly what you said they were."
"Yes."
He closed the notebook. He set it down with a kind of careful deliberateness. "Mercer said this in front of 12 families. So, I understand. He said it knowing it was false."
"He said it," Eleanor said, "because it doesn't matter to him whether it's false. It only matters whether people believe it, and enough people want to believe something of this nature that the truth becomes almost irrelevant." She looked at him. "I've seen this done before to other women. It's a particular kind of weapon because it requires no evidence and leaves no physical mark."
Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. She watched him work through it, not quickly, but thoroughly, the way he did everything.
"What do you want to do?" he said.
The question surprised her again, the same way it had surprised her when he'd asked what she wanted him to do about Mercer's first round of talk. She had expected from a man in his position, a statement, a decision already made, an action already planned, with her role being to approve it or endure it. She had not expected to be asked.
"I want to present the notebooks," she said publicly, "in a context where they have to be addressed rather than dismissed."
"Mercer controls most of the social contexts in this county."
"Then we need a context he doesn't control." She held his gaze. "Does your grandmother still have influence with the Alderson family?"
He looked at her for a moment. "You want to use the Alderson dinner. The end of summer gathering. Every important family in the county attends."
"They attended Mercer's dinner and heard his accusation. They should have the opportunity to hear a response." She kept her voice level. "If I present the work directly, the notebooks, the inventory, the documented record in front of the same witnesses, the accusation loses its foundation. It becomes a man's word against four notebooks full of evidence. And people who are fair-minded enough to look at evidence will see what it is."
"And the ones who aren't fair-minded have already decided," she said. "Nothing I do will change them, and I can't spend my life trying." She paused. "But the ones in the middle, the ones who heard Mercer and felt uncertain. Those people deserve to see the truth. And frankly, so do I."
Nathaniel looked at her for a long moment. She held his gaze and didn't flinch from it because she had made her decision, and she meant it, and she was not going to soften it to make it easier for him to refuse.
"All right," he said.
"You'll speak to your grandmother about the Alderson gathering?"
"I'll speak to her today." He paused. "Eleanor." There was the name again. "There's something else. I sent a letter to Judge Prescott this morning before I came home about Mercer."
She was still. "What kind of letter?"
"A factual account of what he said, to whom, when, and why it is false." His voice was even. "Prescott is the county circuit judge. He has no jurisdiction over social gossip. But he has considerable authority over what constitutes defamatory speech in a professional context. And Mercer knows that you did that before you talked to me."
"Yes." He held her eyes. "I acted first and explained after. I know that's not what you prefer, but I was not willing to wait."
She was quiet for a moment. She thought about being angry at him for it. She found honestly that she wasn't. She was something more complicated than angry. Something that lived in the same county as Grateful, but had more dignity than that.
"Don't do it again," she said. "Act first without telling me."
"I can't promise that," he said. "If it comes to it, then at least tell me faster."
"Yes," he said "that I can do."
Margaret heard the whole of it from both of them separately within the same hour. She sat in her chair by the east window, hands folded in her lap, and listened to Nathaniel's account with the attention of a woman who had been listening to important things for eight decades, and knew the difference between the words being said and the thing underneath them. When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.
"The Alderson gathering is in 11 days," she said. "Yes, Catherine Alderson owes me a favor of some standing." She said it without elaboration. "She'll agree to what we need."
"I thought she might."
"Is Miss Bennett set on doing this herself? Presenting the notebooks?"