Elizabeth hoped her friend was right. She still could not settle on how sincere Darcy had been when he said he did not despise her, but if a promise of his good opinion was the best she could hope for, she would not like to throw it away.
Rosings, when they arrived, fulfilled Mr Collins’s every prophecy. The proportions of all the rooms were formidable, seemingly designed to make visitors feel as small as possible. The antiquated furniture was uselessly ostentatious in form, lacking in any real splendour because it was all so dark, dominated by wood panelling and aged tapestries. Miss Anne de Bourgh was all but indistinguishable from the faded portraits that adorned the walls. She was so pale and drawn, and sat so disconcertingly still, that she wanted only for a gilded frame to complete the impression. Her companion, Mrs Jenkinson, was dressed all in brown, wore a permanent expression of worry, and never spoke above a whisper. Both ladies seemed to be at an advanced stage of ossification.
Lady Catherine herself was almost a relief. Her stentorian voice ricocheted off the walls, bringing life to an otherwise dead space. She was large, and tall, and prying, in the way Elizabeth had once expected Lady Rothersea to be. Throughout dinner, she asked a ream of impertinent questions about whom Elizabeth knew, where she had been, and what she had seen of the world. Elizabeth’s upbringing and education were minutely examined and every aspect of her family’s situation exposed, from Longbourn’s entailment to her uncles’ employment.
Charlotte sent repeated apologetic glances her way, but Elizabeth did not mind it as much as she might have done, had she not just spent two months being similarly interrogated by strangers. Lady Catherine’s officious curiosity was nothing compared to the drunken melee at the Four Feathers, and she answered every question with a candour that more than once made her cousin wince.
It was not until later, after the carriage had been ordered to take them home, that she comprehended her naivety. She had just drunk the last of her coffee when her ladyship said, “Tell me, Miss Bennet, what ought I to make of the reports that you are engaged to my nephew Mr Darcy?”
Elizabeth instantly felt herself colour, and her mind emptied of every clever phrase or coherent explanation. It had never occurred to her that the rumours would have reached Kent!
“Come,” her ladyship pressed, “you have not held back in offering your opinion thus far this evening. What have you to say on this matter?”
“There is no truth to it,” she said as firmly as she could.
“Indeed, how could there be?” Mr Collins interceded. “It is well known that Mr Darcy is engaged to his venerable cousin.”
Elizabeth looked at Miss de Bourgh in alarm. She thought Darcy had said they were not engaged, but perhaps she had misunderstood him. The lady showed little emotion, however; if she was distressed by the conversation, she concealed it well.
“I understand that you have stepped out together on multiple occasions,” Lady Catherine continued, disregarding Mr Collins entirely. “Not least riding in his curricle through Hyde Park, attending the theatre together, drinking tea at Gunter’s, and dancing a waltz at St James’s. Is this true?”
“Very little of it is true, ma’am. It has all been embellished and misconstrued.”
“Embellished and misconstrued—but not fabricated? There is foundation for the reports, then?”
“I suppose it depends what one considers reasonable foundation.”
“Repeated clandestine meetings without chaperonage could most certainly be considered as such,” her ladyship retorted.
Mr Collins made a strangled noise; Elizabeth glanced at him, grieved to see both his and Charlotte’s distress.
“None of the meetings were clandestine,” she told Lady Catherine, though she felt herself blush deeper still with the lie. She and Darcy had met in darkened passages, cowered together in cupboards, and whispered in the corners of drawing rooms—they could not have been much more furtive if they had tried.
“That is by the bye,” her ladyship replied. “The meetings still occurred.”
“Some of them, perhaps, but they were not deliberate. We have not intentionally gone anywhere together.”
“No indeed. By all accounts, you have gone out of your way to go everywhere separately, yet somehow always to the same places and at the same time. If one wished to devise a means of piquing theton’sinterest, I could not think of a better method. It is certainly not an approach that savours of a wish to remain undiscovered. It therefore makes no sense that you should be so reluctant to admit to it. Tell me once and for all, are you engaged to my nephew?”
“I am not.”
“And will you promise never to enter into such an engagement?” interjected Mr Collins, who was half out of his seat with outrage, only held back by his wife’s hand on his arm.
Lady Catherine scowled at him. “Mr Collins, you will desist, or I shall have you ejected. Miss Bennet, a wish to keep an understanding private from the eyes of Mr Darcy’s friends is one thing—especially in this case.” She ran her eyes up and down Elizabeth’s person to emphasise her point. “But I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world. I am therefore at a loss as to why you should try to deny it to me.”
“For no other reason than that it does not exist,” Elizabeth said with feeling.
Lady Catherine peered at her for a long time, her brows drawn together in a way that brought forth an unnervingresemblance to her nephew. At length, she demanded imperiously, “Why not?”
“I…I beg your pardon?”
“It is a simple question. Why are you not engaged to Mr Darcy?”
It might have been simple, but it discomposed Elizabeth completely. Was she to think that her ladyship wished them to be engaged? It seemed entirely improbable, but it made little difference either way. “I cannot force him to propose.”
With an expressive glance at her daughter, Lady Catherine clicked her tongue in agreement. “That much, I can believe. But you do wish to marry him?”
Elizabeth had no idea how she was to answer such a question with Miss de Bourgh sitting not five yards away from her.
