“You are not required to be.”
He inclined his head and stepped away from them—not in haste, but with unmistakable finality. He could not remain. Not while she was still looking at him as though the matter were unfinished. Bingley, speaking with Sir William near the window, turned in surprise as Darcy joined him.
Behind them, Denny laughed at something Wickham said; Miss Bingley’s voice followed, quick and animated, seizing upon the thread Darcy had abandoned. The space he had occupied filled itself almost at once, the conversation bending and reforming as though it had never paused.
Darcy did not remain to hear what was made of it.
Chapter Twenty
The candles had beenlit, and the servants dismissed when Mr Collins began again.
“Her ladyship has always maintained,” he was saying, “that a household prospers best when each member understands his or her proper sphere.”
Elizabeth kept her eyes on her plate and applied herself to the small, manageable business of eating. The scrape of knife against porcelain gave her something firm to hold. She matched her motions to it deliberately, as though the rhythm itself might keep the rest of the room at a tolerable distance.
“…a principle her ladyship herself has often impressed upon me, particularly where families of established consequence are concerned.”
The sensation broke over her at once.
It gathered behind her ears, narrow and insistent, not pain yet but unmistakable pressure, as though the space around her head had been drawn a fraction too tight. Elizabeth adjusted in her chair, turning slightly away from him, and bent her attention to her plate. She cut her meat into pieces smaller than necessary, precise to the point of absurdity, and waited for the moment to pass.
“Indeed, Mr Collins, Lady Catherine’s guidance is most valuable. How very fine for you, sir, to have the patronage of such a splendid lady.”
The pain sharpened.
Elizabeth’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. The room felt closer suddenly, the space around her head reduced by degrees she could not measure but could certainly feel.
“Oh, yes, truly! And it is precisely this attention to lineage and responsibility that renders her counsel so indispensable. One cannot disregard such authority, particularly when it is exercised with such benevolence—”
Benevolence pressed like a hot poker justbehind her ear.
Elizabeth swallowed without tasting anything and set her fork down with care. The words reached her clearly enough, but they no longer arranged themselves properly. They arrived as emphasis without content, weight without distinction, each syllable landing in the same narrow place until she found herself bracing for the next.
Papa’s voice cut in, a dry chuckle. “I should think authority is often exercised whether one invites it or not.”
Mr Collins laughed. “Ah! Just so, sir. And yet her ladyship would argue—and has argued most persuasively—that guidance freely offered is a gift, not a burden.”
The pressure tightened further, sliding upward now, as though something were drawing a line from the base of her skull toward her temples. Elizabeth lifted her hand from under the table and pressed her fingers lightly against the side of her neck, searching for some place to shift it.
“Lizzy,” Mama said sharply, “pray do not fidget. You will make yourself nervous.”
Elizabeth dropped her hand at once.
Mr Collins never even paused for breath. “Lady Catherine herself has often remarked that the misfortunes of society arise not from hardship, but from a failure to accept the arrangements that Providence has so wisely set in place—”
The sound thinned.
Not quiet—never quiet—but narrowed, as though all other noises had been filtered away, leaving only his voice, flattened and relentless. Elizabeth blinked and found she could no longer quite separate one word from the next.Arrangement, Providence, duty—they struck the same internal note, each one reverberating against the last until she could feel it along her jaw.
She set her glass down—though when she had picked it up, she could not recall. “Must we discuss Lady Catherine at supper?” The words escaped her before she had fully considered them. “It is difficult to digest instruction along with mutton.”
There was a pause—not silence, but a distinct hitch in the flow of conversation.
Mama turned toward her at once. “Elizabeth!”
Jane’s hand brushed her arm, a warning more than a comfort.
Mr Collins blinked, then smiled, indulgent rather than offended. “My dear cousin, I assure you I speak only from admiration. Her ladyship’s example is—”
