CHAPTER 1
Mrs Bennet despised her houseguest. To be sure, there was not much to like about him, unless one took seriously his compliments to her fine table, which she accepted as her due. Even in these, however, he had an air of rehearsed puffery; he would doubtless just as enthusiastically apply his accolades to Lady Lucas’s table, which was mean in comparison.
Fleetingly, she felt a trace of guilt for her resolve that Elizabethmustmarry him, regardless.
Quickly, however, she quashed it. Hadsheloved Thomas Bennet, ten years older than herself and not nearly so handsome as the least of her suitors? No, she had not. Sensibly, her own mother had, by means neither gentle nor affectionate, drawn her seventeen-year-old daughter’s attention to the advantages of the match, the size of the home she would inevitably rule, and the degreeto which her future children would be elevated. It was for those unknown, unborn offspring that she had sacrificed her girlhood fancies; now was the opportunity for one of them to keep the dream alive, to preserve the Longbourn estate unto her grandchildren.
To this end, she had overcome her inclination to put Mr William Collins in the third-storey spare room usually occupied by draughts and damp; as well, she stifled her hopes that he might not too heartily anticipate his future occupation of her home. Instead, she had begrudgingly prepared for him her nicest guest chambers—a suite of rooms across from Mr Bennet’s. Elizabeth was unlikely to be a comfortable bride; it was important that he not be overeager to look elsewhere.
Surely she will not look this gift horse in the mouth, Mrs Bennet reassured herself. Instead of a bleak, impoverished life as a spinster, she would gain a lovely residence in Kent in the present and become mistress of her girlhood home in the future.
Still, a conversation overheard the previous evening had unnerved her.
Mr Bennet had been unable to attend her sister Philips’s dinner party due to his latest health complaint—which was nothing unusual, for he hated dinner parties as much as he loved his illnesses. Elizabeth, in relating to him of the evening’s events afterwards, had used the time to complain of that awful Mr Darcy’s past treatment of Mr Wickham. Had there been something of passion, perhaps,in her long and detailed recital of Wickham’s injuries? Could she be developing atendrefor the handsome lieutenant? There was no future in it!
Naturally, Mrs Bennet found nothing wrong with a bit offlirtation. At the age of one-and-forty, a longing for the youth and beauty of her past almost tempted her to flirt with the fine-looking man herself. Butpassionwas tantalising, and it would be even more difficult for Elizabeth to see the advantages of connexion to the odious Mr Collins with passion’s cloying tentacles gripping her heart. Her daughter had recounted the lieutenant’s pitiful tales until Mrs Bennet had been forced to interrupt with complaints of her own—which, predictably, caused Mr Bennet to begin whingeing again abouthissufferings, effectively turning Lizzy’s attention back to himself.
Naturally, the girl had been all solicitousness then, full of consideration towards her father’s latest ailment; she always gavehisgrumblings far more consideration than her mother’s. The complaint was not a serious one; Mr Bennet’s infirmities never were, and Mrs Bennet half expected that he employed them in order to keep the attention of his family—especiallyElizabeth—upon himself, and to exacerbate her own nerves with the ever-present reminder that he held only life tenancy in his own estate. Still, it was also true that he would not easily part with his favoured daughter, much less to a man the two both enjoyed ridiculing.
A marriage to Mr Collins is inherbest interests, she thoughtwith renewed resolution. Could her husband so blatantly ignore Lizzy’s future? Surely, he wanted the best for his favourite.
Yet, a niggling discomfort reminded her of how easily he ignored so many things, herself most of all. The workings of his mind remained ever-baffling.
The arrival of Mrs Hill interrupted her muddled thoughts. “Mrs Bennet, Mr Jones has come to see the master. I took him up.”
“Thank you, Hill,” she mumbled, still distracted by her chaotic contemplations.
“You are so very welcome,” the older lady answered cheerfully, quickly departing and leaving Mrs Bennet with raised brows. It was another mystery. Hill had been in an exceedingly jolly mood of late, with a spring in her step and a jaunty disposition unnatural to her. It was disconcerting, and Mrs Bennet had worries enough.
Sighing, she took herself to her husband’s chambers to learn the latest diagnosis for such ailments as he pretended to possess.
“I have made him a special tonic. He is to have a dose twice daily, without exception. It will cleanse his corrupted intestine while strengthening his heart.”
“Why not calomel?” Mrs Bennet asked. Whatever his verdict on the source and cause of any affliction, Mr Jonesalwaysprescribed calomel.
“This situation requires a more serious treatment.”
Mr Bennet glanced at her, a definite note of triumph in his gaze. ‘You see, my complaint is serious,’ his look said. ‘I told you so.’
Fear filled her breast. She was accustomed to taking lightly his agitations, just as he took hers. That he should betrulyunwell was terrifying! That her future should be so gravely at risk, was unbearable.
Mr Jones measured a dosage from a large bottle and administered it to his patient. Unlike the calomel—which did nothing much that she could tell except make the chamber-pot an immediate necessity—a beatific smile shortly thereafter emerged in place of Mr Bennet’s usual smirk.
“Darling,” he said to his wife, taking her hand and tugging her closer. “Come sit with me.”
She frowned.
“My work is done here,” Mr Jones announced. “My joints tell me that the rain on the horizon shall be our first true winter storm, and I wish to be home ’ere it arrives. Call for me if he worsens.”
It was two hours before Mrs Bennet could extract herself from her husband’s chambers. Whatever was in that medicine put her husband in an excessivelyfriendlymood, and not at all as if he were lying at death’s door. Yet she could not ignore the apothecary’s words; it was more importantthan ever that the repulsive Mr Collins be chained to the welfare of her family by the bonds of matrimony.
As if she had summoned him, Collins’s oily voice rang out from the open door of his sitting room. After a very few moments of eavesdropping, she understood them to be a rehearsal of a marriage proposal! To have happened upon him, and it, at this particular moment was divine sanction, and she could not overlook it; nor, however, could she overlook his choice of wording, with its liberal stream of blunders. Lizzy would not appreciate any of it, and Mr Bennet, in his current state of inebriety, would be of no help in forcing her to think past the inconvenience of a stupid husband and towards the rewards of a life of security and ease. In fact, forcing Lizzy to do much of anything was easier said than done.
There was no hope for it: shemustdelay this proposal until her husband was well, if she did nothing else.
“My dear Cousin Jane…no, no, no, CousinElizabeth. Elizabeth. Elizabeth,” Mr Collins mumbled, repeating her name a few more times before continuing. “Almost as soon as I entered my future home, I singled you out as the companion of my life. I am run away by my feelings?—”
Boldly she rapped on the door jamb.
