These women needed to get married and have children!
If I saw Elizabeth Bennet again, that was what I would tell her.
Of course, there was no reason that I would see her again, however.
The trip to my aunt’s house was dreary. She had taken up with the young parson who lived in the rectory near the grounds of her house, and she had made him into a sort of pet. He spent all his time singing her praises and she spent all her time telling him whatever it was she wished him to say, and he parroted it back faithfully.
Towards the end of the visit, she said that she thought that Mr. Collins—that was his name—should think about taking a wife, and I thought that I pitied the poor woman, who would obviously come second in his affections to Lady Catherine.
Eventually, in mid-April, my cousin and I quit Rosings and rode back to London together.
“Do you ever think about women?” I said to him.
He laughed from the other side of the carriage at me. “Darcy, what sort of a question is that? Obviously, I think about women.”
“You are correct, it was poorly thought out,” I said. “Do you ever think about a certain woman.”
“You mean, a woman I am in love with?”
“No, this woman you cannot be in love with. You barely know anything about her, and she has nothing to recommend her except she is exceedingly pretty.”
“Are you asking if it is enough for me to fall in love with a woman because she is pretty? Because I think you know the answer to that. I am frightfully shallow.”
My cousin the colonel was not actually shallow, but I knew that he was likely a bit less serious than I was. He could afford to be. He was a second son, without responsibilities on his head as I had as the heir to Pemberley. On the other hand, I suppose, he’d had to join the army and it was the middle of a war, so perhaps that did make things serious for him, risking his life and all of that.
He was still talking. “At any rate, I have discerned that we are not actually speaking of me, that we are speaking of you. Who is this woman that haunts your thoughts, Darcy?”
I sighed. “Well, I told you that I went to the country with Mr. Bingley to see the house he was renting.”
“You met this woman in the country. I see.”
“She is not an appropriate match for me,” I said.
“Ah,” said the colonel. “Too well connected to be a mistress, not well connected enough to be a wife.”
“I do not take mistresses,” I said, sitting up straight. “You well know this of me.”
“I do not take mistresses either,” he said, grinning across the carriage. “But this is primarily because I cannot afford them.” He chortled.
“I do not wish to speak about her in that fashion. Please, get your mind out of the muck, Richard.”
He only laughed more. “So, you think of her. What do you think about when you think of her?”
I felt heat rush to my face.
His laughter echoed against the insides of the carriage.
“I do not understand why I am so obsessed with this woman,” I muttered. “It makes no sense.”
“Well, this has been going on since, what? December?” he said. “That is when you came back to London?”
“About that,” I said.
“I do not think it is going to go away on its own, then, Darcy,” he said. “You’re going to have to do something about it.”
“What do I do?”
“As I see it, there are two courses of action,” he said. “One is to go and see the object of your obsession, which could—of course—have the effect of making you even more obsessed, but often, when you see the person, you see that you have paintedthem incorrectly in your mind and that they are not worthy of obsession.”
