Miss Bingley reread the missive four times, hoping against all hope the words on the parchment would somehow change. They did not. She was ruined and it was all that chit Jane Bennet’s fault! She had been played for a fool. One thing she knew for sure was if her chances with Mr. Darcy were not zero already, they would be when he read her letter.
She wished she had never written it, but then she realised as Miss Darcy had been present to witness Miss Hampton-Downs’s performance, he would know regardless of her letter.
Miss Bingley knew her stay with her aunt would be of very long duration. As she considered her options, she decided to ask her brother to release her dowry to her and then take a ship to the Americas. No one there would know of her total humiliation so she could become a leader in society there.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Darcy had instructed his butler that any notes or letters from Miss Bingley, whether addressed to himself or to his sister, were to be consigned to the fire unopened.
Even though he would not give in to a compromise, Darcy did not want people to think him a cad by for accepting a letter from a lady to whom he was not betrothed and then refusing to offer for her.
Hence, when Miss Bingley’s letter arrived, Killion followed his orders and dropped it into the nearest fire as soon as he saw the writer’s name.
Chapter 17
Jane Collins cringed every time herlibidinous husband came to her at night. Even though he kept to his commitment to bathe daily, he still made her skin crawl. The way he drooled over her turned her stomach.
Thank goodness the stratagem she had devised with her mother had fooled the man. She heard the housekeeper report to the master the next morning that there had indeed been blood on the sheets. Jane did not want to know what her husband would have done were it absent.
Her home was not bad, if one could remove her husband and his virago of a patroness—who thought it was her right to direct even the tiniest decision in the running of Jane’s home, down to the size of the joints she ordered.
Jane was at a loss what to do with her gowns and dresses, as Lady Catherine had suggested shelves in the closets, and a suggestion from her was like the Word of God to her husband. He could not understand the problem as in his mind, nothing his patroness uttered was anything but brilliant.
Jane could still hear the conversation with Lady Catherine in her head, which took place when the Collinses arrived that Friday evening, the day of their wedding. No sooner had they arrived than her husband dragged her to Rosings Park so his patroness could meet her. More importantly, he could demonstrate to her that he had obeyed her edict.
When the newlyweds followed the butler, Jane thought she was in a baroque palace that displayed every distasteful and gaudy item from the period. To hear her husband tell it, Lady Catherine had the most discerning of tastes, but Jane saw only evidence of the opposite.
The butler led them into a drawing room which was, if possible, more ostentatious than what she had already seen. In the centre of the room was a raised throne-like chair with a gilded frame. It had the same red velvet upholstery one would expect to see on the monarch’s seat—all that was missing were the lions which were part of the royal standard.
Her husband began a long soliloquy praising his patroness, then she cut him off. He placed his hand in front of his mouth as if that would halt the flow of words. “Approach, Mrs. Collins, so I can see you properly,” came the imperious command from the lady on the raised chair.
Lady Catherine may have been considered handsome at some point, but now her face was full of lines and wrinkles with a very angular bone structure. Jane had done as commanded and stepped forward and then she had made a deep curtsy.
“You will do. You are a prettyish kind of girl,” Lady Catherine pronounced with a sniff. Then the officious lady had sniffed some more. “Mr. Collins, you smell different.”
“You have my apologies a thousand times over, your beneficence, I had to agree…” Again, he had been cut off.
“Your odour is much more pleasant; see you keep it up.” Although Jane had agreed with the rude lady, still for her to humiliate the man in such a fashion was beyond the pale. She did not love, nor even like, her husband, but to see him so treated did not make her feel good. Then she looked at her husband. He had not realised he had been insulted; he bowed and scraped while thanking the great lady for her condescension.
“I will provide you with all the direction you need to run your house correctly; I like to pay attention to everything in my sphere,” Lady Catherine had announced.
“My wife will be most grateful…” Collins tried to say.
“Mr. Collins! When I address your wife, I expect her to answer, not you. She is not a mute, is she?” Lady Catherine had spat out, almost causing Mr. Collins to vacate his stomach there and then, as he bowed even lower to display his contrition.
“I thank you, your Ladyship,” Jane had responded.
Lady Catherine dismissed them with a disinterested wave of her hand.
Since that first meeting, Lady Catherine had visited the parsonage once with her sickly daughter in tow, the same one her husband described as the ‘Rose of Kent.’ She was a small, wan creature and if she was a rose then Jane would have eaten her bonnet.
The same woman who had taken her husband to task for not allowing Jane to speak for herself never allowed her daughter to speak, and always answered anything directed to Miss de Bourgh. Jane took pity on the woman. If she were able to, she would try and befriend her.
They dined at Rosings Park twice; five course meals for a normal day, not for a special event. Jane wondered how it was the lady who ordered her to buy smaller joints wasted so much food. Her husband ate as much as he could; his table manners were atrocious, Lady Catherine picked at a little here and there, and Miss de Bourgh hardly ate a mouthful. She just pushed her food around her plate.
Even when Jane did not enjoy what was being served, she took a bite of each course to spare herself a lecture on arriving back at the parsonage about how she insulted the great lady by not eating from each course.
One time, Jane had tried to get her husband to allow her to run the house as she saw fit, pointing out although his patroness might be expert in some things, Jane knew full well Lady Catherine was not, but could not chance her husband’s wrath to point that out. Rather she had prudently pointed out that Lady Catherine was used to running a mansion, not a small house like theirs.
