Elizabeth
Heavy rain arrived shortly after midnight on Friday and continued for the next two days.
By midday the following morning, the lanes were impassable, and the Bennet household had been reduced to its own company.
Elizabeth had formed her initial opinion of Mr. Collins within the first hour of his arrival. Two days of enforced proximity had done nothing to revise it and a great deal to confirm it. He had opinions on everything and knowledge of very little, a combination she found particularly exhausting. He spoke of Lady Catherine with the devotion of a man who had found religion and chosen an unusual deity. He complimented everything in the house, including the card games.
Knowing her mother would steer him away from Jane and might still encourage his attentions towards her, Elizabeth had braced herself for Mr. Collins's advances, particularly after the way he had lingered during their introduction. Yet by the end of the second day, it became apparent that Mr. Collins had either thought better of Elizabeth altogether or had been redirected by some external force. He had attached himself to Mary, praising her reading of Fordyce and extolling her skill upon thepianoforte, which he declared superior to that of the organist at his parish. Mary received these attentions with such indifference that Elizabeth began to suspect she had no wish to receive them at all.
Elizabeth made several attempts to observe conversations between Mr. Collins and her mother, hoping to overhear some mention of his intentions. All had proved futile. It was Kitty who eventually brought the intelligence she sought.
She appeared in Elizabeth's bedchamber on the afternoon of Mr. Collins's second day at Longbourn, while Elizabeth and Jane were passing the time together, with the breathless energy of someone carrying news she considered of the utmost importance.
"I heard Mr. Collins talking to Mama," she announced, dropping onto the bed beside them. "In the small parlour. He did not know I was in the hall."
"Kitty." Jane raised her brows in gentle warning, suggesting that accuracy and Kitty were not always intimate companions.
"He said," Kitty continued, entirely undeterred, "that Elizabeth is afforded too much liberty. That she speaks too freely and has opinions she expresses without invitation.
Elizabeth stared in shock at her. Then she laughed, a genuine, unguarded laugh that surprised even herself. "He said that?"
"Yes." Kitty paused, watching their faces for effect. "I think when Mama told him that Jane was as good as spoken for by Mr. Bingley, he insisted upon you instead."
Jane tapped Kitty's arm impatiently. "Then how did he come to speak of Lizzy in the manner you first described?"
"Mama told him that Mary was considerably more biddable and that Elizabeth was..." Kitty frowned, trying to recall the exact wording. "Difficult. I believe that was the word."
"Difficult," Elizabeth repeated with considerable satisfaction.
"I thought you should know," Kitty said, rising. "Mary, however, says she could not marry him either."
"Mary said that?" Elizabeth grimaced.
"This morning. To me." Kitty nodded. "She said..." Again, she paused to remember. "She said that a man who speaks so frequently of another woman's virtue has very little of his own to recommend him."
Jane seemed to considered this thoughtfully. "I think that means she does not like him."
"I think it does," Elizabeth agreed.
Kitty soon departed when she realised that, having delivered her news, she was no longer of particular interest to either of her sisters.
Once she had gone, Jane looked at Elizabeth with a small smile. "You look relieved."
"Enormously," Elizabeth said, making no attempt to conceal it.
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9-10thNovember 1811
Netherfield
Darcy
The rain that had arrived shortly after midnight on Friday continued through Saturday, giving Darcy far more time indoors than he found useful.
He had been thinking about his visit to Longbourn ever since returning to Netherfield. He was still thinking about it now, standing at the window of his sitting room and watching the rain sweep across the grounds, with a book lying open upon the desk behind him that he had not touched in over two hours.
He thought about the walk in the gardens. About the ease with which Elizabeth had walked beside him, free from the careful management she employed in company, as though the afternoon had lowered her guard without her realising it. He thought about what she had said, that she would not marry a man she did not love or respect, spoken with a certainty that was neither performance nor bravado but merely the conviction of a woman who knew her own mind and expected to be taken seriously. He thought, too, of what he had said in return, words that had escaped more plainly than he had intended and which she had received without embarrassment and without pretending she had not heard them.
