Thus, with many solemn bows and assurances of unalterable devotion, Mr. Collins departed Hertfordshire.
Mary stood in the doorway watching his carriage roll away, her posture rigid with a peculiar mixture of sorrow and injured dignity.
Elizabeth, observing from the staircase, felt an unexpected pang of sympathy.
For all Mary’s severity, she had grown accustomed to Mr. Collins’s steady presence—his approving nods, his shared disapproval of perceived worldliness. Without him, she seemed suddenly unmoored.
Unfortunately, the loss did not soften her disposition.
If anything, it sharpened it.
Mary’s wedding was not to take place until after her two elder sisters. With Jane poised to become mistress of Netherfield and Elizabeth soon to preside over Pemberley, the third Bennet daughter found herself, once more, relegated in her mother’s enthusiastic comparisons.
“Of course, Mary will do very well,” Mrs. Bennet declared one evening with unintended cruelty, “but Longbourn is only two thousand a year. Very respectable, certainly—though hardly the ten thousand that Mr. Darcy has!”
Mary’s lips thinned.
From that day forward, her scowls deepened whenever the upcoming weddings were discussed. She spoke of solemn duties and the sanctity of matrimony with increasing frequency. She quoted scripture with pointed emphasis. She sighed meaningfully when Lydia laughed too loudly over bridal ribbons.
And whenever Elizabeth’s engagement was mentioned—particularly in connection with the common license—Mary’s expression took on an almost ascetic severity. Time, it seemed, had not accustomed Mary to the idea that her sister might be marrying a heretic.
Elizabeth did her utmost to ignore it.
She busied herself with fittings and modest preparations, with consultations alongside Lady Anne to determine what clothing would be needed for the more frigid temperatures of the north. She spent afternoons with Georgiana, who played carols in anticipation of Christmas, and evenings walking with Darcy when the weather permitted.
Elizabeth allowed herself to believe that nothing could intrude upon such carefully laid happiness.
And yet—there were moments.
Moments when she would look up from her needlework and find Mary watching her with an intensity that unsettled more than it angered. Moments when conversation would die too quickly as she drew near. Moments when the air seemed to hum with something unspoken whenever she was in the same vicinity as her middle sister.
At dinner one night, when Mrs. Bennet began enumerating how many courses should be served at Pemberley’s table, Mary’s fork struck her plate with unnecessary force.
“Earthly splendor,” she said stiffly, “is a fleeting consolation when compared to the depravity of the heretic.”
Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek, but she was certainly beginning to feel anxiety around the most pious Bennet sister. She told herself that nerves were natural. That weddings unsettled households. That jealousy, when it appeared, burned itself out harmlessly.
Mary did not openly attack Darcy again—Mr. Bennet’s earlier admonition had been clear—but there was an intensity to her piety that felt less like devotion and more like resentment in disguise.
The closer the weddings drew, the more pronounced it became.
Elizabeth chose not to engage, however.I shall not allow my younger sister to rob me of the joy I feel in this moment.
But sometimes, late at night, when the house was finally still, she would wake with the inexplicable certainty that something stood just beyond the edge of their carefully arranged joy.
Waiting.
And she could not decide whether it was imagination—
or warning.
∞∞∞
Darcy had thought everything was in order with the marriage settlements. When he first arrived back to Meryton with the completed documents, he had gone at once to Mr. Bennet’s study to present them. The packet lay neatly tied with ribbon beneath his arm, every clause carefully prepared and copied by the solicitor.
Mr. Bennet received him with his usual languid courtesy. “Mr. Darcy. To what do I owe the pleasure? Another chess defeat in mind?”
“I have brought the marriage settlements for your review, sir.”
