For a moment, silence pressed between them.
Mr. Bennet looked away first and reached for his book. “Tell her, if you must.”
“Are you forbidding me?”
“No.” His tone was sharp now. “Do as you please, since you usually do. Only take the papers with you. They interrupt my peace.”
Elizabeth gathered the stack again, Mr. Collins’s letter on top. She ought to have felt guilty for speaking so plainly, but she could not find the energy. Her father had turned back to his book before she reached the door.
She paused there, hoping—foolishly, perhaps—that he would call her back, soften, say that he had only been teasing and that he knew she was tired.
He did not.
Elizabeth closed the door quietly behind her.
The drawing room was no quieter than when she had left it. Jane lay against the cushions, pale but patient, while Mrs. Bennet sat beside her and lamented, for the third time, that they had returned before Mr. Bingley could be made to feel their absence properly.
“It is very unlucky,” Mrs. Bennet said as Elizabeth entered. “Very unlucky indeed. Had you stayed another day, Jane might have had a whole evening by the fire with Mr. Bingley, and whoknows what might have come of it? But no, Lizzy must bring her home as though Netherfield were not the very best place for her to recover.”
“Mama,” Jane said gently, “I wished to return.”
“Nonsense. You are too good to know what you wish.”
Elizabeth set the papers upon a small table and held out Mr. Collins’s letter. “It is fortunate we did return, Mama, for otherwise you might not have known until the day itself that Mr. Collins is to arrive in two days.”
Mrs. Bennet stared at her. “Mr. Collins?”
“Our cousin. The heir to Longbourn.”
For one breath, Mrs. Bennet did not move. Then she snatched the letter from Elizabeth’s hand with an expression that might have belonged to a woman receiving news of invasion.
“The heir!” she cried. “Coming here? In two days? Mr. Bennet never told me! Oh, that man will be the death of me. Hill! Hill must be told. The spare room must be aired, and the sheets changed, and what are we to have for dinner? Two days! Only two days! I am sure no woman was ever so used.”
Lydia brightened. “Is he handsome?”
“He is a clergyman,” Mary said, as though that settled the matter.
“That does not answer my question.”
Mrs. Bennet, meanwhile, had sunk into a chair and begun the letter. Elizabeth watched her mother’s eyes move rapidly down the page, watched outrage mingle with curiosity, then with calculation.
“He speaks of an olive branch,” Mrs. Bennet said slowly.
“So he does.”
“And reconciliation.”
“Yes.”
“And making amends for the entail.” Her voice changed again, gaining that sharp, hopeful note Elizabeth knew too well. “Girls, do you hear? He speaks of making amends.”
“Mama,” Elizabeth warned.
Mrs. Bennet looked first at Jane, then at Elizabeth. Her gaze lingered critically upon Jane’s pale face and then sharpened as it turned.
“Jane is for Mr. Bingley,” she said.
Jane’s cheeks colored. “Mama, please.”
