For once, the problem before her was not Darcy.
It was not even Mr. Collins.
It was whether a secret kept for protection had become another kind of harm.
Chapter 23
Darcy did not remember the ride back to Netherfield.
He knew he must have passed through the same lanes, over the same damp road, between the same hedgerows stripped thin by November winds, but none of it fixed in his mind. His horse carried him onward, and Darcy let him, scarcely aware of anything beyond the furious beating of his own thoughts.
Mr. Collins.
The name alone was intolerable.
Not merely because the man was foolish, though he was that in abundance. Not merely because he was pompous, obsequious, and incapable of speaking three sentences without dragging Lady Catherine into them like some gaudy idol before which all rational beings must bow. That would have been bad enough. Such men existed everywhere, and Darcy had endured them in clubs, drawing rooms, and army messes.
But Mr. Collins wanted Elizabeth.
Or worse, he assumed he had only to condescend to choose her.
Darcy’s stomach turned.
He drew the horse up at last near a gate and sat there, breathing hard, his hand tight upon the reins. A flock of crowslifted from a distant field, black against the gray sky, and their harsh cries seemed suited to his temper. He tried to force order upon his thoughts, but each attempt brought him back to the same image: Elizabeth standing in Meryton, pale and still, while that absurd clergyman spoke of Hunsford and domestic arrangements as if she were already half bestowed upon him.
Hunsford.
Rosings.
The full horror of it came upon him then with a force that made him close his eyes.
If Elizabeth married Mr. Collins, she would belong to that little parsonage near his aunt’s estate. She would be there whenever he visited Rosings. Darcy did not go often. Lady Catherine had severed almost all intercourse with his father years before Darcy inherited, offended by George Darcy’s conduct and disgusted, perhaps, that the brother-in-law she had once expected to honor the family name had chosen instead to degrade it. But since his father’s death, Lady Catherine had renewed her claims upon him with determined persistence. Letter after letter had come, all full of family duty, Anne’s delicacy, and the long-cherished hopes of two sisters that their children should one day unite Rosings and Pemberley.
He had gone once, two years earlier.
Anne had been frail, silent, and so pale she seemed almost part of the chair in which she sat. She had not looked at him with longing. She had scarcely looked at him at all. When Lady Catherine spoke of their future, Anne’s hands had tightened in her lap, and Darcy had understood her feelings with perfect clarity because they matched his own. He had no wish to marry his cousin. Anne had no wish to marry him. Only Lady Catherine seemed unable, or unwilling, to perceive that two living persons stood between her and the fulfillment of a dead woman’s wish.
Yet he had promised to visit again at Easter.
At the time, it had seemed a harmless concession.
Now he saw it differently. He saw himself seated at Rosings’ long dining table while Elizabeth sat lower down, Mrs. Collins, wife to the rector, invited because Lady Catherine liked to arrange lives and then inspect the results. He saw his aunt’s severe gaze upon her, heard the sharp corrections, the lectures upon economy, dress, parish duties, proper submission to a husband, and every other subject upon which Lady Catherine considered herself sovereign. He saw Elizabeth forced to endure it with composure, her wit restrained because prudence required it, her liveliness stifled beneath gratitude she did not feel.
And at night—
Darcy’s eyes opened.
No.
He could not think of it. He would not. Yet the thought had already entered, vile and unbearable: Elizabeth bound for life to that fumbling fool, obliged to submit to his attentions, to share his name, his house, his table.
His bed.
Darcy felt physically ill.
He turned the horse toward Netherfield and rode harder than the road warranted.
By the time the house came into view, the first heat of rage had altered into something colder and more enduring. He gave the reins to a groom, entered by the side door, and went directly upstairs. He could not face Bingley yet. He could not endure Miss Bingley’s questions, nor Hurst’s indolence, nor Mrs. Hurst’s half-amused observation. He needed silence.
