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While Elizabeth and her family endured a parade of congratulatory conjecture, the village had already settled the matter: Mr. Darcy was either a clandestine pirate’s accomplice or the long-concealed offspring of Uncle Henry, smuggled into Pemberley for just such an occasion.

Lydia and Kitty, never ones to let truth impede a good story, embroidered tales of Uncle Henry’s rum-running exploits until his ships rivaled the Royal Navy in reach. The notion that Darcy was Elizabeth’s secret cousin proved far more digestible to both Bennet parents than the prospect of the actual new heir presently bearing down upon them.

Monday came as surely as Sunday faded, and with it came one Mr. William Collins.

He did not walk into Longbourn; he invaded it. His black clerical coat shone with an unholy polish, his spectacles gleamed with unearned authority, and his bow in the hallway was so deep Elizabeth wished he might pitch straight through the floorboards.

“My dear cousin Elizabeth!” he boomed before Mrs. Bennet could even grab her smelling salts. “It is with a heart overflowing with Christian humility that I present myself under your roof—though, alas, under circumstances so deeply freighted with worldly avarice and ungodly haste!”

“Mr. Collins,” Mr. Bennet murmured from behind his newspaper, not lowering it by so much as a hair’s breadth. “We are as thrilled to see you as a tenant is to see the bailiff.”

Mrs. Bennet offered a tight, glacial twitch of her lips as a greeting. “You find us in considerable distress, Mr. Collins, what with the dead brother and a wedding to plan while in half-mourning.”

Unperturbed, Mr. Collins bobbed his head in a series of oily nods while Elizabeth and her sisters were forced to perform equally stiff, grudging curtsies.

“My dear cousins,” he began, his voice carrying the nasal singsong of a sermon being delivered to a congregation of moderate intelligence, “I come bearing the most profound condolences for the loss of your esteemed uncle, Mr. Henry Bennet, whose untimely passing has occasioned in me such grief as can only be compared to the grief I experienced upon the loss of my own dear father. My grief was only assuaged when the Right Honorable Lady Catherine de Bourgh saw fit to offer me the living at Hunsford through the generous and condescending patronage, praising my filial duty as I honored my dear departed father during his final illness, which occasioned many⁠—”

“Yes,” Elizabeth interrupted, because the sentence showed no signs of reaching its destination unaided. “Thank you, Mr. Collins. You are very kind to call.”

“I intend to stay as long as necessary to fulfill my familial duty,” Collins continued as if she had not spoken, “for I have heard, my dear Cousin Elizabeth, that you have come into a most substantial fortune bequeathed by your late uncle—may he rest in eternal peace. I knew at once that Providence had placed before me an opportunity to heal the breach between our families.”

“Mr. Collins,” Mr. Bennet interrupted from behind his newspaper. “I do not see the link between Elizabeth’s inheritance and the breach caused by your late father.”

“Oh, quite simple, sir,” Mr. Collins simpered, whipping out a square of cambric to mop his shining forehead. “Because Henry Bennet is deceased without a legitimate son, the entail dictates that Longbourn reverts to the next closest male descendant of our common great-grandfather. Which is, by all laws of God and property, myself.”

“I am not dead yet, sir,” Mr. Bennet observed mildly. “If you have come to measure the draperies, I am afraid that they are in need of repair, and you might consider chipping in for their replacement.”

“Oh, but I have not come for the furniture, but to select a wife from amongst my fair cousins, thereby healing the breach and restoring peace to Longbourn.”

Before a single soul could draw breath to object, Mr. Collins dropped to one knee with bone-rattling suddenness on the threadbare Turkish rug.

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet!” he cried, snatching her hand before she could evade him. “Will you do me the very great honor of accepting my hand in marriage?”

His hand was a curious amalgam of grease, sweat, and an indefinable stickiness. Elizabeth’s stomach performed a small revolt just as Lydia sprang from the window seat, shrieking, “Lizzy, he’s proposing! And you haven’t even brushed your hair!”

“I am painfully aware of what he is doing, Lydia.” Elizabeth extracted her hand from between Mr. Collins’s oozing palms. “Mr. Collins, I am sensible of the honor of your proposal, and I must decline it with every expression of gratitude I can muster—which at present is precisely zero.”

Collins remained on his knee, blinking up at her with the incomprehension of a man whose recipe had refused to cook. “My dear cousin, I understand that it is customary for young ladies to refuse the first offer, the better to inflame the ardor of the suitor. Lady Catherine herself has told me as much, and I assure you that my ardor is sufficiently inflamed⁠—”

“Your ardor, Mr. Collins, is noted and returned to sender.” Elizabeth took a step backward. “I am not refusing from custom. I am refusing because I do not wish to marry you.”

“But the fortune! The estate! The natural and elegant solution to the entail! Surely you see that a match between us would unite the property and the money under one roof, securing the future of your entire family⁠—”

Mr. Bennet cleared his throat. “Mr. Collins, you do not seem well-informed about the particulars of my brother’s will. Elizabeth is not free to accept your hand because she is to marry Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. The banns were read yesterday.”

“But I object! I must protest to the ecclesiastical authorities. As heir of Longbourn⁠—”

“Elizabeth is already engaged.” Mrs. Bennet shook her fan at the hapless clergyman. “However, I do have a daughter who is most well-read, preferring Fordyce, most accomplished at the pianoforte, and quotes Scripture.”

Before Mary could so much as adjust her spectacles, Mrs. Bennet shoved her onto the rug with the ruthless efficiency of a drill sergeant deploying a cannon.

“I do not require a wife who quotes Scripture better than I do,” Collins said, blinking down at Mary as if she were a particularly tiresome footstool.

Mary’s face, which had just begun to show a hopeful flush at the sound of her name, fell as swiftly as a pudding removed from the fire before its time.

Collins, the windbag, had not stopped to take a breath as he continued, “Lady Catherine has been most particular in her advice. She has urged me to seek a wife of fine conversation and engaging address, one who might reflect credit upon my position and impress her ladyship’s acquaintance at Rosings Park. A wife who quotes Fordyce at breakfast would be, I fear, somewhat trying to the nerves.”

Elizabeth felt a surge of fury on her sister’s behalf. Mary was irritating, certainly—her sermons, her moralizing, her apparent belief that she alone among the Bennets had discovered the path to righteousness—but she was still Elizabeth’s sister, and she did not deserve to be inspected and discarded like a bolt of inferior cloth.