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“Mr. Collins,” Elizabeth began, but he was no longer listening.
His gaze moved past Mary, past Lydia and Kitty, and settled on Jane—beautiful, gentle Jane, who stood in the doorway with a growing alarm distorting her face.
“Miss Jane Bennet,” he said, rising from his knee at last and crossing the carpet, “I must say that I have been most struck by your gentle deportment and sweet countenance—”
“Jane is spoken for,” Elizabeth said.
“Indeed?” Collins’s heavy brows rose. “And by whom, pray?”
“By Mr. Bingley,” Kitty chirped. “He is at Netherfield. He has been courting her since Michaelmas.”
“Six months!” Mrs. Bennet corrected, and the bitterness in her voice was sudden and scalding, six months of dances and dinners and walks in the shrubbery boiling over at once. “Six months he has danced attendance upon my Jane, sat at our table, walked with her in the garden, sent his sister to call, and has he proposed? He has not! He has not so much as hinted at a ring, a settlement, a letter of intent!”
“Mamma!” Jane’s cheeks had gone from their usual soft pink to a white that Elizabeth did not like at all.
“A bird in the hand, Jane! A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and Mr. Collins is a bird who is here, in our parlor, offering you security, while Mr. Bingley is off doing heaven knows what at Netherfield and showing no signs of making his move!”
“If Jane doesn’t want Mr. Collins,” Lydia announced from her corner, “I shall marry Mr. Darcy instead, and then Lizzy can have the parson. I am quite tall enough for Pemberley, and I should look magnificent in a barouche.”
“You cannot marry Mr. Darcy,” Kitty objected. “He is promised to Lizzy.”
“I can too marry Mr. Darcy,” Lydia retorted. “I shall wear a heavy veil over my wedding clothes and answer to Elizabeth instead of Lydia.”
“Except Mr. Darcy will notice your pointy elbows and knees.” Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at her sister. “You always brag about your height; now you cannot hide it.”
Kitty, not wishing to be left out of the marriage circus, pushed Lydia aside. “While you two argue about Darcy, I can marry Mr. Bingley if Jane does not want him. He seems nice enough, in an eager spaniel sort of way.”
“Neither of you is marrying anyone!” Elizabeth’s voice cut through the chaos with an authority she did not feel. “Mr. Bingley’s intentions toward Jane are perfectly honorable, and Mr. Collins has no business interfering in matters that do not concern him!”
“Do not concern me?” Collins drew himself up to his full—and not particularly impressive—height. “I am the heir to this estate! Everything in this house concerns me! When your father shuffles off this mortal coil—which, given his age and the delicate state of mourning a brother three years his junior, may occur at any moment—this parlor, these furnishings, these very walls will belong to me! I have every right to concern myself with the marital prospects of the young ladies who will shortly be dependent upon my charity!”
“My father,” Elizabeth said through gritted teeth, “is alive and well, and may yet live to produce a male heir.”
“Over my dead body!” Mrs. Bennet shrieked, which was perhaps not the most helpful contribution to the discussion.
Elizabeth shot her mother a look that could have curdled milk—the same mother who had dumped her on the Netherfield gravel like a parcel of unwanted laundry, the same mother who had instructed her not to return without Darcy’s consent, the same mother who was now apparently prepared to sacrifice Jane to a pompous clergyman rather than wait another month for Bingley to declare himself. Over her dead body indeed. That was rather Elizabeth’s point, though she had the restraint not to say so aloud.
But Collins, ignoring the tempest around him, crossed the remaining carpet to where Jane stood. “Miss Bennet,” he said, reaching for her hand, “I perceive that your situation is one of particular delicacy, and I assure you that my intentions are wholly honorable. Will you, beautiful Miss Bennet, marry me?”
Jane’s blue eyes fluttered, and she slid down the wall in a slow, graceful collapse, as if her bones had quietly excused themselves from the proceedings.
“Jane!” Mrs. Bennet shrieked, fanning her collapsed daughter. “Water! Vinegar! Mary, the smelling salts!”
Mary, having retreated to the writing desk to compose either a letter of condolence to herself or a treatise on the spiritual hazards of being perpetually overlooked, produced from her pocket a small vial—kept expressly for her mother’s most regular emergencies.
“Mr. Collins.” Elizabeth stepped forward, placing herself bodily between the clergyman and her collapsed sister. “We are in mourning for my uncle. You have offered your condolences, such as they are. You have proposed to two of my sisters and been refused by one and ignored by the other. I believe it is time for you to take your leave.”
“Take my leave? But I have not yet secured—”
“You have not yet secured anything, Mr. Collins, and you will not secure anything in this house. We are grieving. We are not receiving suitors. And if you do not remove yourself from this parlor in the next thirty seconds, I shall be forced to conclude that Lady Catherine’s instruction in proper deportment has been sadly deficient.”
Collins’s face went through several colors in rapid succession—purple, then white, then an unbecoming mottled pink. “You dare to speak to me of Lady Catherine? You, a country miss with pretensions above your station? Lady Catherine will hear of this! She will hear of the shocking ingratitude of the Bennet family, the refusal of her nephew’s intended bride to show proper respect to a man of the cloth. She will—”
“Thirty seconds, Mr. Collins.”
“I shall write to her this very evening! I shall describe in detail the vulgar reception I have received, the mercenary designs of your mother, the unladylike conduct of—”
“Twenty seconds.”
