The Unexpected Miss Bennet (11 page)

Darcy turned down her demands for a visit with the same demeanour that he presented to the world: a calm, measured one. After the fifth such letter, however, he turned to Lizzy. Silently he handed her Lady Catherine’s demands, written in the lady’s stilted, angular hand, and waited for her to read it. She did and passed it back to him.

‘I feel a sort of frightening shiver,’ she said, her small smile belying her words. ‘Do you think she will do as she threatens?’

‘I think she is entirely capable of doing so,’ he said. ‘She has always felt as if she owned Pemberley herself and has no qualms about arriving here unannounced. I think it is better to do as she requests – visit her at Rosings, rather than risk a visit here.’

Lizzy nodded. ‘As for that, it will be easier to devise a reason to break off our visit than one to break off hers,’ she said, her voice breaking into a laugh. Her smile changed from mischievous to happy. ‘And it will be very good to see Charlotte and her new baby. I will write to Charlotte to let her know we are coming, but you, my dear Mr Darcy, must write to Lady Catherine, as I know she will not receive a letter from me.’

MARY HAD ONLY ever heard about Rosings from Mr Collins, Lizzy and Maria Lucas, Charlotte’s younger sister, but its charms had been so well described that she thought she was prepared for the magnificence of the estate. However, nothing could prepare her for the opulence in the very air about it. Every column, every bit of glazing in the windows, even the way the gravel in the drive gleamed as if it were made of crushed diamonds, all of it proclaimed an exalted self-regard. As their horses trotted up the drive in the afternoon sun, Mary wondered whether Rosings were the cause of Lady Catherine’s puffed-up nature or a reflection of it.

Growing up here, how could one not become insufferable? She caught Lizzy’s eye across the carriage and her sister gave her one of her bright smiles.

‘So what do you think?’ Lizzy asked.

‘I think I understand everything a great deal more now,’ Mary said, still too astonished by the vista to curb her tongue or try to express her emotions in grand terms.

To her surprise, Darcy laughed. ‘Well put, Mary. Well put.’

They were ushered into the house by an army of footmen, the doors opening for the party as if invisibly, the servants hidden behind the massive carved wooden panels. Though Darcy was a tall man, he was dwarfed by the walls and high ceilings, yet this did not seem to affect him. Mary looked around at the frescoes and the gilding and almost laughed. It was preposterous. Utterly preposterous. One could not imagine taking tea in such a house, or really doing anything human at all. She indulged a small whimsy, imagining Lady Catherine and Anne living in a small house behind this grand one, staying here by day but whisking themselves home with relief at night when they could let slip the pretence.

It was the thought of Lady Catherine in ragged slippers and a floppy cap that made Mary laugh just as the final door opened and they were in her ladyship’s presence at last.

The butler announcing them never quite overrode the echo her laughter made, and Lady Catherine, in a large ornate chair, looked at her with a piercing glare. Mary bit her lip and swallowed the rest of her laughter. Darcy bowed; the ladies curtsied. Lady Catherine gestured with a magnanimous hand. She was alone except for her servants. Mary wondered where Miss de Bourgh could be.

The butler finished his recitation.

‘So,’ Lady Catherine snapped. ‘You’re here. Well, if you must come to overwhelm me, I suppose you must. Darcy, you know that I asked for you alone, or you and your sister. Instead, I see you’ve not only brought your wife, as I suppose you must, but also the plain Bennet.’

‘I thought you would enjoy a party of young people, Aunt,’ Darcy said.

‘Nonsense! You are not young, nor is your wife. As for your sister, Georgiana, why have you not come and given me a kiss?’

Georgiana ran forward dutifully and kissed her aunt on the cheek. Lady Catherine waved her away impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, you are a foolish girl. Are you over all that nonsense now?’

Again Darcy and Lizzy looked askance and a little angered as Georgiana blushed and mumbled something. Mary wondered with sharp curiosity what it was that they all seemed to know. What had Lady Catherine meant?

‘You’ve come at a most inconvenient time,’ Lady Catherine said. ‘Anne is ill. She has a very sensitive constitution. I expect her down for dinner but not an instant sooner. I shall have the Collinses come to dine with us. I shall send the housekeeper’s daughter to sit with the baby.’

‘Is that wise for Charlotte to leave her baby?’ Lizzy said with some astonishment. The boy was but a few months old. Lady Catherine fixed her with a glare.

‘Miss Bennet – rather, Mrs Darcy.
You
can hardly be an expert on children. Mrs Collins knows to defer to my judgement and that of her husband when it comes to raising a child. Such a boy will be ruined if his mother coddles him with attention and affection, especially a child in such a circumstance. He must learn from the youngest age to curb his own needs in accordance with those of his parents.’

Lizzy kept her composure and Mary knew that it required the greatest effort her sister could give.

Lady Catherine fixed her eye on Mary.

‘So,’ she said. ‘You are the middle Bennet, are you not?’

Mary curtsied most awkwardly. Lady Catherine harrumphed. ‘I told you, Darcy, that you were only to come yourself. There is not enough room at Rosings for such a large party. For I expect that you will wish to share your apartment with your wife, while Georgiana must have her own room, and Mrs Jenkinson cannot be removed from her room, as it is the one next to Anne. There is not another such room for Miss Bennet. She will have to stay at the Collinses. I shall direct a footman over there with her bags.’

Mr Darcy made as if to protest but Mary looked at him with a pleading eye. She did not much engage in conversation with her brother-in-law, for he was so stiff and formal that it was hard to come to any meeting of the minds with him. This time, though, she cast her unease aside and begged him silently not to counter Lady Catherine’s will. She would much rather stay at Charlotte’s, even though that could only be awkward too.

Mr Darcy coughed slightly to cover his false start. He gave Mary a mere nod and turned and bowed to his aunt. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘We do not mean to presume too far upon your hospitality.’

As Lady Catherine dismissed them and told them not to bother her until dinnertime, Mary could hear Lizzy conversing with Darcy in a low, angry voice. Her words she could not hear but she could easily hear Darcy’s reply:

‘I give her only the respect she deserves as my relative and as a person of great countenance. That does not mean I agree with her, my love.’

AS THEY WERE all at loose ends until dinnertime, they resolved to visit Charlotte and Mr Collins and follow Mary’s trunk to the parsonage. The small company walked over to the modest house given the Collinses as part of Mr Collins’s living.

Mr Collins answered them at his door, and was full of astonishment and gratitude, but it did not escape Mary’s notice that he did not seem to notice Lizzy or herself but was entirely attentive on Mr Darcy. It was many minutes before they were allowed in, as they had to wait on his exclamations.

‘Mr Darcy! Mr Darcy! What an honour, sir! I am your humble servant.’ Here he made an awkward attempt at a bow, but he was winking and nodding so much that it was more as if his back were hunched with rheumatism than with civility. Mary tried to keep back her smiles and could not dare look at Lizzy lest they both break into peals of laughter. Mr Darcy bore it all with a severe demeanour, but even Mary, without a wife’s familiarity, could see he was losing his patience and regaining all his contempt.

At last Mr Collins turned to Lizzy, the woman to whom he had once professed undying, raptured love. ‘My dear cousin,’ he said. ‘May I congratulate you once again on allying yourself with one of the greatest families in all of England?’ He winked at her with a familiarity that almost sickened Mary. ‘I can see now why you had to turn down a humble cleric when such a grand connection awaited you. And this must be Miss Darcy! A relation of my patroness is always a friend
here
.’

Georgiana curtsied, confused but mindful of her manners, and Mr Collins went into raptures once again. He hardly noticed Mary, but by then she was so used to it that she barely heard him as she waited for him to stop talking.

‘But come in, come in! You must all come in. Charlotte is no longer quite indisposed, and the child – a boy, he is a boy, my dear son – grows fat and well. Come in, come in, and grace my humble abode!’

Mr Collins ushered them in with his nods and bows and scrapes, stuttering all over his words as he looked towards Darcy and Georgiana and back again. If he had his way, Darcy and then Georgiana would have led, but Georgiana stepped back out of normal deference and so first Lizzy, then Darcy, and then Georgiana walked into the house at last. Mr Collins bowed them all in, but his eye fell upon Mary as she passed over his threshold and into his home. She smiled and gave him a small curtsy, then she saw something in his eye that she did not at first understand. His gaze shifted behind her and he saw the footman with the trunk.

‘My word,’ he said. ‘Whose belongings are those?’

Now Mary felt all the awkwardness of her situation. If only the footman had arrived before them and had been able to deliver Lady Catherine’s message. It would have been more acceptable then. Now she had to tell him that she was a house guest, whether he would or no. Oh, if only Charlotte had greeted them!

‘They are mine, Mr Collins,’ she said as forthrightly as she could. ‘Lady Catherine said there was no room at Rosings.’

His expression was all astonishment, and Mary felt as if she could sink into the small gravelled path. She had barely set foot inside the house.

With great relief she heard Charlotte’s voice from within. ‘Mr Collins! What do you mean by keeping Mary Bennet from coming inside! We’re all here, waiting on you! Lizzy says Mary is to stay, so let the man bring in her trunk!’

At the bidding of his wife, but still uncertain and unspeak-ing, Mr Collins stepped aside and let Mary in. She bowed and hurried past him. The footman followed and she could hear Mr Collins give orders to bring the trunk upstairs with at least ten words to every one he needed to get his point across. Gratefully Mary left him behind and entered the parlour where the rest of her party were gathered.

Charlotte waited on the stairs, her hair dishevelled. ‘Oh good, Mary, there you are. I am all undone, and will be down in a moment. Please forgive – well, all the uproar. Mary, I am so glad you are to stay.’ She whisked herself back upstairs.

Mary could have kissed Charlotte for her kindness, but she was slightly alarmed at her appearance. She was not even in half-dress but looked as if she were still wearing her morning wrap. Her entire party had the same uneasy expressions, as if they too were not quite sure of what had just happened. Awkwardly, she looked around her. The comfortable house reminded Mary of Longbourn. Charlotte’s touches were everywhere, although the house itself was somewhat untidy, with clothes scattered here and there and dust in the corners.

A baby’s wail could be heard at the back of the house. Mr Collins started.

‘Please sit and make yourselves at home in my humble abode,’ he said. ‘Such good fortune that brings you here for our blessed event – a blessed event it is! Though loud, and we haven’t been able to sleep. But I hope for you to be equally blessed, for marriage and children are God’s natural order of things, and I cannot conceive of marriage without the blessing of children.’

‘Perhaps we may be forgiven for starting out childless,’ Lizzy said, ‘if we take care not to continue in that state.’

She twined her fingers with Darcy’s and gave him such a smile that Mr Collins’s mouth dropped and he merely gasped like a fish a few times. Mary turned on her heel and pretended interest in a pretty plate over the mantel, trying to control her expression. Lizzy was most impertinent! How could she say such things? That was something Lydia would say or do, not a proper married woman. What had come over Lizzy? For once almost wordless, Mr Collins bowed again and muttered a few words about Charlotte. He rushed off with such speed that he almost bumped into the door.