Freeing Mr. Collins (Pride and Prejudice Christmas Variation)

Chapter 1

“Clergymen should by no means indulge in excessive romantic behavior regarding their wives. It might give the Lower Classes the wrong ideas.”

-Lady Catherine de Bourgh

It was only three days before Christmas, and I had just settled down at Hunsford Parsonage to look over the household accounts, when I received a message that Lady Catherine de Bourgh wanted to see me on a matter of the utmost importance.

Lady Catherine was our neighbor and my husband William Collins’ patroness and indefatigable dispenser of advice, correction, and reproof.

Though I did not share my husband’s affection for her, a summons from Rosings was not one to delay answering, or Lady Catherine would be liable to send another messenger or even, God forbid, come herself to see why her orders had been ignored.

What in the world could Lady Catherine want to see me about?

I hurried to get ready, stopping to look in the mirror before I left. I had to make sure my bonnet was tied neatly, and I didn’t look too pink-cheeked and blowsy, or Lady Catherine would say “are you the wife of a clergyman or a milkmaid tromping across the fields?”

I was no beauty and I never had been. I had auburn-brown hair, but it was stick-straight and thick, resistant to all the elaborate curls and styles that were most in fashion now.

If you tried to curl my hair with curl-papers it would fall into limp and boneless waves and straighten back almost immediately.

I had ordinary brown eyes and I was medium height, neither attractively tiny and fairy-like or admirably tall and willowy. My skin also had a terrible tendency to freckle.

As for my body, I was round everywhere: heavy breasts, round belly, round hips.

I knew as soon as I saw Lady Catherine her sharp eyes would roam over my round belly, wondering every time if I was expecting an interesting event.

I was not, and my failure prickled uncomfortably at my skin.

But I had always been of a practical turn of mind, so I knew there was no benefit to delaying the meeting with Lady Catherine.

But I did reflect on how my practicality had led to me being here, wrapped in a warm cloak against the chill December air, and walking the short distance to the great house of Rosings.

Everyone in my hometown of Meryton had been shocked at my engagement to William Collins, clergyman.

My neighbors the Bennet family certainly had been.

Mrs. Bennet had been shocked because she couldn’t believe with my plain face I had managed to get married before any of her daughters, and my best friend Elizabeth Bennet had been appalled because she couldn’t believe anyone could bear to marry a man she saw as a pompous fool.

My own family was shocked, too, my brothers falling over themselves to shake William’s hand and clap him affectionately on the back, so glad were they to get rid of a wallflower sister they had thought would be a burden on their own homes.

But I had no desire to end up passed like a parcel between my brothers’ homes, reduced to the poor relation who would do the fetching and the carrying and sleep in the room without a fire.

My parents wept on William’s neck too, because I was plain and had no portion, and here was a respectable match, a man with all his teeth, who had a good income and no known vices.

And so I married a man I wasn’t in love with and have found it a good bargain, mostly, although there are times when I want more. . .

I felt my thoughts trail off as I reached Rosings, stepping gladly into the warmth of the great house.

I was greeted almost immediately by Lady Catherine herself.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a very tall woman in her late 40s, with an imposing shelf of a bosom, an elaborate hairdo that seemed at any moment in danger of collapse, pale blue eyes, and a rather sour expression on her face.

She was not a handsome woman, although my husband had been known to say that she had “a stately visage that was unique for its intellect and delicacy, even among those of the great families, where stately visages are not unknown.”

I caught a glimpse of her daughter, Anne de Bourgh, and some of the other visitors in her sitting room, but Lady Catherine swept me away down the hallway to a different ornately furnished and stuffy sitting room, and waved me into a chair.

“What did you want to see me about?” I asked politely, watching her heave that great bosom dramatically.

“Things,” said Lady Catherine, with sinister import, “have taken a turn for the worse. There is a crime wave at Rosings.”

Lady Catherine was known to be a bit on the melodramatic side, although I never would have admitted such a thing out loud to my husband.

“What has happened?” I asked, arranging myself calmly in the chair.

I wasn’t much to look at, but I was calm in a crisis.

“Pigs,” Lady Catherine said, “are missing.”

I blinked for a moment.

“Are you sure?” I asked, “that they are not merely misplaced?”

Lady Catherine glared at me. “I think I would Know,” she said, enunciating her words in all capital letters, “Whether a Pig is Merely Misplaced.”

I bit my lip and waited for developments.

“Specifically, Wilberforce and Julia,” Lady Catherine said.

Ah. That made matters a little clearer. Wilberforce was a prize-winning pig, renowned across the land for his size and shining coat, and Julia was his regal consort.

“That’s unfortunate,” I said, playing for time, so I could figure out what she wanted me to do about it.

“I wonder,” said Lady Catherine, “if some Young Person has not been attempting to play a childish prank by stealing Wilberforce and Julia.”

I agreed that this might indeed be so. I was not sure what I could do about it, but I did not say so.

“And,” my husband’s patroness said, drawing her narrow lips together, “my acrostic necklace, given to me by my late husband, Sir Lewis de Bourgh, is also missing.”

I wondered weakly what kind of acrostic her late husband would have commissioned, since Lady Catherine always described him as “not overburdened with brains.”

“Very shameful,” I said, since I saw some reaction was clearly expected of me.

“Mrs. Collins,” said Lady Catherine impressively, as if she was bestowing a rare and valuable gift on me, “I would like you to look into these mysteries and tell me who or what is responsible for them, so I can bring the malcontents to justice.”

“Why me?” I asked.

Lady Catherine had begun to stroke the head of a very old, very ugly pug dog, and she said, “Clearly Mr. Collins married you for your sense, not your looks, so it’s time to show it.”

I couldn’t deny it, but I still felt a little stab of irritation at her words.

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“Do,” she said. “I would like it solved before my nephew Fitzwilliam Darcy, his wife Elizabeth, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bingley arrive.”

Since it was only three days before Christmas, and the Darcys and Bingleys might arrive at any time, this was rather a tall order.

“I don’t want news of this getting Abroad,” Lady Catherine continued.

“I am not sure the Darcys or Bingleys will feel obligated to visit the pig sty,” I said. “So I think we can have tolerable confidence in news not getting abroad.”

“Leave no stone overturned,” Lady Catherine said sharply, a feather in her hair beginning to bend with the violence of her movements.

“Do you have any new servants. . .?” I began dubiously, but Lady Catherine shook her head firmly. “No new servants whatsoever, and the only visitors have been Anne’s two suitors and Mr. Crawford our solicitor, and I have known him since he was in swaddling clothes.”

Lady Catherine said this as if having viewed Mr. Crawford as a baby was proof that he would never dare to commit any crimes as an adult.

“Of course,” I said, making a mental note to ask the housekeeper if it was indeed true that there were no new servants.

Lady Catherine had an indefatigable desire to know and advise on every matter, big and small, that had to do with Rosings, but I would not put it past the formidable housekeeper Mrs. McGregor to have snuck in an unapproved parlourmaid if she felt it was necessary.

Then I heard a tempestuous noise in the hallway and my husband was ushered into the room.

My husband was a tall bear of a man, almost knocking his head on the doorway as he came in. William was well over 6 feet tall, with big, broad shoulders, thick, unruly brown hair, big, often clumsy, hands, and a big body.

He gave both Lady Catherine and I unnecessarily deep bows.

“My dear Lady Catherine,” he said to his patroness. “Are you in any difficulties that I could help you with?”

“Mrs. Collins is going to take care of it for me,” Lady Catherine said firmly.

I blinked a bit. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to do, but I supposed I was grateful she was so confident in me?

“You will stay to tea, of course,” Lady Catherine continued.

“Of course,” William said eagerly. “I would not miss the pleasures of tea at Rosings for the world.”

She got up from her seat and walked out the door, clutching her old pug in her arms.

Oh dear. Now we were going to be subjected to tea accompanied by the sounds of Puggy’s aged snuffles and snorts, never an appealing prospect.

“My treasure,” William said, taking my arm, and talking in his usual booming whisper, which he fondly believed made his big voice less conspicuous, “Nothing could make me happier than to learn that you have become so indispensable to Lady Catherine.”

“Pet names,” said Lady Catherine, calling back behind her shoulder at us, “should be discouraged in men of the cloth so they can promote restrained and modest marital relations.”

We went in silence the rest of the way into the other room for tea.

Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bingley were expected any day now, so I did not have a lot of time to solve the mystery.