Chapter 11
When the carriage left Netherfield the following morning, Jane and Elizabeth leaned back against the squabs and sighed.
“That’s it! You two have been sighing all morning. What is going on?” cried Kitty.
Jane looked at her sister in surprise. “I told you. Mr. Bingley and I have set a date for the wedding.”
“And he kissed you. Rather a lot if your hair was anything to go by,” said Kitty.
“Catherine Bennet! You should not speak of such things.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. “It is only us, Jane. If you cannot talk to your sisters, who can you speak to?”
“I do not wish to speak of my private activities with Mr. Bingley with anyone,” said Jane. “Not at this time, anyhow.”
Kitty rolled her eyes as Jane looked out the window. “I know why you are sighing, Lizzy. Miss Bingley was an absolute harridan!”
Elizabeth did not correct her and turned her gaze to the window so her sisters would not see her face.
“Jane, I hope she does not live with you and Charles after you are married. She will make your life a misery.”
“She is not so bad,” said Jane.
“She is awful!” cried Kitty. “Truly Jane, you cannot trust her. She will take over your household and drive you mad.”
“I agree with Kitty,” added Elizabeth.
“What?” cried Jane. “I was counting on you to be the voice of reason!”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Miss Bingley is shrewd and self-serving, a terrible combination. And I cannot give you particulars, but I know she has a loose relationship with the truth.”
Jane gasped. “Calling a lady a liar is a serious accusation, Lizzy. Are you sure?”
“She lied to my face, Jane. And I suspect she has lied about me as well.”
“I am not surprised,” said Kitty. “She is jealous that we are the daughters of a gentleman and our family has lived on our land for hundreds of years. Her brother has yet to buy an estate.”
“We should not judge them for that. They cannot help their birth,” said Jane.
“I am not judging them for it, merely saying it is a reason Miss Bingley might be jealous.”
“Kitty may be right,” said Elizabeth. “She is certainly displeased with Hertfordshire and our family in particular. You should be careful with her, Jane. She will not make things easy for you.”
Jane looked troubled and twisted her hands together.
Elizabeth reached over and placed her hand on Jane’s. “Talk to Charles. He knows his sister better than we think. I do not think she has him fooled. He will deal honestly with you and you may come up with a plan to deal with her together.”
Jane nodded. “Very well. I shall speak to Charles, but I hope you are wrong.”
“For your sake, Jane, I hope I am wrong, too. But I do not think I am.”
The carriage pulled up to Longbourn and the ladies climbed out, asking the groom to see to their horses who were tied to the back. They made their way inside only to be waylaid by their mother just inside the door.
“Girls! There you are,” cried Mrs. Bennet. “You’ll never believe what has happened.”
“What is it?” asked Kitty.
“Your cousin has arrived.”
“Claude is here?” cried Elizabeth, moving towards the front parlor.
“No, no, your father’s cousin on the Bennet side. Mr. Collins.”
“Mr. Collins who will inherit the estate?” asked Kitty.
Mrs. Bennet scowled. “Do not remind me, child.” She huffed, then pulled them further into the hall and spoke in a hushed voice. “He is here looking for a wife. Since the rest of you are marked, I have encouraged him towards Mary.”
“Mary?” asked Kitty.
“Shhh! He will hear you. They are reading scripture together in the front room. Do not distract him.”
“Will we not meet him sometime?” asked Kitty.
“She does not want him to see the sisters he cannot have until Mary has secured him,” said Elizabeth dryly.
“Lizzy, that is unkind,” scolded Jane.
“I speak of mama’s motives, not Mary’s attributes,” defended Elizabeth.
“Oh, go upstairs, all of you! You are giving me a headache.” Mrs. Bennet shooed them away.
“I will just go to Papa,” said Jane as they passed the study.
Kitty and Elizabeth smiled at her encouragingly and made their way upstairs.
“Lydia!” called Kitty. They found their youngest sister in the nursery on the third floor, a room they only visited when they wanted to hide from visitors or their mother. “Tell us about Mr. Collins.”
Lydia set down the book she was reading and sighed dramatically. “Oh, he is a dreadful bore! I thought I might actually fall asleep standing up when we greeted him yesterday. He kept us standing in the hall for ten minutes, going on about how pleased he was to be at Longbourn.”
“So you do not like him?” said Kitty.
“He is ridiculous! He never stops speaking, but he never actually says anything! He only talks about his patroness, some nosy old woman called Lady Catherine. He speaks about her as if she were the queen and not some batty old woman in Kent.”
“You do not know she is batty,” said Elizabeth.
“If she is even half like what Mr. Collins says of her, she is batty.”
“Does Mary seem to like him?” asked Elizabeth.
“That’s the strangest thing of all!” exclaimed Lydia. “She does. I do not know what she sees in him, but if he makes her happy, that is her choice.”
“I am surprised you are so magnanimous, Lydia. Brava.”
Lydia sighed. “I am not magnanimous. I was horrid to Mary last night when we were getting ready for bed. I told her Collins was a disgusting toad and that she would be better off as an old maid than married to him.”
“You didn’t!” said Kitty.
Lydia hung her head. “I did. She nearly cried. And instead of being kind, I told her she would spend her entire life crying if she married Collins, and she ought to put him off while she could.”
Kitty slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, Lydia,” said Elizabeth. “Is Mary all right?”
“She seemed well enough at breakfast, but it is Mary. She is impossible to understand!”
Elizabeth rubbed Lydia’s arm. “Did you apologize?”
“Yes. She said it was her Christian duty to forgive me, but that doesn’t mean she has done it, does it? Anyhow, I know I did the wrong thing because my favorite flower was missing this morning.”
“What?”
Lydia stood and raised her skirt, showing them the bottom of her mark. Where there had been a vibrant red flower over her hip, there was now a faded pink outline. Elizabeth and Kitty sat back in shock.
Lydia looked at them solemnly. “I know. It is wretched. After I saw it, I apologized again to Mary and promised I would help her along however I could if this was what she truly wanted. Then I came up here to improve my mind and try to get it back.” She gestured to the book beside her.
Elizabeth did not know what to say. Lydia’s mark had always been unusual.
She had never heard of a mark behaving in such a way, but it was yet more proof that the Bennet sisters were out of the ordinary.
At least the mark was encouraging Lydia toward good behavior.
She did not want to think how wild her sister would have been without its influence.
“Are you going to hide out here all day?” asked Kitty.
“Probably. Mama does not want Collins to spend any time with the rest of us until he has decided on Mary.”
“You were right, Lizzy!” cried Kitty.
Elizabeth huffed. “We cannot stay up here for days at a time. How long is he staying?”
“For the week,” answered Lydia.
“This is ridiculous. Surely Mr. Collins knows the rest of us are marked. Even if we were not, Jane has Mr. Bingley and Lydia is too young to consider marriage.”
“That leaves you and me,” said Kitty, her eyes wide with horror.
“You are too young as well. And I would never marry a ridiculous man. I could never take him seriously,” argued Elizabeth.
“Mama seems set on Mary for Mr. Collins. It is a good match in some ways. He is respectable, I suppose, and he has a good living now. She will live moderately well. And then one day she will have Longbourn.” Lydia made good points, but it was clear they tasted like ash as they came out of her mouth.
Elizabeth stifled her urge to laugh at her sister’s expression and stood to leave the room. “I will go and greet papa. I shall pray for your mark, Lyddie.”
Lydia stuck her tongue out at her elder sister as she was walking away, then sucked it back in when Kitty tutted at her.
“You will never get your flower back with that attitude,” scolded Kitty.
Lydia crossed her arms and scowled. At least Kitty had the grace to restrain her laughter.
Mr. Bennet smiled when Elizabeth entered his bookroom.
“How was your sojourn at Netherfield, my dear? Have you come back engaged like your sister? Jane has told me all about her plans with Mr. Bingley. And now Collins is sniffing around Mary. If he follows through, I will lose two of my girls in the same month.”
Elizabeth looked at him guiltily. “Three of your girls, papa.”
“What?”
“While I was at Netherfield, I made a discovery.” She took a deep breath. “Mr. Darcy is my soulmate.”
Mr. Bennet stared at his daughter with a blank expression.
“Papa? Will you not say something?”
“Mr. Darcy? Your soulmate?”
“Yes. We were both quite surprised. He has the mark on his right arm. I only saw the bottom portion, it would have been indecorous for me to see the whole thing, but it is an exact replica of my mark, only smaller.”
Mr. Bennet continued to stare at his favorite daughter.
“I thought you liked Mr. Darcy? You seem to enjoy your discussions.”
“Yes, I like him well enough for a game of chess or a discussion of politics, but that is a far cry from wanting him to marry my daughter!” Bennet’s voice rose louder as he talked, and Elizabeth cringed back into her seat.
“So you do not approve?” she said in a small voice. She had never thought her father would deny her. She did not know what she would do if he withheld his consent.
Mr. Bennet sighed. “I am not saying I do not approve, but I do not love the idea either. He is a difficult man, Elizabeth. He will not be easy to be married to.”
“How do you mean?”