Chapter Eighteen
Papa did not so much suggest the walk the next morning as seize upon it.
“Mr Collins,” he said, rising with an alacrity that startled the table, “you must excuse me. I have promised myself a turn about the grounds before the day escapes me entirely.”
Collins was already on his feet. “How gratifying! I find that walking, when undertaken in sober reflection—”
“—is best accomplished alone,” Mr Bennet finished cheerfully. “Do enjoy the morning.”
And with that, he vanished through the door.
There was a brief silence.
Elizabeth felt it first—not awkwardness, precisely, but a faint foggy sensation, as though the very air in the room had grown less accommodating.
“Well,” Collins said, clasping his hands. “Perhaps the ladies would care to accompany me into Meryton? It would be quite improper for a gentleman newly arrived in the neighbourhood not to make himself visible.”
Lydia was already reaching for her bonnet. Kitty followed. Jane hesitated only long enough to glance at Elizabeth with a question in her eyes. Elizabeth smiled reassuringly—indeed, she would go, because refusal would have required explanation. They set off at once.
Mr Collins took the place beside Elizabeth with an air of decision, as though the arrangement had been settled in advance.
His stride refused to find a common measure—too brisk for Jane, too lingering for Elizabeth—so that she was obliged either to hasten or be left a half-step behind.
He corrected for this constantly, edging closer as he spoke, his shoulder nearly brushing her sleeve.
“And it is my firm conviction,” he was saying, “that propriety, once established, must be upheld with consistency. One cannot allow uncertainty to creep in where duty has already been so clearly defined.”
Elizabeth murmured what courtesy demanded and fixed her gaze ahead.
He continued without pause. Of obligations. Of family arrangements. Of… nothing of substance, really. The full summary of any actual points he made could have been voiced in a handful of words, but he chose instead to ladle them on rather more generously.
But it was his voice that grated the most. It had a particular quality when he warmed to a subject—flat, yet earnest, and unyielding, each sentence laid atop the last as though he were building toward a conclusion that permitted no alternative.
She listened. Or tried to.
The difficulty did not announce itself at once. It began as a faint compression, deep behind her ears, as though the space around her head had grown subtly smaller. His words reached her clearly enough, yet seemed oddly displaced—too near and too far at once.
She shifted her attention to the road. The hedgerow. Jane’s profile a few steps ahead.
The sensation persisted. Similar to yesterday’s faint headache, but worse. She shook her head experimentally, and the pressure branching across her forehead grew no worse, no better.
Mr Collins leaned nearer, lowering his voice with confidential gravity. “In matters of inheritance, especially, one must be prepared to act decisively. Hesitation serves no one.”
The pressure sharpened—not pain, not dizziness, but a firm internal protest that had nothing to do with her thoughts or temper. Sound hollowed. His voice dulled into vibration rather than meaning, each word arriving with uncomfortable force, as though striking a single point just inside her skull.
Elizabeth slowed without intending to. She brought a hand up, fingers pressing instinctively to her ear, and turned her head away from Mr Collins.
As if he were to blame for her sudden earache! How Papa would laugh at the notion. Why, that was preposterous. She was overtired. Should not have undertaken such a long walk so soon. That was all.
Yet when she straightened, and he fell briefly silent, the pressure eased at once—retreating, not gone, but diminished enough to breathe.
Elizabeth frowned.
Voices did not behave like this. Proximity did not produce sensation. Words did not create screaming pain in one’s ear all on their own. And yet the moment he resumed—earnest, uninterrupted—the nerve-biting pain crept back again, clear and unmistakable.
“…a duty I have long considered with the utmost seriousness,” he was saying, hands folded before him as he walked, his tone warm with self-approval. “One must, after all, look beyond personal inclination when Providence has laid out one’s responsibilities so plainly—”
“Naturally,” Elizabeth said, digging a finger against the side of her neck just below her ear. Perhaps the pressure could be shifted...
“It has always been my belief,” he continued, “that a proper sense of obligation, once embraced, is a source of great comfort. There is relief in knowing one’s course has been determined—arranged, if you will—by wiser authority than one’s own—”
Something twinged behind her left ear this time.
Elizabeth frowned faintly and shook her head. The sensation persisted—narrow, insistent—like a finger pressed too firmly just out of reach.
“—and that personal happiness, while not insignificant, must always be understood as secondary to the greater structure of—”
The sound wavered. His voice did not grow louder, but it lost shape, flattening into a single, grating thread that vibrated against her skull. The words no longer arrived as sentences—only as pressure.
“I beg your pardon,” she said quickly, though she could not have said what she was interrupting. “Would you—would you allow me a moment?”
“Certainly, certainly,” he replied, sounding pleased rather than concerned. “I was only remarking that once a young lady understands the advantage of a suitable arrangement, she is spared the inconvenience of—”
The ringing spiked, almost like an explosion inside her ears.
Elizabeth yelped and clasped the sides of her head with a hiss.
But her foot came down late, her balance tipping just enough to force her hands out into the empty air.
She caught herself at once, but the world had narrowed unpleasantly, the sound pressing inward until there was nowhere left for it to go.
She could not have said what he was saying now. The words no longer mattered. The sound pressed in on itself, crowding the narrow space of her attention until there was no room left to endure it.
Elizabeth turned away from him abruptly—not as an act of will but writhing, ignorant evasion.
And the ringing eased at once.
Not vanished—but receded, like a tide withdrawing the moment one stepped back from the shore. Air rushed in where pressure had been. The world righted itself.
She stood very still, heart beating harder than the exertion warranted.
This was not faintness. This was not some inflammation of the ear, as she used to get when she was a child. Whatever had protested had done so vehemently, selectively—and with far too much precision to be ignored.
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and decided to put it to the test. A little distance might… She slowed.
Collins slowed to match her, and the pressure in her ear rang down her spine until she was grating her teeth.
She angled left to admire a hedge.
Collins angled with her.
The sensation sharpened—through her core as much as through her ears. Not alarm, but an unmistakable urging to move away. She quickened her pace without quite knowing why.
They had nearly reached the first houses when a burst of laughter carried toward them—easy, unrestrained, utterly unconcerned with being overheard. Two officers came into view first, walking abreast with the unselfconscious ease of men who had nothing to prove to one another.
Kitty gave a small, excited sound. “Oh! That is Lieutenant Denny. We met him last week—Lydia, do you see?”
“I do,” Lydia replied, already quickening her pace. “And the other must be—oh, I do not know him. But he is wearing regimentals, so we must meet him!”
The two men slowed, then halted altogether as Denny turned, his expression brightening. “Ah—Miss Lydia Bennet! I thought that was your voice.”
Lydia all but bounced forward. “We knew it! Kitty, I told you.”
Kitty smiled at once. “I told you, Lydia. Good afternoon, Lieutenant Denny. Oh, you haven’t met our sisters. This is Jane and Lizzy, and… oh, dash it all, Mary did not come. She never does.”
“Good afternoon to you, ladies,” Denny replied with a bow. “May I present my friend and newly appointed brother officer, Mr Wickham.”
Mr Wickham inclined his head easily. “Ladies.”
“Well now, this is most fortuitous,” Mr Collins said, his voice carrying with it a tone of instant proprietorship.
“Gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr William Collins, cousin to these young ladies and a clergyman entrusted with the moral welfare of a respectable parish. It affords me the greatest satisfaction to encounter officers of His Majesty’s forces engaged in the worthy task of preserving order in our county.
” He smiled upon them—not warmly, but approvingly—like a man conferring acknowledgment rather than seeking it.
Elizabeth’s ear sent a painful shiver down the cords of her neck. A thin, narrowing sound that pulled her focus inward despite herself.
Denny blinked at Collins’ speech. “That is very good of you, sir.”
Mr Collins gesticulated broadly. “I have long held that discipline and moral instruction, when properly aligned, serve as the twin pillars of social order. One must admire the uniform, of course, but it is the character beneath it—”
Elizabeth shifted her stance and crossed her arms tightly over herself—she could hardly help it. Her eyes were starting to water.
Mr Collins shifted with her. “—that ensures the stability of our communities.”
Jane glanced sideways. “Lizzy, are you well?”
Elizabeth lifted a hand to her ear, fingers pressing lightly. “Perfectly. Pay me no mind.”
Denny laughed at something Mr Collins had said. “Most amusing, sir! You catch us at an opportune time, for we were just returning to our barracks. I was giving Mr Wickham a tour and introducing him around town.”