Unexpected Miss Bennet (9781101552780)

by Sarath, Patrice

  ‘No, I could not imagine doing so,’ Mary agreed.

  ‘Extraordinary, that some people like books so much they read them anywhere.’

  Mary’s embarrassment began to turn towards irritation. What on earth was so remarkable about a liking for books?

  ‘I do like to read, Mr Aikens. I find it exercises the mind and can even enrich the soul, if it’s the right book.’ She thought of Fordyce’s Sermons and how often she took comfort in the familiarity of its passages, the way it informed and reinforced her most decided opinions. He nodded at the book in her hand.

  ‘So what is that one about?’

  Oh dear. He had to ask. ‘Oh,’ she said, stumbling over the narrative. ‘This one is rather more exciting than uplifting.’ He waited with a keen expression, so she began to narrate the plot as best she could.

  ‘It is about a girl who is beset on many sides by terrors both real and imagined. She is orphaned and sent to live with a relative who treats her with disdain and forces her to give up her inheritance. She has many adventures,’ she concluded lamely.

  ‘By Jove! How does she fare?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Aikens, it’s just a pretty little fiction. Emily St. Aubert doesn’t exist at all.’

  He looked thunderstruck. Mary was mortified. Had her correction insulted him? She was so unused to men!

  She looked at him from the corner of her eye. He did not look angry, but pensive.

  ‘So it is like a play,’ he said at last. ‘I like the theatre better than books, I own. Some actors are just splendid fellows and I like the plays with plenty of good swordfights, though you can tell that if those fellows really fought like that, well, they would be dead in a minute. Have you ever seen the play Hamlet?’ At her quiet headshake, he went on, ‘Lots of thee-ing and thou-ing and I can’t always understand it. But it ends with a capital sword-fight, and that makes up for the rest.’

  While Mary was made envious by his having seen one of the great tragedies, Mr Aikens went on in a more thoughtful tone. ‘I sometimes try to read,’ he admitted. ‘But I must always be up and about. If I could just get past the first five minutes, I always think I will like the story, but the letters jump around so.’

  ‘Perhaps I could read to you,’ Mary suggested. She almost clapped her hand over her mouth. What was she thinking? Had she proposed reading from a romantic novel to a strange man?

  Mr Aikens beamed. ‘Read to me! Read to me! Why, who would have thought of such an idea! Capital idea! But first I must finish walking Hyperion out so that he’s dry, you know. Can’t leave him standing.’

  When Mr Aikens had deemed that Hyperion was safe to let stand, after checking the horse’s chest, they settled into a small shady spot under a tree at the edge of the field. Mr Aikens took off his coat to let her sit on it, and the dogs settled down, panting and smiling, waiting for the fun. Mr Aikens sat down with a most intent expression on his face so that Mary was a little alarmed. Since Mr Aikens had not read the book before, she started from the beginning.

  On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony, stood, in the year 1584, the chateau of Monsieur St. Aubert. . . .

  She read with all the expressiveness she could muster, falling into the story with great anticipation. She almost felt as if they sat on the bank of the French river in Mrs Radcliffe’s book, and Mary was very conscious of the young man sitting next to her on his coat. They were so close that their shoulders brushed against one another and she was highly sensible of his presence, sometimes so that she lost her place.

  He managed to sit still for a page and a half before jumping to his feet, startling the dogs.

  ‘There! That is all I am capable of, Miss Bennet! There were so many words, I just couldn’t keep track of ’em. They jump about in my head just as much as they do on the page, and there you go, I must be off.’

  Startled by his sudden action, Mary stared up at him. His expression showed distress, and he went on. ‘Now I’ve disgusted you, just as I have my tutors and teachers.’

  Mary endeavoured to assure him that she was not disgusted, but he shook his head. She remembered that she sat on his coat and got to her feet with haste. She picked it up and handed it to him. Dampness from the grass had penetrated through it to the skirt back of her gown though she had not felt it. She felt uneasy about walking home with a damp skirt, and hoped it would dry by the time she returned to the house.

  Mr Aikens still looked downcast.

  ‘I think it is a matter of practice,’ she told him. For a moment both held on to the coat. ‘Oh, do not put your coat back on, Mr Aikens, it’s still quite damp. But I think that you cannot be expected to sit still all at once, just as I could not be expected to ride a horse without first being led about on a fat pony.’

  Heedless of her warning about his coat, he shrugged into it anyway. ‘But everyone else can learn to read and sit and listen,’ said he. ‘Why not I?’

  Mary cast about through all of her learning but could not come up with an answer for him. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘that we are what we are meant to be. And so long as we are good and kind to others, we should not allow our shortcomings in some areas to poison our enjoyment of others. I have often wished . . .’ She stopped, for she had come dangerously close to telling him what had been her heart’s desire.

  He looked at her, having forgotten his own frustration now that she had started telling him of hers.

  ‘What?’ he said with keen interest.

  Mary blushed, and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told him. And though he teased her about it, she refused to say, and she even enjoyed the battle between them, because it wasn’t often that a young man paid her so much attention that he would care about something she said, let alone did not say.

  He gave up after a while, or perhaps grew tired of the game. Mary felt a pang. Had she proved too hard a challenge? And on the heels of that thought came another: had she been flirting?

  Mr Aikens did not seem upset, just distracted, as he often was when he talked of many topics all in the same breath.

  ‘Well, well, I see you will not tell me,’ he said at last. ‘You stand firm, Miss Bennet, you do indeed. I could not do it. I have no sense of constancy, except toward my beasts.’ He gave her a look then, as if considering her in a new light. ‘I hope you get your wish,’ he said at last. ‘You deserve it.’

  They walked back to the house in silence then. He shook her hand when they arrived at the drive, and Mary curtsied and watched him mount up and ride off. The dogs set up barking and Hyperion shied sideways, but kept on going.

  ‘Oh hush,’ she told them crossly, and they wagged their tails apologetically. She sighed and went into the house.

  It was good of Mr Aikens, but she would never get her wish, to be known as the accomplished, scholarly Miss Bennet. It would no more happen than it would that Mr Aikens could sit still. She would have to take her own advice: We are what we are meant to be, and if we are kind and good, then we should not let our shortcomings poison our accomplishments.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHILE THE DARCYS spent a quiet summer at Pemberley, it was not to be supposed that they were to be left in peace. For there was one person who had a particular interest in Pemberley and Longbourn, and a connection to both: Lady Catherine de Bourgh. An aunt of Darcy’s, she had been used to having him at her beck and call. As the patroness of Mr Collins, she also took a great interest in the Bennets, and she was not sanguine about how one Bennet in particular had thwarted her hopes for her own daughter, Anne, who from birth had been destined for Pemberley. To Lady Catherine, Elizabeth Bennet had stolen Darcy from his rightful wife.

  With Mr Collins as her go-between, she kept abreast of all the doings of the Bennets and the Darcys and even of the Bing-leys, though that household meant little to her except in relation to her own sense of importance. She did not scruple to continue to demand Darcy’s presence, sending letters by post and by the hand of her own footman in her own livery.
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  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 Mar
y. ‘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!’