The Unexpected Miss Bennet (18 page)

At the bottom were her books, old friends that had kept her company many a long night when the candle had burned so low that she had had practically to hold it over the book in order to read the words, but she had been determined to read just one more page....

There was a new book, too. Curious, Mary picked it up. She recognized it – it was from her father’s library, one of his books on the natural history of beasts and birds in their part of England.

‘Papa?’ she said, holding up the book. Everyone turned to look at her. ‘Did you mean to pack this?’

‘Goodness, how did that get in there?’ her mother cried. ‘For I did not pack it, Mary. Perhaps Cook did. I could tell she was grabbing things quite at random. I can tell you, it was no easy thing to fit everything in.’

‘I packed it, my dear.’ Mr Bennet smiled. ‘I thought you would like it, Mary. I have done with it. I thought it might be a relief from sermons and being agreeable.’

‘Thank you,’ Mary said, still a little confused. It was not like her father to think of her as wanting to read something, and the fact that he had given up one of his books for her was most unusual. He was very protective of his library. She wasn’t sure that she wanted a book on beasts and trees, but all knowledge could be enlightening. She resolved to read it and write to him, giving her opinion. She set it back carefully in the trunk.

While she did this, Mr Collins coughed into his hand. When no one looked at him, he coughed harder until Mrs Collins said, ‘Yes, Mr Collins? Have you something to say?’

‘Thank you my dear. Mr Bennet. Mrs Bennet. Please allow me to address your daughter on the eve of this momentous change in her life. Miss Bennet. Cousin. You have put yourself in a position that will provide you with excellent opportunities to improve yourself far beyond the accomplishments that most young women achieve. To be the companion of Anne de Bourgh! To live next to her, and be a part of her most intimate moments – it is with great regret that I, as a man, am barred from the orbit of such a star.’

Everyone looked down and away from him, but heedless of what effect he was having on his audience, Mr Collins continued his praise, enumerating the great benefits that Mary would enjoy in living under the same roof as Anne de Bourgh. To think she would be allowed to live in the small room next to Anne! To think of what she must no doubt imbibe from the very air of nobility that graced the de Bourgh family. She would become kind, modest, good, and humble, just by being in their proximity. And it had all been his idea.

‘But you should be very careful, Mary,’ he concluded earnestly, ‘not to lose Lady Catherine’s regard and take for granted any thing that she should give you. For you see, what Lady Catherine elevates, she can cast down. She would not wish you to become proud. Be humble, Mary. Stay humble, as befits your position. You cannot then go wrong.’

Mary really had no idea what to say. She looked around her at the rest of her family. Mr Darcy’s face was filled with disgust. Mr Bennet likewise had a look of tired contempt. Her mother did not seem to have been listening very much, and Lizzy had cast her eyes at the ceiling but made no other sign. Since she did not feel that she was expected to say anything to Mr Collins’s extraordinary speech, Mary kept her silence. Mr Collins didn’t seem to mind. Cheerful that he was able to discharge his thoughts in this manner, he turned to his wife.

‘Well, Mrs Collins? Shall we all march up to Rosings?’

MARY’S TRUNK WAS so small that they made a parade of it, the men holding the handles between them, and the rest of the party straggling behind. The twilight was only just settling over the country. A few stars poked out, and the sunset glimmered on the horizon. Insects buzzed, and the cool air washed over Mary’s flushed cheeks. Up ahead, the torches of Rosings already lit their way. The beaten path was a pale road that led them on to the house. The path was dry and the way was clear. Most of the company was in a good mood. Her mother was in the throes of heightened anticipation at finally seeing Rosings, of which she had heard so much. She seemed to have forgotten Lady Catherine’s impetuous visit to Longbourn last year, which had left Lizzy in such a temper.

Mr Darcy’s visage had lightened, no doubt because he would be departing on the morrow. Mr Collins was lecturing Mr Bennet and any and all who listened, and Lizzy and Georgiana exclaimed over young Robert, who was well wrapped against the chill and safe in his mother’s arms, looking at the strange world with wide eyes and peaceful babbling.

Mary dawdled a little behind. Mr Collins’s voice rose over the others as he declaimed to his captive audience.

Once I could have been married to that man,
she thought.
I, of all the Bennet sisters, would have made the best match for Mr Collins
. Their interests and their temperaments matched exactly. She had entertained dreams of playing a simple pianoforte to him, whilst he wrote his sermons. She had thought – before first he fell in love with Jane, and then with little effort, adjusted his heart to accept Lizzy and presumably with very little uneasiness after that, Charlotte – that surely he would see she was the Bennet for him.

It was laughable now, in the face of the reality before her. She despised him for his pedantry and his slavish attachment to Rosings. Poor Charlotte! She pitied her old friend once again. She would always be tied to a man who would for ever place her and her son beneath his patroness in esteem. Yet, Charlotte had
known
. She had known before she decided to make Mr Collins fall in love with her what kind of man he was.

And what of me? Mary thought suddenly. For if she were truthful with herself, she had just allowed herself to be put on the same plane as he, a useful servant for Lady Catherine de Bourgh, submissive to her wants and needs, and never once to be considered as having any other use or future or want or need herself. She hadn’t
married
Mr Collins: she was about to become him.

T
HEIR ARRIVAL AT Rosings went as well as Mary expected. Lady Catherine greeted her parents with condescension and bullied Mr Collins unmercifully. Then she called on the footmen to carry up Mary’s trunk, and though she had first feared that Mary would bring too much now seemed to think she had brought too little.

‘Miss Bennet!’ she said to Mary. ‘I cannot imagine what you are thinking, for your dress reflects my household now. Pray assure me you have not stinted on your clothes, for I will not buy you new ones. A companion should have a simple dress, always clean with modest lines and very little ornament, for her position is to remain in the background waiting to be called upon. You should have taken your tone from that of Mrs Jenkinson. She was always proper in her dress and comportment.’

As Mrs Jenkinson was at least four decades older than Mary, even her unvain heart sank. But in keeping with her new determination not to let Lady Catherine cow her, for Anne’s sake of course, she spoke up before her mother, father, or sister could defend her – or before Mr Collins could leap in with his anxious exclamations in support of Lady Catherine.

‘I have never been one to seek ornamentation, Lady Catherine,’ she said, and her ladyship widened her eyes at Mary’s temerity. ‘But I do know how to dress as befits a young lady of my breeding and background.’

There was a silence. Lizzy and Mr Darcy exchanged glances, which Mary saw from the corner of her eye. Her mother sat as if turned into stone. Mr Bennet looked pleased. Mr Collins gazed wide-eyed at his cousin for a few moments and made a few sputtering sounds, but could produce no other vocalization.

Lady Catherine recovered first. ‘My word, the Bennets do seem to have a very high opinion of themselves.’

‘We have indeed, ma’am,’ Mr Bennet said heartily, as if she had made a compliment rather than a complaint. ‘The girls learned that themselves, you know – if one did not speak up, one was not heard.’

Mrs Bennet put in, ‘But they are good girls, Lady Catherine, and most gently brought up. Mary is a reader, and plays the piano, and she will be a good, quiet sort of girl for your Anne.’

Lady Catherine leaped on the mention of the piano with the air of a small terrier. It was an alarming expression of animation for one so overwhelming.

‘Mrs Bennet! What do you mean, the piano! Your daughter most assuredly does not play, for she told me so herself.’

Where her daughters were concerned, Mrs Bennet felt herself to be on solid ground. ‘Does not play! Goodness, Lady Catherine, we almost couldn’t stop Mary from playing! She could be quite insistent upon it.’

Lady Catherine stumped her cane on the floor and turned to Mary. ‘Miss Bennet! Answer me this instant! Do you play the piano, or do you not?’

There was a ringing silence. Mrs Bennet looked at her daughter as if she just then realized that the young girl was a cuckoo and not really a Bennet after all, but a strange bird of plain plumage.

‘I have given it up, ma’am,’ Mary said with calmness. ‘My mother did not know, for it was after I left home to visit my sister.’

‘Given it up?’ cried Mrs Bennet. ‘Well, Mary, I think that you might have told me. Very well, but I can’t imagine why, except, my dear, that you were never quite that proficient. So I suppose it is for the best.’

Lady Catherine had a look on her face that could best be expressed as second doubts. She had offered the position of companion to Mary, knowing it would humiliate the Bennets whilst she got her revenge for Mrs Darcy marrying Mr Darcy. Now she wasn’t sure that the revenge was worth it. The Bennets were as changeable as the wind, it seemed, and seemed to weather all manner of disgrace and good fortune with equal parts of luck, humour and decidedly odd behaviour. They did not stay put in one’s estimation, but went about doing things, or not doing them, or deciding differently what they should do. It was hard to keep up.

And now this strangely self-possessed girl, who was more plain than Anne, had a past life that included playing the piano, but she had not even told her mother that she had stopped! She was on the verge of calling the footman for Miss Bennet’s things and dismissing them all from her house, when she noticed Anne sitting quietly next to Miss Bennet.

Anne was smiling.

MARY WENT UP to her little suite next to Anne’s. The maid had already put away her things and so the room, in which she had already spent her first nights, was now more familiar and more comfortable. There were her books and her few belongings, the fan, a little statue of an elegant lady, and small round hatbox with her sewing things, all set out on the dressing-table by the window that overlooked the garden. The cupboard held her clothes, serviceable and plain, as befitted Mary herself. There were a few pearls and a round brooch with a faded picture of flowers, but, as she had promised Lady Catherine, very little ornamentation.

She had said goodbye to her parents and the Collinses and the Darcys and was now blessedly alone.

A knock came on the door and a head poked in. It was Lizzy.