Her mind, however, was not on the virtues of a modest countenance. It was spinning, centred around Mr Darcy’s letter.
You have ruined my peace.
The words echoed in her mind, drowning out Mr Collins. She had spent the last two nights staring at the ceiling, oscillating wildly between laughter and a bone-deep confusion. She had rejected the insufferable master of Pemberley; she hadslain the dragon. But the dragon had accidentally handed her his heart, proving he was not a monster of marble and ice, but rather a man who was actively bleeding to death from a wound she had inflicted.
“Charlotte,” Elizabeth interrupted, her voice cutting through a particularly tedious passage regarding the evils of excessive ribbon. “I feel a sudden and overwhelming need for fresh air. My constitution requires a turn in the grove.”
Mr Collins lowered his book, moderately offended. “The grove, Cousin Elizabeth? At this early hour? Lady Catherine may be observing the grounds from her morning room. It would not do to be seen wandering aimlessly without purpose.”
“My purpose is survival, Mr Collins.” Elizabeth rose to her feet. “Charlotte, will you accompany me?”
Charlotte set down her mending. “Of course, Lizzy. A brisk walk is exactly what is required to clear the humours.”
Five minutes later, the two women were walking across the meadow that separated the parsonage from the woodlands of Rosings Park. Elizabeth took a deep, greedy breath of the crisp morning air, the oppressive weight of the parsonage slowly lifting from her shoulders.
She sought the refuge of the grove to escape the endless, mind-numbing chatter of her host. The trees offered a cool, dappled shade, and more importantly, a blessed silence.
“You are walking so fast I fear you intend to march all the way back to Hertfordshire,” Charlotte observed, falling into step beside her. “Is the burden of your secret correspondence growing too heavy?”
Elizabeth shot her friend a look, still lost in a whirlwind of confusing thoughts regarding the disastrous paper. “It is nota ‘secret correspondence,’ Charlotte. That implies a mutual exchange of letters. I am the victim of a clerical error.”
“An error that guarantees you ten thousand pounds a year, should you choose to exploit it.”
“I am not going to exploit a man’s prostration!”
“More’s the pity,” Charlotte sighed. “It is a marvellous breakdown. It seems a waste not to turn it to account.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to deliver a scathing rebuttal about the necessity of marrying for respect and affection, but the words died in her throat.
They had just rounded a dense cluster of laurel bushes and crossed paths with a most unusual procession.
Miss Anne de Bourgh was approaching them. The heiress of Rosings was wrapped in no fewer than three woollen shawls, despite the relative warmth of the morning. She was leaning heavily on the arm of her companion, the perpetually anxious Mrs Jenkinson, and was executing a cough so fragile and pathetic it resembled a moth sneezing.
“Miss de Bourgh.” Charlotte instantly adopted the smooth, deferential tone of a vicar’s wife, dropping into a flawless curtsy. Elizabeth followed suit, though her curtsy lacked the requisite amount of obsequious awe.
“Mrs Collins,” Anne whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. “Miss Elizabeth. The air... the air is so taxing today.”
“You should not have ventured out, my dear,” Mrs Jenkinson fretted, hovering over Anne like a mother hen attempting to shield a fragile egg. “Lady Catherine expressly forbade any exertion before luncheon. If the wind changes, you could catch a chill!”
Elizabeth watched Miss de Bourgh. She remembered the intense, calculating look the heiress had given her the day Viscount Keathley had invaded. There was nothing fragile about the intelligence in those pale eyes.
Charlotte, reading the atmosphere with efficiency, stepped forward. She politely but firmly engaged the companion in a detailed, mundane discussion about the local flora.
“Mrs Jenkinson, I was just admiring this specimen ofRhododendron ponticum.” Charlotte gestured vaguely to a bush that was definitely not a rhododendron. “Do you find the Kentish soil provides adequate conditions for its propagation? Or do you employ a mixture of peat?”
Mrs Jenkinson blinked, momentarily distracted from her charge. “Peat? Well, I... I am not certain, Mrs Collins. The head gardener generally manages the soil composition, but I do know Her Ladyship prefers a robust mulch—”
As Charlotte drew the companion several paces down the path, trapping her in a conversation about mulch, a miraculous transformation occurred.
Anne de Bourgh shed her sickly demeanour. She dropped the woollen shawls from her shoulders on the bench behind them, straightened her spine with a loud crack, and let out a long sigh of relief.
“Thank God.” Miss de Bourgh’s voice was devoid of its previous wispy frailty. It was sharp, clear, and laced with a boredom that rivalled her cousin Lord Keathley’s. “If I had to pretend to be out of breath for one more minute, I was going to push Mrs Jenkinson into the fountain.”
Elizabeth stared at her, bewildered. The invalid of Rosings Park was standing upright, not looking at all like a woman on death’s door, as she was supposed to be.
“Miss de Bourgh?” Elizabeth managed. “Are you... are you quite well?”
“I have the constitution of a workhorse, Miss Elizabeth,” Miss de Bourgh said flatly. “But if I display an ounce of vitality, my mother attempts to force me into an immediate marriage to secure the estate, or worse, assigns me to audit the tenant ledgers. Feigning an imminent demise is the only way I can get any reading done.”
