You do not understand the agony of my position,he wrote, the nib having clearly caught on the paper in his haste, leaving a splatter of ink resembling a tiny explosion.I have fought. I have applied every ounce of my reason, my duty, and my consequence against it, and I have been routed. My composure is shattered. I am a mockery of myself. I hear your laugh in the empty corridors of this oppressive house. I confess a desperate, starving longing for your wit, your smile, and yes, even your impertinence. No, not even. Especially for your impertinence. I adore you when you challenge me.
It was a mixture of poetic admiration and frustrated despair. He went on to describe the exact shade of her eyes in a paragraph that would have made a seasoned romantic poet blush, followed immediately by a furious lament about the torture of knowing she preferred the company of the “smiling, deceitful rogue” George Wickham.
There was no defence regarding Jane beyond his loyalty to his friend. There was no mention of her mother’s vulgarity. There was only Fitzwilliam Darcy, stripped of his armour, having a total collapse in ink.
Elizabeth’s hands began to tremble, a strange heat blooming in her chest. For months, she had viewed him as the villain of her story—a cold, calculating snob who ruined lives for sport. But the man who had written this passionate, wildlyinsecure letter was not a villain. He was just a man. A man helplessly in love with her.
An unsettling flutter of genuine sympathy began to take root inside her. She traced a particularly large ink blot with her gloved finger, imagining him sitting in his grand, lonely room, stabbing his pen into the inkwell in the dead of night.
Snap.
The sound of a breaking twig shattered the silence of the grove and Elizabeth jumped as if she had been caught stealing the Crown Jewels.
Clumsy footsteps approached through the shrubbery. Elizabeth’s heart plummeted into her half-boots as the foliage parted to reveal the one man in the entirety of England she wished to see least.
Mr William Collins emerged, his face shining with exertion and the serene, unearned confidence which meant he was about to inflict himself upon an innocent.
“Cousin Elizabeth!” Mr Collins declared, his voice cutting through the morning mist like a dull saw. “What a fortuitous encounter! I had surmised you might be enjoying the salubrious air of the grove, and I hastened to join you, lest you find the solitude... ah... lonely.”
The solitude was the only thing keeping me sane,Elizabeth’s mind shrieked.
In a panic, she shoved the letter into the pocket of her pelisse, crushing it in her haste. She arranged her face into a rictus of polite tolerance, though her mind was spinning.
“Mr Collins,” she managed, her voice too steady, considering she possessed a written confession of consuminglove from a man who owned half of Derbyshire. “Good morning.”
“It is a morning made glorious by the proximity of Rosings Park,” Mr Collins corrected her, taking his place beside her on the path. He clasped his hands behind his back and puffed out his chest. “I have just concluded a most invigorating inspection of the parkland, Cousin. Specifically, the elms.”
“The elms,” Elizabeth repeated blankly. Her pocket felt as though it were on fire.I confess a desperate, starving longing,the letter burned against her hip.
“Indeed. I was observing the exact measurements between the trunks. It is a topic upon which Lady Catherine has very firm opinions.” Mr Collins paused, waiting for Elizabeth to express awe at this revelation. When she only stared at him with wide, slightly unhinged eyes, he continued, unfazed. “Her Ladyship maintains—and I must say, I concur with her unparalleled judgment—that the optimal spacing of trees is precisely twenty-two feet. Not twenty. Not twenty-five. Twenty-two. It allows for the proper development of the canopy while maintaining a respectful distance, much like the proper boundaries between the social classes, do you not think?”
“Fascinating,” Elizabeth choked out, forced to endure his tedious company as they began to walk back to the parsonage.
“I intend to write a modest treatise on the subject,” Mr Collins droned on, his voice a monotonous hum. “I shall title it ‘Arboreal Propriety: A Study in the Spacing of Elms and Oaks under the Patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh.’ I am certain it will be met with widespread acclaim among the clergy.”
Elizabeth nodded mechanically, her brain detached from the conversation. She was walking next to a man who was waxing poetic about tree roots, while her pocket contained a bleeding soul. The juxtaposition was so absurd that she had to bite the inside of her cheek to prevent a hysterical bubble of laughter from escaping her lips.
My mind is a prison, Elizabeth, and you are the warden.
“Of course,” Mr Collins continued, blissfully unaware of his cousin’s internal crisis, “Sir William prefers the clustering method at Lucas Lodge, but as I told him, one cannot compare the humble shrubbery of Hertfordshire to the majestic, curated woodlands of Kent. Lady Catherine herself said to me only yesterday...”
Elizabeth endured the lengthy monologue for what felt like three lifetimes. She nodded at the appropriate intervals, murmured polite agreements regarding the superiority of Lady Catherine’s landscaping, and focused all her energy on putting one foot in front of the other until the parsonage finally, mercifully, came into view.
“Ah, the breakfast hour approaches,” Mr Collins noted, checking a thoroughly unimpressive pocket watch. “I must inform my dear Charlotte of my arboreal findings before the eggs cool. A clergyman’s wife must be kept abreast of all matters of estate management, after all.”
“You are very thoughtful, sir.” Elizabeth darted to the front door. “If you will excuse me, I must remove my walking pelisse.”
Once she managed to escape her cousin in the hallway, Elizabeth flew up the stairs with the speed of a woman fleeing a burning building.
She retreated to her guest room, threw the door shut, and turned the iron key in the lock.
She was alone. The silence of the chamber wrapped around her, broken only by the sound of her own ragged breathing.
Elizabeth leaned back against the solid wood, closing her eyes for a brief, dizzying moment. Then, with trembling fingers, she reached into her pocket.
She pulled the crumpled paper free. The red wax bearing the Darcy crest had cracked, the pieces clinging stubbornly to the edges of the fold. She walked slowly to the small writing desk near the window, the morning light catching the jagged strokes of ink that bled through to the back of the paper.
She smoothed the paper out flat upon the desk, pressing the creases away with the palms of her hands.
