Page 72 of Twice Chosen

A Different Refusal

Mr. Collins proposed to Elizabeth on a damp Monday morning.

This too happened again.

Elizabeth almost pitied him.

Almost.

He began with Lady Catherine. Continued with duty. Added her modest portion. Mentioned the entail. Assured her that he had selected her with due consideration and that his patroness had recommended a lady of active usefulness who was not brought up too high.

Elizabeth listened.

In her first life she had grown increasingly angry with every sentence. Now she heard something else beneath the absurdity: a man who had built his entire understanding of marriage from duty, hierarchy, and instruction because he possessed little instinct for intimacy of his own.

It did not make him appealing.

It made him more human.

At an appropriate pause she said, "No."

Mr. Collins smiled.

Elizabeth sighed.

"Mr. Collins, I understand that you believe young ladies refuse men whom they intend eventually to accept. I do not."

His smile faltered. "My dear cousin, modesty--"

"Is not what is happening. I am refusing you."

"But Lady Catherine--"

"Is not marrying me."

He blinked.

Elizabeth almost smiled. "Nor are you."

When Mrs. Bennet learned what had happened, she reacted terribly.

That did not change.

"You will be turned out!" she cried, following Elizabeth through the morning room. "You will have nothing! Your father will die and Mr. Collins will take Longbourn and we shall all be in the hedgerows!"

Mr. Bennet looked up from his book. "Not immediately, I hope."

Mrs. Bennet rounded on him. "This is your fault. You encourage her to laugh at everything!"

In another life Elizabeth would have rolled her eyes, appealed to her father, and allowed the quarrel to become another private joke between them.

Now she saw fear.

Real fear beneath the foolish language.

Mrs. Bennet had spent twenty years waking beside an entail she could not alter. Every daughter represented love and vulnerability in equal measure.

Elizabeth crossed the room and took her mother's hands. "Mama."