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Fortunately, Bingley had not spoken of his feelings for Miss Bennet over the past year and a half; if he had, Darcy might have succumbed to the impulse to confess his own infatuation with Elizabeth. Instead they had both endeavored to forget. Bingley’s interest in Hertfordshire suggested he had been as successful as Darcy knew himself to be.
He had come within minutes of proposing to Elizabeth at Hunsford Parsonage. Knowing she was at home alone with a headache, Darcy had approached the house with that design in mind. He had long since admitted his love to himself and finally conceded he could not b
e satisfied unless she was his wife.
But just as he drew near the cottage’s door, he had glimpsed an express messenger arriving. Fearing bad news, Darcy had followed as the maid took the message into the house; thus, he had been present when Elizabeth learned that her father had suffered an attack of apoplexy. All Darcy’s other concerns had been forgotten as he did his best to lend his aid, sending the maid for Mr. and Mrs. Collins and providing Elizabeth with the use of his carriage to reach Longbourn. Nevertheless, he had felt singularly useless in the situation.
He had not laid eyes on her again.
Shortly afterward, he had received a note from her uncle, Mr. Phillips, a man Darcy scarcely knew, informing him that Mr. Bennet was expected to make a full recovery of his faculties and thanking him for his assistance to Elizabeth.
Away from Elizabeth’s enchanting presence, Darcy realized he had nearly made a terrible mistake and had been rescued by fate. As much as he loved her, allying himself with the Bennet family could have dire consequences for Darcy’s social standing and Georgiana’s marital prospects, which were already threatened by Wickham’s actions. Surely the arrival of a messenger at that particular moment was a sign that he should not be seeking a wife in that quarter. Hoping his obsession would fade with distance and time, he had arranged the trans-Atlantic voyage to visit some of his business interests in Canada.
But now, as he watched the shores of England slowly grow larger, he was forced to concede that he had been wrong. She haunted his dreams. He would awaken during the night with her name upon his lips, having experienced sensual reveries that no man should entertain about a woman not his wife. Every day a snatch of music, the sight of dark curls, or the sound of melodious laughter would remind him of Elizabeth. The effort to forget her had been a failure. He could only hope that upon his return to England, he would meet a woman who would replace her in his affections.
The lack of information about Elizabeth’s family—far from being a welcome surcease—had allowed his imagination to prey upon him. Every day he wondered if she had fallen ill. If she had married. If some tragedy had struck her family. He had built so many elaborate fantasies about her life that he began to question his sanity. He was a drunkard who tried to wean himself from the bottle.
Thank God they were returning home. Now he at least might obtain some news about the Bennets. Surely it was this scarcity that preyed upon his mind. Once he knew she was well, he could begin the business of finding a suitable wife among the women of the ton.
“’Tis good to be home,” Darcy echoed his friend’s sentiment. “No doubt much news awaits us in London.”
***
“Are you ready, Lizzy?” Mary called out as she clattered down the steps into the kitchen. Elizabeth wiped flour from her hands onto her apron before untying it and hanging it on a peg. Smoothing her serviceable muslin gown, she tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. Hill smiled in encouragement as Elizabeth hurried toward her sister. The housekeeper did not know precisely what was happening, but she had sensed Elizabeth’s anxiety all morning.
Mary’s eyes mirrored Elizabeth’s apprehension. This conversation was so important. They must choose the right words and present the information in just the right way, or all their work would be for naught. The fate of Longbourn hung in the balance.
And even so, Elizabeth was not sanguine about their chance of success, but they must make the effort.
Mary’s arms were full of books and agricultural journals. When their father died, Mr. Collins had shown no interest in these tomes, so Mary had studiously collected and read them. Elizabeth had no doubt that the Bennets’ quiet middle daughter now understood enough about farming to serve as a steward—if anyone would hire a woman.
Elizabeth followed Mary up the stairs and through the front hallway until they reached the study. Even in her own thoughts she was carefully neutral in naming the room. When her father was alive, it had been Papa’s study; even now she could not bear to think of it as Mr. Collins’s study.
After squeezing Mary’s hand, she knocked on the door. Their cousin bade them enter, and the two women hurried into the room, closing the door behind them. Taking their seats in chairs opposite the enormous dark wooden desk that had once been their father’s, they faced the man who now possessed Longbourn and had owned it for nearly a year and a half.
Mr. Collins no longer dressed like a simple parish priest. Today he wore an embroidered waistcoat and elegantly tailored coat. His watch fob was gold, and the watch itself was an expensive antique purchased in London. His Hessian boots were diligently polished by Longbourn’s sole manservant, and his cravat was starched stiffly enough to pass muster on the floor of Parliament. Elizabeth had watched their lone maid of all work, Polly, toil over Collins’s cravats and had marveled at the amount of labor that could be expended over such a small garment.
Elizabeth forced herself to smile at her cousin even though it was wrong to have this man inhabit her father’s domain. Papa’s desk, Papa’s chair, Papa’s books—even Papa’s eyeglasses—now belong to Collins, she reminded herself sternly.
Before her father’s death, Elizabeth had rolled her eyes when her mother complained about the inequity of an entail. It was the way of the world; one might as well complain about the passage of the years or the falling of the leaves in autumn. But she now understood her mother’s sense of injustice in her very bones. It might be the law. It might be the way of the world. But that did not mean it was right. Why must an accident of birth grant everything to Collins?
Elizabeth was willing to grant that Collins was legally entitled to Longbourn, but it was still wrong.
“Cousins.” He bestowed a weak smile on the sisters, and Elizabeth braced herself for a patently insincere compliment. “It is delightful to see such an array of beauty before me. You put the flowers in the garden to shame.” And there it was, arriving with a thud that apparently Collins was unable to discern.
Elizabeth managed a tight smile in reply, believing it best not to give any verbal acknowledgment to such “praise.” It only encouraged him.
However, Mary was rather literal. “Nothing yet blooms in the garden; it is too early in the season.”
Collins squirmed in his chair. “Yes…er…well, when it blooms, you will put it to shame.”
Mary was still frowning, and Elizabeth had no doubt she was about to question how inanimate objects like flowers could experience shame.
“Cousin,” she said quickly, “Mary has been diligently reading our late father’s agricultural journals and making quite a study of his books. I believe that what she has discovered will be of great interest to you. There are methods that might increase the yields at Longbourn and augment the profits.”
Collins’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “Forgive me, but that is quite a bold claim.” He gave Mary a condescending smile. “Do you possess some sort of magic charm?”
Mary bristled. “It is not magic, but science.” She opened one of the journals to a page she had marked. “Two innovations have recently been proven to bring about a tremendous increase in the yields of crops. These are the Norfolk four-crop rotation system and the seed drill.” She gestured to the article on crop rotation.
