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Kitty fell weeping into her sister’s arms. “M-Mr. W-Weston! The b-blackguard! I stood to adjust the curtains against the afternoon light. And he-he patted my bottom!”
Hill and Elizabeth gasped. It might seem like a small thing, Elizabeth mused to herself, but I can easily imagine how violated Kitty felt—someone else’s hand on such an intimate part of her body! She could picture the shock and shame, freezing and not knowing how to respond.
“I was so ashamed. What should I do? I seated myself immediately, but my chair was right beside his. He laughed and talked with Mr. Collins and Sir William as if nothing had happened. No doubt my face was bright red. The longer I sat there, the more humiliated I became. What does he think of me? Does he think I am the kind of girl he can—can—” Kitty burst into a fresh bout of tears.
Elizabeth hugged her weeping sister to her chest and stroked her hair. “This is not of your doing, dearest.”
“But perhaps he believed I was flirting with him. I did smile at him and tried to speak pleasantly—”
“A smile is hardly an invitation, Kitty. Nothing can justify laying his hands on your person. It is your body.”
Hill put her hands on her hips. “Your sister has the right of it, Miss Kitty. Some men is just born pigs. You can’t help it if they insist on wallowing in the mud. All you can do is stay away so you don’t get splashed.”
Elizabeth laughed at Hill’s imagery. Kitty’s tentative smile was a good sign. “Listen to Hill,” Elizabeth admonished her sister. “You cannot prevent a pig from behaving like a pig, can you?”
Kitty shook her head. “But what if it happens again?” she said in a thin voice.
Elizabeth folded her arms over her chest. “Yes, the problem is that someone keeps inviting pigs into our drawing room.”
Kitty laughed outright.
“Very well. I will take up the subject with Mr. Collins.” When Weston had confined his bad behavior to inappropriate stares, Collins would not have believed any of Elizabeth’s objections. Now it was a different matter.
Fortuitously, at that moment, the master of the house himself hurried down the steps. “Hill, what is keeping the tea service? Everyone is quite hungry! And, Kitty, why did you flee from the room in such haste? It was most unseemly. You must return at once.”
Kitty visibly paled.
Elizabeth nodded to the housekeeper. “I pray you, Hill, take up the tea things. We will be there directly.” As Hill departed, she spoke to Kitty. “I think you should retire to your room.”
“No,” Collins said. Kitty halted with her foot on the bottom step. “Mr. Weston asked specifically after Kitty. He enjoys her lively presence.”
“I bet he does,” Elizabeth muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
Elizabeth stalked toward her cousin, surprised that fire was not shooting from her eyes. “Mr. Weston patted Kitty on the bottom just now! In our drawing room! Distress at his actions prompted her to flee the room.”
Collins drew himself up, blinking bloodshot eyes, the consequence of heavy drinking with Weston the night before. “Nonsense. Weston is a gentleman! His father was Lady Catherine’s steward. He came with excellent references.”
Elizabeth inched closer to her cousin, not allowing him to avoid her scrutiny. “Are you accusing Kitty of lying? Or perhaps she hallucinated the incident?”
Collins stumbled backward, fidgeting nervously with the cuff of his jacket. “Surely it is all a misunderstanding. Perhaps his hand slipped.”
“Slipped?” Elizabeth’s voice rose in pitch and volume. “Where, pray tell, did he intend to touch her? Her waist? Her bosom?”
Collins blanched at that word and withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket to mop his perspiring brow. “P-Perhaps he intended to kiss her hand.”
“He wished to kiss her hand and instead touched her bottom?” Elizabeth echoed incredulously. “Is his knowledge of anatomy so deficient?”
Collins colored a deeper red, but his lip jutted out defiantly. “Certainly if he had patted her…there, I would have noticed—as would Sir William.”
Men who performed such disgusting actions were adept at concealing them, Elizabeth knew—performing them when others were distracted. They relied on their reputations and the trust of other men to quash any rumors of impropriety. Even her own father, as dear as he had been to Elizabeth, rarely credited his daughters’ words over another man’s.
She tried again, without much hope of success. “Mr. Collins, I do not believe Mr. Weston is proper company for young, unmarried women.”
Collins’s eyes widened at this blasphemy. “He is a gentleman. Lady Catherine has vouched for him.”
Elizabeth shook her head. Just like Mr. Darcy, he believed good breeding somehow ensured good behavior. “Gentlemen exhibit gentlemen-like behavior,” she said. “Mr. Weston most decidedly does not.”
