Page 2 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
She certainly couldn’t speak of it with him now, not in front of Caroline.
She was not feeling well, and she had not really entirely recovered from last night—what with all the drinking, the lack of sleep, and the bit of tenderness in odd areas of her body, areas she wasn’t aware had been really used for the purpose of having her virtue divested. Her muscles were sore nonetheless. So many of her muscles were sore.
And it was blurry for her, too.
She couldn’t remember all the sequences of it.
There was a point when they were kissing and then, somehow, they’d not been wearing clothing. Perhaps if she thought about it, she’d piece together how they’d gotten from one to the other, but as of now, it all seemed vague. She did remember the divesting of her virtue bit, though. That was very clear.
She looked at the gentleman in question now, looked at his crotch area, and remembered whatthathad looked like.
Oh, Lord.
She left.
But she didn’t go home. She couldn’t. She went to Lucas Lodge, where her friend Charlotte lived, practical and sweet Charlotte, who would never have gotten herself into a predicament like this, never.
Except she didn’t quite make it there.
Instead, she came across Mr. Collins in the road, whistling to himself.
She had no desire to speak to him, but then it was too late, for he looked up and took her in. She had been crying, tears making long rivulets down her cheek for she had stopped trying to dash them away at this point. She was still sniveling rather badly. The truth was, this was likely the worst day of her life.
Be sure your sins will find you out!She’d heard that sentiment from the pulpit on a number of occasions, and here was the real and obvious illustration of such a thing. Having done this, it wasn’t anything like her. Why, it was something her ridiculous and silly and idiotic younger sister Lydia might have done, but Elizabeth would never have done it, never.
Except she had.
“Miss Bennet,” said Mr. Collins. “You are… are walking on the road.” It cannot be stressed how much this stumbling over speech was indicative of Mr. Collin’s sheer surprise to see his cousin walking here, for Mr. Collins was not one given to a lack of words, as Elizabeth well knew.
She had no idea what to say to him. So, she simply agreed. “How astute you are to notice, sir.”
He sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. He looked over his shoulder. Lucas Lodge was still visible in the distance, a short walk away, but Elizabeth could not go there now. There was nothing for it.
No, she saw her future laid out in front of her suddenly, blindingly brilliant in its clarity. She let out a shaking breath, and it sounded like a sob.
“You are… are crying.”
“Because I have reconsidered your proposal, sir, and have been feeling terror that you will not forgive me for my behavior earlier,” she said, all in one breath, more tears squeezing out of her eyes as her heart seemed to wrench itself in two. She didn’t want to marry this man, but it was this knowledge—that Mr. Collins wanted her—that had also led her to drink in excess last night and to give in to improprieties with Mr. Darcy. She had thought to herself that if she were going to be married to a man that disgusted her, she might as well know what it was like to kiss a man who was pleasing to the eye. But then Mr. Darcy had made all those promises—empty promises, it turned out—and she had begun to envision herself as Mr. Darcy’s wife, head of his vast estate in Derbyshire, comfortable and well-kept, a storybook ending. How foolish she’d been!
“Oh,” said Mr. Collins and his shoulders slumped.
Now, she straightened. Lord, he did not sound pleased. “You will forgive me, sir?”
“Miss Lucas, she is so very pleasant, isn’t she?”
Elizabeth was horrified. What? He wantedCharlotte?Charlotte was a full seven years older than Elizabeth, and her father might be a knight, but they couldn’t even afford servants to keep them all, and that was truly an inferior match, but trust Mr. Collins not to know such things, of course. He was truly an idiotic imbecile of a man.
Still, Elizabeth would have never have said no to his proposal that morning if she hadn’t thought she had Mr. Darcy coming to rescue her. She owed it to her family, after all. She had struggled with it, gone back and forth in her mind, and she had tried to find the strength to choose herself above the plight of her family, but… but…
Well, it would have been one thing if Jane weren’t still so ill.
They thought that all Jane had was a trifling cold when she was first laid up at Netherfield, and indeed, their mother kept insisting that’s all it was. But Jane hadn’t been well enough to come along to the ball the night before, and she had been spending almost all her time in bed, and Elizabeth had been moved out of Jane’s bed and forced to sleep with Lydia instead, because her father was alarmed that Jane’s illness might be catching for whoever was sharing a bed with her.
That, truly, was the reason that Mr. Collins had passed over Jane for Elizabeth, the second eldest daughter, even though Mrs. Bennet had tried to go on as if Jane had some connection with Mr. Bingley, Caroline’s brother. Jane was too ill for any admiration, however.
If Elizabeth were honest with herself, she knew this had been true for some time. It was not so much that Jane had caught a cold from being in the rain on her trip to luncheon with the Bingleys back in early November, but that the rain had worsened the underlying condition that Jane’d had for some time. Moving Elizabeth out of Jane’s bed was likely too little, too late. Assuming that Jane’s illness was even infectious. It was just as likely she’d been born with it or that it was something her own body had done to herself. The doctors who’d examined her had all put forth such theories.
Anyway, the fact remained that Elizabeth had a lot on her shoulders. Jane was ill, and her sister was never going to marry. Elizabeth sometimes knew—with an awful certainty—that Jane would die quite young, and when she thought this, she felt such despair that it seemed to tear her in two. She and Jane had always been so close. And Jane was sogood. But perhaps that was the way of the very ill, sort of angelic beings given to the earth for their sheer goodness, too good to be anywhere but Heaven.
