Page 27 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
“Put me down, Mama,” said Elizabeth to Willie. She was trying to teach him how to put sentences together by giving him sentences to repeat. Thus far, it wasn’t working.
“Why are you talking to yourself, Mrs. Collins?” said Mr. Collins.
“Down, down, down!” Willie shrieked.
“God in heaven, put him down,” said her husband. “My head aches listening to him.”
Truthfully, Mr. Collins was always this way about the boy. He seemed to get no joy from his son. But, well, he wasn’t his son. Could Mr. Collins sense such a thing?
“Apologies, Mr. Collins,” she said. She put Willie down. She let him toddle around along the floor.
“Papa, Papa, Papa!” chirped Willie, his disposition sunny now that he had gotten his way.
“We’ve come to give you some news,” said Elizabeth. “You have been relieved of your position at the rectory due to your illness.”
“What?” Mr. Collins was devastated. “But then how shall we live? This is my living, and—”
“There is no worry,” she said. “We are going to Rosings.”
He gave Elizabeth an odd look. “What?”
“Lady Catherine, she has remembered us—you—her faithful friend. She is looking after us even in her death.”
“Truly?” said Mr. Collins, stunned. “So, we are to live there?”
Elizabeth gave him a small smile. “Yes. It will be a difficult thing, I think, moving you out of here and into Rosings itself, but we shall have the servants there to assist us and I think you will be quite more comfortable there.”
“But… who else will live there?” said Mr. Collins. “With Anne gone, who has the estate passed to?”
Elizabeth licked her lips. “Well, us, husband.”
“Us?” He sat up in bed, his hair in disarray. “Us?”
“She did so love… Willie. And you know I have been there, every day, seeing to her for the past two years.”
“That’s not done, Mrs. Collins. A woman like Lady Catherine does not leave something like Rosings to people like us.”
“Well, you and I both knew Lady Catherine very well,” said Elizabeth. “She was wont to do things her own way when she had a strong inclination to.”
Mr. Collins lay back down the bed, gazing at her wonderingly. “Well, that’s entirely true. Yes, yes, if Lady Catherine wished it this way, it is exactly the right way. She was an angel, that woman, a living angel amongst us.”
“She has been good to us,” said Elizabeth.
“Rosings,” said Mr. Collins, shaking his head. “This calls for a celebratory dram of laudanum, Mrs. Collins! Fetch it for me.”
“Oh, celebratory?”
“Don’t.” He turned on her, fierce. “I won’t have this lecture again, how it’s meant for my pain. There is no happiness left to me in this life but the release of opium, Mrs. Collins. Now fetch me my bottle.”
She did as he asked.
They were settled in Rosings by the time Lady Catherine’s family began to descend upon them.
Lady Catherine’s death had been sudden and horrifying.
No one knew exactly what had happened. She had been found at the bottom of the steps, her skirts twisted around her ankles, the cane she sometimes used to get around twisted in her skirts.
She had still been alive at that point, though not really sensible, going in and out of consciousness and saying all manner of odd things about having seen the bright light of heaven, Anne calling for her, and every time she would clap eyes on anyone, she would say, “Oh, no, I’m still here. I want to go to Anne.” She would shut her eyes and say, “Annie, my sweet girl, Mama is coming. By and by, I come.”
