Page 75 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
“Mrs. Collins, I think you must hold your tongue,” Mr. Collins snapped.
Elizabeth looked down at the floor.
“I accept it, the responsibility,” said Mr. Collins. “You, sir, you…” He sneered at Mr. Darcy. “Get out of my house.”
Mr. Darcy let out a breath. He nodded, once, and tried to catch Elizabeth’s eye. He didn’t know why, exactly. What could he communicate to her with a look, anyway? What did he wish to say to her?I shall fix this?How?
She looked down at the floor, anyway, biting her bottom lip, shaking all over.
Mr. Darcy wanted to wrap his arms around her. He wanted to say to Mr. Collins that he could go to hell, that he was taking Elizabeth with him, damn everything. If she’d look at him, maybe he would.
The marriage has never been consummated,he thought.Legally, she’s not really married to that man. Maybe there’s some way…
“Mr. Darcy,” said Mr. Collins imperiously.
“Yes, all right,” said Mr. Darcy, clenching his hands into fists and then releasing them. He turned around and hurried down the hallway, leaving his Elizabeth alone with that man.
Bloody hell.
MR. COLLINS WASpacing.
Elizabeth didn’t know what to say or do, but luckily, Mr. Collins was characteristically in one of his long diatribes, and she didn’t have to say anything.
“It is a duty of mine that I have neglected,” Mr. Collins was saying. “Yes, you can hardly be blamed. You were needing your own husband’s attentions, but I was worthless and bedbound, and I had too much laudanum, and I was killing myself, and I don’t blame you. It’s him we shall blame. He took advantage of your weakened state. He is the villain. We shall never see that man again.”
Elizabeth wanted to protest. She wanted to go to Mr. Darcy now, just run from her husband and go to herrealhusband and say to him,Take me away from this. I don’t care if I can’t really be married to you, make me your mistress, please—I can’t—get me free!
But she knew she couldn’t.
She’d lose everything that way.
She had inherited this house. Her.
So, if Mr. Collins died, it was hers. It would not pass on to Mr. Collins’s heirs—though Willie was his heir. But while Mr. Collins lived, she was his wife, and all her property was his.
Willie was not hers. He was the purview of his father.
She could leave, and there would be little that might be done, but if Mr. Collins wanted his son, he would come and take him, and even if she told Mr. Collins that Willie wasn’t his son, it didn’t matter. In the eyes of the law, Willie was Mr. Collins’s. He belonged to him.
She couldn’t risk it. It was too much to risk.
She didn’t need Rosings, not for herself, but Willie needed it. And to tar Willie with the brush of illegitimacy? No, no, no, not her own sweet boy. She could endureanythingfor her son.
So, trapped here with Mr. Collins, unable to see Mr. Darcy, unable to do anything at all, and still wrestling with the shock and horror she felt over Jane’s death? She could handle it. Shewouldhandle it.
“He will be gone by morning. We shall never speak of this after tonight. But there are some things I need to know about what has passed between you and him.”
“It was only tonight. And he didn’t… there is no chance I carry his child, at any rate. That is what you wish to know, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Collins grimly. “I can’t know if you’re telling the truth, of course, but I shall not touch you again until you have bled. If there is a child, that will… well, I shall determine how to address that situation then. For now, I hope you are not lying to me, Mrs. Collins.”
“I swear to you,” she breathed.
“Only tonight?”
“I have been… well, tempted,” she said. “But I have not given in. But then my sister’s death, I… nothing mattered.”
Mr. Collins nodded. “Yes. I suppose I can see that. I have felt very hopeless in the ensuing years, this illness, this addiction. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, Mrs. Collins. This is a blow to me, and you have sinned—both against me and against your vows and against God himself. However, I do not know if anything on Earth could have shaken the hold the laudanum held on me besides this. Seeing him, there, naked as the day he was born, in bed with you. I am… I shallnevertouch a drop of laudanum again.”
