A figure, partially visible behind it, was standing very still.
Elizabeth faced forward again and pressed her lips together. The laughter rose in her chest, warm and unexpected. She held it there, private and fierce, because it was the first time in longer than she could remember that she had laughed at something that was not a defence or a deflection but simply, purely, funny.
Mr Darcy, master of Pemberley, was hiding behind his own curtains.
She closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun, and smiled.
The smile faded slowly, the way warmth faded from stone after the sun moved on.
She reached into the pocket of her dress and retrieved the letter. It had arrived at The Polygon three days ago, and Elizabeth had read it twice already—once at breakfastand once in bed. Neither reading had settled the restlessness it produced.
Charlotte’s handwriting had not changed. It was still the same neat, practical script that had addressed a hundred letters from Lucas Lodge, back when Lucas Lodge was a place Elizabeth visited and Charlotte was a woman she understood. The seal was plain wax, unadorned. Collins would have insisted on the Longbourn crest if he had known about the letter. He did not know, which meant Charlotte had posted it herself, probably on a walk to the village, probably with the careful deliberation that governed everything Charlotte did now.
My dear Lizzy,
I hope this finds you well and that your new situation is agreeable. I confess I was surprised to learn from a mutual acquaintance that you are employed by Mr Darcy as governess to his daughter. The world is smaller than we suppose, and its turns more peculiar.
I write cautiously, as I always must. Mr Collins follows the household correspondence with a diligence he applies to nothing else, and I have learned to conduct my private affairs with discretion. This letter will not pass through his hands.
You will think me forward, but I must say this plainly. I lived in close proximity to the affairs of Rosings for one year before Mr Collins inherited Longbourn, Lizzy. I sat in Lady Catherine’s drawing room twice weekly for months. I heard a great deal, and I observed more. Things are not always as they first appear.
I know what you believe about Mr Darcy’s character. I believed much the same, once. I would urge you to allow room for revision.
I cannot say more in a letter. I hope one day to say it in person.
Your devoted friend,
Charlotte Collins
Elizabeth folded the paper along its creases and held it in her lap.
Things are not always as they first appear.
She did not want this. She did not want Charlotte’s careful hints, her oblique suggestions, the implication that Elizabeth had built her understanding of Mr Darcy on foundations that might not hold. She had spent years constructing a version of events that made sense. Mr Darcy had insulted her at Meryton. He had interfered with Jane and Mr Bingley, though she had only Charlotte’s vague reports to confirm this. He had proposed to her with arrogance and condescension, listing her family’s deficiencies as though cataloguing livestock. She had refused him and he had married his cousin within three weeks. The end.
This version was clean, simple. It cast her as the wronged party and him as the proud, unfeeling man who deserved what he received, and it had served her well because it required nothing of her except certainty.
But certainty was becoming difficult to maintain.
The man who had insulted her at Meryton was the same man who carved a wooden horse for an infant and carried the bruises of her small fist on his collarbone without complaint. The man who had proposed with arrogance wasthe same man who offered her double salary and looked away when she could not eat the toast. The man who had married his cousin within three weeks was a widower who raised a child that did not resemble him, who loved her completely, and had never once spoken of his marriage or his late wife.
And now Charlotte, careful, practical Charlotte, who had never been romantic and had never been wrong about people, was telling her that she had missed something.
She pressed the letter flat against her knee.
Their arrangement was practical, the boundaries clear. The feelings were contained, or could be, if she tried hard enough and did not think too often about the way his hand had closed around her wrist in the library, or the way his voice had cracked when he saidstay, or the way his heart had hammered beneath her ear while she wept against his chest.
She thought of Charlotte standing in the parlour and telling Elizabeth she had accepted Mr Collins.
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am seven-and-twenty, Lizzy. I am not romantic. I ask only a comfortable home. Considering Mr Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.”
Elizabeth had been appalled. She had been one-and-twenty, full of principles and utterly certain that Charlotte was making a catastrophic mistake. She had said so with confidence, because she had never been hungry, had never been afraid, and had never sat in a grey room on a hard bench wondering if anyone would hire a Bennet.
She understood now. Not the choice itself—Collins was still Collins, and the thought of him made her skin crawl—but the arithmetic behind it. The cold, practical calculation. A woman had to weigh her options. Charlotte had not married for love. She had married for shelter. Elizabeth, who had once judged her for it with the self-righteousness of a girl who still had a roof and a father and the luxury of ideals, now lived in a world where shelter was the most valuable thing she could possess. Ideals bought nothing, and the distance between her and Charlotte was not as vast as she had once believed.
She folded the letter, slipped it back into her pocket, and stood. She walked towards the house, and did not turn to check the study window.