Free Pemberley by Emma Tennant Page B

Elizabeth will find tender memories of childhood return to her. To think’ – Mr Collins turned to embrace Mrs Bennet, Mrs Long and Kitty by opening his arms wide – ‘to think how mistaken my dear Charlotte and I proved to be, when Elizabeth came as our guest to Hunsford parsonage.’
    â€˜Mistaken?’ said Mrs Bennet, drawing herself up. ‘How so?’
    â€˜We were certain that Colonel Fitzwilliam, Lady Catherine’s cousin, then a guest at Rosings, would propose marriage to Elizabeth. We found Colonel Fitzwilliam the pleasantest man.’
    The maid came in and said the coach was at the door.
    â€˜Heavens!’ cried Mrs Bennet. ‘I am hardly ready at all!’
    â€˜Mr Darcy has considerable patronage in the church,’ said Mrs Long. ‘You must be glad the colonel came to nothing.’
    Mrs Bennet, who showed her guests the door, kept them in the hall long enough to make strong objection to Mrs Long’s remark. ‘And what is wrong with a colonel, I would like to know? There is a colonel in my own family and I hope he is good enough for my daughter Mrs Darcy.’
    â€˜And how should that arise?’ said Mrs Long as Mr Collins stood still without opening his lips.
    â€˜Colonel Kitchiner will call on us at Pemberley, when he leaves Manchester after visiting his sister,’ said Mrs Bennet on a note of triumph, for she could no longer conceal her excitement from anyone. ‘And I expect Mr and Mrs Darcy to receive him most genially.’
    â€˜Colonel Kitchiner?’ said Mr Collins, who now wore a frown across his forehead. ‘I think I have heard the name before.’
    â€˜Very likely,’ said Mrs Bennet. ‘He is received everywhere.’
    Mr Collins continued to frown; and to say several times that he had heard the name before, and he thought Colonel Kitchiner had been to Rosings.
    â€˜There you are!’ said Mrs Bennet. ‘Lady Catherine, who will naturally recognise the colonel when he comes to Pemberley, will have many topics to discuss with him.’
    But Mr Collins continued to frown, and to mutter; and only the imminent departure of the Bennet family, and his own necessity of pointing out that the little inlaid box must perforce contain so many fewer blooms than would have been gathered in the garden at Rosings, led to the dispersal of the company.
    â€˜Lady Catherine will understand there is not the space for a wide variety of roses at Longbourn’ were the last words of Mr Collins.

Chapter 14
    Elizabeth’s spirits were much restored on her return to Pemberley from Yorkshire by Mr Darcy’s admission that his ill humour at the lodge could be ascribed to the manners of Mrs Hurst, and to a burning desire to be alone with his wife, uninterrupted by the presence of others, however pleasant aunt and uncle Gardiner might be.
    She had cause to remember, too, her first impressions of the man she had married; that he had a very satirical eye, and if she did not begin by being impertinent herself she should soon grow afraid of him; and she had to confess to herself that the importance and duties attached to Mr Darcy, combined with what he termed his ‘resentfulness’ – that he would not change his opinion once he had taken a decision to censure someone – had quenched her own natural impertinence a good deal. Was she not her father’s daughter, the daughter of Mr Bennet, whose vision of the world was that neighbours were there to be made sport of; and what was oneself other than an object of their sport? Elizabeth feared she had been too much in thrall to her husband since their marriage – and, whilst she had no desire to mock the master of Pemberley, a man she loved distractedly, she considered it now timely to give vent to her feelings on the subject of Mrs Hurst. This was made all the easier by Mr Darcy’s opening up after dinner, as Georgiana sketched by the fire and Elizabeth sat at her