The Unexpected Miss Bennet (22 page)

Mary felt herself grow dangerously angry. Her voice was quiet with her attempt to control her emotions. ‘Miss de Bourgh, I would rather you not insult my family. My sister is not unsuitable. The Bennets are good people, better perhaps than some that interfere with the lives of others. Your mother showed her breeding when she intruded into our lives so rudely and told Lizzy not to marry Darcy.’

Anne stood, and her small eyes glittered. Her face was pale again, except for two spots of colour high upon her cheeks. The two ladies faced each other on the side of the rocky slope.

‘How dare you speak of my mother in that way. You are low and plain, and I only took you as my companion out of pity.’

‘Amusing. Pity for you is the only reason I took the position.’ Mary’s own response took her by surprise and she stopped abruptly. Anne seemed equally startled. For a moment they both looked at each other, then looked away in embarrassment. They had declared in anger what they had conceived privately and had never meant to reveal.

‘I can dismiss you any time I wish,’ Anne said. ‘I will tell my mother you are no longer suitable.’

‘Good,’ Mary said. ‘I will write to my parents and start packing at once.’ She picked her way back up the hill, stumbling a little over the rocks in her angered haste, her thin slippers inadequate for the going underfoot. It was not long before she took a careless step and slid, rolling on her ankle, and she fell into the dust. Mary gave an involuntary cry and stopped herself from sliding back down to Anne.

‘Miss Bennet! What have you done?’

Frightened, Anne made her way back up to her. Mary sat up, rubbing her ankle, her stockings and slippers covered with dirt and mud.

‘Nothing permanent,’ she said, her voice quivering. Her ankle hurt dreadfully. ‘I will be able to walk in a minute.’

Anne looked as if she were going to cry or rage. She chose the latter. ‘Miss Bennet. How could you! You are supposed to help me!’

Mary laughed out loud though she herself felt like crying. ‘I am sorry, Miss de Bourgh. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘Now what am I supposed to do? If my mother finds out we walked this way – Miss Bennet! I demand you stand up at once.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ Mary said. What were they to do? This was the furthest Anne had walked by herself for months. How could she climb up the hill for help?

‘If I help you up, could you walk home? Oh please say yes, Miss Bennet. For I don’t know what else to do.’

Mary agreed to try, and she let Anne help her to her feet. But Miss de Bourgh had very little strength, and the hill was so steep that they both fell back. The pain increased.

‘You will have to go back to the house and fetch someone,’ Mary said at last. It was mortifying. Anne would not have to dismiss her after all. After this, Lady Catherine would set her in a milk cart and send her home that way.

‘I suppose I will have to,’ Anne said resentfully. ‘Wait here.’ She gathered her skirts and marched back up the hill, looking rather like her mother.

Mary sighed and put her forehead in her hand. How could she have done such a thing? In all the stories, it was the rich heiress who hurt her ankle, to be rescued by the gallant hero. She was the companion, for goodness’ sake. What was she thinking? Her lips quivered again, but instead of crying she found herself laughing. Mary Bennet, can’t you do anything right? She couldn’t be pretty, she couldn’t play the piano, and she couldn’t even be a companion to a rich selfish girl who would grow up exactly like her mother.

A noise caught her attention and she looked down the trail. Two farmers came huffing and puffing up the hill.

‘We saw you was in trouble, miss,’ the old man said. The younger one was a sturdy fellow who looked to be his son. ‘Came as soon as we could.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Mary said, heat rising into her cheeks. ‘I turned my ankle.’

‘Saw that. The shoes you ladies wear are nothing for this ground. I wonder that you came this way. You should stick to the footpaths. Robert, help me here.’

Roughly but not unkindly they soon had Mary to her feet. They escorted her up the hill, speaking kindly and encouragingly. Mary was relieved that she was not to be carried. That would be much too – too overwhelming, as if she were heroine and the young farmer her handsome hero.

Mary Bennet, you should stick to your sermons, she told herself. Novels are no good for you.

L
ADY CATHERINE’S EYES fairly popped out of her head when her daughter recounted Mary’s mishap and told how she had gone for help. She sent for Mary, but her housekeeper told her that Miss Bennet was hard put to manage the stairs, and could they send for the doctor to have a look at her ankle? With due resentment Lady Catherine allowed the doctor to be sent for. The good man came at once, for he thought it was Miss Anne who had been hurt. When he found it was the new companion he breathed a sigh of relief. He bound Mary’s ankle, scolded her loudly for her clumsiness, and told her to stay off her feet for the next few days.

‘If you can, that is,’ he said
sotto voce
, as he packed his satchel. ‘If I know Lady Catherine, she will send you packing. I’ll see what I can do to prevent that. But there’s nothing wrong with you that a bit of rest won’t put right. I must say, Miss Bennet, this wasn’t what I meant when I said you should try to get Miss de Bourgh out and about. What led you to try that path?’

Mary could hardly tell him that it had been Anne’s choice. After all, she should have been wise enough to counsel a different walk. She apologized and he patted her hand kindly.

As promised, his manner was more stern when he spoke to Lady Catherine in the hall outside Mary’s room, telling her that if she did not want to be responsible for an amputation, Miss Bennet should be allowed to rest as long as she needed. Lady Catherine’s response was most gratifying, for she told the doctor that she would ensure that Mary rested and had the best care, along with advice for healing a hurt ankle and a discourse on proper shoes and any number of suggestions on how best to wrap her ankle so as to heal it best. The doctor listened gravely, and Mary closed her eyes. She was quite tired from her adventure.

Lady Catherine’s voice signalled its mistress’s progress down the hallway and Mary was left in silence. Her ankle throbbed and the emotion that had been kept under a tight rein now exposed itself, leaving her weak and tired. She had almost fallen into sleep, when a knock came at the door.

It was Anne.

Mary struggled to sit straight. Anne had a most peculiar expression on her face, one that Mary had never before seen her wear. She twisted her hands in her little lacy shawl, and she looked everywhere but at Mary. Eventually she burst out, ‘I should not have said those things. I insulted you and your family and you should not have borne it.’

‘I didn’t bear it,’ Mary pointed out. ‘’Twas why I fell.’

Anne gave a choking little laugh. ‘Miss Bennet, you are strangely forthright with me. I wish – I wish more people would be. Please don’t go.’

Mary frowned. ‘I don’t know but that your mother will make that decision for me,’ she said. ‘She’s very angry.’

‘If you wish to stay, I will talk to my mother.’

Mary was at a loss for words. Did she want to stay? Miss Anne was a strange girl indeed. She was prickly, like Mary, and she was awkward, and she didn’t seem to have any friends, not that she had the opportunity to make any. Despite their recent falling out, though, Mary thought that she and Anne could come to understand one another. Other people know how to live in society, but we two do not, she thought. Dances, flirting, all the parts we are supposed to play – it’s as if we were thrust on stage with no time to learn our lines, and our whole lives depend on how we play our parts.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ she said.

Anne nodded. ‘I understand if you wish to go home. But I would like to start again. On another foot, perhaps.’

It was a very small joke, but it might have been Anne’s first one and it so surprised Mary that she laughed. Anne laughed too. It was a very good thing that Lady Catherine had not yet come back from advising the doctor on his profession, for if she had heard the two of them laughing she would have dismissed Mary outright. Grand ladies do not like laughter, especially in their offspring. It betokened a dangerous ease and carelessness. Anne laughing was Anne unaware of her high position. But Lady Catherine was safely out of earshot and so not able to save her daughter from her downfall, and when Anne spoke to her mother later at dinner, and told her that Mary had apologized thoroughly for her clumsiness and would not be so careless again, and had begged to stay on, Lady Catherine unbent enough to allow it.

‘But you must take care, Anne,’ she told her daughter. ‘She is a Bennet, after all, and they are dangerous. They don’t know their place, and they have been given unwarranted freedom to make their own decisions and think for themselves. I allow it only with the greatest of caution, and with the belief that you can teach her much. She must be made humble, you know.’

Anne agreed with her mother and they supped in silence.

MARY’S INJURY KEPT her in her room for two days, but she was not left alone. In fact, when Mr Collins came to visit, she rued that she could not flee but had to sit and receive him. He paced in her small room, ducking when he came to the eave at the far end, nervously holding his hat while he berated her.

First it was her clumsiness, then her temerity, then her carelessness – what if it had been Anne who had fallen? Had she not been aware of the risk? And Anne had to go to fetch help. Was cousin Mary not aware of how beneath her status that was? Was this how she repaid the great attention that was bestowed upon her by Lady Catherine? Did she not see how this reflected upon Mr Collins himself, and his wife and child, by virtue of her relationship to them? And what of her sisters? Mr Darcy was a relative of the de Bourghs – could she not see that her mishap also dishonoured him and, by extension, his wife and so her other sisters?

As he went on, Mary listened, fascinated. Would Mr Collins even relate her slip to Lydia’s downfall? Indeed he would, with many flowery allusions to a woman’s carelessness and a single slip that could bring her low if she did not place her feet carefully on the path of virtue. Just when she expected that he would warn her that her twisted ankle could bring about the downfall of the kingdom, rather like the want of a nail, he changed tack.

‘I told Lady Catherine that it would bring me honour if I could assist her in this terrible task and relieve her of your presence, which must be so odious to her. But she told me in no uncertain terms that you are staying. I do hope, cousin Mary, that you did not beg, but that you are aware of the great honour – nay, the great mercy – that has been shown you.’

‘Miss de Bourgh asked me to stay,’ Mary said. He stared at her, thunderstruck.

‘Miss de Bourgh!’ he said, his tones excited and reverent. ‘Miss de Bourgh! So she shows as great a forgiveness as her mother. She is a Christian indeed.’ He took on an expression of deep thought. ‘Yes,
there
is a sermon – I can turn that into a sermon that will be one to reckon with on Sunday!’ He turned to her. ‘You see, from even the most dire calamity can be brought forth the great blessing of a lesson for us all. A sermon indeed!’

Mary could hardly wait for him to go; she was not disappointed. He swept out with scarcely a farewell, and she was left alone at last.