The Unexpected Miss Bennet Read Online Free Page A

sure he divided his time between Longbourn and Lucas Lodge, but he seemed to feel less compelled to spend time with his in-laws than he did to visit his future estate. It was almost as though he did not like to leave it in the hands of Mr Bennet where he had found it, now that he was settled with a wife and infant son.
    Mary watched her mother and Mr Collins walk round to the front of the house. She heard Kitty cry out again. ‘I cannot find my rose-sprigged muslin!’
    Mary sighed, closed the window and went off to see about tea.

    ONCE SHE HAD quite liked Mr Collins and thought that she could encourage herself to fall in love with him. He was serious, he was as studious as she, and he was as given to moralizing. A little flutter – her nerves, she supposed – had overtaken her when she met him on his first visit. She had thought, At last, a man for me. The type of man whom I would suit very well . Mary knew that men liked beauty first, but this man, this Mr Collins, was different. He spoke well, he read sermons, and he made of everything a little comment. She found herself at that first family dinner thinking of her best aphorisms and sayings in order to catch his attention. He would see that she was serious and a thinker, not like her younger sisters who giggled disgracefully every time he spoke.
    Yet as she came to know her cousin, Mary started to realize several things. First, he never heard a word she said. He listened to Mr Bennet and Mrs Bennet and responded to them, but after the second or third time she spoke, he would merely look about and continue with whatever thought he was pursuing at the moment. Second, he never really looked at her – her conversation might have been coming out of thin air. He looked at Jane though. With little grimaces and winks and a ducking of his head, he made it clear that he saw Jane.
    Mary had never begrudged Jane her beauty or her goodness or the attention she drew from any one, men or women. Jane was all goodness – even pert Lizzy, whose tongue could make one smart, knew it, and she softened under Jane’s attentions. No, Mary knew that she could not match Jane for all those accomplishments a truly good person had. But she sometimes wished, though a little forlornly, that she could be the centre of so much attention with so little effort. And then had come Mr Collins! The man who, from the moment he walked into their house – his house – was clearly a match for Mary, was already half in love with Jane! Even the sober, dour, plain suitors, who should have known better, had known that Jane was marked for a grander sort of marriage than they could offer, even they could not see beyond her beauty to look about them for a better match.
    And then . To discover that Mr Collins had transferred his attentions to Lizzy! That was an idea so ludicrous on the face of it that it was hard not to repeat ‘Mr Collins and Lizzy!’ in increasing tones of astonishment; that there seemed never to have been a thought for Mary was another unpleasant surprise.
    When Mr Collins married Charlotte Lucas, Mary thought that she could at last understand her mother’s nerves. To her it was as if someone had walloped her in the stomach.
    She knew she had not loved him; far from it. Mary was a Bennet, and she was not the stupidest one. That prize belonged to Lydia at present, though Kitty seemed likely to make a bid for it. No, Mary quickly discovered that Mr Collins was ridiculous and unsuitable for any one, even a one such as she. But was she so unnoticed and so preposterous a marriage prospect that even Charlotte Lucas was a better match? As far as Mary knew, Charlotte never opened a book and her conversation centered on the doings at Meryton and her brothers and sisters, with never a thought about the wider world. What kind of rector’s wife would she be?
    He should have at least looked at me, she thought, as she sat in the drawing room with the tea, waiting for her mother and Mr Collins. He should