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Elizabeth timed it.
"You are ruined!" her mother wailed. "We shall all be in the hedgerows!"
"I hope we may choose a dry one," Elizabeth muttered, then wished she had kept the joke to herself.
"What was that?"
"Nothing, Mamma." Elizabeth looked at the hand her mother had braced against the door. The fear beneath the complaint was familiar now. She would not marry Collins to quiet it, but she need not pretend it was nothing.
"Papa has said I need not accept him," she added. "Let us speak of what else may be done when we are both less tired."
Jane appeared, looking apologetic. "Lizzy, perhaps you should just—"
"No."
"But Mama is very upset—"
"I know she is afraid, Jane. I cannot make this marriage the answer."
Jane looked unhappy. "Lizzy..."
Jane had been trying to keep peace since breakfast. Elizabeth touched her sleeve. "You need not persuade either of us today. I am sorry we have left you to try."
By evening, Mrs. Bennet had worn herself out and retired to her room with her vinaigrette and dire predictions. Elizabeth escaped to the garden, where she found Mary reading in the arbor.
"Did you really refuse Mr. Collins?" Mary asked without looking up from her book.
"I did."
"Good. He's an idiot."
Elizabeth blinked. "Mary!"
"What? He is. He quotes scripture incorrectly and doesn't understand basic theology. It's embarrassing." Mary turned a page. "You can do better."
"I hadn't expected you to take my part."
"I'm practical." Mary finally looked up. "Besides, if you'd married him, Mama would have pushed me toward the next available clergyman, and they're all equally tedious."
Elizabeth made room beside Mary by moving a neglected gardening glove. "Mary, that's the most self-interested sisterly support I've ever received."
"You're welcome."
Mary returned to her book. Elizabeth settled beside her on the narrow bench, leaving the questions she had meant to ask unspoken.
"You need not stay on my account," she said when the light began to fail.
"I know."
Mary stayed. Her elbow occupied more than half the available space, and Elizabeth did not ask her to move it. She had spent the morning wrestling for the right to say no. It was unexpectedly comforting to find that someone else could say nothing at all, and mean I am on your side.
* * *
That night, Elizabeth wrote to Darcy. They had been corresponding since the preparations for the ball, carefully worded letters which passed through her father's hands. He found them "philosophical" and "peculiar," but allowed them.
Mr. Darcy,
The Collins proposal happened. I tried to leave the scene early (feet wouldn't cooperate) but I did manage to shout "no" nearly a dozen times in rapid succession until he fled. For once he left before I had exhausted every refusal I knew.
