The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh by Claudia Gray

Author:Claudia Gray [Gray, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Next morning, near the end of breakfasting, Jonathan heard Miss Tilney’s account with great interest. “Did you see Deb again before you left?”

“I did not. He did not emerge to bid me farewell, when at last I was able to leave. This as you know was not until near sundown, as Mr. Collins still had not come home—Mrs. Collins walked me back to Rosings, which is after all not so very far.” Miss Tilney sighed. “Lady Catherine demanded to know why I had not sent word that I should need a carriage, which was rather a kind impulse, really. She is an imperious lady, but one thing that can fairly be said of the imperious is that they are attentive.”

“Indeed, they must attend, for how else would they know when to issue commands?” Jonathan did not mean this as a joke, but Miss Tilney laughed, and he was grateful for having accidentally proved himself a wit. “What you say about Deb and Mr. Collins is curious. Certainly both are hiding something—no, the entire family is doing so—and I doubt it is only one secret they conceal. The only question is whether any of their secrets pertain to murderous intent toward Lady Catherine.”

“To me it seemed very much as though Deb were angry, though what inspired his wrath, I cannot say.”

Jonathan said, “I feel I should tell you of an incident I witnessed in our youth. This I never shared before, because I understand it no more at the present than I did at the time, but the similarity to what you witnessed is very great indeed.”

He explained Deb’s odd absences, the ways in which the Collins family sometimes suddenly withdrew him from all others, and the damage to property sometimes found afterward. The story of the henhouse alarmed Miss Tilney exceedingly. “Do you mean—do you believe it was Deb who truly did the harm?”

“This I do not know,” Jonathan replied. “The juxtaposition of the two events struck me very forcefully at the time, and still does. However, I must in justice admit that they may be wholly unrelated.”

Miss Tilney shook her head. “Surely it cannot be Deb. He is still but a boy.”

“As one who has attended a boys’ school, I know too well that boys can be cruel, some of them as coldly as any grown man.” Jonathan did not want to think about his schooldays any longer, nor to remind her of Ralph Bamber, and so he chose this moment to tell Miss Tilney of his inadvertent discovery in the study the day prior.

She was even more thunderstruck by this information than he had been. “The colonel intends”—Miss Tilney leaned closer, so as to speak so softly not even the footman could overhear—“to leave his wife?”

“I must believe it so, for he has kept this information a secret, even from my father, to whom he is both cousin and friend,” Jonathan said. “Were they both departing, the news would surely be known to all, through Lady Catherine’s vocal displeasure if via no other means.

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