The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. Colleen McCullough

said Mary, offering the cake. “Your reading of his character is much the same as mine. He dispenses his fortune according to necessity. Charity is a word in a lexicon to him, nothing more. Most of the stupefying amount he has spent upon us Bennets is to alleviate his own embarrassments, from George Wickham to Mama. Now that Mama is gone I doubt he will be as generous to me. Especially,” she added, the thought popping into her unruly mind, “if my face no longer brands me an appropriate maiden aunt.”

      “I know Sir Peter Cameron is hanging out for a wife,” said Kitty, “and I do think he would suit you — in no need of a fat dowry, bookish and kind.”

      “Do not even entertain the idea! Though I cannot say I am looking forward to Pemberley or Bingley Hall. Lizzie cries a lot, Charlie tells me — she and Fitz see little of each other since he went on the front benches, and when they are together, he is cold to her.”

      “Dear Charlie!” Kitty exclaimed.

      “I echo that.”

      “Fitz does not care for him,” Kitty said with rare insight. “He is too soft.”

      “I would rather say that Fitz is too hard!” snapped Mary. “A kinder, more thoughtful young man than Charlie does not exist.”

      “Yes, sister, I agree, but gentlemen are peculiar about their sons. Much and all as they deplore over-indulgence in wine, dice, cards and loose women, at heart they think of such pursuits as wild oats, sure to pass. Besides which, that rat of a female Caroline Bingley slanders Charlie, who she early divined was Fitz’s Achilles heel.”

      Time to change the subject, thought Mary. It did not do to mingle her sense of loss with a far more important grief, her love for Charlie. “We may expect the Collinses tomorrow.”

      “Oh, Lord!” Kitty groaned, then chuckled. “Do you remember how you mooned over that dreadful man? You really were a pathetic creature in those days, Mary. What happened to change you? Or are you still sighing for Mr Collins?”

      “Not I! Time and too little to do cured me. There are only so many years one can fritter away on inappropriate desires, and after Charlie came to stay that first time, I began to see the error of my ways. Or at least,” Mary admitted honestly, “Charlie showed me. All he did was ask me why I had no thoughts of my own, and wonder at it. Ten years old! He made me promise to give up reading Christian books, as he called them, in favour of great thoughts. The kind of thoughts, he said, that would prick my mind into working. Even then he was quite godless, you know. When Mr and Mrs Collins came to call, he pitied them. Mr Collins for his crassness and stupidity, Charlotte for her determination to make Mr Collins seem more tolerable.” Lizzie’s smile lit Mary’s face — warm, loving, amused. “Yes, Kitty, you have Charlie to thank for what you see today, even to the spots and the tooth. It was he who asked his Mama what could be done about them.”

      “Then I wish I knew him better than I do.” Kitty looked mischievous. “Did he perhaps remark on your singing?”

      That provoked an outright laugh. “He did. But the thing about Charlie is that he never leaves one bereft. Having told me that I did not sing, I screeched, and advised me to leave song to nightingales, he spent a full day assuring me that I played pianoforte as splendidly as Herr Beethoven.”

      “Who is that?” asked Kitty, wrinkling her brow.

      “A German man. Charlie heard him in Vienna when Fitz was there trying to restrain Bonaparte. I will play you some of his simpler pieces. Charlie never fails to send me a parcel of new music for my birthday.”

      “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie! You love him very much.”

      “To distraction,” Mary said. “You see, Kitty, he has been so kind to me over the years. His visits lit up my life.”

      “When you speak in that tone, I confess I am a trifle envious. Dearest Mary, you have changed.”

      “Not in all respects, sister. I still tend to say what I am thinking. Especially to Mr Collins.” She huffed. “When I thought him looking for a beautiful wife I was able to excuse his choosing inappropriate females like Jane and Lizzie, but when he asked for Charlotte Lucas, the scales began to fall from mine eyes. As plain and unappetising as week-old pound cake is Charlotte. I began to see that he was not a worthy recipient of my affections.”

      “I do not pretend to have your depth of intellect, Mary,” said Kitty in a musing voice, “but I have often wondered at God’s goodness to some of His less inspiring creations. By rights Mr Collins ought to have barely scraped along, a penurious clergyman, yet he always prospers through no merit of his own.”

      “Oh, it was not easy for him between Lizzie’s marriage to Fitz and Papa’s death, when he inherited Longbourn. Lady Catherine de Bourgh never forgave him — quite what for, I do not know.”

      “I do. Had he been to Lizzie’s liking, she would have wed him instead of stealing Fitz from Anne de Bourgh,” said Kitty.

      “Well, her ladyship’s long dead, and her daughter with her,” said Mary on a sigh.

      “And that is more evidence of God’s mysteriousness!”

      “What are you wittering about, Kitty?”

      “The attack of influenza that carried off both de Bourghs so quickly after Colonel Fitzwilliam’s marriage to Anne! Or should I say, General Fitzwilliam? He fell heir to Rosings and that huge fortune in time to be respectably widowed before someone else took dear Georgiana’s fancy.”

      “Huh!” Mary emitted a snort of amusement. “Georgiana had no intention of settling for anyone except the Colonel — or the General, if you prefer. Though I cannot approve of unions between first cousins. Their eldest girl is so stigmatised that they have had to shut her away,” said Mary.

      “The Bladon blood, dear. Lady Catherine, Lady Anne, and Lady Maria. Sisters all.”

      “They married very rich men,” said Mary.

      “And rightly so! They were the daughters of a duke,” Kitty protested. “Their papa was very high in the instep — the merest whiff of Trade was enough to kill the old gentleman. That was the General’s father — turned out to have made his fortune in cotton and slaves.”

      “How ridiculous you are, Kitty! Is your life nought but gossip and gallivanting?”

      “Probably.” The fire was dying; Kitty pulled the bell cord for Jenkins. “Do you really expect the Collinses to travel twelve miles to condole?”

      “It is inevitable. Mr Collins can scent a tragedy or a scandal a hundred miles away, so what are twelve? Lady Lucas will come with them, and we can expect to have Aunt Phillips here constantly. Only an attack of her lumbago prevented her coming today, but a good cry will cure it.”

      “By the way, Mary, must Almeria sleep in my room? She has a tendency to snore, and I know there is a nice bedroom at one end of the attic. She is a lady, not an abigail.”

      “I am keeping the attic room for Charlie.”

      “Oh! Will he come?”

      “Undoubtedly,” said Mary.

      It was not custom for women to attend funerals, either in the church or at the graveside, but Fitzwilliam Darcy had decreed that this social rule should be ignored on the occasion of Mrs Bennet’s obsequies. With no sons among her offspring and five daughters, attendance would be far too thin unless the rule were relaxed. So notification had gone out to the extended family that the ladies would be in attendance at church and graveside, despite the objections of persons like the Reverend Mr Collins, whose nose was rather out of joint because he would not be officiating. Thus Jane’s sisters-in-law, Mrs Louisa Hurst and Miss Caroline Bingley, came down from London to be present, while Mrs Bennet’s cronies, her sister Mrs Phillips, and her friends Lady Lucas and Mrs Long, made the shorter journey from Meryton to attend.

      And there they are together at last, the five Bennet girls, thought Caroline Bingley