“No,” Kit replied, “but you didn’t trouble yourself to stop it either.”
“What I do is not Elias’s or any other brother’s business,” Laurence protested.
“Oh, but it is—as you may ruin our good name. There was a time I listened to you; now you have lost your compass and ought to listen to the voice of reason. Not mine necessarily—but perhaps I speak in a tone you are still willing to hear. It’s time to get back to your senses, Laurie.”
There was a brief silence. The only sound was the faint creak of a wind-tossed shutter and the shuffle of hooves from within the stable.
Laurence sighed and looked away. “They all act as if I had committed high treason. So I misused a little money—mymoney, mind you—and enjoyed myself for once. That hardly warrants exile.”
“You squandered what was meant to secure your future,” Kit said levelly. “It wasn’t for drink or a decent coat—it was for your commission. For your path forward. You don’t get to play the martyr and the fool at once.”
Laurence bristled. “You sound like Elias.”
“Elias isn’t wrong.” Kit stepped toward him, arms now folded in mirror of his younger brother’s posture. “You behave like the world owes you a moment of greatness—a battle, a duel, something glorious enough to make your name. But the war is over. There will be no cannon fire to carry you forward, no sword polished by fate. Now you must make yourself. Women won’t offer that. Nor will gaming tables or cards.”
“I would have made myself,” Laurence said sharply, “had they let me.” He kicked at a clod of earth, dislodging a pebble that clattered across the packed dirt. “They coddled me out of it. You did. Father did. And Miles—with his eternal caution. You all talk of what’s prudent and respectable while I sit here with empty hands.”
Kit’s voice lost some of its sharpness. “Do you really believe you were ready? That the army would have made you into something better? Do you think a uniform would have solved you?”
Laurence did not answer, not at first. His jaw worked as though chewing back a retort, but when he spoke, the words came low, nearly unheard.
“I wanted to be someone.”
Kit inhaled slowly, letting the breath out through his nose. “You are someone. To us, at least.”
Laurence gave a bitter laugh. “That’s not the same.”
“It may not be the same,” Kit agreed, “but it’s not nothing. You think James didn’t spend half his youth wondering how to fill Father’s shoes? Or that I never questioned whether poking at injured cattle in a muddy field was a calling worth the name? Even Miles wrestles with it—and he has God to answer to.”
He paused, then added, “You want to be respected. But you must give people reason to respect you. And that doesn’t begin with parlour boasts and debts of shame. Yes—the debts I paid for you out of money I saved as a student.”
Laurence turned away, the harness slipping from his shoulder and landing with a soft thump on the ground. His hands went to his hips, his voice quieter now. “You think I have ruined everything.”
“No,” Kit said, more gently. “But I think you have not yet begun a steady life. And I think you don’t know who you want to be—only that you are afraid you never will be.”
Laurence’s throat bobbed once. Then: “Is that what you all think? That I am some sort of failure waiting to happen?”
“We think you are our brother,” Kit said simply. “Which means we are allowed to be disappointed—but never to stop hoping.”
The silence that followed was no longer sharp. It held, instead, the quiet weight of things understood but not resolved, accepted but not forgotten. The yard, for all its dust and hum, felt still.
After a moment, Kit stooped to pick up the harness. “Come, I could use a hand. Miss Tansy’s favouring her near foreleg again. I don’t trust her not to worsen it.”
Laurence looked up. “You trust me with her?”
“I trust you will follow instructions. That is a beginning.”
The corner of Laurence’s mouth twitched. “High praise.”
Kit offered him the harness. “Earn higher.”
And together, without further discussion, they moved toward the open stable—two young men bound by blood, low rivalry, and the unspoken understanding that while greatness might elude them for now, there remained work to be done, and honour yet to build, one quiet gesture at a time.
***
The parlour at Longbourn stood still in the late morning quiet, its chairs set in informal symmetry, the tea service cleared and idle on the sideboard. The lace curtains stirred faintly in the summer breeze, and the slow, deliberate tick of the mantel clock marked the hour with the kind of precision one rarely noticed unless alone.
James Bennet stood near the hearth, not for its warmth—it was rarely lit in summertime—but for the habit of reflection it encouraged. He had that stillness about him which spoke not of idleness, but of thought—arms loosely crossed, eyes tracing the edges of a framed sketch above the mantel, half-seeing, half-remembering.
