“It’s all right,” I reassured her, although of what I wasn’t entirely sure. “If you need to cry, you can cry, but I promise nothing is wrong we cannot fix.”
When I received no reply, I began to wonder if she’d taken a vow of silence. She let go of my hand, letting it fall to my side. As she stepped away, my other hand slipped from her jaw.
“Are you in trouble?” she asked, finally letting me hear her voice. I would have been thrilled, if she didn’t sound so concerned. “Is that why you came? Because your brother wanted to keep an eye on you?”
“I asked to come. I wanted to see you, and I thought you wanted to see me, too. I received your letter.”
A fire of panic ignited in Kitty’s eyes.
“Did you show it to anyone?” she asked, desperation colouring the words.
I shook my head. It was carefully tucked into the lining of my valise, as it felt safer to bring it with me than leave it unattended at Pemberley, but no one else’s gaze had fallen across it.
“No, of course not.” I tried to take a step towards her, but she took one away. “I have said nothing to no one, about any of it. My brother only knows I fell and hurt my knee.” But Ithought over that evening in my mind and realised I was not entirely being truthful.
“What?” Kitty asked, picking up on the way I flinched and the guilty bite of my lip.
“I said nothing exact, but I… I was not entirely in my right mind when I returned to the house and found you had left. I was afraid and in pain and it was not possible to contain all of it and—”
“What did you say?” Kitty pushed, her voice acidic. “Who did you tell?”
“Emma, my lady’s maid, connected my state to your absence. But she’s as trustworthy as the most loyal steward, I swear it. I confirmed nothing specific, and she would never tell my brother, or your sister.”
Kitty’s legs appeared to collapse from under her, and she settled onto the edge of her bed, chewing at the side of her cheek. Tentatively, I sat on Lydia’s bed. It was barely five feet away, all too close to be to someone who wasn’t happy with your presence. But my knee was starting to protest, and at least Kitty and I would be at eye level if I sat, too.
“Your maid has kept this kind of secret for you before?” she asked.
I wondered what answer she was truly after. Was she solely concerned with Emma’s trustworthiness, or did she instead seek to enquire after my history of kissing girls under the cover of darkness? From the intensity of her fears, I imagined my total in that arena to be greater than hers only because her experience was evidently limited to me. I hadalready experienced some of the worst repercussions of that particular sin.
“No,” I said, honestly. Since Emma had become my maid, I’d had no active secrets she would need to have kept. She’d been hired precisely due to the extended consequences of my first foray into kissing another girl.
“Then what makes you sure she will keep your secret now?” Kitty asked, clearly frustrated. She got to her feet and started to pace the room. “We should never have done it.”
That hurt more than I anticipated. I’d never gotten to dissect a kiss after it happened before, but I imagined both parties were supposed to be feeling far happier with the situation. Like Kitty had seemed in her letter. Like how I’d imagined she felt, for a moment, as she kissed my hand not minutes earlier. It was enough to make my head spin.
“Well, we needn’t do it again,” I said, softly.
Kitty’s resulting look was far from the relief I expected. She seemed anguished at the resolution, lacing her fingers together and pulling tight. If things had been different, I would have taken her hands and teased out the tension until I could separate her fingers and wind them with my own. Nothing about the situation suggested she wanted that.
Except she had kissed me, in the grotto. She had written me a letter so full of fondness it alone had summoned me to Meryton. Some part of her must have wanted to do those things, as I was certain I’d never forced her. The connection I’d felt in the library at Pemberley was not one-sided. But this entire thing was too fragile to be encouraged in someone hesitant.
When Kitty left the room without another word, I gave in to the urge to lie back on the bed, shifting so I could prop up my leg. It hurt less if I could elevate it, and although I felt guilty for taking Kitty’s own room hostage, I needed to close my eyes for a few moments and process everything that had happened.
I couldn’t stop the tears that fell or the sobs I muffled with the back of my hand. Kitty’s presence in Pemberley had felt like a dream. Each smile I’d earned from her was a gift, and every time she’d touched me, my skin felt hot in her wake. I had sworn I would never again give in to the tug I felt to pretty girls like that, but I’d been unable to refuse myself the chance to follow what felt like signs of affection from her. But nothing had changed. Pretty girls with soft smiles and soft curls and soft hands were still a bad idea.
Chapter Ten
I could avoid the other members of the household for only so long. It would not do to invite yourself to someone else’s home and proceed to hide upstairs for the entire duration of your stay. No one disturbed me until there was a call for dinner, my injured leg likely earning me my solitude, but eventually there was a soft knock at the door. For a wild moment, I hoped it was Kitty, but the hope building in my chest turned to dust when instead Emma offered to help me dress for polite company.
As she helped me—a task made a little trickier by my newfound inability to rest all my weight on one of my legs—I considered whether or not to warn Emma against spreading rumours, if she knew anything of what had happened that night. But it seemed likely to only make things worse. If shehad only her suspicions, this would confirm them. Besides, she could know only that I had feelings for Kitty. Dwelling on the matter in any way might make her aware Kitty had feelings for me.
If Kitty even did have, or had ever had, feelings for me. It was a fact I was now painfully doubtful of.
All the etiquette guides one could possibly read on the subject laid out the clear rules for conversing with potential suitors over refreshments. Since there was no one around the table that any such guide would consider a possible suitor for me, I took that as an invitation not to converse at all.
Even with their father ill upstairs, the Bennet sisters and their mother were a lively group. Jane and Mr. Bingley’s arrival had swollen the ranks of the party even further and made it possible to overlook my silence and Kitty’s absence. I pushed a potato around my plate, trying to rearrange the food so it looked like I’d managed more than a mouthful. My appetite had lost itself amid the grief in my heart.
It felt inconceivably selfish to be nursing a wounded ego and broken heart while Mr. Bennet wrestled genuine illness, but if inconvenient feelings could so easily be tamed, I would not have found myself suffering these latest developments in the first place. With no confidante trusted enough to discuss them with, I was doomed to the bickering of the voices in my head as they fought amongst themselves to decide whether I wanted to scream at Kitty for being so frustrating, or wrap her in my arms for being so confused.
