Even with Elizabeth’s support, if Darcy took issue with anything I did, I had nowhere else to turn. His word alone would see me turned away at the door of every family member we had left.
Elizabeth forced a sad smile, tucking an errant strand of hair behind my ear.
“He loves you,” she said. “You must know he’d do anything for you. If you’d not approved of me, I daresay he wouldn’t have married me. Truly, I owe you a great debt.”
“He may be fond of me now,” I conceded, because all evidence from the past seventeen years supported the statement, “but I cannot delude myself into believing that love to be unconditional. He… he once sent away a chambermaid for the same indiscretion, and I have nowhere else to go.”
“He would not dare,” Elizabeth said, squeezing my hand in hers.
Her reassurance was all very well, but we both knew she couldn’t guarantee a positive reaction from my brother. While he was of no mind to imminently marry me off to a well-spoken member of the landed gentry, it was certainly an expectation he had for me in years to come. As much as I knew he cared for me, I had no true idea what the terms of that affection were.
Still, there was one person in the world who knew the whole truth and was still speaking to me. I had not anticipated how freeing such a notion would be. When Elizabeth put her arm around me, I leant against her and tried to hold back my tears.
Longbourn House felt far less lonely knowing Elizabeth did not resent me. I still retired to Kitty’s room each night to find a new posy of wildflowers gracing my pillow, tied up in a different colour of hair ribbon. I collected the flowers in a vaseI’d begged from Emma, displaying them on the dresser at the end of my bed. I braided the ribbons together, tying them around my wrist in a rope of light blue, lilac, and peach. If Kitty noticed either gesture, she said nothing to encourage or dissuade me.
It was on my fifth day in Meryton that I met Mr. Bennet. He was confined to bed for the most part, and while his wife and daughters dutifully made trips upstairs to sit at his bedside, I doubted the presence of a stranger would do much to improve his health.
With Elizabeth’s permission, I’d begun to explore more of the house. I opened each door in fear I’d be encroaching on the space Kitty needed, but instead of finding her behind the latest intriguing oak door, I found a slender, almost gaunt man sitting behind a wide desk, surrounded by bookshelves. He was swallowed up by his chair, a blanket tucked over his lap and glasses sliding down to the tip of his nose as he consulted a large book open in front of him.
When he looked up, his face was already settled into a smile, but it quickly turned to confusion.
“I may be unwell, but unless I’ve taken to hallucinations, you are not one of my daughters,” he said.
“No, sir,” I said with a curtsey. “Forgive me, sir. I did not mean to intrude.”
I turned to leave, my hand already on the doorknob when he called after me.
“Wait. If you are not one of mine, pray tell me who you are. Or I shall have to report an intruder in my home.”
The threat was empty and, although Mr. Bennet’s face was rather too pale for anyone healthy, his smile was still warm.
“My name is Georgiana Darcy, sir.” I added another curtsey, because he looked exhausted and I was an uninvited guest.
“Ah, of course, Miss Darcy. How apt of you to have found your way to my library. My daughter tells me you like to read.”
“Elizabeth spoke of me?” I was surprised to hear I made for an interesting topic of conversation with a man who’d never met me.
He corrected me so casually, it was as if there were no reason for the name he gave to cause any shift in my heart at all.
“Catherine. She told me all about her time at Pemberley.”
I very much doubted he had been toldallabout what Kitty had done at Pemberley, or I was certain Mr. Bennet would have far fewer fatherly smiles to offer me.
I still had no understanding of what it was Kitty wanted from me. She avoided me at every possible moment, yet she spoke of me to her father. She left me flowers but wouldn’t meet my eyes over dinner. With Mr. Bennet still looking at me, patiently waiting for a response, I pushed all thoughts of Kitty aside in favour of a smile.
“I do like to read,” I confirmed. “You have a wonderful collection of books.”
The room was but a fraction of the size of Pemberley’s library and held, at a glance, a much narrower selection of volumes. But I would still take a boring book over no book atall, and there was something comforting in rows and rows of texts full of unlearnt knowledge, no matter how limited the number of offerings.
“You are welcome to read from the shelves here,” Mr. Bennet offered. “My daughters make for a loud house when all assembled, and you seem to me the kind of person who prefers quiet solitude. Readers are often those people—Lizzy being an exception.” He smiled wryly, no doubt imagining just how much chaos Elizabeth could cause. “Should you need a place to think, as I often do, please consider yourself welcome here. I am rarely well enough to sit here myself at the moment, and libraries exist to be used. When this room is empty, you may treat it as open for your respectful use.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” I said.
Then I took a step towards the door, because it had not escaped my attention that the room was currently not empty. He valued his solitude, too, and I was preventing him from enjoying it. With another curtsey and a final apology for intruding in the first place, I took my leave and ventured downstairs. Ruth wasn’t here to indulge me with gingerbread, but perhaps the Bennets’ cook could be persuaded to donate a sweet treat to a girl with a leg not yet fully healed and a heart that got more broken each day.
Chapter Eleven
I was halfway down the stairs when I heard the giggling and laughter from below. It wasn’t Elizabeth. She and Jane could talk endlessly until almost breathless with excitement, but they at least kept up a pretence of refinement. Mary had not giggled once in the time I’d been at Longbourn. I could believe one of the voices was Kitty, but that left her with no one to be interacting with. And, as enthusiastic as I knew she could get, she was not causing all of that shrieking alone.
