Her lips tasted faintly of the strawberry jam served with breakfast. She must have been in the kitchens, sneaking more of it on leftover bread, for it to have lingered this long. The image had me smiling, which did little to help the accuracy of the kiss but made it no less perfect. Her fingers were in my hair, and those that weren’t were tangled with mine.
It was just as risky as kissing Helena. At least then we’d had a door between us and the rest of the world, and I had learnt the lesson to always keep that door locked. Yet here Kitty and I were, surrounded by a spectrum of leaves, every colour of brown and orange and yellow, out in the middle of the woods for anyone in search of some fresh air to trip across. It was foolish and dangerous, but Kitty was enoughof a distraction that I could focus on little but her proximity. When she eventually sat back, I let her go only because we both needed time to refill our lungs.
“Does this mean I no longer get flowers?” I teased, the words buoyant with breathlessness.
The taste of her laughter was sweeter than strawberry jam against my lips as she kissed me quickly again.
“You can have all the flowers you want,” she promised. “I’d give you the world if I could.”
We sat like that, undeniably too close and too caught up in each other, for as long as we dared. The longer we were gone, the greater the chance of someone venturing out to look for us, and there were few worse situations we could be found in. Elizabeth might not have taken umbrage, but I didn’t know how many of the other members of the Bennet family would share her acceptance. I could not trust Lydia, not with knowing who her husband was. Mrs. Bennet would hate me for distracting one of her still-unmarried daughters, if nothing else. Jane’s and Mr. Bingley’s demeanours were bright and cheerful, but that didn’t mean they would be tolerant of something denounced as a sin.
And then there was my brother, whose love for me I had never doubted. Still, it was possible to love and hate someone in the same breath, and I couldn’t bear to test the strength of the former in light of the latter. Kitty and I were both safest if we kept secrets.
Aware we were running out of borrowed time, eventually we pulled away from the moment. Kitty helped me to my feet, gently berating me for exerting my healing leg, and offered her arm. It was a gesture I had never thought twice about before. Women so often walked arm in arm with close friends, but now it seemed like so much was written beneath the surface of the action. At least I was still unsteady onmy feet, in need of support. If anyone questioned it, we had the perfect alibi. My real reasons for wanting to be close to her could stay buried deep beneath the more convenient truth.
Chapter Twelve
Lydia Wickham, even with the absence of her husband, was a thoroughly confusing person to be around. Well aware of her status as a married woman, she carried herself with an air of superiority, but on the occasion she was denied something, her pettiness showed her youth.
She wasn’t a fan of sitting to read. Even her needlework suffered from her lack of focus, with loose stitches and hanging threads, as she barely looked down at her hands, preferring instead to swap gossip. She was at her happiest when discussing others, or in town to observe people to gather gossip fodder for herself.
Lydia spent a token amount of time with her father but disappeared into Meryton at least once a day, often with Kittyin tow. Any invitation offered to me felt disingenuous, so I opted to decline on account of my leg. It certainly could have withstood a leisurely walk, but I was grateful for the easy excuse. As much as I liked spending time with Kitty, I preferred to do so alone. She felt less like my Kitty and more like the Kitty from Elizabeth’s childhood stories when Lydia was around to encourage her in frivolity and idle gossip.
Making the most of my invitation to borrow from Mr. Bennet’s library, I dug through his collection to unearth a book or two that would hold my attention and took them out to the garden. The next few days were spent like that, feeling the breeze tease my hair as I turned pages.
The nights were spent in Kitty’s arms.
We made sure to be in our own beds by the time we fell asleep, to be safe, but the time between taking our leave from the household and taking our leave from the realm of the waking was not wasted.
It felt wrong to be deliriously happy on a visit to a dying man, but I was. The mood in the house was rarely one of melancholy. Occasionally Mrs. Bennet would have to excuse herself, owing to a sudden burst of tears, and at least one of Mr. Bennet’s daughters would spend the evening sitting and talking with him, but his condition, though poor, seemed stable.
Longbourn House was full of people, and a house full of people would find it difficult not to be equally full of spirit. I had never enjoyed company more—from games of whist to being persuaded to play the piano of an evening, which Kitty encouraged at every given opportunity.
“Please,” she begged, “one song.”
The Bennets’ drawing room was not well suited to as many people as it currently held. Extra seating had been dragged in from other rooms, but that still left too many people squashed together on one sofa, meaning no one could say anything about how close Kitty was sitting to me. It was enjoyable but also left me susceptible to her best cajoling tactics as she grabbed my hand and whispered so close I could feel her breath against my cheek.
“Just one,” I warned her.
Elizabeth had sat at the piano stool in the absence of any other spare seat, but she quickly got up to swap with me, squeezing my shoulder as we passed.
“Play the one you wrote,” she encouraged me.
My cheeks went faintly pink at the very thought. I knew it off by heart, of course, but it felt too private. Besides, I had already decided it sounded better on the harpsichord than the pianoforte. I instead opted for an easy, light tune, the kind of thing no one ever took issue with. It was soft enough to melt into the background if everyone else wanted to continue a conversation, but they listened politely as I played the gentle melody. The Bennets’ piano was ever so slightly out of tune, but not so much that anyone else would notice.
When the last note faded, there was a swell of polite applause I would usually have hated, but Kitty clapped the loudest, beaming with pride, and I let myself smile back. She got to her feet and for a fleeting moment I imagined her coming over to reward me with a kiss, as if the very idea infront of her entire family wasn’t absurd. Instead she brought her smile closer, where its power over me only increased, and leant against the wall beside the piano.
“Play the one you played at Pemberley, in your drawing room,” she insisted, asking for the same thing as Elizabeth.
“It isn’t good enough,” I said, although that was far from what I meant. It just felt too much like baring my soul.
“Please.” Kitty batted her eyes in a way that was probably supposed to be comic but was simply effective. “For me?”
She didn’t know that every time I played that song, it was for her. It existed only because it was for her. I had never found the time to tell her, and this definitely was not the best moment, but the least I could do was indulge her request to hear it.
It still did not sound quite right on a piano, especially one not wholly in tune, but Kitty lit up the second I played the first note, and that smile did not leave her face for the entire time I played. I barely looked at the keys, relying on years of practise to guide me to them as I focused on her. Everyone else in the room faded away until their applause at the end of the melody jolted me back to reality, reminding me that this moment was far from private.
I quickly evacuated the piano stool with a small curtsey to my audience, before stealing Kitty’s old space, now beside Elizabeth. It left Kitty to take the piano stool as a seat, but I wanted to put some distance between me and the instrument, and between me and her.
