“I want to go everywhere,” Kitty whispered, “as long as it’s with you.”
She turned her face to kiss my palm, and when she looked back at me, she had made her eyes wide and pleading. I braced myself for what I knew was coming.
“Speaking of places we could go together, Elizabeth and Darcy are holding a ball tonight,” she said, as if anyone in the house had spoken of anything else in the past few days. The request for my attendance was unspoken but so blatant I could not ignore it.
“Kitty…” I sighed, resting my head against her shoulder.
We had the freedom to be ourselves at Pemberley under normal circumstances, but we couldn’t do that when it was full of other people. No matter how supportive Elizabeth and Darcy were, there was no guarantee their friends would grantus the same courtesy. Everything had changed, but at the same time nothing had changed. I still could not be Kitty’s partner in public.
“Please? It’s no fun at all without you,” Kitty begged, and it was so hard to argue with her when she was pressing kisses to my hair and running her fingers up and down my arm. I wasn’t even sure she knew what exactly she was doing. “Besides, it will be the last one before we leave, so whatever happens, we can escape to the Continent afterwards. And I promise to keep you away from any walls you could fall off.”
I couldn’t help my burst of laughter. “Okay,” I relented. “I’ll go.”
At least it meant an evening of seeing Kitty happy. She leant forwards to press her lips to my temple, then trailed kisses down across my cheekbone. I let my eyes flutter closed, still giddy with the fact we could do this in the middle of the day, in a communal area of the house.
When Kitty moved to kiss my smiling lips, she shifted in my lap and I felt the book of Grecian landscapes slide over her skirts, heading for the floor. Before it could bounce onto the hardwood and destroy its spine, I grabbed it and tucked it besideRobinson Crusoewhere it was safe. She was lucky I loved her more than books.
Despite Emma’s skilled needlework and best attempts, there had been no saving my pink dress after its unfortunate encounter with the garden wall. When I told her I would begoing to the ball that evening after all, I expected to be wearing an older dress that had been languishing in a chest with no events to be seen at. I hadn’t minded the idea, but instead Emma’s smile had been knowing and indulgent.
“I think I have just the thing for you to wear,” she said, evidently part of a conspiracy.
The dress she retrieved was a soft lilac, with embroidered white vines trailing around the hem. It had more of the old Grecian style that most dresses were starting to move away from, but the colour was subtle and romantic, just far enough away from white for it not to be seen as outdated.
“Whose dress is this?” I asked. I hadn’t bought a new one in months, not since before I met Kitty.
“Yours,” Emma admitted. “I told Mr. Darcy that I couldn’t mend the one that got damaged, and he insisted it was to be replaced. The design was mostly Mrs. Darcy’s input. They wanted it to be kept a secret until you felt ready to go to a ball, so you wouldn’t feel you had to go just to wear it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. It was understated and quiet, but elegant enough to give me that extra spark of confidence I needed to walk into a room full of veritable strangers.
“And I do believe I have the perfect feather in a matching shade of—”
“No!” I laughed. “Still no feathers.”
Emma held up her hands in defeat, before ushering me over to sit down so she could start attempting to persuade my hair into respectability. She smiled at me in the mirror, squeezing my shoulder.
“Miss Bennet won’t be able to take her eyes off you,” she whispered.
I ducked my head so I didn’t have to watch my cheeks flush. I still wasn’t used to anyone being so openly approving of my relationship with Kitty. Emma had taken it all in her stride when I had told her the entire story, and she had become one of my most enthusiastic supporters. If she hadn’t, I suspected my brother might have seen to it that she was seeking new employment.
Emma’s work was, as always, perfect. My hair was tamed and out of the way; my cheeks and lips were darkened with just enough rouge to make someone doubt themselves if they thought it was there, but enough to bring colour to my face. She was meticulously twisting a curl back into place when someone knocked on the door. I expected Elizabeth to be standing there, or perhaps Kitty. Instead, when Emma swung open the door, my brother waited in the doorway.
“Some of the guests have started to arrive,” he said. “If you’re ready to go downstairs, I thought you may be desirous of an escort. I am told I have rather a repellent effect on presumptuous men wishing to try their luck with my sister.”
My reply came almost too fast. “Yes. Please.”
No doubt my latent fear was clear to Darcy, but he was good enough not to mention it directly. Instead he waited patiently while Emma fussed with my dress, brushing off invisible pieces of fluff and rearranging the drapes of my skirt as if I wouldn’t disturb them with the first step I took. Eventually she squeezed my hands and took a step back.
“Come back safe tonight,” she ordered, as if I weren’t simply going downstairs in my own house. There was something serious in her eyes.
“She will,” Darcy said, both firm and reassuring. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Considering the outcomes of the last two balls I’d attended, the level of concern from them both seemed fair.
Darcy held out his arm, and I gratefully took it, holding on just a little too tight.
“No one will say a word to you that you don’t want to hear,” he assured me as he led me through Pemberley’s corridors. “This is your home, and you are safe here.”
They were such simple words, but they still meant so much, even though he’d been taking the opportunity to say them as often as possible. I relaxed my grip on Darcy’s arm, not wanting to repay him by cutting off the circulation to his hand. I focused on his words as the noise of the ball got louder.
