Elizabeth leaned her head back against the chair. “I do know it, Kitty. I know she means kindness.”
Kitty looked up. “But?”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment. Outside, the faint sound of someone crossing the gravel reached them, then faded.
“But there are times,” she said at last, “when I wish to pass a morning without being pitied for surviving it.”
Kitty’s fingers stilled on the ribbon.
Elizabeth turned the book over once in her lap, feeling the embossed line along its spine. “I do not mean to be ungrateful. I know very well that Mama’s concern is genuine. There are many daughters more neglected. But to be perpetually her poor girl—to be looked at as though one were always on the edge of fresh calamity—” She stopped and shrugged with one shoulder. “It is tiresome.”
Kitty’s answer came so promptly that it seemed to have waited on her lips. “You are not tiresome.”
Elizabeth looked at her and smiled faintly. “No, but being pitied is.”
Kitty considered that with the seriousness of one receiving instruction. “Then perhaps we ought to train Mama out of it.”
Elizabeth laughed. “You may attempt it, if you are bold enough.”
“I am not bold enough,” Kitty admitted. “Lydia might be.”
“Lydia would only do it by accident, which is another matter entirely.”
That earned another smile, though it faded as Kitty said more softly, “I do not pity you, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth’s gaze lifted fully to her face.
Kitty continued, a little color rising in her cheeks but not enough to stop her. “I worry, sometimes. And I am sorry, because I remember what you were like before. But I do not pity you. You are—you are only you. A little more determined, perhaps.”
Elizabeth could not answer at once. Something warm and unexpected moved through her chest, the sort of tenderness that was almost too delicate to be touched directly. How strange, she thought, that comfort should so often come from those once deemed least capable of offering it.
At length she said lightly, because anything more serious might undo her, “Do not say so too loudly, or I shall become intolerable.”
Kitty’s smile returned. “That danger passed long ago.”
“Impertinent girl.”
“Yes,” Kitty said. “Lydia taught me.”
They sat together in companionable quiet after that. Elizabeth picked up the book again, though she did not open it immediately. She liked Kitty’s presence in the room. There was ease in it. No demands, no conscientious sympathy, no officious attempts to assist where no assistance was needed. Only company.
After a minute or two, Kitty rose and crossed toward the window. Elizabeth heard the small metallic sound of the latch, then the faintest current of cooler air entered the room.
“I have opened it only a little,” Kitty said. “The air was close.”
“Thank you.”
Kitty glanced out. “Jane is on the lawn.”
“With Thomas?”
“Yes, our nephew is quite recovered from his poor temper this morning. And there is Mrs. Hill. He appears resolved to escape both.”
Elizabeth smiled at the image. “He has his mother’s sweetness and his grandfather’s preference for liberty.”
“And perhaps a little of Lydia as well.”
“Then Heaven preserve us all.”
