Page 136 of Twice Chosen

Some habits, apparently, had consequences.

The family gathered at Pemberley each Christmas often enough that the house developed new traditions unrelated to the first life. Lydia organized ridiculous charades. Mary insisted upon one evening of serious music and tolerated Lydia's complaints only because Lydia attended anyway. Kitty sketched whoever fell asleep after dinner and threatened to publish the least flattering results.

Bingley cheated at children's games.

Darcy accused him annually.

Jane defended him without conviction.

Mrs. Bennet spent the first visit overwhelmed by Pemberley's scale and the second acting as though she had always belonged there. Mr. Bennet discovered Darcy's library and had to be physically summoned to meals.

One Christmas Elizabeth found all five sisters in the old morning room at once. Jane was mending a child's sleeve. Mary was copying music. Kitty sketched Lydia, who complained about being required to remain still. Elizabeth sat near the fire.

For a moment no husbands, children, mothers, fathers, or servants interrupted.

Only sisters.

Elizabeth looked at them and felt the weight of both lives.

Lydia noticed. "Why are you staring?"

"I like the view."

Kitty snorted. "She means Jane."

Mary said dryly, "Statistically, that is likely."

Everyone stopped.

Then Lydia laughed so hard she nearly fell from the chair.

Mary began laughing too.

Elizabeth joined them.

This was what she had wanted without knowing how to ask for it the first time: not improved sisters, but room for each of them to be more than the role the family had assigned.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Kitty and Mary

Kitty married before Lydia.

This offended Lydia enormously.

"She is younger in every way that matters," Lydia complained when the engagement was announced.

Kitty looked up from her sketchbook. "I am older than you."

"By ten months. That hardly counts."

"It counted whenever you wanted to borrow my things."

"That was different."

Elizabeth sat between them in Longbourn's drawing room and smiled.

There had been a time when Kitty's every sentence followed Lydia's. Now Kitty's humor had sharpened into something dry and quiet, a quality no one had noticed because Lydia generally reached every joke first.