Chapter One The Invisible Woman #2
She lifted the lid of the keys. Ivory and ebony, waiting like teeth.
She had spent years mastering them, drilling scales until her fingers ached, learning the most complex concertos she could find.
She had thought that if she were technically perfect—if she never missed a note, never faltered in tempo—they would have to listen. They would have to value her.
But they did not listen. They tolerated.
They nodded politely, their eyes glazed over, waiting for her to finish so they could resume their laughter.
She had been playing at them. She had been demanding their attention with every aggressive arpeggio, wielding Bach like a broadsword in a desperate bid for relevance.
And she had only succeeded in becoming part of the background noise.
A very loud, very precise piece of furniture.
She dropped her hands into her lap, clenching them into fists against the potato-coloured muslin.
She had been trying to force the world to see her on her terms, but her terms were boring. She was boring.
"I need to change," she announced. The words hit the ceiling and fell back down, heavy and true.
She could not change her face. She knew that. No amount of pinching her cheeks would turn her into Jane, and no amount of smiling would give her Elizabeth's spark. She was Mary.
"I cannot change how I look. But I can change the voice," she decided.
She touched a single key. Middle C. It rang out, clear and solitary, hanging in the air without apology.
If she could not be beautiful, she would be undeniable. If she could not be charming, she would be formidable. She would stop quoting other men's words—Dr Fordyce could stay on the shelf—and perhaps—she would find a sound of her own.
She was halfway through a sonata when she sensed she was no longer alone.
The door had not made a sound. The hinges were oiled to perfection, and the carpets clearly designed to muffle footsteps.
But Mary knew. She had four sisters. She had a preternatural sense for the distinct displacement of air caused by feminine presence and fraught nerves.
Mary froze, her hand hovering over a C-sharp like a claw. She turned slowly, fully expecting Elizabeth coming to drag her to an exhibition of "Landscapes Featuring Bees," or perhaps Jane coming to tell her that the strawberries were now seedless and the world was perfect.
The door creaked open, and a figure hesitated on the threshold.
Miss Georgiana Darcy was everything Mary Bennet was not. She was tall. She was graceful, even when doing nothing more than breathing. She had a face that made poets weep and painters throw down their brushes in despair.
She was also, at this precise moment, looking as though she would very much like to apologise for occupying three-dimensional space.
"I heard you," Georgiana whispered. She stepped into the room, closing the door softly behind her as if she were afraid of waking the woodwork. "I heard you playing. It was like you were thinking very loudly."
Mary adjusted her spectacles. "I was merely taking stock of my situation."
"It sounded like a battle," Georgiana noted. She crossed the room, her movements fluid and silent, like a very expensive cloud passing over a lawn. She hesitated at the bench, then sat down beside Mary, not too close. There was a respectful no-man's-land between them. "Do you mind?"
Mary shook her head.
They remained silent for a moment, two breathing statues in a room built for sound.
"I feel unfinished," Mary admitted. The words slipped out before she could check them for propriety or draft a bibliography for them.
But there was something about Georgiana—perhaps the fact that she looked ready to bolt if a butterfly startled her—that made honesty feel less dangerous.
"I am a collection of quotes and good intentions.
I have read all the books on how to be a woman of substance, and yet I feel entirely hollow.
Like a very well-bound book with blank pages. "
"I am the same," Georgiana whispered, looking down at her hands.
Mary turned to her. "You? You are perfect. You are accomplished, you are well-dowered, you are a Darcy. You are practically a species of royalty."
"Exactly," Georgiana sighed, a small, trembling sound that was tragic in a very decorative way.
"I am a Darcy. I am an heiress. I am 'Mr Darcy's Sister.
' I am 'The Earl's Niece.' Everyone sees the name, or the fortune.
No one sees Georgiana. I do not know if I am even real.
Sometimes I think I am just a very expensive doll that my brother keeps in the best cabinet and dusts off for company. "
"You are more than that, Georgiana." Mary sounded firm and absolute. "You are kind. And you play like an angel."
"I play because I was trained," Georgiana countered miserably.
"I have been trained to speak three languages, remember thirty names in one evening, and play the harp without wincing.
But if someone asks me what I like, I panic.
I say 'Mozart' whether it is true or not.
Once, a baron asked me my favourite food and I blurted 'sustenance.
' I have no will, Mary. I have the willpower of a damp biscuit. "
"My aunt Gardiner adores you," Mary pointed out. "She is wise. She would help you."
"Mrs Gardiner is wonderful, and she has adopted me, in a manner of speaking," Georgiana agreed with a small, affectionate smile on her lips.
"But she has the children. Henry is boisterous, Alice is vivacious, and little Ruth is currently experimenting with gravity.
Mrs Gardiner is always so busy being capable.
I do not wish to impose my vapours on her.
She has enough to manage without a mouse trailing after her. "
She turned to Mary, and her expression shifted. The fear receded, replaced by sudden, intense admiration. "But you... you do not crumble."
"Me?" Mary let out a short, harsh laugh. "I am invisible, Georgiana. I am the dun paint on the wall. No one sees me."
"I see you!" Georgiana exclaimed with a sudden huff of spirit. "I saw you yesterday. With that milliner on Bond Street. That vulture in silk."
Mary narrowed her eyes at the memory. "The woman who attempted to charge four guineas for a ribbon because we arrived in a crest-bearing carriage."
"Exactly! Mrs Annesley was flustered. I was cowering behind my parasol. But you..." Georgiana leaned closer, her eyes shining with hero-worship. "You just stood there. You did not raise your voice, you did not get angry. You just planted your feet. You narrowed your eyes and waited."
"It was daylight robbery," Mary said stiffly. "She thought us fools."
"You were unyielding!" Georgiana sounded ecstatic. "Like a wall. Or... forgive me... like a mule."
Mary blinked. "A mule?"
"A very dignified mule," Georgiana added quickly, realising her error. "A mule of high breeding. But you would not move. And she broke! She lowered the price out of sheer defeat of her soul. I want that, Mary. I want to know how to do that. I want to know how to be a mule."
Mary looked at her hands. They were not elegant like Georgiana's. They were square-palmed, capable, and currently clenched in her lap. She had always hated them.
But Georgiana did not see clumsy hands. She saw masonry. She saw foundations.
"You wish to learn obstinacy?" Mary asked slowly.
"I wish to learn backbone," Georgiana corrected, looking at Mary steadily. "I want to be able to stand in a room and not feel as if I am about to blow away if someone opens a window."
Mary looked at the sheet music on the stand. It was a Clementi sonata. Dense. Complex. Technical. Impressive. About as emotional as a sermon on temperance.
She reached out and closed the book with a decisive thud.
Beneath it lay a thin, worn collection of Scottish airs. Simple songs. Songs of heartbreak and hills and wind. Jane used to hum them before she became a Viscountess and started communicating via strawberry.
Mary looked from the music to Georgiana, and she did not see a rival, or a superior, nor a mirror of her own inadequacy. She saw an ally.
"I will teach you." Mary's voice was steel. "I will teach you how to narrow your eyes. I will teach you the silence that makes men check their cravats to see if they are undone. I will teach you how to stand so that they must walk around you."
"Thank you," Georgiana whispered, as if accepting a state secret.
"And in return," Mary continued, touching the worn cover of the Scottish airs, "you will teach me this."
"The music?"
"The feeling. You will teach me how to play so that they do not just hear notes. You will teach me how to make them cry."
Georgiana smiled then. The smile was small and tentative, but it reached her eyes.
"Iron for air."
"Backbone for beauty," Mary countered.
"A pact." Georgiana held out her hand.
Mary looked at it. A Darcy hand. Pale, delicate, and trembling slightly.
She took it in her own. "A pact."
Georgiana shifted on the bench, sitting straighter. She mimicked Mary's posture—shoulders back, chin slightly lifted, gaze direct. It was an imperfect imitation, but the intention was there. She looked less like a mouse and more like a mouse that was considering buying a helmet.
"Play," Georgiana pleaded. "Please. But not the Clementi. The Clementi is shouting."
Mary moved the heavy exercise book aside. She opened the collection of airs. The notes on the page were simple—whole notes, half notes, emptiness. There was no technical shield here. Nowhere to hide behind velocity.
She placed her hands on the keys. This time, they did not feel like tools of conquest. They felt like an invitation.
She pressed down.
The chord rang out—a G minor, deep and rich and full of hidden things. It hung in the silent room, vibrating against the high ceiling, suspended in the dust motes dancing in the late afternoon sun.
Mary began to play.
She did not look at the door. She did not look at the empty chairs. She looked at the music, and she did not just read it. She felt the weight of it.