Chapter Five The Return of the Prodigal Wallflower #2
"Two daughters married, Mary! Two! Jane is a Viscountess—selfish girl, leaving me all alone for her happiness!
Elizabeth is with Mr Darcy—who I still say is very tall and very frightening!
And Lydia... oh, Lydia is at Rosings of all places, being reformed by Lady Catherine, which I am sure is a punishment for sins I cannot recall committing but must have been very serious indeed! "
Mrs Bennet released Mary just long enough to clasp her hands together in theatrical despair.
"And what am I left with? An empty house! Empty! Only Kitty—who coughs for attention—and your father. And your father is no comfort, Mary, no comfort at all. He sits in his study and reads his books and laughs at me. He treats my suffering like a spectator sport!"
Mrs Bennet sniffed, wiping a tear that might have been real, or might have been for effect.
"Thank heavens for my Son," she declared, her voice suddenly softening into reverence. "My Robert. He is the only joy I have left, Mary. The only child who truly understands his mother's heart."
Mary blinked, adjusting her bonnet which had been knocked sideways during the assault. "You mean Viscount Keathley?"
"I mean my Son!" Mrs Bennet clasped the handkerchief to her bosom.
"He writes to me, Mary. Twice a week! He does not abandon me like some daughters.
He sends me full reports of the Season. He told me that Lady Jersey wore a turban last week that looked like a tea cosy, and he is keeping a strict watch on Mrs Long's lace acquisitions.
He knows that if that woman secures the Valenciennes before I do, I shall perish.
He is an angel, Mary. A gossiping, titled angel. "
"I am pleased to see you too, Mamma," Mary said dryly. "The journey was pleasant. The weather warm. Thank you for asking."
Mrs Bennet was not listening. She was examining the carriage, her eyes sharp enough to cut bread.
"What are those?" Her voice sharpened. "Flowers? You have brought flowers? Why would you bring flowers? We have a garden, Mary. We have roses. We do not need London flowers taking up space and dropping petals on my clean floors—"
"They were a gift."
The words emerged before Mary could stop them. She winced and bit her tongue simultaneously.
She watched her mother's face transform. It was a fascinating geological event. Suspicion gave way to calculation, calculation gave way to a terrible, dawning hope.
"A gift." Mrs Bennet breathed the word as if it were sacred. "A gift from whom? A gentleman? Mary, have you secured a gentleman? Is he rich? Does he have a carriage? How many pounds a year? You sly thing! Tell me at once, for my heart cannot bear the suspense!"
"The flowers are from an acquaintance, Mamma. A gesture of politeness. Nothing more."
"Politeness!" Mrs Bennet seized Mary's arm with a grip of iron.
"Men do not send flowers out of politeness, Mary.
Men send flowers when they have intentions.
What are his intentions? Does he have a house?
A title? Is he handsome? He must be handsome.
Even you deserve a handsome husband, Mary, though I confess I had given up hope—does he have a pulse?
At this point, I will accept a pulse and five hundred a year! "
"Mamma, please—"
"Hill! Hill!" Mrs Bennet began marching Mary towards the house, dragging her like a prize of war.
"Prepare Mary's room! And find a vase! A large one!
The largest we have! My daughter has received flowers from a gentleman, and we must display them prominently in the window in case he calls! Or in case Mrs Long walks past!"
Mary allowed herself to be dragged inside. She clutched the yellow flowers to her chest protectively.
The hallway of Longbourn welcomed her with the quiet, faint, lingering despair of a household that had forfeited three daughters in six months.
"A suitor for Mary!" Mrs Bennet was shouting to the ceiling. "Oh, perhaps I shall not die of nerves after all! Perhaps I shall survive to see another wedding breakfast!"
Mary closed her eyes.
She was home.
She left her mother with Hill, and walked towards the study with a deliberate stride, having just survived the maternal ambush and requiring a moment of solitude to regroup.
The hallway stretched before her like a neutral territory in a domestic war.
The polished floors were scarred by years of sibling skirmishes, and the walls were papered in a pattern that had once been fashionable and was now merely enduring.
A low, vibrating rumble emanated from the shadows near the staircase.
Mary paused. She recognised the sound immediately. It was not thunder. It was not the settling of the house. It was worse.
Charles leapt into her arms with the grace of a cannonball fired at point-blank range.
The orange tabby cat landed squarely on her chest, his claws extended just enough to secure purchase on her travelling habit without drawing blood—a calculated act of mercy reserved exclusively for her.
His fur was the colour of overripe carrots, his eyes narrow yellow slits of perpetual disdain, and his tail lashed back and forth like a whip in the hands of an impatient coachman.
Mary steadied herself against the wall to avoid being knocked over by the projectile of ginger fury. She cradled the beast with care, ignoring the way his substantial weight pulled at her gown.
"You have grown heavier, darling." She scratched him behind the ears in the precise spot that transformed his rumble from a threat to a reluctant, gravelly purr. "Too many scraps from Hill's kitchen, I suspect. You are becoming decadent, Charles."
The cat had appeared in December, huddled in the barn during a storm that had turned the roads to ice and the world to a frozen misery. Mary had found him there, a ball of spitting defiance hissing at the hay bales.
No one else dared approach.
Mr Bennet had declared him "a republican in feline form, ready to overthrow the household order and guillotine the mice.
" Mrs Bennet shrieked that he would bring fleas, muddy pawprints, and general ruin to the carpets.
Kitty and Lydia threw boots at him and ran away giggling when he arched his back and hissed like a kettle on the boil.
Mary had named him Charles.
It had been a deliberate choice, inspired by the collective venom of Longbourn and Meryton towards a certain gentleman who had vanished like smoke after raising hopes and breaking hearts.
The despicable Charles Bingley, who had danced with Jane twice at the ball and then fled to London without a backward glance.
The cat embodied that sentiment perfectly: charming at a distance, vicious up close, and utterly unrepentant about the turmoil he caused.
No one liked Charles. Charles liked no one.
Except Mary.
He tolerated her ministrations with grudging acceptance, his purr vibrating against her chest like a faulty engine.
"I suppose I owe you an apology," Mary whispered to the cat, thinking of the yellow flowers currently being arranged in the largest vase Mrs Bennet could find. "It turns out the original Charles is not a villain. He is merely... porous. But you, my darling, remain a monster."
Charles-the-cat yawned, displaying a set of teeth sharp enough to punch holes through a leather riding boot, and head-butted her chin.
She carried him into her father's study, seeking the one room in the house where silence was usually respected.
She halted.
Mr Bennet was not there, but Kitty was.
This was, in itself, a cause for concern.
Kitty Bennet in a study was as unnatural a sight as a fish in a tree.
Kitty did not frequent studies. Kitty frequented millinery shops, the window seat overlooking the lane to Meryton, and anywhere Lydia happened to be causing trouble.
The study was Mr Bennet's domain, a sanctuary of leather bindings and pointed silences where Bennet daughters ventured only when summoned for lectures or desperate for hiding places during a visit from Mr Collins.
Seeing Kitty curled in the large armchair by the window was as unnatural as finding a flamingo in a coal mine.
She had a book open in her lap. She was frowning at the pages with such fierce concentration that the effort seemed physically painful, as if she were trying to lift the words off the paper with her mind.
"Kitty?"
Kitty startled so violently the book flew from her hands. It performed a clumsy pirouette in the air before landing on the carpet with a thud that echoed in the quiet room.
"Mary!" She pressed a hand to her chest, her breathing shallow. "You frightened me! I was reading! Very seriously! I am a serious person now!"
Mary bent to retrieve the fallen volume, setting Charles on the floor. Charles immediately walked over to the book and sniffed it with deep suspicion, as if sensing it contained moral instruction.
Mary examined the spine.
Sermons to Young Women by James Fordyce.
She opened to the page Kitty had marked with a dried flower—a dandelion, appropriate enough, a weed pretending to be a flower.
"You have been reading Fordyce." Mary's voice was carefully neutral, though her eyebrows were climbing near her hairline.
"Yes! Every day!" Kitty's chin lifted in defiance. "I am improving my mind, Mary. I am being sensible. I am not giggling or flirting or thinking about officers. I am thinking about... about..."
She gestured vaguely at the book, clearly uncertain what one was supposed to think about whilst reading Fordyce, other than perhaps the benefits of a nap.
"Dignity," Mary supplied. "The dignity of silence. The importance of moral fortitude. The dangers of excessive levity causing one to resemble a hyena."