Chapter Eight The Library Pact #2
Kitty, meanwhile, had wandered over to a display of sermons and was staring at them with the intensity of a bird of prey. She did not notice the social execution that took place.
Mary felt the familiar urge to remain hidden—to let the scene play out and eventually catalogue it as another example of Mr Bingley's inadequacy.
But the image of his slumped shoulders was too much like her own reflection in those moments when Jane or Elizabeth were the centres of the world and she was merely part of the noise.
She stepped out from behind "Domestic Pests."
"Mr Bingley." Her voice cut through the stuffy air loud and dry. "I believe you are in the wrong section. Mrs Chester's definitions of 'profound' are strictly limited to the thickness of the vellum."
Mr Bingley spun around, the pained expression on his face instantly replaced by an expression of such relief that one might have thought Mary was an angel descending into the pit of his despair.
"Miss Bennet!" he exclaimed, his hat nearly slipping from his grasp as he performed a bow that was several degrees more vigorous than their current level of acquaintance warranted. "I did not... that is to say, I had no idea you were a regular inhabitant of this establishment."
"I am an inhabitant of any space that contains quiet and a lack of required social dancing, Mr Bingley," Mary replied, stepping fully into the aisle. She noted the way he seemed to physically inflate at the sound of a civil voice.
Beside him, Kitty blinked slowly, as if the light of the library was an affront to her newly adopted mantle of gloom. "Mary," she murmured, her voice a hollow echo. "This place is full of the vanity of the world. All this paper, and for what? To distract us from the coming winter?"
Mary ignored her. Kitty's seriousness was currently a theatrical performance that lacked both an audience and a coherent script.
"You seem," Mary said, turning her attention back to Mr Bingley, "like you have accidentally walked into a lion's den while carrying a tray of raw meat."
Mr Bingley let out a laugh that was more of a wheeze. "Is it that obvious? I merely wished to find a book. I am... I am attempting to improve, Miss Bennet. I have spent too long as a man of leisure. I am in search of depth."
"A man of depth does not usually announce his arrival to the local librarian by asking for a book by its weight," Mary observed.
She led him away from Mrs Chester's desk, deeper into the stacks where the air smelled of decaying leather and forgotten biographies.
"And a man who wishes to win a village does not do so by lounging on a chaise while a valet reads to him. "
Mr Bingley stopped dead, his face flushing a shade of crimson that clashed violently with his light green waistcoat. "You heard about that? But I was contemplating! I was absorbing the information through a secondary source."
"You were being a spectacle, Mr Bingley.
In Meryton, a spectacle is only acceptable if it involves a puppet show or a large pig at the harvest festival.
For a gentleman who has recently abandoned the village's favourite daughter, appearing to be too lazy to hold his own book is a tactical catastrophe. "
He glanced down at his hands, and for a moment, the regret was genuine. No smiles, no airy pleasantries. He was finally realising that the ground he stood on was not merely soft but actively sinking.
"They hate me, do they not?" he asked softly.
"They do not hate you," Mary corrected. "Hate implies a level of energy that Meryton rarely expends on anything other than the weather.
They are, however, deeply offended. You are the man who, metaphorically, promised a wedding and delivered a departure.
It matters not a jot that Jane is well-situated now. What matters to them is that you left."
"I did not mean to!" he burst out, then winced as the sound echoed off the high shelves. "I was led. I was advised. I thought I was doing the right thing for your sister. For everyone."
Mary gazed at him steadily. Her internal cataloguer noted the sincerity in his eyes. It was a terrifyingly honest gaze, devoid of the artifice that usually governed such conversations.
"Advice," Mary lifted an eyebrow, "is a dangerous commodity when it comes from those who do not have to live with the consequences. You let others hold the quill, Mr Bingley. And now you are surprised that the story has been written without you."
His eyes landed on her with a sudden, sharp intensity. "You are very wise, Miss Bennet. My sister always said you were... well never mind, she was wrong. You are the only person who has explained to me exactly what the situation is."
"I have a talent for the uncomfortable truth," Mary shrugged. "It is why I am rarely invited to the better dinner parties."
"I want to fix it." He stepped closer. The scent of pomade was stronger now. "Not just the town. Me. I want to be a gentleman who is more than just a name. Will you help me? Not as a Bennet, or a sister of Keathley and Darcy. But as a scholar?"
Mary felt a strange tremor in her chest at the proximity. It was a sensation she usually associated with a difficult passage of Handel, or a sudden drop in a carriage. It was most inconvenient.
"You wish for a tutor in the art of being a person?" she asked, her voice remaining steady by sheer force of will.
"I wish for a friend who does not think I am an empty, fashionable shell," he admitted.
Mary looked at him, then at the skeletal Mrs Chester, and finally at the gloomy Kitty.
"I cannot promise you will not feel like a shell on occasion, Mr Bingley," she said. "But I suppose I can help you find the books you need."
The selection of a book for Charles Bingley was a task that required the talent of a master watchmaker and the patience of a saint.
Mary moved through the shelves with a sense of purpose that left Mr Bingley scurrying in her wake, his hands twitching as if he were afraid to touch the spines without permission.
"Too dense." Mary rejected a volume of political philosophy as if it were a diseased vegetable. "You will fall asleep by page four, and the village will find you the next morning with your face imprinted with the history of the Whig party. It is not the sight of a leader."
"I see your point," Mr Bingley murmured, gazing longingly at a small, brightly coloured book about birds that Miss Bennet had already passed twice.
"Too light," she muttered, intercepting his gaze. "That is for children and simpletons. If you carry that, Mrs Chester will report you to the vicar for intellectual vacancy."
She finally settled on a thick, handsomely bound volume of travel journals from the Levant.
It was physically imposing enough to satisfy his desire for "heavy," but the content was structured in manageable vignettes, written with a clarity that would not tax a mind more accustomed to the nuances of a hunting schedule.
"This," Mary declared, pressing the book into his hands. "It provides the illusion of worldly curiosity without the requirement of being a Doctor of Divinity. It is the literary equivalent of a very sturdy pair of boots—reliable, dignified, and difficult to trip over."
Mr Bingley took the book as if it were a holy relic. "Thank you. It feels quite right. It has a very convincing weight."
"Now, the matter of the villagers," Mary continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Selecting a book is only the first step in your reconstruction. You cannot simply read your way back into their affections. You require a campaign. A strategy of visible, undeniable utility."
Mr Bingley leaned in, his eyes wide. "Utility? Should I fix a bridge? I have a bridge at Netherfield that is quite unstable."
"The bridge at Netherfield is for your own benefit," Mary countered.
"The village requires acts that serve them.
Small acts, genuine. You must be seen not as the master of the big house, but as a neighbour with a conscience.
You must fix the fence of the widow and provide the extra grain for the charity of the curate.
And you must do it without a valet in sight. "
"No Tepper?" Mr Bingley asked, slightly panicked.
"No Tepper. Here, a valet is a sign of a man who cannot wear his own breeches. If you wish to be respected, Mr Bingley, you must work for them."
He nodded, determination crossing his features. It was a new expression for him—it sat on his face like a borrowed coat, slightly too large but worn with a certain pride.
"I will do it," he declared. "I will fix the widow's fence. I will be the most useful man in Hertfordshire. But I shall need guidance. I do not know which widow has the worst fence."
"Fortunately for you, I have spent years documenting the structural failings of every fence in the parish.
I shall provide you with a list. But this endeavour requires planning.
We cannot be seen conspiring in the library—my mother's nerves are already a fragile collective, and your presence in her parlour would likely result in a permanent state of hysteria. "
"Where, then?" he asked, his voice eager.
"Oakham Mount. Monday at noon. It is isolated enough for a consultation but public enough to be respectable, provided we bring a chaperone."
She glanced at Kitty, who was currently staring at a dust mote with an expression of existential dread.
"Kitty shall accompany me. She is currently so lost in the pursuit of gravity that she will likely notice nothing less than a direct lightning strike."
"Excellent!" Mr Bingley's smile returned with a brilliance that made Mary squint. "Noon at Oakham Mount. I shall bring my new book. And I shall leave Tepper at home."
"A wise decision," Mary replied. "For both the book and the valet."
The shadows in the library had lengthened by the afternoon sun. The bell chime above the door signalled the departure of a pair of elderly ladies, leaving the establishment in a silence so heavy it felt as if the books themselves were holding their breath.
"I suppose we should depart." Mary's social duty had reached its limit. "Kitty, we are leaving."
Kitty did not move. She remained fixed in her study of a volume on the inevitability of decay, her bonnet casting a shadow that obscured her face entirely.
"The leaves fall," Kitty whispered, her voice like wind through dry grass. "And we are but leaves, Mary. We are but leaves."
"You are a leaf with a very large bonnet, Kitty. Do try to walk."
Mary turned back to Mr Bingley to finalise the arrangements.
He was still holding the Levant travels, his fingers tracing the gilt lettering on the spine.
He stared at her, and the usual mask of cheerful vacancy was entirely absent.
There was a vulnerability in his expression that Mary found utterly indecipherable.
"Thank you, Miss Bennet," he said. He reached out, intending perhaps to shake her hand or merely to emphasize his gratitude.
In the cramped space between the travel section and the sermons, their nearness was a sudden, jarring reality. As Mary reached out to steady the stack of books on the nearby table, the movement brought her hand into direct contact with his.
It was not a formal handshake. It was a brush of fingers—brief, accidental, and utterly devastating.
For a woman of the world, it might have been a trifle. For Mary Bennet, it was a seismic event. The sensation of his gloved hand—warm, solid, and undeniably human—sent a shock through her that shook the very foundations of her stoic worldview.
It was an earthquake inside her. The orderly shelves of her mind, where each and every observation and emotion was neatly catalogued and stored, were suddenly tossed into a state of utter disorder.
The logic she had used to shield herself from the world seemed to crumble in the space of a single heartbeat.
She pulled her hand back as if she had been burned, her heart hammering against her ribs with the frantic rhythm of a trapped bird.
"Oakham Mount," she managed to say, her voice sounding to her own ears as if it were coming from a great distance. "Noon."
Mr Bingley startled, his eyes wide as they searched hers. "Yes. Noon. I... I shall be there."
He bowed with quiet grace and left.
Mary remained standing in the aisle, the scent of his pomade lingering in the air. She looked down at her hand, the fingers still tingling from the contact.
She was a scholar. She was a woman of intellect.
She was a person who understood the mechanics of the world and the predictable nature of the human heart.
And yet, as she stood in the silence of the Meryton circulating library, she realised with a terrifying clarity that she had no idea what had just happened.
At this moment, she was not a leaf. She was not a spare wheel. She was something else entirely—a woman who had just understood that the most dangerous library in Hertfordshire was the one she carried within herself.
She adjusted her spectacles with a hand that refused to stop shaking.
Then, she picked up her book—a dense volume on the migratory patterns of the North Atlantic puffin, chosen specifically for its lack of emotional demands.
She gathered the dazed Kitty with a gentle hand and led her to the door, the bell above it ringing out one final, mocking chime as they departed.
Mary Bennet, for the first time in her life, found herself without a single metaphor to describe the state of her own soul.