Chapter Ten The Campaign Begins
The Longbourn drawing room was currently functioning as a kiln.
Kitty Bennet sat by the window, her spine fused into a vertical line, enacting a tragedy of immense proportions.
Outside, the Hertfordshire sun of late July was a golden tyrant, waging a scorched-earth campaign against the lawn until the grass practically hissed under the atmospheric pressure.
To any observer, Kitty was the very image of a woman burdened by the weight of worldly vanities.
She sighed—a long, melodic sound that suggested a soul weary of earthly delights.
Yet, within the private theatre of her mind, a very different performance was underway.
Despite the oppressive stillness, a chorus of invisible birds chirped with a frantic, delightful energy.
She felt a giggle bubbling in her throat, a persistent, ticklish thing that required all her sombre discipline to smother.
She glanced at the settee. Mrs Bennet was sprawled across the cushions, a wet flannel cloth draped over her eyes.
The matriarch of Longbourn was, for perhaps the first time in recorded history, silenced.
A soft moan occasionally escaped from beneath the cloth, a mournful tribute to the heat and the fragility of her nerves.
In the distance, beyond the shimmering glass, Charles-the-cat was engaged in a pursuit.
He was a low, yellow blur in the tall grass, his tail twitching as he stalked an entirely unsuspecting chicken.
The bird, a plump and indifferent creature, was busy pecking at the dry earth, unaware that it was currently the target of a feline attack.
Kitty sighed again, this time with a touch more drama.
She smoothed the skirt of her gown. It was a potato-coloured affair, a garment of such dullness that it appeared to absorb all light and joy from the vicinity.
It was a Mary dress. Kitty had insisted on the trade, arguing that a woman of depth could not properly contemplate the sublime while swaddled in frivolous muslin.
She had, however, added a small lace ivory ribbon beneath the bodice.
A woman might be serious, but she was not, after all, a washerwoman.
"Is she coming?" Mrs Bennet's voice emerged from beneath the flannel, sounding as if it travelled from a crypt. "The silence is oppressive, Kitty. It unnerves me."
"Mary is preparing, Mamma," Kitty intoned, her voice dropping to a register suitable for reading wills. "We are to call on Lucas Lodge, accidentally. It is a moral imperative."
"Accidental call," Mrs Bennet muttered with a faint, fluttering wave of her hand.
"You will just happen to be there when Mr Bingley calls.
Oh, my poor nerves! To think that child is the key to his salvation.
It is a heavy burden. And I do not really agree with this campaign, but who listens to me?
No one, Kitty. And your father cares only about his protégé, while my nerves are flaring in this bl. .. er... burning sun."
Kitty heard a rustle from the hall. The door opened, and Mary Bennet entered the room.
Kitty's jaw did not drop, for that would have been un-serious, but her eyes certainly widened.
This was not the Mary who usually inhabited the house.
Gone was the shroud of brown wool. In its place was Kitty's own pale yellow-green muslin, a dress that seemed to capture the very essence of summer.
The fabric was light, the cut elegant, and the colour—by some miraculous trick of the light—seemed to banish the sallow cast from Mary's face.
She looked bright, she looked young, and for the first time, her figure possessed a definitive and pleasing shape.
Mary, however, looked as if she were about to face the fires of hell. Her expression was the same clinical mask of disapproval, but it was currently clouded by a layer of acute frustration.
"I am ridiculous," she announced, her voice as dry as the scorched lawn. "I am a walking citrus fruit. This fabric has no weight, no gravity. I feel as if the slightest breeze might carry me off into the orchard."
Mrs Bennet sat up so quickly the cloth from her forehead fell into her lap. She stared at Mary, her eyes narrowing as she appraised the transformation. Then, she let out a sound that was half-gasp, half-shriek.
"Mary! Oh, you look... you look almost presentable!" Mrs Bennet's handkerchief began to flutter with aggressive speed. "It is a miracle! Elizabeth was right—yellow is your colour. You look quite... well, quite like a girl!"
"I was always a girl, Mamma," Mary noted. "The dress does not change my biology."
"But it changes your prospects!" Mrs Bennet scrambled to her feet, her heat-induced lethargy forgotten. "Kitty, quickly! Your bonnet! You must depart. Everyone must see this apparition!"
"I am not an apparition," Mary muttered, her anxiety evident in the way she toyed with her spectacles. "I am a woman out of her league, dressed for a play I have not rehearsed."
Kitty stood, her potato-coloured skirts swishing. She offered Mary a look of profound, serious support. "You are not out of your league, sister. You are merely improved. Come. The carriage is waiting."
The interior of the carriage was an oven of yellow-green anxieties.
Mary sat opposite Kitty, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were as pale as the lace on her sleeves.
The muslin felt alien against her skin—too light, too revealing, too much.
She felt exposed, as if the dress were a loud, vibrant shout in a room where she had spent her life whispering.
"Stop fidgeting, Mary," Kitty commanded. "A lady remains calm, even when she is anxious. You have nothing to worry about, trust me."
"I am not fidgeting," Mary lied, her gaze fixed on the passing hedgerows. "I am merely assessing the structural integrity of the seams."
Secretly, beneath the layers of intellectual disdain, a small, treacherous part of her was holding its breath.
She wanted to see his face. She wanted to know if the "Campaign" had extended to her own person.
She did not truly believe that a change of fabric could alter the course of a man's heart—the very idea was an insult to the Enlightenment—but she could not deny a flicker of anticipation.
They arrived at Lucas Lodge just as the afternoon was beginning to stretch its shadows.
The parlour was already occupied. Sir William Lucas was in the middle of a sentence, his hand raised as if to ward off any interruption to his own importance.
Maria Lucas sat nearby, looking as if she were trying to remember a forgotten appointment but failing.
And then there was Charles Bingley.
He was standing by the fireplace, listening to Sir William with an expression of earnest, if slightly glazed, attention.
He was tanned—a deep, hardy bronze that spoke of days spent in the pastures.
It was a look that suited him, stripping away the polished veneer of the London beau and replacing it with a more rugged and substantial presence.
As the Bennet ladies were announced, Mr Bingley turned.
His jaw did not just drop. It performed a definitive, physical descent that suggested he had forgotten how his facial muscles functioned. He stared at Mary, his eyes travelling over the yellow-green muslin, the bright face, and the figure that the dress so stubbornly highlighted.
"Miss... Miss Bennet?" he stammered.
The orange tan on his face was suddenly joined by a wave of vibrant, beetroot red. The two shades collided in a spectacular display of vascular distress. He appeared a victim of a very hot coal, one he had accidentally swallowed.
"Good afternoon," Mary said, curtseying around the room. Kitty beside her, mimicked her. Mary turned to him. "Mr Bingley," she greeted him. Her voice remained steady, though her heart was currently dancing against her ribs.
"You... you look... you are... that is to say..." Mr Bingley gestured vaguely in her direction, his eloquence having departed for the coast. "The sun! It is... very bright today."
Lady Lucas, who had been observing the scene with polite but chilly distance, quirked an eyebrow. She looked from Mr Bingley's crimson face to Mary's vibrant dress, and her expression shifted from indifference to a sharp, calculating curiosity.
Mary was overwhelmed by a surge of secret, unadulterated pleasure. She had finally achieved the impossible. She had made a man lose his marbles—not by quoting a sermon on the vanity of beauty, not by pointing out a flaw in a logical argument, but by simply standing in a room.
It was a primitive victory, and entirely beneath her dignity as a scholar. But, as she watched Mr Bingley struggle to find his way back to a coherent thought, Mary Bennet realised that she liked it. She liked it very much indeed.
The visit proceeded with the measured pace of a glacier, though the atmosphere in the parlour remained charged with Mr Bingley's lingering shock. Mary found herself acting as a discreet navigator, nudging the conversation whenever his brain appeared to seize.
Sir William, sensing a captive audience, launched into his most celebrated narrative.
"It was eighteen years ago to the day," Sir William began, his chest expanding with the memory.
"I was at the Court of St James, and who should I encounter but the Duke.
A man of immense presence! We were turning the corner near the gallery when, due to a most unfortunate stumble by a footman, the Duke bumped directly into my person. "
Lady Lucas sighed, a sound that meant she had lived this moment ten thousand times.
"And his drink!" Sir William continued, his voice rising in triumph. "A glass of the finest port, spilled directly onto my waistcoat. I have kept the garment intact, you know. The stain is a historical record! I shall show it to you presently, Mr Bingley. It is in the cedar chest."