Chapter Eleven A Meeting in the Shade
The Longbourn drawing room, shortly after breakfast, was a monument to the suffocating power of a Hertfordshire summer.
The heat had already driven Mrs Bennet back to her bedchamber, armed with a vial of smelling salts and a damp cloth, muttering dark prophecies about her impending demise.
Mr Bennet had retreated to his study, fortifying his position behind a solid oak door and a volume of Roman history.
This left the drawing room to Mary and Kitty.
Mary sat at the pianoforte, her fingers moving lazily over the keys, tracing the delicate, airy notes of a Mozart sonata. It was a gentle, unhurried tune, suited for a morning where the air itself felt too heavy to move.
From the window seat, a tragic sigh echoed through the room.
"Mary," Kitty moaned. "Must you play something so relentlessly jolly? The notes are practically skipping. It is highly inappropriate for the state of the world. Could you not learn a dirge? Or perhaps a requiem? Something that acknowledges the fundamental decay of our existence."
"I am playing Mozart, Kitty, not a jig," Mary replied without breaking her tempo. "And I refuse to play a dirge before noon. It is bad for the appetite."
"My appetite is already ruined by the vanity of this household," Kitty countered, crossing her arms.
The entrance door creaked open, followed by Hill's shuffling footsteps. She entered the drawing room bearing a silver salver, upon which sat a single, crumpled letter.
"The post, Miss," Hill announced, her tone implying that she suspected the letter contained nothing but more trouble.
Mary stopped playing and crossed the room. She took the missive, inspecting the seal and the frantic, looping handwriting that practically shouted from the parchment. "It is from Kent. From Lydia."
Kitty's serious facade slipped instantly. She scrambled down from the window seat, the tragedy of human existence entirely forgotten in the face of fresh gossip. "Lydia? What does she say?"
Mary broke the seal and unfolded the two pages. They were densely packed; the ink smudged in places where the writer had clearly been gesturing wildly with the quill.
Dear Mary and Kitty,
Rosings is ENORMOUS and very echoey. If you sneeze in the long gallery, it comes back at you three times.
I have tested repeatedly. Lady Catherine is a tyrant, of course, and her cane is a menace to everyone's shins, but she is not as awful as Lizzy made her out to be. Actually, she is quite useful.
She is teaching me to be formidable. We do drills!
I have to walk across the drawing room balancing a book on my head while imagining the Prince Regent is watching me.
Yesterday, I practised 'polite cruelty.' I told a visiting squire that his waistcoat was very brave, and he thanked me!
He had no idea I was insulting his tailor!
Lady Catherine says I have excellent raw material, and by next Season, I shall be perfectly equipped to catch a General, or at least a Colonel with a very large pension.
Anne is also a revelation. She is funny when she bothers.
Yesterday, Mr Collins came to the house to read us a sermon, and Anne accidentally-on-purpose lifted her gown above her ankle.
Mr Collins sputtered and choked on his own saliva.
He left in a hurry. Ah, what a lark! Lady Catherine gave us a stern lecture after that, but I caught her smiling.
I have a new silk gown, and I am learning to stare men down in silence until they offer me cake. Write back and tell me if anyone is dead or married and if Charles has eaten another chicken from the yard.
Yours, Lydia.
Mary lowered the letter. The drawing room was suddenly very quiet. The ticking of the mantel clock seemed to echo in the space where Lydia's booming laughter used to reside.
Kitty stared at the letter in Mary's hand, her lower lip trembling slightly. She was not contemplating the sublime decay of the universe at this moment, only a seventeen-year-old girl missing her favourite co-conspirator.
"An ankle," Kitty whispered. "Mr Collins must have had an apoplexy."
"And she insulted a squire's waistcoat," Mary added, a strange, tight feeling forming in her chest.
They looked at each other. The unspoken truth hung in the heavy summer air: Longbourn was entirely too quiet. The silence they had all craved when Lydia was screeching through the halls was now an uninvited guest.
"I miss her," Kitty blurted out, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "I am trying to be serious, Mary, but it is so very boring without her."
"I know," Mary said softly. She folded the letter. "Go and write to her, Kitty. Tell her about the village. Tell her about Mr Bingley fixing the widow's fence. She will want to know the strategy."
Kitty nodded eagerly, already rushing to the writing desk. "I will tell her everything! I will tell her we are being formidable too!"
Mary watched her sister for a moment and the house felt suddenly suffocating. She needed air. She needed to move. "I am going for a walk," she announced to the room at large.
As she stepped out onto the terrace, a low, vibrating rumble sounded at her feet. Charles emerged from beneath a rosebush, his yellow eyes narrowed in mutual agreement. They both needed to escape.
The heat outside was a physical weight, pressing down on the fields and turning the air into a shimmering haze above the grass.
Mary walked with no particular destination in mind, her bonnet shielding her face, her sensible half-boots crunching softly against the dry earth.
Behind her, Charles stalked through the underbrush, treating every fluttering leaf as a mortal enemy requiring immediate assassination.
Mary's mind was a tangle of discordant thoughts.
Lydia learning social warfare in Kent. Kitty struggling with her self-imposed gothic gravity.
And underneath it all, a persistent, un-scholarly preoccupation with a certain gentleman whose agricultural tan and earnest smile had thoroughly disrupted her equilibrium.
Without entirely meaning to, her feet followed the gentle slope of the land eastward, carrying her away from the safety of Longbourn's immediate gardens and towards the boundary line.
She stopped when the sound of shouting voices reached her ears. She was nearing the Northern Pasture. Through a break in the trees, she could see the distant figures of workmen, waist-deep in a trench, hauling stones and wrestling with the stubborn clay.
Panic flared in her chest. She could not go out there.
Propriety strictly forbade a young lady from wandering into a field full of labouring men, and her own newly fragile nerves forbade her from accidentally encountering Mr Bingley while he was covered in mud and radiating that absurd, blinding cheerfulness.
She pivoted sharply, her skirts swishing, and retreated into a dense copse of oak and ash trees that bordered the two estates. The shade here was deep and cool, a green sanctuary hidden from the punishing sun and the prying eyes of the world.
She walked a few paces into the quiet grove, intending to catch her breath before returning home, when she stopped dead in her tracks.
He was there.
Charles Bingley was lying on the ground, his back resting comfortably against the broad trunk of an oak.
He had abandoned his coat entirely, tossing it carelessly over a nearby bush.
His waistcoat was unbuttoned, and the sleeves of his white linen shirt were rolled up past his elbows.
His hands were tucked behind his head, and his eyes were closed in deep, peaceful slumber.
Mary froze. She should leave. It was wildly inappropriate to stand alone in a secluded copse of trees watching a sleeping gentleman. It was a breach of every rule in Fordyce's sermons. It might also be an eleventh commandment for all she knew.
But her feet refused to obey her brain.
She stared. Unhindered by the social requirement to look away, Mary observed him with meticulous attention, like a complex piece of sheet music.
He was remarkably lean, the line of his torso elegant even in repose.
But it was his arms that held her attention.
Exposed to the dappled sunlight, the muscles of his forearms were corded and defined—a testament to the hours he had spent wrestling with fences and digging in trenches.
He did not look like a soft London beau.
He looked capable. He looked entirely male.
A breeze rustled through the canopy above, ruffling his unkempt, carrot-coloured hair, sending a few stray locks tumbling over his forehead. His mouth was slightly parted in sleep, losing the anxious, eager-to-please tension he usually carried. He looked peaceful. He looked beautiful.
Mary felt a sudden flutter in her stomach, a sensation akin to missing a step on a staircase. She was transfixed.
Then, disaster struck.
Charles-the-cat, who had been prowling silently behind her, spotted his namesake.
Calculating the trajectory with feline precision, the orange beast launched himself into the air like a furry cannonball.
With a yowl of surprise, the cat landed squarely, his claws extended for purchase, directly onto Mr Bingley's chest.
Mr Bingley woke with a violent, panicked shout, his arms flailing as he attempted to throw off the sudden, heavy weight that was currently digging ten tiny daggers through his linen shirt. He scrambled backward against the tree trunk, panting, his eyes wide and unseeing.
The cat hissed indignantly, then settled into Mr Bingley's lap, washing a paw as if the entire incident had been no one's fault.
Mr Bingley blinked, his chest heaving, trying to orient himself. His gaze darted from the orange cat to the surrounding trees, and finally, it landed on Mary.
He stared at her. His hair was sticking up in every direction, his shirt was rumpled, and the sleep had not yet cleared from his eyes. He offered a slow, hazed, incredibly unguarded smile.