Chapter Fourteen The Storm and the Shelter
Mary Bennet was currently auditing her own soul, and she was discovering several alarming accounting errors.
The ledger of her existence had, until recently, been a document of aggressive dun. It contained tidy columns for Sermons Read, Piano Sonatas Mastered, and Unsolicited Opinions Offered. The totals were balanced, the margins wide, and the contents entirely without risk.
Now, sitting in the window seat of the Longbourn drawing room, Mary mentally dipped a quill into ink and struck a line through the entire page. The new inventory was a catastrophe of irregularities.
Item One: I made a man lose his marbles. (Method: Wearing a yellow-green muslin and not sermonizing. Result: Highly effective).
Item Two: I helped a man find his footing in Meryton. (Status: Work in Progress. Current yield: Several miles of drainage ditches and one very muddy coat).
Item Three: I have lost my marbles. (Cause: Aforementioned man. Prognosis: Terminal).
She glanced at the hearthrug. Charles was washing a paw with fastidious care, very much like a monarch preparing for a levee. The cat stopped, fixed her with a slow blink of golden eyes, and purred.
"Traitor," Mary whispered to the cat.
The feline republican who despised the entire human race had defected. He had decided that Mr Bingley was acceptable staff. It was a betrayal of their shared misanthropy, and Mary was entirely sympathetic to it.
She turned back to the window. Outside, the early September sky was a bruising purple, heavy with the threat of violence.
In the distance, a solitary figure on horseback trotted away from the house.
Her father was riding towards the boundary line where Charles-the-human was undoubtedly waist-deep in a ditch, happy as a clam in mud.
A sigh escaped her. It vibrated in her chest—not a sensible exhale, but a jagged, heavy sound of longing.
It is merely atmospheric pressure, she told herself firmly. The barometer is falling. A drop in pressure affects the humours. It is not love. It is the natural sciences.
Natural sciences, however, did not usually make one want to weep into a piece of stationery.
She unfolded the letter on her lap for the third time. The paper was thick, creamy, and smelled faintly of roses—Pemberley paper.
Dear Mary,
I have been diligently practising the Mule posture.
Lady Catherine, Anne, and your sister Lydia are visiting.
Lady Catherine informed me yesterday that my hem was an inch too short.
I merely stared at a point above her left ear and counted to four hundred.
She eventually stopped speaking to inhale, at which point I offered her a scone. I believe I won.
Mary traced the signature. Georgiana. A fellow soldier in the war against invisibility. Mary felt a fierce swell of pride. Georgiana was winning her battles.
Mary did not want to be invisible anymore. Not to him.
"Oh, the horror!"
The exclamation came from the chaise longue, where Kitty was currently draped in a posture that threatened to cut off the blood supply to her left arm. She held a leather-bound volume titled The Crypt of Eternal Sorrows aloft, looking like a martyr to the cause of fiction.
"The spectres are emerging from the walls," Kitty whispered, her eyes wide. "Lady Eleanora is trapped in the dungeons with only a flickering candle and her virtue."
"If she has a candle, she is doing better than most," Mary said dryly, refolding Georgiana's letter in precise creases. "And virtue is excellent company, though it provides poor illumination for reading maps."
Kitty ignored the logic, turning the page with a frantic rustle. "You have no soul, Mary. No appreciation for the sublime terror of the unknown."
"I have plenty of terror," Mary muttered to the glass pane. "I merely prefer mine without chains rattling in the wainscoting. My terror is currently located in the North Pasture."
On the settee, Mrs Bennet let out a sound that could only be described as a coo. She held a letter of her own, pressing the paper against her bosom as if trying to absorb the ink through her bodice via proximity.
"My Son," Mrs Bennet breathed, gazing at the ceiling plaster as if expecting a cherub to descend. "Such a dutiful boy. He writes that he has purchased Jane a new carriage. Lined in blue silk, matching her eyes. He asks after my health specifically in the postscript."
She lowered the letter, beaming with a radiance that rivalled the sun which was currently failing to shine outside.
"Viscount Keathley. To think, my Jane. Oh, I long for the day they will provide me grandchildren with titles.
Little Honourables running about the nursery.
We must write to him immediately, Kitty.
Fetch my writing desk. I must tell him that the lace he sent was superior to Mrs Long's in every particular. "
Mary rose from the window seat. The air in the room felt stifling, a thick soup of gothic fantasies and maternal ambition. She moved to the pianoforte, her sanctuary. She sat on the bench, her fingers finding the familiar ivory topography of the keys.
But the music would not come.
Instead of Bach, her mind conjured a mop of unruly, windswept red hair. Instead of arpeggios, she felt the phantom warmth of a hand touching hers in a library aisle.
She remembered the card party at Lucas Lodge. The way he had watched her across the room—not with the polite indifference of society, but with a hunger that had stolen the breath from her lungs. And then, the tactical error.
Item Four: Strategic Blunder. She had smiled at Colonel Lindon. She had done it to be safe, to be witty. To prove she could. And when she looked back, she had seen the light go out of Mr Bingley's eyes.
Was it jealousy? Or was it relief?
She wanted to march out of the house. She wanted to saddle a horse—or perhaps a mule, given her current mood—and ride to the North Pasture. She wanted to grab Mr Bingley by his lapels and demand a citation.
Did you look at me with longing? Do you love me? Or are you merely kind, and I am merely starving?
"Mary, do stop fidgeting," Mrs Bennet admonished, not looking up from the Viscount's prose. "If you are to play, play. If not, sit down and hem a handkerchief. Your restlessness is disturbing my nerves."
Mary slammed the lid of the keys shut. The sound was a thunderclap in the quiet room.
Kitty jumped, dropping The Crypt of Eternal Sorrows. Charles hissed at Kitty.
"I am not fidgeting." Mary's voice trembled a little—a fracture in the porcelain. "I am thinking."
"Well," Mrs Bennet adjusted her cap, "try to think more quietly. You will give us all a migraine."
Before Mary could retort that her mother's nerves were selective enough to survive a hurricane if a Viscount was involved, the universe decided to intervene.
A genuine boom of thunder shook the house. The purple sky finally tore open. Rain lashed against the glass, transforming the garden into a watercolour smear of grey and green.
"The windows!" Mrs Bennet shrieked, clutching her letter. "The velvet drapes! Kitty, move!"
As her mother and sister scurried to save the upholstery, Mary stood frozen in the centre of the room. A cold, leaden weight settled in her stomach, pushing out the jealousy and the logic.
Mr Bennet was out there.
Mr Bingley was out there.
An hour passed, and the deluge continued with the persistence of a very boring guest who refuses to take a hint. Suddenly, under the drumming of the rain against the glass, a different sound grew louder.
"A horse," Mary whispered.
The front door slammed open. The sound reverberated through the floorboards, followed by the heavy, wet tread of boots invading the sanctity of the hall.
"Hill!" Mrs Bennet abandoned the window, smoothing her cap with frantic vanity. "If that is Mr Bennet, tell him to wipe his feet! We are not a stable!"
The drawing room door flew open.
Colonel Lindon stood on the threshold. Water streamed from the brim of his hat, carving rivulets through the dust on his face. His coat was sodden, black with rain, and his chest heaved as if he had run the last mile himself, dragging the horse behind him.
"Mrs Bennet." The Colonel did not bow. He did not smile. He stripped off his gloves, wringing them out with a brutality that sent a cascade of water splashing onto the rug.
Mrs Bennet stared at the puddle forming around his boots. "Colonel? My carpet... you are drenched. You will ruin the pile."
"Mr Bennet has fallen."
The words landed in the room heavier than the thunder.
Kitty gasped, clutching her throat with the hand that was not holding her novel. "Fallen? Into... into a crypt? Into the abyss of eternal night?"
"Into a ditch," the Colonel corrected, his voice tight, clipped, stripping away the London polish to reveal the soldier underneath. "Near the boundary line. The animal spooked at the first crack of thunder. Gravity did the rest."
Mrs Bennet blinked. Her mind, a machine built entirely for the analysis of matrimonial prospects and dinner menus, stalled in the face of physical reality. "Fallen? But... his breeches. They are new. We paid the tailor only last week."
"He is injured, Madam." He stepped further into the room, ignoring the mud he tracked across the floor—a topographical violation Mary noted with distant horror. "Badly. He was unconscious when we found him."
"Unconscious?" Mrs Bennet's hand flew to her heart. "Oh! My poor nerves! To be a widow! To be cast out! To wear black in September!"
"He is not dead," the Colonel snapped, his patience fraying like an old rope. "But he could not be moved far. The storm was upon us. Bingley..." He paused, swallowing hard, and for a second, his eyes found Mary's across the room. "Bingley did not wait for a cart. He picked him up."
Mary felt the air leave her lungs.