Chapter Four #2
I had to disappoint her. There was no trick I’d learnt, no single key to unlock the skill.
Chess had simply always made sense to me—I could see the path to a checkmate far more easily than I could read the tone of a conversation or judge a character.
Once I had realised I might have a manner of skill, it had just been a matter of practise.
It was a thoroughly boring answer to give, but instead of politely changing the subject, Kitty listened to every word, enthralled.
Then she reached for the pieces to reset the board.
“Again,” she demanded, before wincing. “If you want to keep playing, that is. I don’t wish to force you to perform against your will like a circus animal.”
If she thought she was going to learn to beat me genuinely after observing a few games, Darcy’s ongoing refusal to play against me should have shown her otherwise.
But she seemed keen to try again regardless, so I started setting up my line of pawns.
It had been a long time since anyone had willingly sat through more than one game with me.
Sleep evaded me again that night, despite my lack of rest the day before. That alone wasn’t a rare experience, but it was unusual for me to know exactly what was keeping me awake.
Kitty.
I wondered if she was in the library again, tracing soft leather spines with gentle fingers.
If she was there, did she want my company?
I lay there considering it for almost an hour before I climbed out of bed.
Even if Kitty was not there, the books still would be, and they were perfectly adequate company on their own.
The Disposition of an English Lady would not be enough to settle my thoughts.
Pausing to look in the mirror, I took in the old shift and my unkempt hair, loose around my shoulders.
Usually, I had little chance of seeing anyone, but knowing I could stumble across Kitty, I felt more conscious than ever of my pitiful state.
Short of waking Emma for help dressing, I’d likely only make myself look worse.
I didn’t even own a dressing gown, which had never felt like more of an oversight than as I pulled on my secondhand tailcoat. It would just have to do.
My first stop was down to the kitchens, where I carefully wrapped some leftover gingerbread rounds up in a cloth. If I added a few more of the biscuits than I usually would bring for myself alone, there was no one around to notice or pass judgement.
The library was empty when I crept inside, and I tried to suppress the disappointment in my chest. The room was a comfort regardless of the absence of blonde-haired girls within its walls.
I pulled out one of the most familiar books and curled up on a sofa, not in the mood for the cold floorboards.
My candle burned cheerfully beside me, and I’d left the door to the room open. For absolutely no reason at all.
I got more absorbed in the book than I’d intended to, losing track of the material world around me. My reminder of it came in the form of two hands clamping down heavily onto my shoulders and a voice loudly announcing “Boo!” right beside my ear.
It was impossible not to jump. I held back a scream but dropped my book as the muscles in my body pulled tight against one another.
I knew there was likely no real threat—the now-familiar giggling behind me was my biggest clue—but my heart was far less logical than my head.
It raced laps as I tried to persuade it to calm down.
Kitty dropped onto the sofa beside me, stealing a gingerbread biscuit. Her laughter trailed off when she noticed the heaving of my lungs.
“Forgive me,” she said. “It was supposed to be in jest. I think sometimes I forget I am not at Longbourn anymore. Lydia and Lizzy were quite used to a few scares, but I imagine you are not. Are you all right?”
With the question, she reached out to touch my cheek.
I wasn’t sure entirely what possessed her to do it, but she traced the back of her fingers across my skin as I fought to regain control of my breathing.
Her proximity was doing little to help the matter.
For my lungs and my sanity, I shifted away just a little so her hand fell away. I missed the contact immediately.
Seemingly just as displaced as I was by the moment, Kitty nibbled on my gingerbread and scanned her eyes around the room in the search of something on which to fix her attention. When they landed on the book now resting in my lap, she reached out for it. I didn’t stop her.
“This,” she declared, as she tried to read the first line, “is not in English.”
“No,” I agreed, hiding my smile. “It is not. It’s in Latin.”
Kitty’s look of surprise had my heart crashing into my ribs, and I had never been more grateful to have it so confined, or it would surely leap even closer towards her. Her eyes were wide, her lips drawn together in the slightest of gasps. It was a picture I wanted to paint.
“You cannot read this,” she said, her disbelief evident in every word.
“I assure you I can. Whenever my brother came home from school in the holidays, I would endlessly mither him about what he had learnt. I think he taught me at first just to keep me quiet, but I liked to learn and he rather liked to play teacher. I had my own little exercise book and everything,” I admitted, my cheeks warm with blush at the admission.
It had angered my governess that I so desperately wanted to study Latin and Greek rather than needlepoint or dancing, but Darcy had indulged me and she never felt she could argue with him.
“Well then,” Kitty said, shifting just a little closer and holding out the book to me. “Prove it.”
I took a second to recover from her increased proximity, her knee brushing against mine, but managed to collect myself enough to take the book back.
I was a few dozen pages into Virgil’s Aeneid, a copy my brother had used at school.
There were small doodles in the margins that signified every time he’d gotten bored and his mind wandered.
Trees, more often than not. I wondered if he’d been thinking of home, where the forests went on for miles.
When I started to read aloud, I knew exactly what was coming, for it was the Latin I let spill from my tongue. Just as I anticipated, Kitty nudged me with her elbow, laughing as she rolled her eyes.
“In English!” she protested. “Or else I shall have no idea what it is you’re saying.”
I just smiled. Seeing her laugh had been my hope, and I would have liked nothing more than to make it my only goal in life from that moment on.
It lit her up from inside like someone had touched flame to a candlewick, her eyes bright and animated.
I simply could not look away, and it was several long moments before I could bring myself to return my gaze to the page in front of me.
My teasing over, I slipped into English.
It took a little longer to read that way, translating as I went, but Kitty hung on my every word.
She watched my lips, my finger tracing under each sentence, my hair as it slipped from behind my ear.
It thrilled me to know it was not Virgil’s story holding her attention.
I read my way through a few pages before I set the book down.
“This is probably not to your taste,” I said. “Even translated.”
“I cannot pretend to be following much of the story, but it is no hardship to hear you read it,” Kitty admitted.
I could do better than no hardship. Pemberley’s library was always open to visitors looking for an escape amongst pages, but it was usually Elizabeth and Darcy who played host. I never got the chance to make use of my encyclopaedic knowledge of the shelves, and I was keen to introduce Kitty to a section I thought she would much enjoy.
Basing my choice on little more than a suspicion, I dragged across the library ladder to climb up to one of the shelves above the door.
I surveyed the selection of books concerning the world beyond our shores and picked some personal favourites.
There were a few diaries of notable travellers and several large compendiums that came with exquisite colour plates depicting the most popular and picturesque locations.
Passing my choices to Kitty, I climbed back down to find she had spread them out over the rug before my feet had even made contact with the floorboards.
“These are beautiful,” she said, her voice almost reverent as she admired a depiction of Rome.
“You wish to travel to the Continent?” I guessed.
“I would like to go somewhere I could be certain no one had ever met any of my sisters first,” she said, sighing wistfully. “These places are stunning, but my mother says the only chance I have of making it out of the country is if I marry a man with an occupation that gets him sent overseas.”
My heart seized in my chest, losing its rhythm at the idea of Kitty marrying.
Of course she was going to marry. It was what respectable women did, what they had to do.
There was certainly no world in which I would be free to marry Kitty.
The very idea was laughable, and I pushed it from my mind as quickly as it had flickered up, snuffing it out like a flame.
Kitty did not want that. I was not allowed to want that. It would simply not be allowed.
I wanted to be the one to travel with her.
If she lit up like this at illustrations and paintings, then I wanted to see her reaction to the sights themselves.
I had read endlessly about so many of them that I could keep her entertained for hours, because by some miracle she seemed content to listen to me ramble.
Perhaps she might reward my inexhaustible facts with a kiss, even if just to silence me for a moment.
I pushed the idea from my mind. It was ludicrous, and it would do neither of us any good for me to dwell on it.
“I’m sure there is a way for you to find yourself overseas,” I said, hoping there was nothing in my voice that betrayed my thoughts.
“What about you?” Kitty asked. “Do you have aspirations to travel? Perhaps you could meet other people like you.”
I resisted the urge to freeze, aware even the tension in my shoulders might give away too much. I was so sure I’d been careful. Surely she had no idea of the thoughts that pervaded my whole mind when I looked at her, chasing out anything sensible or sane.
“People like me?” I asked cautiously, needing to be certain of what she was implying.
Then there was the other intertwined implication.
Other people. Sometimes I dreamt there were places with people like that.
Others who lingered too long in front of portraits of beautiful women, who dreamt of kissing rouged lips and holding delicate hands.
It seemed ludicrous to imagine a place where that was accepted, but the very idea was paradisiacal.
“Those who are obsessed with knowledge and prefer books to people,” Kitty said, her words at once a relief and a disappointment.
“I do not prefer books to people,” I protested. Kitty gave me a doubtful look, raising an eyebrow, and I conceded her point just a little. “Not to all people.”
There were several notable exceptions. The most recent was sitting before me, polishing off the last of my gingerbread. Not even Darcy usually got away with that.