Chapter Eleven #2
I could not help the burst of hope in my chest. If kissing Helena had not been wrong, kissing Kitty couldn’t be wrong, either.
It seemed unwise to push the idea if Kitty had yet to land upon it herself, so I just watched her, waiting.
She chewed on her lip, clearly debating something, but when she finally spoke, it was not what I expected.
“Did you love Helena? Do you love her?” she asked.
She was jealous. I had to fight to suppress my smile as I took in the hard set of her jaw and the clench of her fingers.
Everything with Helena had happened so long ago that I thought of her only in the past. Even after the business with Wickham had settled and I no longer felt the need to keep away from her for her own good, our lives had gone down entirely different paths.
Other than the secret of that one stolen, interrupted moment, we would likely have little to talk about over tea.
“I have not seen her in almost two years. She is married, and I think is now a mother,” I explained gently. Boldly, I traced my thumb down Kitty’s jaw.
“But do you love her?” Kitty insisted, seemingly desperate for confirmation.
“No.”
I thought perhaps that would be the end of things. She had her answer, explicitly stated, and I assumed that was enough to settle the line of inquisition. Until she asked something else, something I had not expected.
“Do you love me?”
My breath caught in my throat, and a few seconds of hindered breathing made me feel lightheaded.
“You have ignored me,” I reminded her. “The whole time I have been here. We…” I looked out into the forest, unsure how sensible it was to speak so freely in a place where we could so easily be overheard by someone hiding amongst the trees.
I’d been candid about my history with Helena, but that did not incriminate Kitty in the potential earshot of her family.
“After what happened in the grotto, and that letter, you have barely looked at me.”
“I know,” she said, her voice quiet and cracked. “It is no excuse, but I was… frightened. I have never done anything like that before.”
I was not entirely void of sympathy for the notion, but I still vividly recalled the agony of the past few days. If she’d voiced her worries sooner, having this conversation days prior could have alleviated so much of that pain for both of us.
“You were the one who chose to do it,” I reminded her, taking the gamble that our actions in the shell grotto were as emblazoned onto her brain as they were onto mine.
“I know.” She was even quieter, forcing me to strain my ears to hear her words.
“I told you, in that letter, that I didn’t understand these feelings, and I don’t.
But I don’t regret it, George. What we did that night.
I regret how I’ve acted since you’ve been here, but nothing else.
Being around my family unsettled some of the things I thought I was sure of, I have to admit to that, but now you’re here and I can look at you and touch you…
” She tugged my fingers to her lips and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “I am so sure of them.”
“Do you love me?” I asked, boldly.
She did not skip a beat.
“Yes.”
The intensity behind the word surprised us both. It was impossible not to trace Kitty’s bashful smile with the tip of my index finger, trying to memorise the shape.
“Even when I was trying to keep my distance, I couldn’t help but leave you flowers,” she said, her fingers skimming over the hair ribbons laced around my wrist. “I had to express my affections for you somehow, or else they were going to overwhelm me. But now, if you have no objections, I’d prefer to express them like this. ”
She moved slowly, giving me plenty of time to move away or ask her to stop, but all I wanted to do was haul her closer as quickly as I could. I forced myself to stay put, letting her come to me. That seemed important. When she finally kissed me, it was worth the wait.
Her lips tasted faintly of the strawberry jam served with breakfast. She must have been in the kitchens, sneaking more of it on leftover bread, for it to have lingered this long.
The image had me smiling, which did little to help the accuracy of the kiss but made it no less perfect.
Her fingers were in my hair, and those that weren’t were tangled with mine.
It was just as risky as kissing Helena. At least then we’d had a door between us and the rest of the world, and I had learnt the lesson to always keep that door locked.
Yet here Kitty and I were, surrounded by a spectrum of leaves, every colour of brown and orange and yellow, out in the middle of the woods for anyone in search of some fresh air to trip across.
It was foolish and dangerous, but Kitty was enough of a distraction that I could focus on little but her proximity.
When she eventually sat back, I let her go only because we both needed time to refill our lungs.
“Does this mean I no longer get flowers?” I teased, the words buoyant with breathlessness.
The taste of her laughter was sweeter than strawberry jam against my lips as she kissed me quickly again.
“You can have all the flowers you want,” she promised. “I’d give you the world if I could.”
We sat like that, undeniably too close and too caught up in each other, for as long as we dared.
The longer we were gone, the greater the chance of someone venturing out to look for us, and there were few worse situations we could be found in.
Elizabeth might not have taken umbrage, but I didn’t know how many of the other members of the Bennet family would share her acceptance.
I could not trust Lydia, not with knowing who her husband was.
Mrs. Bennet would hate me for distracting one of her still-unmarried daughters, if nothing else.
Jane’s and Mr. Bingley’s demeanours were bright and cheerful, but that didn’t mean they would be tolerant of something denounced as a sin.
And then there was my brother, whose love for me I had never doubted. Still, it was possible to love and hate someone in the same breath, and I couldn’t bear to test the strength of the former in light of the latter. Kitty and I were both safest if we kept secrets.
Aware we were running out of borrowed time, eventually we pulled away from the moment.
Kitty helped me to my feet, gently berating me for exerting my healing leg, and offered her arm.
It was a gesture I had never thought twice about before.
Women so often walked arm in arm with close friends, but now it seemed like so much was written beneath the surface of the action.
At least I was still unsteady on my feet, in need of support.
If anyone questioned it, we had the perfect alibi.
My real reasons for wanting to be close to her could stay buried deep beneath the more convenient truth.