Epilogue
Open books covered the library floor, a patchwork of texts and images that Kitty was poring over.
She flitted from one volume to the next, pulling the smaller books into her lap as she interrogated the pages for information, as if she hadn’t read them all dozens of times already during the five months she’d officially called Pemberley home.
“Do you think we can visit Greece?” she asked, looking up from a map she’d folded out of an atlas.
“I think we can visit Greece next time,” I said with a laugh.
In order to stay out of the way of Kitty’s apparent plan to open every travel-related book within Pemberley’s library, I’d settled myself on one of the armchairs with a battered copy of Robinson Crusoe.
Exchanging the atlas for a book of watercolour landscapes, she picked her way across the sea of paper and climbed unceremoniously into my lap.
I protested, sacrificing my place in my novel in order to keep ahold of her, but couldn’t keep the fondness out of my complaints.
“Look how beautiful it is,” she said, gesturing down to the image in the book.
“Extremely beautiful,” I agreed, not looking away from her face as I tucked a curl behind her ear, “but we’re only going as far as Switzerland. It’s a two-month trip, love. If we go to Greece, we’ll miss the birth of our niece or nephew.”
Kitty huffed, resting her head on my shoulder.
We’d been over our travel plans countless times, but her excitement still got the better of her.
This trip was a short one, planned to take us back to Llangollen for a visit, and then to give Kitty a taste of the Continent.
We were due back before Elizabeth gave birth.
A proper journey could come later—if Kitty wanted to go to Greece, I’d take her there.
“Elizabeth and Jane are making me look bad,” Kitty said with a sigh. “Married to successful men and now Lizzy’s going to be a mother. At least Mary’s still at home, or I don’t think I’d ever hear the end of it.”
I pressed my lips to her temple in a silent reassurance.
She promised me that her future featured me and only me, that she’d never marry regardless of how much her mother might insist, but I knew she wasn’t quite like me.
She could love a man. The fact she chose to stay with me in the face of her family’s potential disapproval was a blessing I did not take lightly.
“Considering Mary still assures me in her letters that she can dream up no worse torture than receiving suitors, I daresay you’re safe for a little longer,” I said.
Since returning to Pemberley, I’d found myself with more than a few new letter-writing commitments.
My letters to Mary had begun rather formally, but now I wrote to her as easily as if she were my own sister, exchanging book recommendations and chess tips between Pemberley and Longbourn.
I had started writing to Charlotte immediately, filling page after page with details of Plas Newydd and its inhabitants.
Lady Catherine had firmly decided that my brother and I were beyond help, and other than a lengthy letter to Darcy detailing my failings, it seemed perhaps we were both finally free of her.
Still, I sent Charlotte letters for Anne, trusting her to pass them on without my aunt getting the chance to read them.
Obviously keen to forge a connection with the Salter family, Lady Catherine had apparently presented her own daughter as an alternative bride.
Anne confided in me that she’d never before pretended to be as weak and sickly as when she first met Lord Salter as a suitor.
He had never returned. The letters were more contact than I’d had with Anne for years, but she was far more agreeable than her mother and, amid our lengthy exchanges, I could see the beginning of a shy friendship.
Then there were, of course, letters to Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby, in which I still expressed my gratitude and appreciation for their kindness, and assured them of my brother’s continued support of Kitty and me.
The most important letters, however, were those I was sending all over the country, trying, perhaps in vain, to find Frances.
With Darcy’s help, I was attempting to track her down to confirm that she was safe.
If she needed money, he had promised we could provide it.
If she still wanted a job after all these years, she was welcome back.
I had gotten far enough to know she was not welcome with her family anymore, but there were still leads to exhaust, and I would not let the matter rest until I had followed each and every one.
I desperately hoped she had built herself a comfortable life alongside the girl with whom she’d been caught.
Kitty kissed my jaw, trailing her fingertip over the inside of my elbow to spark shivers up and down my arm. She knew how best to try to talk me into something.
“It will be hard for Mother to play matchmaker if I’m in Greece.”
There was a tone of sweet persuasion to Kitty’s voice, her eyes sparking with hope. If we hadn’t already promised Elizabeth and Darcy we’d be there to help them with their newborn child, it would have been all too easy to give in.
“Next time,” I assured her. “We can spend as much time in Greece as you like.”
“You know,” Kitty began, innocently, “Sappho was Greek.”
I felt myself blush, even though I had been the one to show Kitty the scraps of her poetry that survived.
A well-loved copy had been delivered courtesy of one Charlotte Collins after I’d told her all about Llangollen in my letters, and Elizabeth had ensured it was rebound in a deep red leather and gilded with silver foil.
I’d only ever treasured one book quite as much in my life, and I kept it next to The Disposition of an English Lady in the drawer beside my bed.
I’d let Kitty read the English translations herself, and recited her the original Greek.
It felt like the closest I might ever get to seeing a published account of how it felt.
How I felt. There were those who tried to argue Sappho felt no love for women, but I understood what I read.
The original texts, free from any translator’s attempts to adjust the meaning, did not lie.
“I am aware,” I said, tracing my thumb over Kitty’s cheekbone. “Is that why you want to go to Greece?”
“I want to go everywhere,” Kitty whispered, “as long as it’s with you.”
She turned her face to kiss my palm, and when she looked back at me, she had made her eyes wide and pleading. I braced myself for what I knew was coming.
“Speaking of places we could go together, Elizabeth and Darcy are holding a ball tonight,” she said, as if anyone in the house had spoken of anything else in the past few days. The request for my attendance was unspoken but so blatant I could not ignore it.
“Kitty…” I sighed, resting my head against her shoulder.
We had the freedom to be ourselves at Pemberley under normal circumstances, but we couldn’t do that when it was full of other people.
No matter how supportive Elizabeth and Darcy were, there was no guarantee their friends would grant us the same courtesy.
Everything had changed, but at the same time nothing had changed.
I still could not be Kitty’s partner in public.
“Please? It’s no fun at all without you,” Kitty begged, and it was so hard to argue with her when she was pressing kisses to my hair and running her fingers up and down my arm.
I wasn’t even sure she knew what exactly she was doing.
“Besides, it will be the last one before we leave, so whatever happens, we can escape to the Continent afterwards. And I promise to keep you away from any walls you could fall off.”
I couldn’t help my burst of laughter. “Okay,” I relented. “I’ll go.”
At least it meant an evening of seeing Kitty happy. She leant forwards to press her lips to my temple, then trailed kisses down across my cheekbone. I let my eyes flutter closed, still giddy with the fact we could do this in the middle of the day, in a communal area of the house.
When Kitty moved to kiss my smiling lips, she shifted in my lap and I felt the book of Grecian landscapes slide over her skirts, heading for the floor.
Before it could bounce onto the hardwood and destroy its spine, I grabbed it and tucked it beside Robinson Crusoe where it was safe.
She was lucky I loved her more than books.
Despite Emma’s skilled needlework and best attempts, there had been no saving my pink dress after its unfortunate encounter with the garden wall.
When I told her I would be going to the ball that evening after all, I expected to be wearing an older dress that had been languishing in a chest with no events to be seen at.
I hadn’t minded the idea, but instead Emma’s smile had been knowing and indulgent.
“I think I have just the thing for you to wear,” she said, evidently part of a conspiracy.
The dress she retrieved was a soft lilac, with embroidered white vines trailing around the hem. It had more of the old Grecian style that most dresses were starting to move away from, but the colour was subtle and romantic, just far enough away from white for it not to be seen as outdated.
“Whose dress is this?” I asked. I hadn’t bought a new one in months, not since before I met Kitty.
“Yours,” Emma admitted. “I told Mr. Darcy that I couldn’t mend the one that got damaged, and he insisted it was to be replaced. The design was mostly Mrs. Darcy’s input. They wanted it to be kept a secret until you felt ready to go to a ball, so you wouldn’t feel you had to go just to wear it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. It was understated and quiet, but elegant enough to give me that extra spark of confidence I needed to walk into a room full of veritable strangers.
“And I do believe I have the perfect feather in a matching shade of—”
“No!” I laughed. “Still no feathers.”