Epilogue #2
Emma held up her hands in defeat, before ushering me over to sit down so she could start attempting to persuade my hair into respectability. She smiled at me in the mirror, squeezing my shoulder.
“Miss Bennet won’t be able to take her eyes off you,” she whispered.
I ducked my head so I didn’t have to watch my cheeks flush.
I still wasn’t used to anyone being so openly approving of my relationship with Kitty.
Emma had taken it all in her stride when I had told her the entire story, and she had become one of my most enthusiastic supporters.
If she hadn’t, I suspected my brother might have seen to it that she was seeking new employment.
Emma’s work was, as always, perfect. My hair was tamed and out of the way; my cheeks and lips were darkened with just enough rouge to make someone doubt themselves if they thought it was there, but enough to bring colour to my face.
She was meticulously twisting a curl back into place when someone knocked on the door.
I expected Elizabeth to be standing there, or perhaps Kitty.
Instead, when Emma swung open the door, my brother waited in the doorway.
“Some of the guests have started to arrive,” he said. “If you’re ready to go downstairs, I thought you may be desirous of an escort. I am told I have rather a repellent effect on presumptuous men wishing to try their luck with my sister.”
My reply came almost too fast. “Yes. Please.”
No doubt my latent fear was clear to Darcy, but he was good enough not to mention it directly.
Instead he waited patiently while Emma fussed with my dress, brushing off invisible pieces of fluff and rearranging the drapes of my skirt as if I wouldn’t disturb them with the first step I took.
Eventually she squeezed my hands and took a step back.
“Come back safe tonight,” she ordered, as if I weren’t simply going downstairs in my own house. There was something serious in her eyes.
“She will,” Darcy said, both firm and reassuring. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Considering the outcomes of the last two balls I’d attended, the level of concern from them both seemed fair.
Darcy held out his arm, and I gratefully took it, holding on just a little too tight.
“No one will say a word to you that you don’t want to hear,” he assured me as he led me through Pemberley’s corridors. “This is your home, and you are safe here.”
They were such simple words, but they still meant so much, even though he’d been taking the opportunity to say them as often as possible.
I relaxed my grip on Darcy’s arm, not wanting to repay him by cutting off the circulation to his hand.
I focused on his words as the noise of the ball got louder.
Everything was very much the same as at the last ball I’d attended at Pemberley, before my whole life had changed.
The same musicians in the corner, the same guests, the same reassuring smile from Elizabeth as she hurried over the moment she saw us enter the room.
The same Kitty, beaming to see me and shining in a light green dress.
She rushed past Elizabeth, taking my hand as soon as she was close enough.
“You look beautiful,” she said, her eyes not leaving mine.
Darcy cleared his throat, and Kitty took half a step back so she could look up at him. There was no fear in her eyes as she nodded her head respectfully in greeting.
“I’ll look after her,” she promised him.
Darcy smiled. “I know. If you want to leave, then you need not feel like you have to stay for the benefit of Elizabeth and me, but go upstairs rather than outside this time, please.”
He let go of my arm and I quickly took Kitty’s, my gloves sliding over the bare skin of the crook of her elbow.
Her skirts brushed against mine. It was easy to forget the rest of the room was even there, but Elizabeth started talking to me and I had to wrench my gaze from her sister to have any hope of listening.
“I’m glad the dress suits you,” Elizabeth said, taking my place at Darcy’s side. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you, both of you. You didn’t need to replace the one I ruined. It was my fault.”
“Nonsense,” Elizabeth clucked, a little of her mother coming through. “It was an accident, and you needn’t be punished for it. This dress was the least we could do.”
I hugged her quickly before relinquishing both her and my brother to the room.
As the hosts, they were in high demand as conversational partners in a way Kitty and I were blessedly not.
Even as they moved away to talk to another couple, Darcy kept an eye on me.
It once might have annoyed me to be so closely watched, but when I caught sight of James Honeyfield across the room, I was grateful for my brother’s caution.
I refused to be forced into dancing with eligible bachelors to obey ridiculous etiquette guides that did not even recognise the potential existence of the love I felt for the girl beside me.
“Dance with me?” Kitty asked, gesturing to the dance floor. A dance floor full of men facing opposite women.
I wanted to be able to say yes. I was in my own home, and I should have been able to take her hand and walk to the centre of the floor with my head held high, but I still couldn’t.
Darcy and Elizabeth might not have protested, but the room was full of people whose reaction could not be counted upon.
I loved my brother too much to damn the reputation of our family name quite so boldly in our own home.
“We can’t,” I told Kitty sadly. “I want to, but it’s not sensible.”
I rested my forehead against her temple for a long moment, squeezing my eyes closed and wishing I could kiss her.
“No,” Kitty said abruptly.
She stepped away from me but grabbed my hand to pull me after her across the room, back towards Elizabeth and Darcy.
I wasn’t sure exactly what she was protesting, and my surprise didn’t give the me chance to ask before she was depositing me next to Darcy and dragging Elizabeth a little further away to whisper frantically in her ear.
They were talking about me, that much was clear, with Kitty’s little gestures in my direction and then towards the rest of the room.
Darcy asked me the same questions I had with a raise of one eyebrow, but all I could do was shake my head.
Kitty could still be an enigma to me if she wanted to.
Whatever she was hearing, Elizabeth was focused on it intently. She listened and whispered her own questions back, nodding slowly for a moment when Kitty rested her case and returned to my side.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Finding a compromise,” she replied.
She grabbed my hand and took a candle out of its holder before leading me back over towards Elizabeth. I was confused but too curious to protest as the four of us slipped out of the room.
Kitty knew where we were going, taking us all upstairs and into a rarely used drawing room above the ball.
She appraised it with her arms crossed for a moment before nodding and crossing to throw open the windows.
Darcy and Elizabeth seemed to catch on, with Darcy helping with the last few windows as Elizabeth took the candle to light those scattered around the perimeter of the room.
The chandelier remained unlit, but there was enough of a glow to chase away the shadows and illuminate the space.
It reminded me of the library late at night.
The music from downstairs drifted through the open windows, wrapping around me and finally providing the answer to Kitty’s plot. We could dance together here.
“You are welcome downstairs, whether you want to dance or just stand and watch, but we understand if you would prefer fewer eyes,” Elizabeth said, gesturing to the expansive floor that was all ours.
I surged forwards to give Elizabeth a hug, whispering my thanks into the sleeve of her dress. Kitty took my place as soon as I was done, squeezing her sister tightly.
“I mean it. You can come downstairs if you’d prefer,” Elizabeth said. “Please don’t think you have been banished up here.”
“No, I know,” I promised her.
The offer meant the world to me, but so did the opportunity to dance with Kitty without worrying what anyone else might be saying. Elizabeth and Darcy left arm in arm, leaving Kitty and me in blissful solitude. The first thing Kitty did was kiss me.
“Now will you dance with me?” she asked, her lips barely removed from my own.
I nodded, the movement turning into another kiss as someone announced the start of the next dance from the room below.
We could just about make out the voice calling the steps, but half of them were useless to us anyway.
With only two of us on the impromptu dance floor, we had to improvise every time there was a direction to swap partners.
Halfway through, both Kitty and I were breathless more from stifled laughter than exertion.
The next time I passed near Kitty, she caught me and held me close, wrapping her arms around my waist to keep me there.
“This isn’t the step,” I protested, but neither of us were convinced by my objection.
Kitty just hummed, resting her forehead against mine and pulling me even closer.
If we did this downstairs, we’d cause a scandal—any couple would—but up here with no one to comment on what we did, I had no arguments.
We swayed gently with the music, not really dancing but letting it carry us on a slow, aimless path across the floor.
“My quiet brilliance,” Kitty whispered.
“My bold adventure,” I whispered back, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
She raised her chin to kiss me properly, the movement so instinctive that I could barely believe there was a time I thought it impossible.
As we continued to drift in each other’s arms, I thought of Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby, I thought of Charlotte, I thought of Helena, and I knew that if this was what the rest of my life looked like, I would be happy.
I had found the person who made it all worth it.
The End