Chapter Fourteen The Storm and the Shelter #3
His breathing deepened into sleep. Mary exhaled. She looked across the bed at Charles Bingley. He was dirty, he was shaking, and he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
"He will recover." She forced the steel back into her spine. "He is too stubborn to die."
"He has excellent care," Mr Bingley said softly.
He reached out, as if to touch her hand where it rested on the sheet, but pulled back at the last second. Mary saw the hesitation.
She reached across and took his muddy hand in hers.
"Thank you."
Mr Bingley gripped her fingers. "You are most welcome."
And with that he turned, and the door clicked shut, sealing the scent of laudanum and mortality inside the Green Room.
*
Mary stood in the corridor. The silence of Netherfield at three in the morning was not peaceful. It was heavy, pressing against her ears with the weight of unsaid prayers.
For hours, she had been the Mule. She had been the wall against which her mother's hysteria broke. She had been the anchor for Kitty's gothic terrors. She had been the stone statue holding her father's hand while Mr Jones committed necessary violence upon his bones.
But walls, even stubborn ones, eventually crack.
The fierce resolve, which had served as a rigid corset holding her upright since the first peal of thunder, vanished. It did not fade. It abandoned her without notice.
Her knees turned to water. A tremor started in her hands, violently shaking the spectacles she removed to wipe her eyes. She gasped, a jagged, ugly sound that tore through the quiet hallway.
The Ledger opened in her mind, unbidden.
Status: Compromised.
Structural Integrity: Failing.
Conclusion: I am about to make a scene.
A sob escaped her, loud and unbidden. She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle it, her shoulders shaking. She was Mary Bennet. She did not weep in hallways. She quoted Scripture. She cited philosophers. She did not crumble.
"Mary."
The voice was low, rough with exhaustion.
She turned. Mr Bingley stood a few feet away.
He had changed into a dressing gown, but he looked as though he had not slept in a decade.
He did not ask if she was well. He did not offer a platitude about recovery or providence.
He saw the tremor in her hands and the devastation in her eyes, and he simply stepped forward.
He opened his arms.
Mary did not think. She did not calculate the propriety of the action. She did not consult her mental ledger regarding the social implications of embracing a bachelor in a dimly lit corridor at three in the morning.
She collapsed into him.
His arms closed around her, solid and warm.
She buried her face in the silk of his dressing gown, ruining the fabric with salt water, and wept.
She cried out of fear, out of relief, out of exasperated love for a mother who screamed about entails while her husband bled; and finally, out of exhaustion for the sheer effort it took simply being the invisible daughter who saw everything.
He held her tight. He did not flinch. He rested his chin on the top of her head, his hand moving in slow, soothing circles against her back.
"I have you," he murmured into her hair. "I have you, Mary. You can let go."
She clung to his lapels, her fingers curling into the fabric.
"I thought..." she choked out, her voice muffled against his chest. "I thought the storm took him."
"The storm tried," he whispered, tightening his hold. "But Mr Bennet is obstinate. And you are his daughter."
They stood there for a long time, the only sound her weeping and the steady beat of his heart under her ear. The house slept around them, indifferent to the quiet revolution taking place in the hallway.
A low, vibrating rumble rose from the floorboards.
Charles-the-cat, having slipped out of the sickroom, wound himself around their ankles. He pressed his orange flank against Mary's hem, then against Mr Bingley's slippers, purring with the force of a small, furry engine.
The cat paused and looked up. He extended a paw and batted gently at the hem of Mary's dress, a silent demand to be included in the circle of comfort.
Mary drew a shuddering breath, pulling back slightly to look up at Mr Bingley. Her face was wet, her eyes red-rimmed, her spectacles clutched in a white-knuckled grip. She knew she must present a sight of absolute disarray. She was a disaster. She was a ruin.
Mr Bingley gazed down at her. He did not see a plain girl in a brown dress. He saw the woman who had marched into a storm for her father.
"You are a mess, Mr Bingley," she managed, a watery, weak laugh escaping her.
"I am a Man of the Soil," he corrected gently, using his thumb to wipe a tear from her cheek. "And you, Mary, are the most substantial thing I have ever held."
The cat meowed, winding a figure-eight around their legs, binding them together.
"Charles agrees," Mr Bingley noted, a small, tired smile touching his lips.
Mary leaned her forehead back against his chest, closing her eyes. She was tired. She was frightened. But for the first time in her life, she was entirely visible.