I pretended not to notice, counting the number of sides of the patterns on Sir Bertram’s shell.
“The sad dragon fell in love with the sharp princess,” Bingley lowered his voice into a hush. “And he told the sharp princess every mean thing he did—all the fire he had breathed, the damage he had caused, and it was the bravest thing the dragon had ever done, because the princess might have sent him away forever.”
“Did she?”
The children waited with bated breath, and Bingley glanced at me, so brief and without guile, and then he looked each child in the eye.
“She told him she needed time to think. And the dragon went home and sat in his empty castle without his tortoise and without his princess, and he waited. Because dragons who have learned to stop roaring can also learn to be patient.”
“I want the dragon to come back,” Rose said, with the fierce conviction of a child who has never considered the possibility that love stories might not resolve. “Tell Sir Bertram to write him a letter.”
“I think,” Bingley said, and his voice was gentler than I had ever heard it, “that the dragon needs to hear from the princess. Not from the tortoise. Not from the sunshine princess. From her. Because the dragon gave up everything—his castle, his fire, his tortoise, his pride—and the only thing he kept was the hope that the sharp princess might forgive him. And forgiveness is not something you can send through a tortoise, however noble. It has to come from the person who was hurt.”
“But the dragon was sorry!” Samuel protested. “He fixed it! He brought the tortoise and the strawberries, and he told the truth. What kind of mean princess doesn’t forgive a dragon who does all that?”
My hand was at my throat, pressing against the pulse that was hammering too hard, too fast. I stood in my aunt’s garden listening to a fairy tale about a dragon and a tortoise and felt every word land.
What kind of mean princess doesn’t forgive a dragon who does all that?
I said something about the washing, or the tea, or some domestic fiction that no one believed. And then I escaped through the kitchen door and up the stairs with a deliberateness meant to look calm but felt like drowning.
Sitting at the edge of my bed, I pressed my hands flat against my knees, and felt the shaking start.
It started in my fingers, a fine, helpless tremor that crept up my arms and into my chest. I did not try to stop it. I had used up all my self-control since the lending library, and there was none left.
I had roared, not loudly but with wit, and I had breathed the fire of judgment, criticism, and contempt. I had heaped coals on Darcy’s head from the moment he injured me at first sight, and I reinterpreted his kindness as orchestration, his goodness as maneuvering—even his attention on me was a performance to achieve his own ends—which was, as he so plainly stated, to get me to love him.
I built an impenetrable fortress and filtered every subsequent encounter through the walls I had erected. And hadn’t I just tried to manage Bingley’s proposal? I had almost stopped it because I felt he had been too easily misled. I had counseled Jane to wait, to test him, to prove to herself that he was constant. I had even, God forbid, and this was to my eternal shame—told her not to allow Darcy to call on her because I wished to protect her—no, I was jealous.
A knock at the door. Jane’s quiet knock—two taps, a pause, a third.
“Lizzy? May I come in?”
“Yes.”
She entered and closed the door behind her and looked at me with the expression she reserved for moments when she believed I was in more pain than I would willingly reveal. Her engagement glow was still on her, warm as candlelight. She didnot speak, but lay beside me on the bed, the way we had done as girls at Longbourn when the world was too large, and the bedroom was the only country we could govern.
We stared at each other across the pillows. Her blue eyes. My dark ones. The beautiful sister and the sharp one.
“Oh, Lizzy.” Jane’s hand found mine on the counterpane. “You are both suffering. The sad dragon and the sharp princess.”
“Bingley has the subtlety of a cathedral bell.”
“He didn’t mean it badly…”
“Apparently.” I closed my eyes, and the tears I held at bay since the lending library on Half Moon Street seeped out without sound, which was worse than sobbing, because soundless tears are the ones that have been waiting the longest.
“Lizzy, don’t take it so hard. It was only a children’s story.”
“Yes, but it told me things I’m not proud of. It showed me how Bingley forgave Darcy without question, without recrimination. He simply accepted the truth with gladness, and now, the two of you are happy, and I’m happy for you.”
“I know you are. These tears aren’t because of the story or my happiness. Lizzy, I believe you care for Darcy, and you’ve been fighting it tooth and nail because he hurt you.”
“I’ve been roaring and breathing fire on him ever since. And I have been protecting you, which is just another form of fire breathing. I’m exhausted from all the guarding. And sad. And jealous.”
“Jealous?” Jane’s eyes widened. “Of who?”
“I was jealous of you.”
