Charles peered through the crack in the mahogany.
The music room was bathed in the golden light of the late afternoon. Miss Darcy was sitting on a chair near the window, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed, listening with an intensity that bordered on religious reverence.
But Charles did not look at her. His gaze was fixed on the figure at the pianoforte.
Mary Bennet sat on the bench. Her back was straight, rigid as a soldier on parade. She was wearing a brown dress that was the exact colour of a dried leaf. Her spectacles had slid slightly down her nose. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it seemed painful.
She looked entirely ordinary, undistinguished like the furniture.
But her hands.
Her hands were alive. They struck the keys with a ferocity that contradicted every inch of her prim appearance. She was not playing the instrument. She was fighting it. She was wrestling a confession out of the ivory and wire.
Charles watched her face. Her eyes were open, staring at the sheet music, but he did not think she was seeing the notes. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line, and her brow was furrowed with a concentration that looked like pain.
God, she is beautiful.
Not in the way Jane was striking, although her skin was smooth alabaster and her lips as rosy as her sister's. Not in the way Elizabeth's eyes sparked with cleverness, althoughthey had a lovely hazel colour and a deep seriousness that bordered on melancholy. Charles stared and stared, his mouth agape.
The music swelled—a great, heaving sob of sound—and then crashed down into a whisper. A single, high note hung in the air, vibrating with a loneliness that matched the hollow space Charles had felt in his own chest for months.
I am invisible,the music seemed to say.I am here, and I am burning, and no one looks.
Charles felt a lump form in his throat. He remembered the girl at the exhibition. The one who talked about trade routes and turnips. The one who called herself 'a shield.' He had thought her funny. He had thought her sharp.
He had not realised she was a storm trapped in a teapot. A very dun teapot.
He did not weep. A bit more education might have brought him to it, but for now, he just felt a sudden, sharp ache in his chest. It was the "depth" he had been searching for, found in the last place he had thought to look.
The final chord faded. Miss Bennet lifted her hands. She held them in the air for a moment, shaking slightly, before dropping them into her lap. She slumped. The soldier vanished, replaced by a tired young woman in a brown dress.
"That was..." Miss Darcy's voice drifted from the room, small and awed. "That was deep as the ocean, Mary."
"It was acceptable." Her voice was flat, clipped, scrubbing away the emotion as if she were wiping a spill from the table. "My timing was imprecise in the third measure. I rushed the arpeggio."
"Who cares about the timing?" Miss Darcy cried. "I felt it."
"Feelings are inefficient," Miss Bennet stated, standing up and smoothing her skirts. "But thank you. We should resume the scales. Discipline is the only cure for indulgence."
Charles pulled back from the door. His heart was hammering against his ribs. He stared at Darcy.
Darcy was smiling with a knowing look.
"She is not what you expected," he said.
"She is..." Charles struggled for the word. He wanted to saymagnificent. He wanted to saystunning. He wanted to say that he had just seen a woman take her own soul out of a box and show it to the world, only to stuff it back in and complain about the timing. "She is deep."
"She is a Bennet," Darcy shrugged, as if that explained everything. "They are full of surprises. Come. Before they catch us."
He allowed himself to be led away, but he cast one last look back at the door. He could hear the monotonous sound of scales beginning—up and down, mechanical, precise. The mask was back on. But he had seen what lay beneath.
He moved through the corridor, his soul vibrating with the magnitude of his discovery. He was altered. Profound. Floating on a higher plane of existence. He kept his eyes fixed on the middle distance, contemplating the nature of sorrow, and walked face-first into the doorframe.
"Beg pardon," Charles muttered to the wood, stepping back and shaking his head to clear the stars.
He adjusted his hat, took a deep breath intended to re-establish his dignity, pivoted to the left, and immediately clipped his shoulder against the other side of the frame. He stumbled, caught himself on a footman—who looked notablyalarmed—and finally managed to navigate the complex architectural challenge of an open door.
He walked out and collapsed into his carriage.
