Seeing Kitty curled in the large armchair by the window was as unnatural as finding a flamingo in a coal mine.
She had a book open in her lap. She was frowning at the pages with such fierce concentration that the effort seemed physically painful, as if she were trying to lift the words off the paper with her mind.
"Kitty?"
Kitty startled so violently the book flew from her hands. It performed a clumsy pirouette in the air before landing on the carpet with a thud that echoed in the quiet room.
"Mary!" She pressed a hand to her chest, her breathing shallow. "You frightened me! I was reading! Very seriously! I am a serious person now!"
Mary bent to retrieve the fallen volume, setting Charles on the floor. Charles immediately walked over to the book and sniffed it with deep suspicion, as if sensing it contained moral instruction.
Mary examined the spine.
Sermons to Young Womenby James Fordyce.
She opened to the page Kitty had marked with a dried flower—a dandelion, appropriate enough, a weed pretending to be a flower.
"You have been reading Fordyce." Mary's voice was carefully neutral, though her eyebrows were climbing near her hairline.
"Yes! Every day!" Kitty's chin lifted in defiance. "I am improving my mind, Mary. I am being sensible. I am not giggling or flirting or thinking about officers. I am thinking about... about..."
She gestured vaguely at the book, clearly uncertain what one was supposed to think about whilst reading Fordyce, other than perhaps the benefits of a nap.
"Dignity," Mary supplied. "The dignity of silence. The importance of moral fortitude. The dangers of excessive levity causing one to resemble a hyena."
"Yes! Exactly! Those things!" Kitty nodded vigorously. "I have been very dignified, Mary. I have not laughed in three days. Mamma thinks I am ill. She has threatened to call the apothecary because she says my silence is unnatural and possibly contagious. But I told her, I am not ill, I am serious. Like Mary."
Mary looked at her younger sister. The bright eyes were carefully dulled, the natural vivacity suppressed beneath a mask of forced solemnity. Kitty was seventeen, pretty in a way that would blossom into beauty if given sunshine and laughter. She was also, at this precise moment, performing a very poor imitation of Mary Bennet, complete with furrowed brow and pursed lips.
It was, objectively, the most ridiculous thing Mary had ever witnessed. It was like watching a butterfly trying to be a moth. It was also, inexplicably, rather touching.
"Kitty." Mary sat in the chair opposite, arranging her brown skirts neatly. "How long have you been reading page forty-seven?"
Kitty's composure cracked.
"Two days," she whispered miserably. "The words keep moving, Mary. I read a sentence and then I forget it immediately because it is so boring. And the sentences are so long. And there are no pictures. And Dr Fordyce keeps saying things about female delicacy that make me want to scream, but screaming is not dignified, so I just sit here and feel my soul leaving my body very slowly through my ears."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because—" Kitty's voice broke. "Because everyone left. Jane left. Lizzy left. Even Lydia left, and Lydia never leaves, she just gets louder until you pay attention to her. And now it is just me and Mamma and Papa. And Mamma cries all day about her nerves, and Papa hides in here and pretends we do not exist, and I thought—I thought if I was serious, if I was quiet, if I was like you—"
She stopped, her eyes filling with tears.
"I thought maybe I would not feel so alone."
Mary looked at her sister. She thought of the music room at Darcy House. She thought of Georgiana asking to learn how to stand like a mule. She thought of the hollow ache she had carried for twenty years—the desperate desire to be seen, to matter, to be more than furniture in her own family.
She thought of yellow flowers and a man who had thanked her for depth.
"Kitty." Mary leaned forward. "Put down the Fordyce."
"But—"
"Fordyce is a punishment to you, not a solution. I have read him cover to cover seven times, and I can assure you, he does not contain the answer to loneliness. He contains only the answers to questions no sensible woman would ask. Mostly regarding the evils of dancing."
She paused and reached out to squeeze her sister's hand.
"Besides, you have been trying to be the wrong Bennet."
