Kitty blinked, confused. "The wrong...?"
"You do not need to be me, Kitty. You need to be you, but a version of you that knows her own worth." Mary closed the Fordyce with a sharpsnapthat made Charles jump. "I spent my life trying to disappear into books because I thought the world did not want to see me. I was wrong. The world simply had not learned to look."
She stood, tucking the book under her arm like a confiscated weapon.
"Come. I will teach you what I learned in London. Not how to be serious—you are terrible at serious, and that is perfectly acceptable. But I will teach you how to stand your ground. How to narrow your eyes at shopkeepers. How to be a mule."
Kitty stared up at her, wiping her eyes. "Mule?"
"It is a compliment. I will explain over tea."
"Very well, sister. I will stop reading Fordyce. Oh! I borrowed ten gothic novels from the circulating library!"
Mary shook her head and picked up Charles, who had been surprisingly well-behaved—mostly because he was plotting a way to claw the spine of Dr Fordyce—and headed to her chamber.
Dinner at Longbourn had always been a physical ordeal. It was a battlefield of competing voices—Mrs Bennet's lamentations, Lydia's shrieks, Kitty's giggles, Elizabeth's wit, Jane's gentle deflections, and Mr Bennet's dry observations shot from behind his newspaper.
Tonight, the table was a tomb.
Four place settings. Four silent figures. The chandelier dripped yellow light over the empty chairs, each one a reproachful ghost of daughters now gone to houses with better menus.
Mrs Bennet sat at the head of the table. She had rearranged the seating twice already, as if shifting the cutlery could fill the void left by Jane, Lizzy, and Lydia. She poked at the roasted chicken on her plate as if it were gruel.
She let out a sigh. It was a masterpiece of a sigh. It started in her diaphragm, went through her ribs, and exited her body with enough force to flicker the candles.
"It is too quiet," Mrs Bennet declared to the room at large. "I cannot abide the quiet, Mr Bennet. It presses upon my nerves like a corset two sizes too small. A house should have noise. Laughter. Screaming, even. I never thought I would say this, but I miss Lydia's screaming. At least it wassomething."
She looked at her husband.
"My Son would never allow this silence," she added with reverent capitalisation. "Viscount Keathley understands the importance of conversation. He would tell me about his horse. He would tell me about the hats. He would not sit there reading about... about crop rotation while his mother withers away from a lack of stimulating conversation!"
Mr Bennet turned a page of his book, which he had propped against his water glass to form a barricade.
"I find the quiet rather peaceful, my dear," he murmured. "My hearing has improved so dramatically I can now hear the woodworm eating the sideboard. I believe they are discussing politics."
"Woodworm!" Mrs Bennet's fork clattered against her plate. "What use is hearing woodworm when I have no one to tell about them? I am left to rattle around this house like a dried pea in a very large drum!"
"You have Mary. You have Kitty. You have me, though I admit I am poor entertainment compared to a screaming Lydia." Mr Bennet peered over his spectacles. "We are not abandoned, my dear. We are merely rearranged."
Kitty, who was sitting opposite Mary, let out a cough. It was a small, dry, pitiful sound, clearly practised in front of a mirror to convey maximum tragedy.
"I am fading," Kitty whispered, clutching her throat. "The silence is affecting my lungs. I feel quite... consumptive."
"Do not cough, Kitty." Mary sipped her soup calmly. "It is unseemly. And if you were truly consumptive, you would not have asked for a second helping of potatoes."
Mrs Bennet let out another sigh, this one tragic enough for a Greek play. "My poor girls. One fading, one reading, and the others gone. I am a mother without a purpose."
Mary set down her spoon. The clink against the china was sharp.
"I have a proposal."
Three heads swivelled towards her. Mary did not make proposals. Mary made observations, corrections, and the occasional unsolicited lecture on moral fortitude. Proposals required boldness. Boldness required being seen.
Mary was done being wallpaper.
"Tomorrow evening," she announced, "I shall play the pianoforte after dinner. Not Clementi. Not scales. I shall play the Scottish airs I learned in London." She paused, letting the words land. "And Kitty will sing."
Kitty's fork slipped from her fingers. "I cannot sing! I am serious now! Serious people do not sing! They cough."
