Chapter Fourteen: The Storm and the Shelter
Mary Bennet was currently auditing her own soul, and she was discovering several alarming accounting errors.
The ledger of her existence had, until recently, been a document of aggressive dun. It contained tidy columns forSermons Read,Piano Sonatas Mastered, andUnsolicited Opinions Offered. The totals were balanced, the margins wide, and the contents entirely without risk.
Now, sitting in the window seat of the Longbourn drawing room, Mary mentally dipped a quill into ink and struck a line through the entire page. The new inventory was a catastrophe of irregularities.
Item One:I made a man lose his marbles. (Method: Wearing a yellow-green muslin and not sermonizing. Result: Highly effective).
Item Two:I helped a man find his footing in Meryton. (Status: Work in Progress. Current yield: Several miles of drainage ditches and one very muddy coat).
Item Three:I have lost my marbles. (Cause: Aforementioned man. Prognosis: Terminal).
She glanced at the hearthrug. Charles was washing a paw with fastidious care, very much like a monarch preparing for a levee. The cat stopped, fixed her with a slow blink of golden eyes, and purred.
"Traitor," Mary whispered to the cat.
The feline republican who despised the entire human race had defected. He had decided that Mr Bingley was acceptable staff. It was a betrayal of their shared misanthropy, and Mary was entirely sympathetic to it.
She turned back to the window. Outside, the early September sky was a bruising purple, heavy with the threat of violence. In the distance, a solitary figure on horseback trotted away from the house. Her father was riding towards the boundary line where Charles-the-human was undoubtedly waist-deep in a ditch, happy as a clam in mud.
A sigh escaped her. It vibrated in her chest—not a sensible exhale, but a jagged, heavy sound of longing.
It is merely atmospheric pressure,she told herself firmly.The barometer is falling. A drop in pressure affects the humours. It is not love. It is the natural sciences.
Natural sciences, however, did not usually make one want to weep into a piece of stationery.
She unfolded the letter on her lap for the third time. The paper was thick, creamy, and smelled faintly of roses—Pemberley paper.
Dear Mary,
I have been diligently practising the Mule posture. Lady Catherine, Anne, and your sister Lydia are visiting. Lady Catherine informed me yesterday that my hem was an inch too short. I merely stared at a point above her left ear and counted to four hundred. She eventually stopped speaking to inhale, at which point I offered her a scone. I believe I won.
Mary traced the signature.Georgiana.A fellow soldier in the war against invisibility. Mary felt a fierce swell of pride. Georgiana was winning her battles.
Mary did not want to be invisible anymore. Not tohim.
"Oh, the horror!"
The exclamation came from the chaise longue, where Kitty was currently draped in a posture that threatened to cut off the blood supply to her left arm. She held a leather-bound volume titledThe Crypt of Eternal Sorrowsaloft, looking like a martyr to the cause of fiction.
"The spectres are emerging from the walls," Kitty whispered, her eyes wide. "Lady Eleanora is trapped in the dungeons with only a flickering candle and her virtue."
"If she has a candle, she is doing better than most," Mary said dryly, refolding Georgiana's letter in precise creases. "And virtue is excellent company, though it provides poor illumination for reading maps."
Kitty ignored the logic, turning the page with a frantic rustle. "You have no soul, Mary. No appreciation for the sublime terror of the unknown."
