Chapter Sixteen: Dump the Consols
The agrarian tribunal in the Green Room showed no signs of adjourning. Robert was currently threatening to court-martial Tepper for failing to turn page four hundred with sufficient reverence, while Mr Bennet offered slurred, unhelpful commentary on the specific viscosity of Hertfordshire manure.
Charles backed away. He needed air. He needed a sanctuary where people were not waving gold canes. His chest ached from a pressure that came directly from a woman currently haunting his guest wing.
He went down the stairs and then turned right to the music room. He needed a place to think, a quiet corner where he could lean against a wall and brood. Brooding seemed the appropriate activity for someone who wore a coat made of carpet and was carrying the weight of the world's most complicated courtship.
He pushed the double doors open.
She was there.
Mary stood in front of the enormous instrument, her hand resting on the polished mahogany lid. She wore a gown of soft, oversized grey wool that swallowed her small frame. Her hair,usually pulled back in a knot tight enough to withstand a gale, fell in a dark, unpinned cascade down her back.
Charles halted, his boots squeaking on the parquet. "I thought you were resting."
Mary started, and turned to face him. She adjusted her spectacles, an impulsive motion she used in most situations that felt out of her control. "The silence upstairs was loud. My mind refused to settle. I fled."
"It is a good instrument." Charles walked into the room. "It arrived more than a month ago. Tepper claims it weighs more than a guilty conscience."
"It is magnificent." Her fingers traced the ivory keys, silent and reverent.
"I heard you." The confession tumbled out, unbidden. He had meant to keep it a secret, a private treasure hoarded in the vault of his memory. "In London, at Darcy House. You were in the music room with Miss Darcy."
Mary stilled. She turned to face him, her eyes wide.
"You were playing." His voice dropped to a hush. He took a step closer, drawn by the gravity of her presence. "But it was not a song. It was a war. It crashed against the walls. It screamed. I had never heard such fury, nor such loneliness. It haunted me."
He paused, studying her face—the pale cheeks, the determined set of her jaw.
"I stood behind the door and listened," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "I simply stood there, listening to you tear the world apart with your hands. I bought this Broadwood because I wanted to give that storm a place to live. I wanted you to have a canvas large enough for the anger."
Mary lowered her gaze to the keys. "I was angry then. I felt invisible. The music was the only way to scream without receiving a lecture on propriety."
"And now?" Charles waited, his pulse beating fast. "Is the storm still there? Do you need to scream?"
She did not answer. She sat on the bench, her simple dress pooling around her on the velvet seat. She adjusted the fabric and poised her hands over the keys.
Charles held his breath. He braced for the thunder. He expected the crashing chords, the dark, brooding sorrow he had witnessed in London. He prepared to weather the gale. He wanted the gale. He wanted to be the man who stood in the storm with her.
Mary pressed down. The keys were heavy, resisting her fingers, demanding strength—a Broadwood was not a toy for a drawing room, but an instrument for a concert hall.
The sound that filled the room was not a storm.
She played a waltz—that dizzying, dangerous German rhythm that had made the Patronesses of Almack's clutch their pearls.
The melody spilled into the air, bright and golden as the afternoon sun. It swirled. It danced. It possessed a playful, teasing lilt that Charles had never associated with the serious, bookish Mary Bennet. The notes chased one another up the scale, laughing, tripping over the silence, and filling the cavernous room with pure joy.
Charles gasped. The air left his lungs.
She was not playing to hide. She was not playing to scream. She was playing because the sun was shining, because her father was safe, and because she was alive.
He watched her profile. There was a smile on her lips—not the tight, polite grimace of the drawing room, but a soft, private expression of contentment. Her shoulders, usually hunched under the weight of expectations, moved freely with the rhythm. The music spun around them, light as a feather, warm as an embrace.
The ache in his chest vanished. The fear that he was merely a project, a "Man of Depth" to be managed, dissolved into the music. She was not seeking a fellow sufferer. She was seeking a partner for the dance.
She was happy. And he, Charles Bingley, was the man standing in the room while she played the music of her own joy.
The final chord rang out, bright and clear. It hung in the air, shimmering.
