"Ices!" Mr Bingley cried out. He was suddenly full of energy again. "Gunter's! I shall take you all for ices! They are in Berkeley Square. And the ices are just the thing... they are very cold! Really cold!"
"Ice is famous for being cold, Mr Bingley." Mary's voice was as sharp as a pin. "Well done for noticing."
Mr Bingley laughed. It was a big, honest laugh that made a man nearby jump. He looked at Mary like she was a prize he had just won.
"She is so funny!" Mr Bingley turned to Georgiana. "Miss Bennet is a wit! I had no idea! I thought she was just the quiet one. But she is sharp! Like a little knife!"
Mary felt her face get very hot. For years, her cleverness had been a secret. It was the armour she wore so she would not be the "plain sister." Having Charles Bingley actually celebrate it was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her.
"I am not a knife," she muttered as she followed him to the carriage. "I am a person with an education. Education is a shield, not a weapon."
"It can be both!" Bingley grinned. "A shield with a point! I shall get one of those. It sounds very deep."
As they drove across London, Mary sat in the corner and watched the streets roll by. Georgiana was murmuring politely about the merits of theboulangère. Mr Bingley was talking with unbridled zeal about the philosophical differences between peach and apricot.
"The apricot is reliable," he was arguing to a bewildered Mrs Annesley. "But the peach has a certain reckless charm. It is the cavalier of fruits."
Mary was the audience, as usual. But for once, she felt as if the person on the stage had glanced into the pit, seen her sitting in the dark, and waved.
She decided to test the theory.
"The portraits." Her voice cut through the babble of the carriage like a—well, like a knife.
Mr Bingley stopped talking about fruit. He looked at her, waiting.
"I found them remarkably insipid," Mary declared, staring straight ahead. "The gentleman in the red sash seemed as if he had been painted during a notably violent bout of gout. And the Countess in the blue silk possessed the intellectual expression of a turnip."
Everyone went quiet.
Georgiana was shocked, her hand flying to her mouth. Mrs Annesley studied the pivot of her fan with intense fascination.
Charles Bingley laughed.
He did not just chuckle. He roared. He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes with his silk handkerchief, shaking his head in delight.
"A turnip!" he gasped, leaning forward so that his knees almost brushed hers. "Miss Bennet, you are a marvel. I saw that woman! I thought her bored, but you are right! It was vegetable in nature! I shall never look at a Countess the same way again. I shall always check for the turnip."
Mary gazed out of the window so they would not see her face. It bore a very small, barely perceptible smile.
She had spent her whole life waiting to be noticed, standing on the shore while the ships sailed past. And now, quite by accident, she had finally found the only man in London who was lost enough to see the lighthouse.
