Page 57 of The Vanished Bennet Sister

"We were so worried," Kitty said. "Mary, we were so —" She stopped, and resumed again. " You’re so special to me and I haven’t done much to make that undeniably clear. You’re my dearest sister and I care for you deeply. I am going to listen better. When you play and when you speak. I should have done all of those before."

"I am so sorry, sweet sister," Jane murmured, her eyes misty. "You deserve none of this and I’m happy to see you rescued."

Mary looked at them all, at the faces of her family, alarmed, exhausted and relieved in equal measure, crowded into a room in a townhouse on Jermyn Street — and felt the complicated fullness that came from receiving what she most needed at the moment she most needed it.

"Come," Mr Thwaite said to everyone and to her specifically. "Let us leave this place."

He carried her out of the room and along the corridor. She let him do so and did not feel any of the usual impulse to demonstrate that she was capable of managing independently. She was tired, he was holding her and that was sufficient.

She was aware, as they came down the main stairs, that the entrance hall was not empty.

Alice and James were there, near the door that led out of the townhouse. They had officers on either side of them, alongside Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley, who both smiled in relief at the sight of Mary and inclined their heads in greeting.

Alice's hands were behind her back. James's face had the expression of a man who was wondering how they had lost track of the calculation they’d made a while before and had not yet decided what came next. They were not going anywhere.

Mary registered this with clear attention, having moved past the stage of the situation that required emotion and was now merely observing facts.

They were almost at the door when Alice's voice came.

"Mary." The calling was raw. Not the pen-friend tone in the letters, not the chirpy voice associated with Elena, not the confident voice that had divulged secrets and forced her to eat earlier in the day.

There was desperation now underneath Alice’s tone, rougher and less managed. "Mary, the papers! You have not signed the papers! Come back, they are rightfully yours, I only want what is mine. Come back and sign them and this is finished. I am your real mother! I am the one who birthed you, so come back to me!"

Mary turned her face away.

She felt Mr Thwaite's arms tighten around her, the physical equivalent of a steadying hand, and she pressed her face against his shoulder and breathed deeply. She would never return here and did not need to.

She wasn’t sure whether she had forgiven Alice for the hurts done to her. But what was ever sub at the moment was this: she had a doting mother, a family who loved her deeply, and she was going home.

The air outside was calm and playfully ruffled her hair. Mr Thwaite settled her inside the carriage with the same unhurried capability with which he had carried her down the stairs. He sat beside her, and her family came in behind them or into the carriage behind. The door closed on Alice's voice still carrying from the hallway of the townhouse.

She was conscious, as the carriage moved into the street, of a measure of profound tiredness that was incomparable to the night's exhaustion. This was the cleansing, released tiredness of a subject that had concluded. It settled over her like a blanket but the resulting feeling was not unpleasant.

Mr Thwaite uttered her name, low, close to her ear. "Are you alright?"

She said yes, she was, and meant it.

She was in his arms and had returned where she belonged. She was still herself, only much stronger. She had not signed the papers, and the family that raised her had come in person to rescue her. Alice Haverford and her accomplice were in the custody of the Bow Street runners.

None of this was what she had expected when she walked out of the townhouse at Portman Square townhouse after sending Thomas to deliver a note to Jermyn Street.

She closed her eyes.

The rocking of the carriage over the morning streets was the most soothing thing she had felt since the start of the day. She was asleep before they reached the end of the block, and she did not stir when the street noise changed or when she heard, distantly, Elizabeth's voice thanking everyone for a job well done.

Chapter Twenty-six

Elizabeth

Several days later

Since Mary’s rescue, the house on Portman Square had become, in Elizabeth’s estimation, the most pleasant place to be.

This was not something she would have acknowledged at the start of the season, but the transformation was real and she was glad of it. The fire in the drawing room burned at the same rate it always had. The breakfast table held the same number of cups. Yet the difference was that everyone had stopped being occupied by their respective plans and collectively arrived at a general state of unity.

Mrs Bennet had spent recent days in a state of total maternal devotion that was largely affecting. She fussed over Mary at breakfast and apologised for fussing and then fussed again. Mary, who had always borne any sort of excessive attention with patient endurance, bore it now with undisputed affection. That was because she recognised it for the raw show of feeling it was, undiluted and driven by care and sacrifice rather than malicious reasons.

Mary was at Mr Thwaite's townhouse this afternoon, with Mrs Bennet in attendance as chaperone. This was, in itself, a small development worth remarking upon: that Mrs Bennet, who had spent much of the season treating the connection as a family asset to be secured and accelerated, had changed her goals to simply being present for her daughter. She had left the house this morning with the straightforward intention of being near Mary, and Mary had gone with the intention of spending time with Mr Thwaite. The two goals had accommodated each other without the complicated negotiation that had characterised most of the season's earlier arrangements.