Page 216 of Pride and Prejudice Resolutions

She opened to the page Kitty had marked with a dried flower—a dandelion, appropriate enough, a weed pretending to be a flower.

"You have been reading Fordyce." Mary's voice was carefully neutral, though her eyebrows were climbing near her hairline.

"Yes! Every day!" Kitty's chin lifted in defiance. "I am improving my mind, Mary. I am being sensible. I am not giggling or flirting or thinking about officers. I am thinking about... about..."

She gestured vaguely at the book, clearly uncertain what one was supposed to think about whilst reading Fordyce, other than perhaps the benefits of a nap.

"Dignity," Mary supplied. "The dignity of silence. The importance of moral fortitude. The dangers of excessive levity causing one to resemble a hyena."

"Yes! Exactly! Those things!" Kitty nodded vigorously. "I have been very dignified, Mary. I have not laughed in three days. Mamma thinks I am ill. She has threatened to call the apothecary because she says my silence is unnatural and possibly contagious. But I told her, I am not ill, I am serious. Like Mary."

Mary looked at her younger sister. The bright eyes were carefully dulled, the natural vivacity suppressed beneath a mask of forced solemnity. Kitty was seventeen, pretty in a way that would blossom into beauty if given sunshine and laughter. She was also, at this precise moment, performing a very poor imitation of Mary Bennet, complete with furrowed brow and pursed lips.

It was, objectively, the most ridiculous thing Mary had ever witnessed. It was like watching a butterfly trying to be a moth. It was also, inexplicably, rather touching.

"Kitty." Mary sat in the chair opposite, arranging her brown skirts neatly. "How long have you been reading page forty-seven?"

Kitty's composure cracked.

"Two days," she whispered miserably. "The words keep moving, Mary. I read a sentence and then I forget it immediately because it is so boring. And the sentences are so long. And there are no pictures. And Dr Fordyce keeps saying things about female delicacy that make me want to scream, but screaming is not dignified, so I just sit here and feel my soul leaving my body very slowly through my ears."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because—" Kitty's voice broke. "Because everyone left. Jane left. Lizzy left. Even Lydia left, and Lydia never leaves, she just gets louder until you pay attention to her. And now it is just me and Mamma and Papa. And Mamma cries all day about her nerves, and Papa hides in here and pretends we do not exist, and I thought—I thought if I was serious, if I was quiet, if I was like you—"

She stopped, her eyes filling with tears.

"I thought maybe I would not feel so alone."

Mary looked at her sister. She thought of the music room at Darcy House. She thought of Georgiana asking to learn how to stand like a mule. She thought of the hollow ache she had carried for twenty years—the desperate desire to be seen, to matter, to be more than furniture in her own family.

She thought of yellow flowers and a man who had thanked her for depth.

"Kitty." Mary leaned forward. "Put down the Fordyce."

"But—"

"Fordyce is a punishment to you, not a solution. I have read him cover to cover seven times, and I can assure you, he does not contain the answer to loneliness. He contains only the answersto questions no sensible woman would ask. Mostly regarding the evils of dancing."

She paused and reached out to squeeze her sister's hand.

"Besides, you have been trying to be the wrong Bennet."

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.