Page 25 of Colour My World
Yet, I am still me.Jane said so.
“Lizzy, you know your eyes no longer match?” Lydia’s voice cut through her thoughts. “It’s so strange! I keep thinking you look like two different people!”
Heat pricked at Elizabeth’s cheeks. Lydia did not mean to be cruel. But the words stung nonetheless.
“That was unkind.” Jane’s white pulsed. A star in the night sky. “You will apologise to Lizzy. At once.”
Mrs Bennet’s hand froze in mid-air. The room grew still.
Lydia swallowed. Mold-like green edged her gold.Verdigris?“I… I apologize, Lizzy.” The green hues yellowed.
“I forgive you, Lyddie. I know you did not intend to be unkind.” Elizabeth smiled to ease the tension.
“Her eyes are ruined,” Mrs Bennet said. She pressed her handkerchief to her chest. Her flames flickered. “What man of fortune will wish to marry a girl with differing eyes? It is unnatural.”
“It is striking,” Jane replied. She was not smiling. Her whites continued to pulse.
“Novelty is for horses, not young ladies,” Mrs Bennet said. She turned to her husband. “Mr Bennet, say something!”
Her father lifted his newspaper even higher.
“I suppose if she cannot marry well, we shall simply have to keep her.”
* * *
Elizabeth returned to her bedchamber, mentally exhausted. She closed the door with care as if noise alone might shatter the fragile thread holding her together. The mirror across the roomcaught the moon’s reflection; she turned away from it, heart pounding.
Elizabeth feared she was going mad. My head. These wretched eyes. This cursed sight. The colours, the flickers, the silent betrayals no one else could see. She could bear no more. She carefully drew the curtain and lay upon her bed. In the muffled blackness, her breath came fast, then slower, then fast again.
A silent prayer rose from her lips, fierce and broken.Let it end. Let me be as I was.
She pulled the counterpane over her head and welcomed the darkness.
* * *
Her father sat beside her, reading. The scent of ink and parchment lingered on his coat, the familiar comfort of old books and warm pipe smoke.
A muted tan haze coiled about him, steady, shifting only when he turned a page or adjusted his glasses. When he chuckled at something in his book, the tan lightened at the edges, like autumn wheat beneath the sun.
She studied it, mesmerised.
“Are you inspecting me, my dear?”
She startled. “I… No.”
He studied her, keen and observant. “You have been watching me rather intently these past minutes.”
She bit her lip. “Have I?”
Setting aside his book, he said, “I have read many things about how the mind works. Fevers often leave one’s thoughts in disarray. Are yours?”
Elizabeth hesitated. She could tell him. He would listen. And yet… “I only dream strange things, Papa.”
His eyes searched hers. The tan mist about him did not waver, and he said nothing more.
* * *
Her mother did not sit. She flitted about, her hands wringing, her voice rising and falling with every exclamation.
