Page 88 of Colour My World
Do not hesitate.
He exhaled. Not the first time the words had appeared just as he needed them—but it never ceased to stop him cold.
“There you are,” he murmured. “As if you’ve been listening all along.”
He touched the edge of the page, almost expecting the ink tosmudge.
It never did.
* * *
Netherfield Park, the following day…
Bennet entered the bedroom with the air of a man who had braved the rain not from necessity but for the sheer amusement of forcing others into civility. He removed his hat and raked a damp hand through his hair, scattering droplets onto the carpet.
Elizabeth and Jane sat together near the fire, the former mending a stocking with more precision than enthusiasm, the latter propped against her pillows, still pale but undeniably improved.
“Well,” Bennet said, shaking his coat, “I see you have yet to expire, Jane. Your mother will be relieved. Mourning would have quite undone her nerves.”
“Good morning to you too, Papa.”
“Indeed, it is a very good morning. My daughters have settled in the finest house in the county, and I have the pleasure of two conversations ahead of me. One with a woman so tender-hearted she would pity a wasp caught in a web and the other, a young lady so sharp-tongued I suspect she would cut it loose merely to see justice done.”
Elizabeth did not look up from her sewing. “I wonder which of us is which.”
“Ah,” he said, lowering himself into a chair. “That is for me to know and for you to pretend ignorance.”
Jane set aside John Gregory’s paternalistic condescension with the weariness of someone who had read it thrice already. “I assume you have come with something to say and not merely to enjoy your own wit.”
Her father glanced at Jane’s book and chuckled. “You woundme, my dear. I shall, as all wronged fathers do, be forced to seek comfort in long-winded speeches.”
He tapped the book’s cover. “But you are right, of course. I came to speak with you both, though Jane, you first. Elizabeth, do a kindness and fetch me a cup of tea. I shall not have you gleaning our secrets before I have the chance to be cryptic.”
Elizabeth rose and closed the door behind her.
Bennet folded his hands. “Jane, I have spent many years believing you incapable of unkind thoughts. I suspect I was mistaken.”
Jane raised a brow. “A virtuous woman must overlook a man’s faults. Perhaps the Reverend had never been insulted by one.”
“Fordyce?”
“You have Mary to thank.”
“Thankfully, that phase of her life has passed. No. I speak of your thoughts towards Mr Bingley. They are not unkind, precisely. But they are calculated, are they not?”
Jane hesitated, then inclined her head. “You do not fault me for it?”
“Fault you? No, my dear. I am merely surprised. I had thought you more like me in that regard—marrying for love, consequence be damned. But I now see you are more pragmatic.”
Jane said nothing.
“Marriage,” he continued, “is a delicate arrangement. It flourishes when affection is balanced, but when it is not when one heart outweighs the other, resentment takes root. And over time, the house stands, but the home is hollow.”
“Like you and Mama.”
Bennet did not immediately reply. He stared into the fire. “Yes. It would have remained had your sister not had her accident.”
“So, Lizzy saved your marriage?”
