Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The Leftover Sister
Silence was a new guest at Longbourn.
For twenty years, the house had been a vessel for noise, the slam of doors, the shriek of laughter, the heavy tread of officers’ boots, and the ceaseless, frenetic hum of five sisters vying for attention. But now, the noise had been carved away, slice by slice.
Jane was in the north, mistress of a great estate. Elizabeth was in Derbyshire, mistress of a greater one. And Lydia…
Catherine Bennet sat by the window in the drawing room, her needle hovering over a piece of muslin she had been pretending to hem for an hour. She did not like to think of Lydia. To think of Lydia was to think of Brighton, and the red coats, and the breathless, giggling conspiracies that had once made up the entirety of Kitty’s world. It was to think of the shame that now clung to the name Bennet like the smell of damp wool.
"It is too quiet," Mrs. Bennet moaned from the sofa. She lay amidst a fortress of embroidered pillows, her smelling salts clutched in one hand like a weapon. "I am sure I shall die of this silence. Three daughters gone! And two of them so magnificently settled, while I am left here with… the rest."
Kitty flinched. She did not look up. She knew she was 'the rest.' She and Mary were the leftovers, the sediment at the bottom of the wine glass after the fine vintage had been poured out.
"Read to me, Kitty," her mother commanded, her voice dropping to a fretful whine. "Read something soothing. My nerves are fluttering dreadfully."
Kitty set down her needlework. Her hands were trembling slightly. "What would you like, Mama?"
"Oh, I do not know. Not that sermon Mary was droning on about earlier. Something… cheerful. Something about a wedding."
A wedding. The word tasted like ash. Kitty picked up the nearest volume, a collection of poetry Elizabeth had left behind, and began to read. Her voice was thin, lacking the rich, confident cadence Elizabeth possessed, or the gentle warmth of Jane. She stumbled over a word, and her father, who had been lurking in the doorway, let out a dry chuckle.
Mr. Bennet walked into the room, a book tucked under his arm, looking over his spectacles at his fourth daughter. He did not look at her with malice, which would have been bearable. He looked at her with amusement.
"Stumbling over Cowper, Kitty?" he asked, moving to the fireplace. "I suppose we should be grateful. A month ago, you would have simply giggled at the binding."
Kitty felt the heat rise in her cheeks, a flush that had nothing to do with health and everything to do with humiliation. "I am trying to improve my reading, Papa."
"Are you?" He raised an eyebrow. "A noble endeavor. Though I wonder if it is merely to fill the void left by the militia. I hear the regiment is settled in Newcastle. Perhaps you are practicing your elocution should we decide to ship you north to join your sister? I am sure Lydia would welcome a familiar audience for her folly."
The cruelty of it took her breath away. Once, Kitty would have pouted. She would have whined, 'La, Papa, how you tease!' and run off to find Lydia so they could complain about how ancient and boring their father was.
But Lydia was gone. And the silence she left behind was not empty, it was a mirror. Without Lydia’s loud, brash influence shielding her, Kitty saw herself clearly for the first time. She saw a girl of twenty who had no opinions of her own, no accomplishments to speak of, and whose laughter sounded sharply like the braying of a donkey.
She did not pout. She gripped the book until her knuckles turned white.
"I have no wish to go to Newcastle," Kitty said. Her voice was quiet, surprising even herself. "I have no wish to see Lydia."
The room seemed to pause. Mrs. Bennet stopped fanning herself. Mr. Bennet blinked, the amusement fading into a look of mild calculation.
"Indeed?" Mr. Bennet said softly. "A sudden onset of sense? We must mark the date in the calendar."
He turned and walked out, retreating to the sanctuary of his library, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in Kitty’s chest.
She was alone. Even with her mother in the room, she was entirely alone. Mary was upstairs, likely moralizing to the ceiling. Jane and Lizzy were miles away, living lives filled with conversation and respect. And Kitty was here, trapped in the amber of her past reputation.
She looked out the window. The autumn rain was stripping the leaves from the trees, leaving the branches bare and black against the grey sky.
I am not Lydia, she thought, the words forming a hard, jagged knot in her throat. I am not Jane or Lizzy, but I cannot be Lydia anymore.
She stood up abruptly.
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Bennet cried. "You haven't finished the poem!"
"My head aches, Mama," Kitty lied. "I am going to walk in the garden."
"In the rain? You will catch your death! And then I shall have no one to nurse me but Mary, and she is so heavy-handed with the pillows!"
Kitty ignored her. She grabbed a shawl from the hook in the hall, a plain grey thing that had belonged to Mary, not one of the ribbon-decked pelisses she and Lydia used to fight over, and stepped out the back door.
The air was cold and smelled of wet earth and decay. Kitty walked briskly, her slippers soaking through instantly, but she didn't care. She walked until she reached the folly at the edge of the wilderness, the place where she and Lydia used to hide to gossip about officers.
It looked smaller now. Shabbier.
She sat on the damp stone bench and stared at her hands. They were pale and useless. She didn't know how to run a house like Jane. She didn't know how to dissect a philosophy like Elizabeth. She didn't even have the musical talent of Mary. She was just… Kitty. The one who coughed. The one who followed.
"I must do something," she whispered to the wet trees. "I must be someone."
But as the wind picked up, rattling the dry leaves across the stone floor, she realized with a sinking heart that she had absolutely no idea where to begin.
It was then that the sound of a carriage reached her ears.
It was coming from the road, moving fast. Not a local gig, but a heavy traveling coach. She stood up, peering through the shrubbery toward the lane that led to Netherfield Park.
The Bingleys were returning. Jane was coming back.
For a moment, hope flared in Kitty’s chest, warm and bright. Jane would know what to do. Jane would be kind.
But as the carriage rumbled past the gap in the hedge, Kitty saw that it was not just the Bingleys’ cheerful yellow barouche. Following it was a second carriage, dark, black-lacquered, and unadorned. It moved with a heaviness that seemed to dampen the very air around it.
A chill that had nothing to do with the rain shivered down Kitty’s spine. She pulled the grey shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Jane had brought guests. And if the look of that black carriage was any indication, they were not the sort who would tolerate a silly, coughing girl who didn't know her own mind.
Kitty turned back toward the house, her resolve hardening into something brittle. She would wipe the rain from her face. She would sit straight at dinner. She would not giggle.
She would try to be a Bennet, even if she was the only one left who didn't know what that meant.