Chapter Text
Meryton was a small town situated within the heart of Hertfordshire. It was, in a relative sense, close to London, and could be reached within a matter of hours or days depending on the chosen mode of conveyance.
Over the course of such a journey, an onlooker could observe the bustling city streets as they slowly turned to sloping country roads. The air changed, as the mist of industry gave way to the – for lack of a better word – freshness - of the great outdoors. The sounds. as well as the associated trials and tribulations, of business and commerce were all but gone; giving way to bird song, and the assorted noises of animals that grazed the fields nearby.
As the carriage bumped heavily over gravel and turned into Meryton proper, Thomas Hayward reflected on the familiarity of it all. The son of a yeoman farmer and now training as a barrister, he had grown up in a place not too dissimilar, just further north in the dales of Yorkshire. The sounds, the smells of the town, as well as the area around it, evoked something all too familiar within him.
He did not know if that familiarity made him feel more at ease or less.
“You look nervous, Tom.”
Whatever the emotion was, it was clearly written all over his face.
Mrs Madeleine Gardiner - who had spoken – was, Tom knew, a perceptive woman indeed. She could tell from a simple change in tone, shuffle of feet or furtive glance what someone was feeling. In the time he had known her, she had never used this talent for ill, but only so she could try her best to ease the minds of those she cared for. She was one of the kindest people of Tom’s acquaintance.
Kind as she was, it was still unnerving the way she smiled at him now, meeting his gaze with one of her all-knowing smiles.
Beside her was her husband, Mr Edward Gardiner. It had been a matter of the law, specifically a dispute between a contractor and Mr Gardiner himself, which had brought Tom into the older man’s orbit and esteem. His keen eye, prompted by determination to prove himself, had found a flaw in the paperwork provided – something even his senior had overlooked – and had proved decisive in helping the firm secure a victory in Mr Gardiner’s favour.
With the case tried and the verdict given, the criminal was then at the mercy of the magistrate. That had been only a matter of months ago. In the interim, Tom had also been turfed out of his lodgings – a suspected connection between said crook and the proprietor that he could not, despite his best efforts, prove – only to find the Gardiner’s willing to open up their home to him. Despite his protestations that he would find somewhere else, they would not hear of it, insisting he stay with them until he secured new lodgings.
As the couple watched him from the other side of the carriage, Tom absently ran a hand through his messy curls.
The road would end, Mr Gardiner had said, at the inn itself. They would be allowed time to rest and recuperate from travel before they were expected at a ball later tonight.
Tom felt his heart clench at the idea of a ball.
“I believe that expression is inquisitive, Madeleine,” said Mr Gardiner, with a grin directed at his wife, before diverting his attention back to Tom. “It is quite natural when one sees Meryton, for the first time. Or so I am told.”
“And whoever told you that?”
Mr Gardiner smiled wider, as he looked out the window.
“You are glad to be back then?”
Mr Gardiner considered Tom’s question for a moment before answering.
The carriage chose that moment to come to a halt, as he explained:
“I am happy to be among the familiar sights. I am looking forward to seeing our nieces. Though I do miss the children.”
“It is for a few nights,” Mrs Gardiner said, as her husband held out his hand and helped her exit from the carriage.
Tom had disembarked first, and waited, on the side of the road, feeling as though he were a spare part. Mrs Gardiner’s hand stayed firmly in her husband’s, as the footmen began to unload the carriage.
“They will be quite happy with Clara for company,” she continued. “Are you sure you are not simply dreading seeing your sisters, dear?”
Mr Gardiner began to point out the sights of the village – a clear deflection from Mrs Gardiner’s question while Tom, half-listening as he was, recalled what he could about Mr Gardiner’s family.
He had two sisters.
Mrs Phillips was married to Mr Phillips, a clerk who had succeeded the Gardiner father’s business upon the man’s death. The couple lived in Meryton and did not have any children.
Thus, the nieces that Mr Gardiner had referred to earlier were the daughters of his other sister, Mrs Bennet, whose husband was Mr Bennet of the nearby Longbourn House.
Tom tried to remember the names of said daughters, as well as the descriptions given by Mr and Mrs Gardiner during their trip and in the passing.
He was interrupted in his thoughts by a pat to his back.
Mr Gardiner gestured towards the inn. It was clear that Mr Gardiner knew he had not been listening, but he smiled understandingly.
Tom smiled back.
It was the least, given all Mr Gardiner had done for him, he could offer.
Netherfield Park was a nearby estate, sequestered deeper within Hertfordshire’s charming countryside. A short carriage ride away from Meryton – so much so that one could likely walk the distance – it struck Tom as the type of dwelling that suggested someone of importance, wealth, and power.
Even from a fair distance, illuminated as it was by starlight, the house cut a stark, intimidating figure amid the landscape.
Tom regarded it in a cool, detached way, as Mrs Gardiner spoke of the latest correspondence she had received of the goings-on in Meryton and Longbourn.
“Lizzy writes that she suspects Mr Bingley has developed somewhat of an attachment to Jane."
Mr Bingley was the man who had recently acquired Netherfield, Tom recalled. He was the heir to a wealthy businessman, and set to inherit no small fortune. Tom had heard of Mr Bingley and his family around London, but had never encountered any of them.
He became aware of the tapping of his foot as they waited for the carriage to be brought round to a suitable place to stop. .
“Jane is your eldest niece, correct?”
Mrs Gardiner nodded. She flipped her fan over her face; Tom knew she was hiding a smirk.
“You are prepared for the quiz, Tom,” Mr Gardiner said, and then after a pause, both he and his wife laughed.
“You do not need to look so nervous,” chimed Mrs Gardiner, lowering her fan, as a footman opened the door. “You will be most welcome; Lizzy has assured me of it. She says Mr Bingley is a charming, affable man, and was only happy to extend the invitation."
By Lizzy, they would mean Elizabeth. She was the second eldest of the Bennet sisters and blessed with, according to her aunt and uncle, a natural charm and wit that was not easily replicated and made her quite popular with all she met.
Mr Gardiner and Tom alighted; Mr Gardiner insisting he help his wife out of the carriage in lieu of the footman.
Tom, as ever, found himself sticking out like a sore thumb.
Still, he was here, at Netherfield, as a guest – or at least a guest of a guest - and so he would try, as best as he could, to act as though he belonged.
It took only a couple of seconds for that resolve to almost completely desert him.
In fact, if it had not been for the fact that the Gardiner’s were with him, and that he was entirely unsure of the best route to return to Meryton, he would have turned and left at once.
At any moment he worried someone would realise he did not belong and have him thrown out, as he repeatedly told himself he would have been better off staying at the inn. An evening could have been very well whiled away with Wordsworth and Coleridge as his companions. He longed for the book of poetry that lay unopened on the table in his room and wished, briefly, that he had thought to bring it with him.
But that would have been rude, wouldn't it?
“Stay close,” Mr Gardiner said, in his usual jovial manner. “It is quite busy and I do not see either of my sisters yet.”
“I am sure we will hear them,” Mrs Gardiner replied, with a raised eyebrow.
The throng of people eventually evened out, until they found themselves in a well-lit dining room. Tables of varying lengths were decorated tastefully. Centerpieces of yellow, red and white flowers sat in ornate vases, atop table cloths that likely cost more than Tom currently made in a year.
The room – and the house itself - for how stunning it looked did not feel quite lived in. Mrs Gardiner had said Mr Bingley had not long bought the property, which settled that thought in Tom’s mind.
On either side of the modestly sized room, doors were opened, allowing guests an easy entry and exit to and from the main thoroughfare of the dining area.
A pianoforte sat in the corner, looking as though it longed to be played. Mrs Gardiner had said something about music being played throughout the evening.
Finally, and with his eyes everywhere apart from in front of him, Tom stopped. Or, if he was to be more exact, he stumbled, as Mr Gardiner came to an abrupt halt. It was not, Tom wanted to be clear, Mr Gardiner’s fault that he stumbled, rather his own lack of concentration that contributed to the misstep.
“Watch yourself, Tom,” said Mr Gardiner, with a steadying hand. He did not say it in a manner of reproach but with concern.
When Tom looked, he noticed they had come to a stop in front of a woman and a man. Mrs Gardiner had just finished greeting them, as Tom and Mr Gardiner approached. While the man looked fairly disinterested, the woman had clearly noticed Tom’s slight trip and looked as though she was quite put out by the prospect of his clumsiness, though she did not, mercifully, point it out.
“Edward, brother, how good to see you,” she said instead. The woman was middle-aged, maybe a little younger than his own mother. Tom could not tell whether she was on the shorter side or if the man next to her was simply very tall.
Nonetheless, the woman - one of Mr Gardiner's sisters - had a confident air about her. It was the best way he could think to describe her, after consulting his vocabulary and deciding that ‘haughty’ felt too rude even to think.
“Jane,” Mr Gardiner said, which alerted Tom to which sister this was: Mrs Bennet. Mr Gardiner had mentioned that the eldest daughter was named after her.
Mr Gardiner then bowed to the man by her side. Tom presumed this to be Mr Bennet, the master of Longbourn. He looked to be a decade or two older than his wife. When he raised his glass, he provided a fond smile for his brother-in-law and then quickly returned to looking disinterestedly around him.
"How wonderful to see you both.”
Before either Mr or Mrs Bennet could speak, the sound of some sort of commotion erupting from the other side of the room. Mrs Bennet smiled tightly while Mr Bennet sighed loudly, as if he wished to be anywhere else but here at that moment.
“Catherine and Lydia,” Mrs Gardiner provided quietly, as way of explanation as two young girls ran in, in pursuit of two impeccably dressed officers. “The youngest daughters.”
Which explained the looks on their parents faces at this moment.
“And you have brought a friend, Edward?”
It was Mrs Bennet who spoke, as if to distract from the scene the two girls were continuing to make. Tom, briefly, had caught the sight of a severe looking man by the fireplace who rolled his eyes, as a woman – Tom could best describe as her as severe in her expression – whispered something to him. The man’s expression did not change; his focus now shifting from the two Bennet girls to another woman who stood at the other side of the room with a worried expression on her face.
“Ah yes,” Mr Gardiner said, and he tugged at Tom’s arm.
Thankfully, with the knowledge that this was happening, Tom did not fall over his own feet this time. He smiled, or at least the best approximation of a smile he could manage.
Mrs Bennet scrutinised him; Mr Bennet looked right through him.
“This is Thomas Hayward, the barrister we told you about in our letters,” said Mr Gardiner.
“The one who is living with you?”
“Boarding with us, yes,” Mrs Gardiner cut in, and clear in her distinction. “It was the least we could do, given how hard he worked on that legal matter for Edward.”
Mrs Bennet pursed her lips.
Tom, wishing the floor would swallow him whole, bowed his head. He tried to remember lessons that he had been taught, and what he had learned from his time around the higher echelons of society.
He thought of his acquaintance William Ryder, a wealthy man who had dropped out of school incredibly early on in their education – how he had blamed Tom for ‘infecting’ him with a love of poetry in a way that was, Tom supposed, meant to be teasing but had felt accustatory.
Especially from a man who had the security to make such a choice as to abandon a career in the law before it had even begun. Who managed to flit through life on charm and connections, with an assurance he did not always appear to have earned.
Tom did not have those same connections, and despite his consternation, he thought he could at least try to be a bit more like William Ryder.
“It is a pleasure to meet you both,” he finally said, as charmingly as he could, though he worried his smile came off as more desperate than dashing. “Mr and Mrs Gardiner have spoken so highly of you both, and your daughters too.”
Mrs Bennet beamed.
“You are kind to say so, Mr Hayworth.”
Tom did not correct her, worried that if he did so she would think him rude or callous. The room was loud; it was likely she had just misheard her brother, and there was no need to point it out.
When Tom could not think of anything to add, and quickly, Mrs Bennet turned to Mrs Gardiner. What started as a whispered conversation between the two women, quite quickly – and loudly – ended in Mrs Bennet declaring how she expected an imminent proposal between Jane and Mr Bingley, a man with a living of £5,000 a year.
The man whose, to his knowledge, home they stood in.
Tom was certain that not only everyone in the room, but even the whole of Meryton, heard her boasts.
A woman, the same one that the stern man had been keeping an eye on – and he continued to keep an eye on her, even as she moved about the room – emerged, as if from out of nowhere.
“Mama!”
Her rebuke was sharp and clear. She raised her eyebrows pointedly.
“Oh Lizzy,” Mrs Bennet said, with a shake of her head, and then a coy laugh. She hiccuped and took another sip of her beverage. “You surprised me!”
“Father…”
There was no opportunity for Tom to be introduced to the second Bennet sister, as Mrs Gardiner took his arm then, beckoning her husband to follow. It seemed as though there was some discussion to be had between father, mother, and daughter and Mrs Gardiner clearly had the foresight to not want to be involved in it.
"Oh, there is Jane!”
Mrs Gardiner, a master of discretion, did not draw the same attention her sister-in-law did as she weaved her way through the small crowds of people, ending up at the table where the eldest of her nieces was engaged in quiet conversation with a man. Blonde-haired and willowy, Jane Bennet, before she had even said a word and had only noticed her aunt and uncle's approach, emitted the quiet warmth that the Gardiner's had told him about.
George, Marianne, and Rebecca extolled the virtues of their eldest cousin. She was, in their estimation, the nicest woman in the entire world.
And Tom took the Gardiner children’s impression with the utmost seriousness it deserved.
He was introduced, in turn, both to Jane and the man she spoke to - Netherfield’s owner, Mr Bingley himself. They did look, Tom thought, quite close indeed. If he did not know otherwise, he would have supposed them already engaged, or at least on the way to an engagement.
Once the pleasantries were dispensed with, Mrs Gardiner took a seat at the table, Mr Gardiner was snared by his other sister – and a quick introduction was made to Mrs Phillips and her husband, who looked about as impressed as Mrs Bennet.
Tom found himself looking around. Jane and Mr Bingley, as cordial as they had been to him, were, it was plain to see, only interested in one another.
Which was fine by him.
As Tom examined the room, he counted in his mind that he had either made the acquaintance of, or seen, four of the five nieces.
Jane, who was in deep discussion with her aunt.
Elizabeth, who - clearly finished convening with her parents - was walking away from the man who had been watching her so intently earlier.
Catherine and Lydia, who, now sitting, still giggled like the young women they were, reminding him of his sisters when they were – and he was – younger.
But there was another. Mary, Mrs Gardiner had said, was the name of the middle Bennet sister.
Quiet and introspective, as well as a thirst for knowledge; quite often found with her head in a book.
She, too, had an affinity for the pianoforte, though Mrs Gardiner had been unsure if she would play at tonight's soirée.
As if he had thought it into existence, the strains of the instrument began again. This time, a bespectacled young woman arranged her sheet music, fixed her glasses, and took a deep, calming breath. For all the world, she looked as though she did not believe anyone was watching her.
And then she started to play.
When Aunt and Uncle Gardiner had mentioned they were bringing a friend from London – a barrister who had helped Uncle Gardiner with a tricky legal matter – Mary found herself only minutely interested.
After all, she had plans and intentions, and though her mother tried to ward her off as best she could, she was still confident in the assertion that she, and not Lizzy, would make the best bride for Mr Collins.
Not only would it allow them to keep Longbourn and save Lizzy from spending the rest of her life with a man she clearly had so little time or patience for - a man she would, Mary suspected, likely reject if he proposed marriage at all - Mary thought it within her own character to fix the deficiencies that were in Mr Collins’ own.
“A barrister?” Lydia said loudly, over breakfast, as she slathered a healthy helping of butter onto her toast.
Mary waited for the butter, timing her sighs so Lydia knew that she waited. Which she realised the folly of at once, as Lydia began to slow the movement of her knife, and with a conniving smile on her face.
“Sounds dreadfully boring,” Kitty said, with a sidelong glance to Lydia, as if awaiting her approval.
Lydia snorted with laughter and nodded wholeheartedly.
Mary was still waiting for the butter.
“How old do you suppose he is?” Lydia asked. “Forty? Fifty?”
Mary sighed again, wondering how terrible it would be to go without her toast buttered. Just for this morning.
“He is a junior barrister, Lydia,” Lizzy said, plainly, but not without an eye roll. “From Aunt Gardiner's letter, it sounds as though he is only a few years older than me, Jane or even Mary.”
“‘Oh,” Lydia said, almost disappointedly. And then, as if she had realised something, she giggled.
“Mary and the stuffy barrister.”
Mary glared at Lizzy; why had she even mentioned her?
Why could it not have been Lizzy and the stuffy barrister? Or Jane and the stuffy barrister?
Lydia had now abandoned the butter but Mary struggled, against Lydia’s chittering and Kitty’s encouragement to get a word in edgeways to ask for it.
Another sigh.
Lizzy stood and reached over, retrieving the butter from Lydia’s elbow, and plonking the dish next to Mary.
Mary softened her earlier glare and mouthed a thank you to her elder sister who did, to her credit, look apologetic.
“Do you reckon he wears spectacles?”
“Just because someone is a barrister,” Jane said, “does not mean they must wear spectacles, Kitty.” She paused, mid-chew, before she swallowed.
“Spectacles can be very becoming anyway.”
The comment, which Mary knew was for her benefit, led to Miss Bennet admonishing Jane that in no way was she to be swayed by a junior barrister with spectacles when Mr Bingley – who Mary was convinced her sister was in love with anyway, and who loved her in return – was the goal.
Mary turned her mind to the ball later that evening; humming as she finally buttered her toast to perfection and recalled the notes of her piece in her head. She would have her sheet music, of course, but she was determined that everything would be perfect.
She would make her mark.
She would, as was her goal – capture Mr Collins’ attention.
She had succeeded in nothing, apart from managing to embarrass herself quite thoroughly. She had no one to blame, not really, apart from herself.
It burned her, anyway, and as the tears streamed down her face – barely held until she reached the door and the comforting arms of Aunt Gardiner, with her hand clasped over her mouth to stifle her sobs as best as she could– she blamed Lizzy anyway. She blamed her father. She blamed her mother, and Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins. She blamed Caroline Bingley and her brother for their blasted ball.
She ran out of people to blame, eventually, as the tears abated.
Aunt Gardiner led her away, while soothing her - going as far to assure her it was not as bad as she had supposed. Mary did not - could - believe her words as anything more than an attempt at supplication, as she insisted that everyone had heard, had seen.
It was not until she felt the rush of the wind in her hair and heard the slow patter of raindrops on the concrete that Mary realised her aunt had guided them, gently, to the estate’s grounds. She opened her eyes and watched as the rain pounded against the stone.
How she wished she could pretend her tears were just the rain.
“Oh Mary, dear,” Aunt Gardiner said, soothingly, rubbing reassuring circles on her arm, as they approached and then sat down upon a nearby bench, which was under an awning and so out of the way of the rain.
Aunt Gardiner fished about in her reticule, eventually producing a handkerchief.
Mary, at first, refused it.
And then the very fresh memory of her father's firm rebuke of her performance and Lizzy's agitated look and Jane's disappointed eyes reverberated in her mind and she was forced to take the handkerchief because she was crying again. Thankfully, though she did not shake with the same violence as before and that was somewhat of a relief.
Aunt Gardiner looked up at the sound of footsteps. Mary did not even register them at first.
When she eventually did, she assumed it would be Uncle Gardiner.
Instead, it was a man she had never met before.
"Tom?” asked Aunt Gardiner. “What are you doing out here?”
People, who had not been witness to her humiliation milled about outside. They had not, it seemed, been in the room to witness Mary's performance.
But this stranger, given that he knew her Aunt Gardiner, was more than likely to have been in the room at the time of said humiliation, and was now peering down at her.
The man looked as confused as her aunt sounded. Mary blinked, stemming the tide of tears – she felt even more embarrassed to be crying in front of a stranger – and let herself properly glance at the newcomer.
He looked to be a little older than her - somewhere in his early to mid-20s she supposed . had curly, messy hair that he had clearly tried to tame and had only been half-successful in the endeavour. He was tall, forcing Mary to crane her neck upwards.
“You both left the hall in such a hurry,” he finally said.
Mary quite liked the sound of his voice, though she could not specify why. His accent suggested he was not from Meryton, but from further north.
“Mr Gardiner asked me to check you were okay,” he added. “And I wanted to…”
He trailed off. Mary allowed the recollection of her shame to the back of her mind, now curious as she was about this man in front of her. It proved, if anything, a good distraction from how she felt.
She watched as a small smile bloom on Aunt Gardiner’s face.
“That is very kind of you, Tom,” she said. She then turned to Mary. “Mary, this is Tom Hayward. The friend your uncle and I wrote about in our letter. Tom, this is Mary Bennet, our very accomplished niece.”
She emphasised those kind words – and they were kind, not patronising as they might have been if she were in this situation with Jane or Lizzy.
“You’re the junior barrister,” Mary said, because it was the first thing that came into her mind, and before she had realised how silly the statement sounded.
“Oh, there is Edward,” Aunt Gardiner said, before Mr Hayward could say anything in response. Instead, he nodded to confirm that he was, indeed, a junior barrister as she had said.
"I will go speak to your uncle, Mary," Aunt Gardiner said.
Mary did not want to move, worried if she did she would see someone else who had been in the room during her performance.
Aunt Gardiner understood this, even without words, and nodded to Mr Hayward.
“Would you mind, terribly keeping my niece company, Tom?”
Mary did not see it, her head bowed as it was, but he must have nodded, as Aunt Gardiner scurried off towards Uncle Gardiner, but not before giving Mary a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder.
The stranger, the junior barrister, Mr Thomas Hayward, gestured to the seat next to her. Mary nodded. Still, he looked unsure as he sat beside her.
“You play very well.”
Mary felt angry at once, tensing at the words - a barb, she had no doubt.
“Are you mocking me?” She asked, grumpily, and not much caring that she had only just met this man. Or that such conduct was entirely out with her usual character. He did not know her; he would not know.
“Or patronising me?”
He spluttered. When she looked up at him, she expected him to wear an expression that said she should be grateful for his praise, no matter where it came from, as so many did.
Instead, he looked troubled.
He looked troubled and she had snapped at him.
Mary clutched the handkerchief tighter in hand.
She was aware now of the raindrops that smudged her lens, and therefore her vision, and her view of the man before her.
She sighed, ripping the the glasses off her face.
“I am sorry, Mr Hayward,” she said, quietly. “ I believed you were being unkind, but I was mistaken. Still, I do not think lying to be a kindness.”
“I was not lying about your playing,” he replied, as Mary tried to use the already-damp handkerchief to clean her glasses, and felt her frustration mount as the smudge only worsened rather than cleared.
Mr Hayward paused, retrieving from his jacket a cloth.
“Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “I always carry a spare one, just in case.”
“You wear spectacles?”
He looked surprised by her surprise.
“Since I was a boy,” he said, lightly.
Mary took the cloth from him, hesitantly. Once it was in her hand, and he regarded her with the hint of a smile, a lightness threatened to overtake her serious heart.
Where before she had wished to be alone, to wallow in her self-pity, she found that was not as appealing as a prospect anymore.
Despite herself, she offered him a smile, albeit a small one.
“I have only just recently gotten mine,” Mary admitted. “My mother was quite resistant, but I could no longer bear the struggle when I tried to read my books.”
“They suit you.”
The words hung in the air. Mr Hayward looked as though he regretted saying them, but he had no way to take them back. Mary did not want him to, in any case. She blushed, just a little, and thanked the heavens for the ink black night which would disguise it.
“What kind of books do you like to read, Miss Bennet?”
He asked the question hurriedly, as if it might dispel his earlier words.
“Histories, geology,” listed Mary.
Mr Hayward laughed.
“And what do you read for pleasure.”
Mary paused.
“That is reading for pleasure.”
He looked a little taken aback by that but quickly regained himself.
“And you?” Mary asked, unsure where this newfound confidence had sprung from but unwilling to let it fizzle out until it was necessary. “Do you read, Mr Hayward?”
He looked at her. She struggled to find the right word for such an expression before settling on ‘shyly.’ She did not like its usage much, but found it was difficult to find a better descriptor.
“The law is my profession,” he replied, after a beat. “but poetry is my passion.”
Mary grimaced; she did not have much patience for poetry and its scribes. Why could they not say things exactly as they meant it, rather than hide behind metaphors, similes, and stanzas that encompassed everything and nothing all at once.
“I take it,” Mr Hayward said, “from the look on your face that you are no great fan.”
Mary explained, quite succinctly, her issues with the form.
Her rant at an end, he took what looked to be a deep breath and paused before speaking again.
“Is there anything you like about poetry?”
“Some poems are mercifully short.”
He looked stuck by that, as if he thought, at first, she might have been joking and then quickly realised she was not.
Still, he smiled, even as she denigrated something which he had just confessed to be a passion of his.
Not many men would do that.
“Ah.”
An awkward silence descended upon them. Despite the lull in the conversation, Mary found herself quite heartened. Until she remembered why she was out here, as her aunt and uncle looked ready to approach.
“Thank you, Mr Hayward,” she said, as she held up the cloth. “For the conversation as well.”
“You are most welcome, Miss Bennet,” he replied, holding her gaze. "You may keep the cloth. I have a spare for the spare."
Only minutes ago Mary thought she might never crack a smile again. Now, she allowed herself the smallest of chuckles at Mr Hayward's remark, made in self-deprecating fashion that she found familiar and reassuring.
Mr Hayward must have been aware of her aunt and uncle concluding their conversation; her uncle heading back inside and her aunt coming towards them.
“I hope you know,” he said, “that I was not lying about your playing.”
“And my singing?”
It was fresh; she was still angry at herself and Lizzy and her father for not only embarrassing herself but letting her and then not having the courage to stand by her in the aftermath.
“You were brave, Miss Bennet,” he said, and she was grateful he did not lie, even if his words were a slight deflection. “There are many who would not be able to say that, myself included.”
Mr Hayward looked as though he was going to say something else, but Aunt Gardiner chose that moment to interrupt.
Mary, ever grateful for her aunt, dampened the small part of her that bristled with an irrational annoyance.
“Do you feel better?” She asked, looking hopefully at Mary, before turning to Mr Hayward. “Thank you, Tom, for sitting with Mary.”
He stood, quickly and awkwardly. Then, as if he realised how strange it looked, he bowed.
“It was a pleasure, Mrs Gardiner,” he said.
Mary was not sure if the shadows were deceiving her, but was he blushing?
Surely, she must be mistaken. What need would there be for such a thing, and especially around her.
But a pleasure?
She felt herself flushing at the compliment.
And he had complimented her playing too, had called her brave.
She did not believe him – all she really felt was stupid – but the words were sincere enough that she trusted he believed them. Which was, given how terrible she felt, close enough.
“Mary,” Aunt Gardiner said, and it was only then that she realised Mr Hayward had retreated with her uncle. His steps were slow and deliberate. Mary wondered if he might even turn around to look at her.
“Y-yes,” stuttered Mary, feeling awfully foolish.
She shook her head against the thoughts roiling around.
She had no time to even think on what she was feeling, as burdened as she now felt by the reaction of her mother, her father, and her sisters to her display.
Not to mention Mr Bingley and his sisters.
Mr Collins, too.
Surely, she had ruined any chance of saving Longbourn for her family now that he had borne witness to such a wretched display.
The only hope would be if Lizzy would not have him, that he might turn to her in place of Kitty or Lydia.
The thought, appealing in its practicality earlier that week, now weighed on her, and Mary found herself - as her aunt assured her, they were arranging a carriage to take her home - why that might be the case.
Even Wordsworth and Coleridge struggled to keep his attention later that evening, as Tom settled on the relatively comfortable mattress and tried to unwind from the excitement - a word he had not expected to attribute to the night - of the ball earlier.
The lone candle flickered on the bedside table. He tried laying on his back, on his side and upright, and eventually snapped the book shut.
He could not concentrate and he knew why.
He let himself smile, even slightly, as the image of Mary Bennet sprung to mind.
He'd been struck, at first, when she had started playing - quite proficiently, surely one of the best Tom had ever heard - and then again when she had opened her mouth and started to sing. The tones were not the most dulcet, he could admit that, but he admired her courage - that she would perform in front of a room of people, without seeming to care what they might think.
Until he had watched her flee from the room and into the waiting arms of her good Aunt Gardiner - trying his best to avert his gaze from her suffering - and been asked by Mr Gardiner to follow them and ensure Miss Bennet was alright, and he realised she did care.
Clumsy as his assurances were - he cringed to think of how she thought he might be mocking her - their conversation had been pleasant.
More than pleasant, Tom thought uncomfortably.
It had been the most comfortable he'd felt all evening - the most comfortable he'd felt in so long in such a situation.
Knowing they would be up early to travel again tomorrow, Tom sighed again. He shook his head, dispelling the thought of the middle Bennet sister from his mind.
He had a feeling it would not work as much as he hoped; that she would be lodged there for a good time to come, but he could pretend, as his head hit the pillow and he closed his eyes, that that would not be the case.
One thing was certain, however, he thought with a smile.
Suddenly, after spending a whole evening feeling out of place, on the outside, Tom found himself quite thankful that the Gardiners had invited him to Meryton after all.