Chances Come, Ney Mitch [snow like ashes series TXT] 📗

just surprised. Usually, when confessing that one is in love, people ask the traditional questions: when did you first begin to fall in love with him? Are you very much violently in love? Did you fall in love when you danced together? Are you expecting a proposal?”

“Are you expecting a proposal?” She lifted her eyebrows.

“In truth, I do not know.”

“Well, I do. He shall propose one day, for he is in love with you in return. And when he does, then I shall want the full story. Sorry if my lack of curiosity comes across as startling. But I have thought ahead, you see.”

“How so?”

“Well, I get the feeling that you shall be asked those same questions very often after Mr. Darcy proposes to you. And you shall have to repeat yourself frequently in telling the story. Therefore, if I do not know about it now, then I can be as surprised with everyone else later.”

“Do you really believe that he shall propose?”

“I believe he will,” she replied, confidently as she smiled broadly, “for he invited me. I know that he did not favor me at all. Therefore, to invite a woman who he had no apparent connection to, means that he feels a deep affection for you. But if I may offer some advice, pretend to be surprised when he does ask for your hand. The surprise, from what I have observed, is everything to men. Then again, what do I know of men?”

She turned the knob and opened the door. It was then that I noticed some ink on her hands.

“Were you writing a letter?” I asked her. “And did the ink get ahead of you?”

“Oh,” she gasped, placing her hand behind her back. “Yes, I was composing a letter, and then the ink decided that I should not, and splashed itself back up at me. Even ink puts up a fight with me.”

“Oh, Kitty, do not speak of yourself in such a way. I am your sister; I can do that job for you.”

“Oh, shut it.”

She closed the door behind her, and I began to change my clothes. Yet, after I did so, I recalled that I had a letter that I had to write to Charlotte Lucas. It was time for me to rise above myself and write to her. I sat at the desk and began a letter to Charlotte, but I would only have the time to finish it once I returned from the theatre.

That night, the Gardiners did accompany us to the theatre. The play was lovely, but I could not hold my attention to it. But rather, I found myself stealing glances at Mr. Darcy throughout the course of it.

Kitty’s words wrung through my mind. I fancied that Mr. Darcy felt for me in such a manner, but I worried that my theories sprung from a place of vanity. And vanity was never the proper foundations to rational judgment.

That night, I went to bed with my thoughts still filled with Kitty’s words. And my mind, as is often the way it is at night, dwelled on the form of Mr. Darcy, and the very mind and mood that he was often in. I suppose… there was a side of me that was desolate and wanton, and the wantonness sprung from an eternal wickedness that all of us possess under the skin. Or over the skin, and amongst it, with it in between ourselves. For, we humans, in all essentials, have a light between those we are drawn to. We feel a mutual heat. Quite often, that heat that was between us felt as if it was of the boiling point, and at any moment, it would boil over and I would feel the burn of it. Or, if all went as one would dream, I would only feel the warmth of it.

To be warmed or to be burned?

Love, truly, could offer no other set of alternatives. For the very aftermath of love would deliver us into the very path of one, or the other.

It took a great deal of time to fall asleep, but eventually, my eyes closed, and sleep found me at last.

Such a situation was ideal, for I would need all my faculties the next day…

For there was another arrival to be met.

For would this home be content with only three women in it? It was a large home and Darcy had a unique situation on his hands. As such, it was only fitting for a fourth woman to come!

The next day, we all stood in anticipation, and at the appointed time, the carriage rolled up in front of the house. Mr. Darcy exited the house first, and we three Bennet sisters joined him on the steps of the home.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Kitty, who stood behind me.

“I am, to my utter dismay, nervous,” Kitty admitted, “and how do you feel?”

“Petrified,” I also admitted, and then I turned to Jane. “And how do you feel right now?”

“I shake in my shoes,” Jane said. “For some reason I fear she may despise me.”

“I feel the same way as well. And so does Kitty.”

“Yes, she does,” Kitty responded, referring to herself in the third person.

“But I am waiting for my bravery to rise up any second,” I asserted. “I am willing to let my courage rise with every attempt for something to intimidate me. Brave heart, sisters. After all, it is just another woman that we meet.”

“We women can be terrifying.”

“Yes. Yes, we can.”

Mr. Darcy went to the carriage door and opened it. A hand emerged and took his. Then a bonnet was produced, and at last, we saw the face of the wearer. Georgiana Darcy had come back into town.

She stepped down, smiling at Mr. Darcy in the process. They exchanged some brief but sweet words and then turned to us. Once her face fell on the three of us, I saw her eyes fill with a subtle dread.

If I read her expression correctly, then