mommy was a sick muse (part v)
[part iv]
~
v. | everybody just wanna fall in love
In a magnificent further display of the universe’s general opinion re: Mary Bennet, Fanny Price knocks on the door of Mary’s room at Girton about three seconds after Mary finishes dragging her weary body inside. “Heya,” she says quietly. “Can I talk to you?”
Mary stares at her for what feels like a very long time, but is probably only a few seconds. “Of course,” she says when good manners kick her in the arse. “Come in. I was just about to plug in my kettle. You want some tea?”
Nervously pulling at the hem of her cardigan, Fanny nods. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
Fanny Price is one of those people whose sheer existence makes Mary feel like a complete tosser. As far as the sliding scale of morality goes, Mary is leagues beyond Crawford and anyone who doesn’t recycle, but Fanny Price has tested into the 99th percentile of People Likely to be Sainted and she practically glows with the force of her beneficent purity. If she was humorless or pinch-faced or preachy she would be downright unbearable, but Fanny is small-boned and has a lot of curly yellow hair that makes her look like a spunky Disney princess and she’s just so damn nice.
Until she’d enrolled at Girton and met Fanny at the mixer the day before Michaelmas term began, Mary hadn’t thought that anyone in the universe could out-Jane Jane Bennet, but Fanny Price takes the cake in that arena. It is physically impossible for Mary to dislike or resent Fanny because of her resemblance to Jane.
“How was your Christmas?” Fanny asks, still fiddling with her cardigan. Mary knows for a fact that Fanny knit it herself because she’d seen Fanny carting around carefully wound balls of green yarn for months.
Mary pulls a pair of mugs out of the cabinet where she stores her food stash and dumps a bag of Earl Grey into each. “Very nice, actually. My sister gave birth, so now I’ve got a niece at home.”
Fanny begins to glow more forcefully. “Oh, how lovely!” she exclaims, and she really does sound enthused. “What’s her name?”
“Penelope Francis Bennet.” Speaking the words makes a little ball of light grow in Mary’s stomach. Penelope’s not even her kid but Mary’s still wrapped around her stubby little infant finger. “A sure tyrant, what with my sister Lydia as her mum.”
Fanny beams as the electric kettle hisses and turns off with a loud snick. “Congratulations. That’s a beautiful name.”
Mary hands her the tea. Apologetically, she adds, “I haven’t got milk or sugar about, sorry.”
“No worries,” says Fanny. She transfers her fiddling to the rim of the mug, which she traces with her left index finger. “I just wanted to, um, discuss a matter with you.”
Beyond Girton business, there’s only one matter that Mary and Fanny Price have in common. “Christ, he’s not bothering you again, is he?” Mary asks, exasperated. “You’d think after Edmund bashed his face against a tree he’d have learned his lesson.” She tries not to let bitterness creep into her soul, but she can’t fight it, not with that awful memory of his face, battered and frustrated, as he stomped off into the bowels of Paddington. Of course Crawford’s abandoned his idiot quest for her heart already.
“Oh, no,” says Fanny quickly, and cuts off Mary’s dour imaginings at the knees. “That was awfully unkind of Edmund.”
“It was awfully stupid of Crawford to sleep with Maria Bertram,” Mary says dryly. “Anything that results from that can be laid at his door and his door alone.”
“Violence will only beget more violence,” replies Fanny earnestly. She’s adorable and entirely serious, like a Jehovah’s Witness crossed with a forest sprite. Were Mary Crawford and obsessed with the future state of her immortal soul, she’d probably imprint on Fanny Price, too. “But I’m not here about Edmund and Henry’s fight.”
Mary raises an inquiring eyebrow and gestures with her mug. “Do you want to sit?” The only available options are her desk chair and her bed; Fanny sinks backwards onto the bed, folding her hands in her lap and balancing her cup of tea on her knee.
“Thank you,” says Fanny absently. She sharpens immediately afterwards, honing in on Mary as she sprawls in her desk chair. Fanny’s face is round and moon-like, pale, set off to glorious effect by her wild curls. When Mary’s hair had been its natural color and a more respectable length, it had never achieved such a winsome look. “Mary,” Fanny says firmly, “I think we ought to talk about why Henry sought me out.”
“Salvation for his wounded soul?” Mary suggests, not really kidding.
Fanny’s curls shiver as she shakes her head. “Please-don’t joke about this. Henry is good at hiding his feelings, but he hurts. Desperately.”
Slight unease prickles the base of Mary’s spine. She wants to say something about Crawford’s emotional unavailability or that he couldn’t act his way out of a sack, but when faced with the force of Fanny Price’s goodness, she can’t make the words come out. Mary Bennet is never speechless; abstractly, she hopes Fanny appreciates this rare sight.
After a deep sigh, Fanny sips her tea. “I knew exactly what Henry was like when we started spending time together. His sister is rather friendly with Edmund’s brother Tom and I’d heard about-you know. All of the girls, the parties. I had no idea why he suddenly thought I was the most interesting use of his time, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.” Fanny’s voice drops into a slightly tortured register. “He’s so unhappy, Mary.”
Of all people, Mary would have thought practical Fanny Price would be able to see through the bullshit of Henry Crawford’s Poor Rich Boy persona; but apparently not.
“He didn’t want me, you see,” she continues. “The entire time we were-seeing each other, I suppose-he never once tried anything. Not even a kiss. And to be honest with you, after so many years of being ignored, I gave him plenty of opportunities to steal one.”
Mary’s stomach tightens. Philosophically speaking, she’d had no problem with Crawford sleeping with other girls during their tenure as shagging buddies; but she doesn’t want to think about Crawford being steadily reeled in by Fanny Price’s delicate innocence. “Sounds like he really fancied you, frankly,” Mary comments, surprised by the croak in her voice. She can’t quite muster up the energy to be elated about being right: Crawford isn’t over Fanny.
“He treated me like a sister,” Fanny says gently. “Better than a sister, considering how much he dislikes Mary. I don’t think he had any interest in kissing me, which is why he didn’t try. If Henry had fancied me, I have a feeling nothing in the world would have prevented him from doing whatever he wanted.”
She’s right in that-Crawford feels no compunction about reaching out for what he wants with both hands outstretched. He does it differently from Mary, who stretches for what she wants because she has four sisters and her parents haven’t any money. Crawford believes that he deserves what he wants, so he asks for it. Or, failing that, he simply takes.
“So, your pseudo-relationship with innocent on both sides,” says Mary, trying for brisk and falling short. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? I wasn’t shagging Crawford when he pursued you-it didn't seem fair.”
Taking her lower lip between her teeth, Fanny stares into her cooling tea as though she wants it to do the next bit for her. Mary, too twitchy for a hot beverage, pushes her mug further away on her desk. “He talked-about you, Mary.”
Mary’s thighs tense. “How much he regularly wants to strangle me, I’m sure. Bad form to be talking about another girl on a date-shame on him.”
“About your head, actually. How much went on inside of it, what color you’d recently dyed your hair. And what you thought about things, like Cameron and Clegg and the independence of Scottish Parliament and-” helplessly, Fanny shrugged “-stupid things, like Adele and the second series of Sherlock. I don’t even watch Sherlock.”
“How do you not watch Sherlock?” Mark demands, before she can help herself. “It’s brilliant.”
“I haven’t got a TV,” Fanny says.
Mary scoffs. “Who are you, my gran? Just watch it on your computer-it’s on BBC iPlayer, if you’re desperate not to be tainted by illegality.”
“I had more conversations with Henry about television shows I don’t watch and musicians I don’t listen to than I did about anything else. It was like he couldn’t help himself. Every other word out of his mouth was about you. Until he-until he went to Maria, I thought you two were dating, secretly, and he was just being friendly.”
Weirdly, Fanny’s words are having a worse effect on Mary’s composure than Crawford’s manhandling of her person at Paddington. “He doesn’t have a friendly setting,” says Mary. “He’s only got shag and bromance.” Immediately afterwards, however, she thinks through her statement. He’d been friendly with her family-kind, even, to play chess with her father and stick out fourteen hours of labor with people he’d only met that day.
Correctly interpreting her expression, Fanny smiles. “That’s not quite true, is it?”
“Regardless,” Mary says, shaking her head slightly to loosen her thoughts, “I’m going to be honest. I don’t really understand why you’re here, telling me all of this.”
“I want you to forgive him,” Fanny replies, inching forward so that she is peering, earnest again, into Mary’s eyes. “I want you to forgive him for Maria Bertram and take him back.”
Exasperated, Mary leans forward and speaks clearly. “There is no ‘back’ to which I could take him, Fanny, as we weren’t dating.” As this is a point that has penetrated no one’s skull, not even her sluttiest sister, Mary feels that her rising frustration is understandable. “Fanny, Crawford didn’t owe me a thing, and we loathe each other tremendously when we aren’t shagging. He’s a misogynist pig and constantly tells me that I’m self-righteous. Does that sound like a healthy relationship to you?”
“It sounds to me like two confused people who haven’t figured out their feelings,” Fanny tells her. When she’s filled with sympathy, her eyes tilt up in the corners-Mary knows, as she currently has a first row seat to the phenomenon. “I recognize the signs.”
“I didn’t think you were physically capable of hatred,” Mary says.
Fanny’s smile grows minutely. “The signs of people who hurt each other,” she explains, gently, the same way she cradles Mary’s mug as though it hadn’t been picked out of bin at an M&S clearance sale for £2. “I let Edmund ignore my feelings for many years, and all it brought me, until I gathered my courage, was sadness and pain. I’m fond of Henry, and I like you. I want you to be happy.”
If they all lived in the sunshine world where Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram frolick through fields of wild flowers quoting Wordsworth at each other and making nauseatingly sweet love on a bed of buttercups, Mary is sure that she and Crawford could be happy together. But as she and Crawford aren’t idealistic young lovers, the likelihood of that seems somewhere between incomprehensible and the heat death of the universe.
“I’m happy,” Mary says. “I can’t speak for Crawford after your boyfriend broke his face, but he’s at least a little bit happy, I’m sure.”
“He’s miserable,” Fanny corrects her. “I can’t claim to know your feelings, but I don’t quite believe that you’re happy, either.”
Of course Mary isn’t happy; she’s just broken things off with a specimen of perfect manhood and everyone of her acquaintance that she considers of equal, if not higher moral rectitude, seems to be insisting that she hand Crawford her heart and a little penknife he can use to stab it.
“I’m happy,” Mary repeats through her teeth.
Still looking skeptical, Fanny places the half-drunk mug on the floor and stands. “I only wanted to tell you that. Thank you for listening.” She tucks a particularly tenacious curl behind her ear and smiles. “I’ll see you about, then.”
After Fanny closes the door behind her, Mary sits in her desk chair and stares (broodingly; she’s surely giving Will a run for his money in this sphere) at her bed. After their biochemistry lab practicum final, she’d dragged Crawford into that bed, laughing into his mouth as she licked his teeth. They haven’t had sex in a bed since, perhaps cursed by the moment that Mary let her anger get away from her and she threw his trousers out of the window. Normally the memory of Crawford, open-mouthed and shocked, watching his wool trousers float genteelly towards the ground, fills Mary with goodwill towards all mankind, but she doesn’t feel up for goodwill of any sort.
Her skin itches against her bones, so Mary tucks her wallet into the back pocket of her jeans and walks to the chemist three blocks away, where she carefully surveys her options before deciding that she hasn’t dyed her hair purple in an age and she feels, frankly, like purple will suit her current mood and not look as hideous with her complexion as black would.
By now, Mary’s a veteran at dyeing her hair; every term she’s called to help at least four first years in the College who want do something radical and shock their parents but can’t figure out how not to blind themselves with bleach. She applies the beach evenly and thoroughly and then sits on her towel on the windowsill with both door and window open, to properly ventilate. As she reads and occasionally checks her wristwatch, various other residents of the College stop by to say hello and ask about her hols.
Thanks to Girton’s massively efficient gossip network, Mary hears within two hours everything of debatable interest that has happened since the end of Michaelmas. Emma Wu and George Nyugen have gotten engaged (unsurprising); Fanny and Edmund have been spotted necking in four places on campus (also unsurprising); Maria Bertram is giving Peter Rushton the time of day again (slightly unexpected, although Maria can’t go half a week without being admired).
When Mary goes to wash out the bleach and apply the purple dye, she finds Frederica Vernon cowering outside of the bathroom, clutching her phone to her left ear and repeating “Mm-hmm,” and “Of course, Mum,” in a terrified voice. Mary holds up the bottle of purple and mouths, Do you want the extra? Bleach in my room.
Freddie considers a curl of her thick black hair, hums, “You’re very right, Mum,” and mouths back, Yes, please. After a long pause, she rolls her eyes and, covering the base of her phone, whispers, “This’ll be a while. Start without me.”
Of the current crop of first years, Freddie is Mary’s favorite-closely followed by Harriet Smith for sheer entertainment value-and her mother has achieved the status of urban legend in the halls of the College. The boys who’d seen Susan Vernon help Freddie move in the first day of Michaelmas had all immediately sworn to her a vow of eternal devotion. “She has a perfectly symmetrical face and figure,” George Nyugen had explained over shared chips that evening.
“Her arse is a work of art,” Emma had promptly translated for him. “She looks like a more beautiful Gina Torres. Stop hogging the vinegar, George.”
Over George’s exaggerated insistence that he wasn’t hogging anything, Mary had observed, tapping a chip against her lower lip, “I wasn’t aware there could exist anymore more beautiful than Gina Torres.”
Mary still hasn’t personally witnessed the Aphrodite Incarnate that is Susan Vernon, but she personally finds Freddie tremendously attractive and thinks that her mother is likely to be a she-devil. Even with her head in a sink, Mary hears Freddie’s long-suffering sigh when she enters the bathroom. “What’s up with your mum?”
Sounding aggravated, Freddie mutters, “She’s thinking about divorcing my stepfather. Apparently she met some 25-year-old hedge fund manager at a New Year’s party she attended and latched onto his dick like a limpet.” Mary shuts off the sink and gropes for her nearby towel. “At any rate, let me help you with the back of your head, and then you can return the favor, yeah?”
Twelve minutes later Mary is seated at her desk chair as Freddie enthusiastically scrapes purple goo onto the hair behind Mary’s ears. Offhand, Freddie asks, “What’s this I hear about Crawford, then?”
Mary jerks her hair to the right and almost yanks half of her hair out of her scalp. “Where the hell did you hear about anything with me and Crawford?” she demands. “Bleeding fucking Christ, I think I just scalped myself.”
“You’re fine,” Freddie says after a second of careful perusal. “Nary a hair removed. So I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about whether or not you and Crawford are dating after you dragged his arse to your sister’s wedding?”
After a moment’s consideration, Mary groans. “The rowing team.”
“The rowing team,” Freddie agrees. “Gossipy cats. Worse than first years.”
“You can tell everyone that thinks to mention it that I am not dating Crawford,” Mary informs her in the snootiest voice she can manage; it’s improved dramatically over the length of her acquaintance with Will. “And tell the rowing team that if they keep spreading that information about, I’ll castrate the lot of them.”
~
The threat would be more effective were Mary not smaller and spindlier than 99% of the team. Even Ed Ferrars, the 1% of the team who is smaller and spindlier than Mary, isn’t at all convinced by her cease and desist demands. “Listen, Mare,” he tells her at the first CUSU LGBT meeting of the term, “I get that you don’t want it to get around that you’re now compromising your morals and dating someone who couldn’t pick out Darfur on a map, but honestly, it’s the most fucking hilarious thing that’s happened in Girton since Nyugen almost broke his hand wringing Elton’s neck.”
Ed punctuates this by taking a long swill of his lager.
Mary abruptly changes her tactics. “If you stop making shit up, I’ll introduce you to Eli Dashwood.”
Ed chokes on his lager, no longer looking casual. “W-what?”
“I said,” Mary enunciates, “that if you stop pretending to be a 13-year-old girl and shut up about my non-existent relationship with Crawford, I’ll introduce you to Eli. He’s over there, chatting with Marianne.” Mary doesn’t have to point; Ed’s eyes drift towards Eli like a compass needle. “Swear you’ll stop.”
Ed, bless him, knows better than to bluff her about this. “I’ll stop,” he rasps. “Shit-how do I look?” He immediately tugs at the bottom of his shirt. “I look like a prat, don’t I?”
“Better he finds that out now,” Mary says under her breath, and she grips Ed around the upper arm and drags him to Eli and his sister, who are doing shots. Well, Marianne is doing shots and Eli is watching, disapproving but affectionate. Thank god Mary and Marianne had had a mutually amicable break-up, or else this would be awkward as hell.
With an enthusiastic and well-snogged Ed on her side, Mary plugs up the leak from the rowing team but can’t undo their damage. This is emphasized three days later, when Mary walks into her last class of the week and finds out that she shares it with Crawford, who is sprawling at their usual table, his legs crossed at the ankle. She stops in the doorway, hovering and uncertain for the first time in her life, and she can’t think for a moment on how to proceed. All she can think about is Crawford, loose-limbed and mostly healed, his head bent over his notebook.
A solid wave of lust washes over Mary, slamming into her chest and almost knocking her back on her heels. She wants to do lots of unspeakable things to Crawford, which is not an unfamiliar state; but they haven’t been together since before the Fanny Price/Maria Bertram mess, and it’s been months.
“Chin up,” she whispers to herself. “Don’t be an idiot.” Shreya Govindarajulu, filtering into the room behind Mary, gives her a strange look and pushes through to the front of the room.
As she places her books on the table and slides her bag off of her shoulder, Mary tries to come up with something to say-something just witty enough to indicate that she’s thought of his ultimatum and finds it full of shit-but all she can manage through her dry throat is, “Heya.”
Crawford says, neutrally, eyes fixed on the lecture podium in the front of the room, “Bennet.” His fingers tighten on his pen and he rustles through his things, making noise and avoiding contact with her. There’s no hope that any amount of wit is going to rescue this situation. At least here girls in the back row are whispering and pointing at them; how do they all know?
Mary drops guiltily into her seat. Embarrassment prickles her skin and she shrugs her shoulders, trying to shift the wool of her jumper into a more comfortable configuration. She can feel herself begin to turn a flustered, frustrated red. “Jesus, Crawford,” she says abruptly. “It’s not like I murdered your pet.”
Crawford replies tightly, “That’s a comfort to me, Bennet. Not the issue.”
“Oh, grow up,” she snarls under her breath.
“How’s Robert?” Crawford continues nastily. “Still completely wrong for you?” Now that she’s broken the spell of perverse shame, he has no compunction about nailing her to the floor with a particularly angry glare.
“My relationship with Richard isn’t any of your business, and I would appreciate it if you’d just shut your gob and concentrate on this incredibly important class we’re currently sharing.” Mary stabs him in the back of the hand with her pencil. “We’ll talk about this afterwards, all right?”
Crawford swears and bats her pencil away. “Jesus, fine. And you say I’m the psychopath.” He rubs at the skin along the back of his hand and swears again as the professor loudly clears her throat.
“Good morning,” Professor Jennings shouts. “Shut up you lot, pay attention.”
At the end of class, Mary can’t say for certain that she’s digested more than 13% of the material, but she also hasn’t stabbed herself or Crawford in the eye with a pen, so she’s willing to mark it up as a success. “Let’s get a coffee,” she says to Crawford, exhaling loudly as Jennings sweeps out of the room, trailing a small posse of devoted students behind her.
Crawford finishes returning his designer notebook to his bag and says, “Great, I’ll host,” and locks his hand around Mary’s forearm. He then proceeds to bodily drag her across campus, grimly silent and with a horrifyingly severe expression affixed to his face. Most of the bruising has gone down and after six more weeks his zygomatic arch should be as good as new, although things can be tricky with facial injuries.
“How are you feeling?” Mary asks before she can help herself. “Are you taking your medication?”
“I’m fine,” says Crawford shortly. The King’s College green is thick with snow and Crawford, taking a turn too quickly for someone of Mary’s lesser weight class, almost flings her into a nearby drift.
Jesus, Mary thinks. He’s completely lost it. This would probably be romantic to the kind of person that finds abusive Twilight-esque relationships endlessly dreamy, but Mary has never been that kind of person. “Slow down,” she says, “you’re going to wrench my arm out at this rate.”
“Sorry,” Crawford snarls, and speeds up. He takes the stairs to the third floor two at a time and uses centrifugal motion to fling Mary into his room as he pulls the door shut. “Not up for a polite chat, I’m afraid.”
“I can tell,” Mary gasps, out of breath from their stupid dash up the stairs. “Fuck, Crawford, I might actually hack out one of my lungs at this rate.” Wheezing, she doubles over and pounds on her chest with her fist. “Do you have coffee, or were you going to drain my blood and drink that?”
Crawford pulls a Nespresso (of course he has a Nespresso, Mary isn’t even surprised) out of his wardrobe and plugs it in by his desk. “Har, har,” he says. “Brilliant, Bennet. Go fill this up.” He shoves the container that holds the water into her hands and directs her towards the floor’s kitchen. “Get.”
When Mary returns, it’s apparent that he’s tidied up some of his desk since last term. Now that his coats aren’t just flung on top of his stuff, Mary can see that he’s got even more books piled on the back half of his desk than he does on the shelf. “Is that Mists of Avalon?” she asks before she can help herself. “Are you serious, Crawford?”
“Shut up,” he says, wrenching the water out of her hands. “Not a word, Bennet.”
Mary ignores him. “That’s the seminal nineties feminist take on the Arthurian legend! Crawford. You didn’t buy that because of me, did you?” But as soon as she says it she knows that it can’t be: The book’s binding is almost completely destroyed; it’s been read at least two dozen times over the course of many years.
“I like science fiction,” says Crawford dismissively.
“That’s fantasy,” Mary points out.
“Science fiction and fantasy are always shelved in the same area of bookstores,” Crawford says, like Mary’s going to believe that he bought Mists of Avalon because he thought it was science fiction and then he read it thirty times by mistake. “My reading tastes are unrelated to the point at hand, Bennet.”
“They’re related,” Mary promises him absently. She moves forward and squints as she tilts her head to the side, her glasses sliding against her nose. “Are you secretly a romantic, Crawford? Because that looks like the works of Sara Douglass-Wayfarer Redemption and Troy Game series?”
Crawford pulls his jumper over his head and throws it over the books, obscuring their titles. “I’m serious,” he says tightly. “We need to talk.”
“It’s not that my entire opinion of you as a person is going to change because you happen to own a copy of Darkwitch Rising, but that one’s my favorite of the Troy Game boo-”
“It’s my favorite, too,” says Crawford repressively. “Not the point.”
The Nespresso machine beeps to indicate that it’s finished, so Mary swipes the first cup of coffee and leaves Crawford to growl with frustration and stuff another capsule into the top. “I don’t know,” says Mary. “Considering that I’ve judged you in the past on your obsession with Robert Heinlein, knowing that you also read a lot of Marion Zimmer Bradley is a new step for us.”
“I like Robert Heinlein,” Crawford says through his teeth. “What I don't understand is why you won’t date me because I read him.”
“He’s a misogynist arsehole.”
“So’s James Bond,” Crawford points out, “and that didn’t exactly stop you from suggesting we watch Casino Royale last term, did it?”
“Vesper Lynd is the greatest female character ever invented for the Bond series,” Mary says, as she had said last term when they’d torrented a copy of Casino Royale and watched it on her laptop with a shared pair of headphones. “Eva Green was a revelation.”
“You,” says Crawford, “are a snob and an intellectual arsehat. For some unfathomably reason I find that devastatingly attractive. But I’m not going to let you continue to shove me into your handy categories if it means you won’t admit that we should be dating.”
The Nespresso machine beeps again. Crawford ignores it, but Mary uses her foot to unplug the machine; it’s one of those habits years of watching global warming documentaries has instilled in her bones.
“You’re the snob,” she finally says, when Crawford shows no sign of continuing, simply breathing heavily and clenching and unclenching his fists. “You’ve got your rich family and your lovely trust fund and a truly appalling amount of expensive clothing and because of that, you haven’t the need to regulate your behavior.”
Crawford reaches up and mimes strangling her. “Bennet, I know who Nelson Mandela and Idi Amin are. The fact that you still bring that up just tells me that your sense of humor is hideous.”
“All we do is fight,” Mary bellows at him, catching herself before she gestures expansively and pours coffee over everything. “All! We! Do!”
“Because you think you want a relationship where you’re morally superior, and the only way you can prove that is by picking fights that support your claim,” Crawford shouts back. “I’m not a beast, Bennet! I give money to Save the Children and I made that joke in admittedly bad taste about East African dictators because getting you riled up is hilarious. And, just because I enjoy reading about sixties-era space espionage does not mean that I actually believe that women should be one-dimensional breast implants while their male lovers explore the great frontier.” While yelling, Crawford’s face turns slightly purple and the flushing shows where the bruising in his face has not entirely healed. “I was willing to let most of it slide because of that aforementioned hilarity, but since you insist on judging me, I’m not going to let you anymore. Making me out as a horrible person doesn't make you a better one, Bennet!”
Mary rears back; this time she does manage to spill her coffee, but most of it splatters onto his bedspread and not onto her. “Excuse me!” she gasps, like a parody of an offended lady of the manor. “What the hell, Crawford?”
“Do you ever listen to yourself?” he asks her, in a lethally level voice. “When it comes to women’s rights and CUSU LGBT and God fucking damn Médecins Sans Frontières I don’t know anyone who is more invested or active than you. But in terms of interpersonal relationships, you are a sorry mess of a person.”
For a very long series of seconds, Mary feels like everything inside of her skin has been crumpled up and stepped on. Even the bits of her that are being fueled entirely by anger suddenly feel delicate and bruised, like the inside of Crawford’s face. “In that case,” she says, “and you are wrong, I think we’re rather done with this parody of a relationship, aren’t we? Clearly you don’t respect what I value, and clearly I have no way of telling whether you’re joking or are actually being an insensitive arsehole.”
“Shit, no, Bennet,” says Crawford, deflating as the purple-and every other color-drains from his face. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You should get that phrase tattooed on your knuckles,” Mary suggests, slamming the mug down on his desk. “Considering the frequency with which you must have to say it.”
Crawford, still pale, shoot out a hand and props it against the doorframe, almost hitting Mary in the nose as she attempts to leave. “You don’t get to run off.”
“Why not?” Mary fires back. “You did!”
“You’re the more mature one, remember?” Crawford smiles without a shred of humor. “Bennet, I’m sorry that I said that. I just meant-”
Mary counts to five in her head, and when he’s yet to finish his sentence, she offers, “You meant that I’m shite with relationships, didn’t you? This is, of course, coming from the man who, as far as I’m aware, has yet to go two weeks without shagging something in a skirt.”
“I have never been unfaithful to a monogamous relationship,” says Crawford tightly. “That thing with Fanny; it wasn’t what everyone assumed.” Crawford could be lying about his history of fidelity, but as far as Mary is aware, he’s never lied to her or to anyone else she knows. One of the many screws in her chest loosens slightly.
Mary has nothing to do with her hands, and looking at his fingers as they dig into the wood of the doorframe doesn’t seem very practical. “I know,” she admits. “Fanny came and told me. About your-friendship, I guess.” But she still wants to know: “Were you in love with Fanny? That whole making you a better man, changing yourself business-was it because of Fanny?”
Crawford relaxes his grip on the doorframe. As it turns out, it’s so he can shift, using his proximity to push Mary back into his room, away from the door and an easy exit. “No, Mary. I wasn’t in love with Fanny.” There’s just enough humor in his voice that Mary jerks her head up. “It’d be a bit difficult for me to have managed that, because I was crazy about you.”
His eyes are sparkling, like Lizzie’s do when she stares at Will when she thinks no one will see. Mary’s read about this phenomenon, but she’s never actually seen them happen in the context of herself; she’s never looked twelve inches away and seen someone’s eyes light up and dance, the way that Crawford’s are at this very moment.
Faintly, Mary is aware that her proximity to a copy of Mists of Avalon is making her unforgivably saccharine, but she can’t seem to push down the odd feeling in her stomach. “You have an odd way of showing it,” she says. “Since you just called me a snob and an intellectual arsehat.”
“I told you,” he reminds her, “that I found both of those things very attractive.”
“You also find Maria Bertram attractive.” Mary makes a face to show how she feels about fucking Maria Bertram. “Jesus, Crawford. If you were so crazy about me, why were you fucking her?”
“Are we seriously going to have a discussion about the disconnect between romantic expectations and reasonable parameters of poorly-defined casual relationships?” Crawford asks. Mary recognizes his sentence, because it’s lifted verbatim from a text she sent him during Michaelmas term.
“Cute,” she says sourly, meaning fuck you.
“I’m not going to apologize for Maria,” he says.
Mary growls, “Well, I’m not going to apologize for Richard!”
“That’s completely different,” Crawford begins, and Mary points an angry finger at him and interrupts with a loud, “HA! Who’s the hypocrite now?”
Exasperated, Crawford says, “I never called you a hypocrite.”
“No,” Mary agrees, the anger beginning to build again, throbbing at her temples. “You just told me that I’m incapable of forming rational judgments of people. Well, of you, I guess. But while we’re talking about that, you in fact spent the end of last term talking about how you were going to become a better person, and then you just told me off for essentially agreeing with you. Jesus, Crawford!”
“I’m not great by your standards, Mary,” says Crawford, and Mary wants to interrupts, Don’t say my name, not like that, not like I’m breaking your heart, but he barrels on, “but that doesn’t mean I’m unforgiveable. You see me as an absolute, in this case absolutely horrible, which is I assume why I’m only good enough for casual shags. But I’m not, you know.”
“You do a very good job pretending to be,” Mary replies. “All of those jokes, the girls, the rowing, your infamously trashy parties with your rich friends. What was all of that? Did you make that up?”
Awkwardly, Crawford explains, “It’s easy.”
“Oh, that was beautiful,” Mary says. “It’s easy. Right.”
“Mary,” says Crawford through his teeth, “please shut up and let me explain.”
Mary would much rather crawl back to Girton and lick her wounds in the peace and quiet of her own room, but she folds her arms across her chest and says, “By all means.”
“Thank you.” Crawford rubs at the line above the bridge of his nose, sighs, and rubs it again. “Being who I am-you know, my grandfather’s title and my sister and her wretched husband and the rest of my family, of whom you are so witheringly disdain-it’s much simpler to be exactly what’s expected. But there’s not a single human being on this planet who can exist on just one shallow plane of existence.”
“Are we getting existential now?” asks Mary snippily.
“Shut up, Bennet,” growls Crawford. “You asked me at the train station if anyone really knows me. The answer is no. But I’d-like it to be you.”
Part of Mary wants to ask if he’s imprinted on her like a baby duck, but she’s not quite cruel enough to do that. Reasonably (she feels), she points out, “You seem to find plenty about me frustrating. Maybe you should try someone more like Fanny.”
“What are you so afraid of?” Crawford demands. “Every time I try to move beyond a casual shag, you run full tilt in the opposite direction. There’s no way you have intimacy problems, not with your crazy family.”
“I’m not afraid,” hisses Mary, stung. “I’m practical.”
“That’s an utter load of shit,” says Crawford flatly. “You’re terrified. What, that you’ll actually like me? What will it say about Mary Bennet, one of the most vocal members of Cambridge’s social justice organizations, that she’s romantically involved with Henry Crawford, general cad and bounder?” His voice hardens over ‘vocal,’ and Mary scowls at him. She wishes she was still holding the coffee mug, just so she could have the pleasure of throwing it at him.
“Thanks for that incredibly flattering analysis of my personality and completely incorrect assumption, seeing as how, thanks to your rowing friends, everyone’s already sure I’m “romantically entangled” with you, and not a single one has impugned my honor.” Three milliseconds after she uses air-quotes Mary already regrets them, but she moves on. “God, I can’t believe that I missed you. I must’ve had brain damage.” She slips out from under the hand that he lifts to stop her and in seconds is pounding down the stairs and erupting into the green, which is turning even more white because it’s begun to snow, the clouds angrily spitting out wet clumps.
As she stuffs her hands into the pockets of her coat, there’s a loud shush from above her and she hears Crawford’s slightly tinny voice. “Bennet!” he shouts. She looks up before she can stop herself, and he’s leaning like a lunatic halfway out of his window, getting snowed on. “We wouldn’t have to spend all of our time fighting if you would just accept that you like me.”
“I don’t like you!” Mary reminds him. She has to squint because the snow that lands on her glasses is melting into her eyes. “We just had a fight, you moron! Go sulk inside your room before you catch hypothermia.”
Crawford leans further out of the window. “Have dinner with me.”
“You just called me a sorry mess of a person!” Mary shouts. “You arse!”
“Seven-thirty,” Crawford counters. “Kashmiri Palace.”
Whatever he sees on Mary’s face makes him throw back his head and laugh. “You drive me nuts, Bennet,” he calls down to her. “I bet you feel the same way.”
“Of course I feel the same way,” Mary says loudly. “Because you’re clearly suffering from some kind of personality disorder!” Crawford just continues grinning. For once, the sight of it inspires a part of Mary’s brain not devoted to murderous impulses. Oh god, she can’t actually like him, can she? What’s happened to her self-preservation instincts? “What are you smiling at me like that?”
“Because you missed me,” he says. “Seven-thirty, Bennet. Don’t forget.” Before Mary can do anything-remind him that she hates his guts, offer to remove his spleen, and throw a snowball at his head all come to mind-Crawford ducks back inside his room and slams the window shut.
“You’re criminally insane,” she yells, just for the hell of it, and a group of first years coming up the walk behind her immediately scatter like chickens at the outburst.
vi. | watch out, cupid
Twelve minutes before Lizzie’s supposed to be in the ballroom slicing cake in front of the 300 people Will’s insane aunt had insisted be invited, Mary finds her camped out with Lydia on the stairs leading to the east wing, drinking from a bottle of a 2007 Gaja Barbaresco.
“This is exceedingly classy,” Mary notes, leading across the banister and swiping the bottle to check that its contents are nonalcoholic. “It suits your very posh wedding.”
“Oh god,” says Lizzie blankly, staring at the mirror at the base of the stairs, her hands still formed around where the bottle of wine had been. “Did you see what his aunt is wearing?”
“Oscar de la Renta: Fall Collection for Hags?” replies Lydia. “It was hard to miss, what with her gigantically awful hat. If she doesn’t shut up about her luncheon last week with Wills and Kate, I’m going to stab her with my shoe.” Lydia wriggles it in the air for emphasis.
Lizzie buries her head in the crook of her arm and moans, “Who am I kidding with this charade? Me? Mrs. Darcy?”
“That’s you,” agrees Lydia drunkenly, elbowing Lizzie in the side. “Mrs. William Arthur Pemberly Darcy! Is there a reason why is one of his names is the same as this stupidly large house?”
Mary takes a mouthful of the contents of the bottle, which are ginger ale, and then returns the bottle to Lizzie, who clearly needs it most. “I thought this is an estate?”
“It is,” Lizzie says. She gulps down a fourth of the bottle and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing some of her lipstick into the corner of her mouth. “Have you been sent to fetch me for something?”
“Mum was yelling about the cake, but Da was pouring her another glass of champagne as I left, so she’s probably not yelling about anything anymore except how beautiful all of her daughters are.”
“Dear thing,” says Lizzie. She begins to look slightly teary-eyed and the tenor of their staircase interlude shifts in the maudlin direction. “Oh god, I’m going to have a baby in a few months in this cavern.”
Swooping down the stairs, Jane says, “Oh, darling,” as Lydia points out, “It’s at least four caverns, Lizzie.”
Mary rescues the bottle of ginger ale as Jane pulls Lizzie into a tight hug, crinkling the back of Lizzie’s hugely expensive dress with the force of her affection. “We love you so much,” Jane says into Lizzie’s hair. “Were you checking on Penelope?” Mary asks Kitty, who is trailing down the stairs after Jane.
“Yeah.” Kitty rolls her eyes. “Out like a light. If only Lydia had been this perfect. Is the cake done yet?”
“Waiting for Lizzie’s waterworks to end,” Mary replies. “Ginger ale?” She offers Kitty the bottle, and her sister accepts gratefully. Kitty raises an eyebrow and tilts her head inquiringly towards Lizzie, blubbering like no one has ever blubbered before. “She’s upset about Lady Catherine’s couture.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Kitty wrinkles her nose. “Old hag. Might as well have hung a sign around her neck, ‘I’m the poshest tosser here, bite me.’”
“You wouldn’t be able to get anything out of her,” Lydia says critically. “She’s like a leather handbag that’s a kazillion years old. Lizzie, stop crying, or else you’re going to be puffy when you cut the cake, and we’ll have to burn all of those photos.”
“Puffy,” Lizzie wails. “I’m puffy.”
Jane and Mary both turn evil eyes on Lydia. “Shut it,” Mary advises her. “Or else none of us will ever be getting cake.”
“Boring,” mutters Lydia under her breath, turning the word into two long syllables.
Thank god for the best adjusted of the Bennet sisters. “Lizzie,” Jane coos, running her hands over Lizzie’s head, “you’re going to be a wonderful mother, because not only have you got years of experience from watching Mum, you have the best partner to help you do it.”
Kitty jokes, “Who, Jane, you?” and all of them laugh, even Lizzie. “You have to admit,” Kitty continues, “he’s a teensy bit frightening.”
“Please, he’s going to fold like a bad hand of poker the moment Lizzie puts his daughter in his hands,” Mary predicts. “They always do, you know. And the ones that don’t aren’t worth marrying or procreating with at all.”
“Was that supposed to be encouraging?” Lydia inquires sweetly. “It wasn’t.”
Mary kicks her in the ankle. “Oh, shut it. We all know that Will is the good sort. He hasn’t killed his aunt yet, which is a sign of impending sainthood, and his best friend is Charlie. You couldn’t get a better character reference than that.” Jane blushes as she releases Lizzie and hands her a white linen handkerchief.
“Why are we vetting him?” Lizzie asks as she dabs at her eyes. “I’m already married. It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late,” says Lydia gravely, which is hilarious coming from a seventeen-year-old.
Mary props her elbow on the bannister as Lizzie chokes on a laugh. “There’s nothing you need to worry about,” she tells Lizzie quietly. “The baby is healthy, you’ve married a man that is, incongruently, one of the richest, handsomest, and nicest in the entire U.K., and you don’t have to worry about seeing any of our sorry faces any time soon because you and Will’ll be back in Glasgow before you know it.”
“Actually,” says Lizzie bashfully, “Georgie’s graduating at the end of this year. Once she’s out of the Royal Conservatory, there’s no reason for us to stay in Glasgow. So I’m transferring to the firm’s offices in London.”
For half a second, silence descends on their deserted staircase, before Kitty shrieks and launches herself at Lizzie, taking Lydia in with her. “OH MY GOD,” she yells. After a few seconds of flailing, she manages to hook Mary around the neck and drag her into their lopsided hug-pile. “You’re coming home!” Kitty squeals.
“Mum’s going to go insane,” predicts Lydia from under Kitty’s armpit, but she sounds like she’s trying to smother her pleasure. “And Da’s going to be happy that his favorite will be back home.”
“I’m not-” begins Lizzie, but the rest of them drown out her half-hearted denial.
As they’re picking themselves up, Georgie appears from the direction of the ballroom where the wedding guests have been stowed. She’s so adorable that Mary wants to pick her up and protect her from the rest of humanity, not in the least because she’s so nice to Penelope even though her biological father had tried to seduce Georgie the same way he’d succeeded with Lydia. “It’s almost time for the cake,” she says quietly. “Are you ready, Lizzie?”
“Yes, yes.” Lizzie checks her make-up in the mirror and pushes a few strands of hair back into her pins. “As ready as I’ll ever be for getting cake smashed into my face, I suppose.”
“It’s institutionalized humiliation,” Mary tells her. “Go on then, give us a show.”
Lizzie affixes her best queenly expression and sails out with Georgie, closely followed by Jane, and then Kitty and Lydia, bickering about something stupid and useless. Mary tells herself that she’s being shallow but she still ducks in front of the mirror and checks that her hair, which is too short for her mother’s tastes but dyed to a color found in nature (blonde, if more honey than her own natural color), is in at least some semblance of order.
“Vanity’s a sin,” Henry says from behind her.
Mary gives half a shriek and whirls around, her bridesmaid dress fluttering as madly as her nerves. “Jesus. You prat! You gave me a fucking heart attack.”
He grins lazily, hands in the pockets of his nice suit trousers as he pushes himself off of a doorframe. “If you’re done with your preening? Let’s go back. I’m only here for the cake, after all.”
Mary scoffs before shepherding him into the same corridor down which her sisters had disappeared moments earlier. “Have you seen that five-layer monstrosity? There’s no way it’s going to be palatable. There’s a law about wedding cakes, and it’s all about how the fancier the outside is the more the inside resembles cardboard.” The halls of Pemberly haven’t much changed since the house was built 500 years ago, so Mary counts four suits of armor as they make their way out of the residential east wing to where the wedding reception is being held towards the front of the house.
“I’m sure you’re a wedding expert,” agrees Henry, crowding against her the further they travel down the corridor. “What with your vast experience of-what is this, the second wedding you’ve attended? And you missed this bit of Jane’s, didn’t you?” He catches up to her and casually links her hand with his, his warm fingers gentle as they curl around hers.
“Yes, because you’re much more qualified,” Mary says, eyes fixed straight ahead. “What’s this, your third? Your sister, my sister, and now my other sister?”
“Fourteenth, actually,” he replies as they come to one of the side entrances of the ballroom. “I’ve got a lot of cousins. Gentry, you know.”
Mary can finally hear the faint, teasing thread of his voice. She gives a loud, overdramatic sniff. “Aristocrats. Inbred, the lot of you.”
Right before he tugs her through the doors to dart behind a pair of potted palms so her mother won’t catch them returning and not socializing with the party guests, he turns to her and smiles. The expression provokes something in her belly, making it tighten pleasurably and spill out onto her face through her eyes and mouth. After a long second, he says, “Oh, all right. I’m here for the cake and to finally beat your father at chess.”
“Ha!” Mary says. “That’ll be on a cold day in hell.”
“Mary, dear,” observes Henry pleasantly, drawing her closer with an arm around her waist, “You need to stop issuing definitive statements like that.” He nips her bottom lip, and then tilts his head and slides his mouth across hers. He tastes like champagne, now slightly flat, and the strawberries from the cheese plate that had been served after dinner. Mary inhales deeply and curves her arms around his neck as he pulls back slightly. “We can’t have you being wrong,” he says. “After all, Mary Bennet is never wrong.”
~
v. | everybody just wanna fall in love
In a magnificent further display of the universe’s general opinion re: Mary Bennet, Fanny Price knocks on the door of Mary’s room at Girton about three seconds after Mary finishes dragging her weary body inside. “Heya,” she says quietly. “Can I talk to you?”
Mary stares at her for what feels like a very long time, but is probably only a few seconds. “Of course,” she says when good manners kick her in the arse. “Come in. I was just about to plug in my kettle. You want some tea?”
Nervously pulling at the hem of her cardigan, Fanny nods. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
Fanny Price is one of those people whose sheer existence makes Mary feel like a complete tosser. As far as the sliding scale of morality goes, Mary is leagues beyond Crawford and anyone who doesn’t recycle, but Fanny Price has tested into the 99th percentile of People Likely to be Sainted and she practically glows with the force of her beneficent purity. If she was humorless or pinch-faced or preachy she would be downright unbearable, but Fanny is small-boned and has a lot of curly yellow hair that makes her look like a spunky Disney princess and she’s just so damn nice.
Until she’d enrolled at Girton and met Fanny at the mixer the day before Michaelmas term began, Mary hadn’t thought that anyone in the universe could out-Jane Jane Bennet, but Fanny Price takes the cake in that arena. It is physically impossible for Mary to dislike or resent Fanny because of her resemblance to Jane.
“How was your Christmas?” Fanny asks, still fiddling with her cardigan. Mary knows for a fact that Fanny knit it herself because she’d seen Fanny carting around carefully wound balls of green yarn for months.
Mary pulls a pair of mugs out of the cabinet where she stores her food stash and dumps a bag of Earl Grey into each. “Very nice, actually. My sister gave birth, so now I’ve got a niece at home.”
Fanny begins to glow more forcefully. “Oh, how lovely!” she exclaims, and she really does sound enthused. “What’s her name?”
“Penelope Francis Bennet.” Speaking the words makes a little ball of light grow in Mary’s stomach. Penelope’s not even her kid but Mary’s still wrapped around her stubby little infant finger. “A sure tyrant, what with my sister Lydia as her mum.”
Fanny beams as the electric kettle hisses and turns off with a loud snick. “Congratulations. That’s a beautiful name.”
Mary hands her the tea. Apologetically, she adds, “I haven’t got milk or sugar about, sorry.”
“No worries,” says Fanny. She transfers her fiddling to the rim of the mug, which she traces with her left index finger. “I just wanted to, um, discuss a matter with you.”
Beyond Girton business, there’s only one matter that Mary and Fanny Price have in common. “Christ, he’s not bothering you again, is he?” Mary asks, exasperated. “You’d think after Edmund bashed his face against a tree he’d have learned his lesson.” She tries not to let bitterness creep into her soul, but she can’t fight it, not with that awful memory of his face, battered and frustrated, as he stomped off into the bowels of Paddington. Of course Crawford’s abandoned his idiot quest for her heart already.
“Oh, no,” says Fanny quickly, and cuts off Mary’s dour imaginings at the knees. “That was awfully unkind of Edmund.”
“It was awfully stupid of Crawford to sleep with Maria Bertram,” Mary says dryly. “Anything that results from that can be laid at his door and his door alone.”
“Violence will only beget more violence,” replies Fanny earnestly. She’s adorable and entirely serious, like a Jehovah’s Witness crossed with a forest sprite. Were Mary Crawford and obsessed with the future state of her immortal soul, she’d probably imprint on Fanny Price, too. “But I’m not here about Edmund and Henry’s fight.”
Mary raises an inquiring eyebrow and gestures with her mug. “Do you want to sit?” The only available options are her desk chair and her bed; Fanny sinks backwards onto the bed, folding her hands in her lap and balancing her cup of tea on her knee.
“Thank you,” says Fanny absently. She sharpens immediately afterwards, honing in on Mary as she sprawls in her desk chair. Fanny’s face is round and moon-like, pale, set off to glorious effect by her wild curls. When Mary’s hair had been its natural color and a more respectable length, it had never achieved such a winsome look. “Mary,” Fanny says firmly, “I think we ought to talk about why Henry sought me out.”
“Salvation for his wounded soul?” Mary suggests, not really kidding.
Fanny’s curls shiver as she shakes her head. “Please-don’t joke about this. Henry is good at hiding his feelings, but he hurts. Desperately.”
Slight unease prickles the base of Mary’s spine. She wants to say something about Crawford’s emotional unavailability or that he couldn’t act his way out of a sack, but when faced with the force of Fanny Price’s goodness, she can’t make the words come out. Mary Bennet is never speechless; abstractly, she hopes Fanny appreciates this rare sight.
After a deep sigh, Fanny sips her tea. “I knew exactly what Henry was like when we started spending time together. His sister is rather friendly with Edmund’s brother Tom and I’d heard about-you know. All of the girls, the parties. I had no idea why he suddenly thought I was the most interesting use of his time, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.” Fanny’s voice drops into a slightly tortured register. “He’s so unhappy, Mary.”
Of all people, Mary would have thought practical Fanny Price would be able to see through the bullshit of Henry Crawford’s Poor Rich Boy persona; but apparently not.
“He didn’t want me, you see,” she continues. “The entire time we were-seeing each other, I suppose-he never once tried anything. Not even a kiss. And to be honest with you, after so many years of being ignored, I gave him plenty of opportunities to steal one.”
Mary’s stomach tightens. Philosophically speaking, she’d had no problem with Crawford sleeping with other girls during their tenure as shagging buddies; but she doesn’t want to think about Crawford being steadily reeled in by Fanny Price’s delicate innocence. “Sounds like he really fancied you, frankly,” Mary comments, surprised by the croak in her voice. She can’t quite muster up the energy to be elated about being right: Crawford isn’t over Fanny.
“He treated me like a sister,” Fanny says gently. “Better than a sister, considering how much he dislikes Mary. I don’t think he had any interest in kissing me, which is why he didn’t try. If Henry had fancied me, I have a feeling nothing in the world would have prevented him from doing whatever he wanted.”
She’s right in that-Crawford feels no compunction about reaching out for what he wants with both hands outstretched. He does it differently from Mary, who stretches for what she wants because she has four sisters and her parents haven’t any money. Crawford believes that he deserves what he wants, so he asks for it. Or, failing that, he simply takes.
“So, your pseudo-relationship with innocent on both sides,” says Mary, trying for brisk and falling short. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? I wasn’t shagging Crawford when he pursued you-it didn't seem fair.”
Taking her lower lip between her teeth, Fanny stares into her cooling tea as though she wants it to do the next bit for her. Mary, too twitchy for a hot beverage, pushes her mug further away on her desk. “He talked-about you, Mary.”
Mary’s thighs tense. “How much he regularly wants to strangle me, I’m sure. Bad form to be talking about another girl on a date-shame on him.”
“About your head, actually. How much went on inside of it, what color you’d recently dyed your hair. And what you thought about things, like Cameron and Clegg and the independence of Scottish Parliament and-” helplessly, Fanny shrugged “-stupid things, like Adele and the second series of Sherlock. I don’t even watch Sherlock.”
“How do you not watch Sherlock?” Mark demands, before she can help herself. “It’s brilliant.”
“I haven’t got a TV,” Fanny says.
Mary scoffs. “Who are you, my gran? Just watch it on your computer-it’s on BBC iPlayer, if you’re desperate not to be tainted by illegality.”
“I had more conversations with Henry about television shows I don’t watch and musicians I don’t listen to than I did about anything else. It was like he couldn’t help himself. Every other word out of his mouth was about you. Until he-until he went to Maria, I thought you two were dating, secretly, and he was just being friendly.”
Weirdly, Fanny’s words are having a worse effect on Mary’s composure than Crawford’s manhandling of her person at Paddington. “He doesn’t have a friendly setting,” says Mary. “He’s only got shag and bromance.” Immediately afterwards, however, she thinks through her statement. He’d been friendly with her family-kind, even, to play chess with her father and stick out fourteen hours of labor with people he’d only met that day.
Correctly interpreting her expression, Fanny smiles. “That’s not quite true, is it?”
“Regardless,” Mary says, shaking her head slightly to loosen her thoughts, “I’m going to be honest. I don’t really understand why you’re here, telling me all of this.”
“I want you to forgive him,” Fanny replies, inching forward so that she is peering, earnest again, into Mary’s eyes. “I want you to forgive him for Maria Bertram and take him back.”
Exasperated, Mary leans forward and speaks clearly. “There is no ‘back’ to which I could take him, Fanny, as we weren’t dating.” As this is a point that has penetrated no one’s skull, not even her sluttiest sister, Mary feels that her rising frustration is understandable. “Fanny, Crawford didn’t owe me a thing, and we loathe each other tremendously when we aren’t shagging. He’s a misogynist pig and constantly tells me that I’m self-righteous. Does that sound like a healthy relationship to you?”
“It sounds to me like two confused people who haven’t figured out their feelings,” Fanny tells her. When she’s filled with sympathy, her eyes tilt up in the corners-Mary knows, as she currently has a first row seat to the phenomenon. “I recognize the signs.”
“I didn’t think you were physically capable of hatred,” Mary says.
Fanny’s smile grows minutely. “The signs of people who hurt each other,” she explains, gently, the same way she cradles Mary’s mug as though it hadn’t been picked out of bin at an M&S clearance sale for £2. “I let Edmund ignore my feelings for many years, and all it brought me, until I gathered my courage, was sadness and pain. I’m fond of Henry, and I like you. I want you to be happy.”
If they all lived in the sunshine world where Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram frolick through fields of wild flowers quoting Wordsworth at each other and making nauseatingly sweet love on a bed of buttercups, Mary is sure that she and Crawford could be happy together. But as she and Crawford aren’t idealistic young lovers, the likelihood of that seems somewhere between incomprehensible and the heat death of the universe.
“I’m happy,” Mary says. “I can’t speak for Crawford after your boyfriend broke his face, but he’s at least a little bit happy, I’m sure.”
“He’s miserable,” Fanny corrects her. “I can’t claim to know your feelings, but I don’t quite believe that you’re happy, either.”
Of course Mary isn’t happy; she’s just broken things off with a specimen of perfect manhood and everyone of her acquaintance that she considers of equal, if not higher moral rectitude, seems to be insisting that she hand Crawford her heart and a little penknife he can use to stab it.
“I’m happy,” Mary repeats through her teeth.
Still looking skeptical, Fanny places the half-drunk mug on the floor and stands. “I only wanted to tell you that. Thank you for listening.” She tucks a particularly tenacious curl behind her ear and smiles. “I’ll see you about, then.”
After Fanny closes the door behind her, Mary sits in her desk chair and stares (broodingly; she’s surely giving Will a run for his money in this sphere) at her bed. After their biochemistry lab practicum final, she’d dragged Crawford into that bed, laughing into his mouth as she licked his teeth. They haven’t had sex in a bed since, perhaps cursed by the moment that Mary let her anger get away from her and she threw his trousers out of the window. Normally the memory of Crawford, open-mouthed and shocked, watching his wool trousers float genteelly towards the ground, fills Mary with goodwill towards all mankind, but she doesn’t feel up for goodwill of any sort.
Her skin itches against her bones, so Mary tucks her wallet into the back pocket of her jeans and walks to the chemist three blocks away, where she carefully surveys her options before deciding that she hasn’t dyed her hair purple in an age and she feels, frankly, like purple will suit her current mood and not look as hideous with her complexion as black would.
By now, Mary’s a veteran at dyeing her hair; every term she’s called to help at least four first years in the College who want do something radical and shock their parents but can’t figure out how not to blind themselves with bleach. She applies the beach evenly and thoroughly and then sits on her towel on the windowsill with both door and window open, to properly ventilate. As she reads and occasionally checks her wristwatch, various other residents of the College stop by to say hello and ask about her hols.
Thanks to Girton’s massively efficient gossip network, Mary hears within two hours everything of debatable interest that has happened since the end of Michaelmas. Emma Wu and George Nyugen have gotten engaged (unsurprising); Fanny and Edmund have been spotted necking in four places on campus (also unsurprising); Maria Bertram is giving Peter Rushton the time of day again (slightly unexpected, although Maria can’t go half a week without being admired).
When Mary goes to wash out the bleach and apply the purple dye, she finds Frederica Vernon cowering outside of the bathroom, clutching her phone to her left ear and repeating “Mm-hmm,” and “Of course, Mum,” in a terrified voice. Mary holds up the bottle of purple and mouths, Do you want the extra? Bleach in my room.
Freddie considers a curl of her thick black hair, hums, “You’re very right, Mum,” and mouths back, Yes, please. After a long pause, she rolls her eyes and, covering the base of her phone, whispers, “This’ll be a while. Start without me.”
Of the current crop of first years, Freddie is Mary’s favorite-closely followed by Harriet Smith for sheer entertainment value-and her mother has achieved the status of urban legend in the halls of the College. The boys who’d seen Susan Vernon help Freddie move in the first day of Michaelmas had all immediately sworn to her a vow of eternal devotion. “She has a perfectly symmetrical face and figure,” George Nyugen had explained over shared chips that evening.
“Her arse is a work of art,” Emma had promptly translated for him. “She looks like a more beautiful Gina Torres. Stop hogging the vinegar, George.”
Over George’s exaggerated insistence that he wasn’t hogging anything, Mary had observed, tapping a chip against her lower lip, “I wasn’t aware there could exist anymore more beautiful than Gina Torres.”
Mary still hasn’t personally witnessed the Aphrodite Incarnate that is Susan Vernon, but she personally finds Freddie tremendously attractive and thinks that her mother is likely to be a she-devil. Even with her head in a sink, Mary hears Freddie’s long-suffering sigh when she enters the bathroom. “What’s up with your mum?”
Sounding aggravated, Freddie mutters, “She’s thinking about divorcing my stepfather. Apparently she met some 25-year-old hedge fund manager at a New Year’s party she attended and latched onto his dick like a limpet.” Mary shuts off the sink and gropes for her nearby towel. “At any rate, let me help you with the back of your head, and then you can return the favor, yeah?”
Twelve minutes later Mary is seated at her desk chair as Freddie enthusiastically scrapes purple goo onto the hair behind Mary’s ears. Offhand, Freddie asks, “What’s this I hear about Crawford, then?”
Mary jerks her hair to the right and almost yanks half of her hair out of her scalp. “Where the hell did you hear about anything with me and Crawford?” she demands. “Bleeding fucking Christ, I think I just scalped myself.”
“You’re fine,” Freddie says after a second of careful perusal. “Nary a hair removed. So I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about whether or not you and Crawford are dating after you dragged his arse to your sister’s wedding?”
After a moment’s consideration, Mary groans. “The rowing team.”
“The rowing team,” Freddie agrees. “Gossipy cats. Worse than first years.”
“You can tell everyone that thinks to mention it that I am not dating Crawford,” Mary informs her in the snootiest voice she can manage; it’s improved dramatically over the length of her acquaintance with Will. “And tell the rowing team that if they keep spreading that information about, I’ll castrate the lot of them.”
~
The threat would be more effective were Mary not smaller and spindlier than 99% of the team. Even Ed Ferrars, the 1% of the team who is smaller and spindlier than Mary, isn’t at all convinced by her cease and desist demands. “Listen, Mare,” he tells her at the first CUSU LGBT meeting of the term, “I get that you don’t want it to get around that you’re now compromising your morals and dating someone who couldn’t pick out Darfur on a map, but honestly, it’s the most fucking hilarious thing that’s happened in Girton since Nyugen almost broke his hand wringing Elton’s neck.”
Ed punctuates this by taking a long swill of his lager.
Mary abruptly changes her tactics. “If you stop making shit up, I’ll introduce you to Eli Dashwood.”
Ed chokes on his lager, no longer looking casual. “W-what?”
“I said,” Mary enunciates, “that if you stop pretending to be a 13-year-old girl and shut up about my non-existent relationship with Crawford, I’ll introduce you to Eli. He’s over there, chatting with Marianne.” Mary doesn’t have to point; Ed’s eyes drift towards Eli like a compass needle. “Swear you’ll stop.”
Ed, bless him, knows better than to bluff her about this. “I’ll stop,” he rasps. “Shit-how do I look?” He immediately tugs at the bottom of his shirt. “I look like a prat, don’t I?”
“Better he finds that out now,” Mary says under her breath, and she grips Ed around the upper arm and drags him to Eli and his sister, who are doing shots. Well, Marianne is doing shots and Eli is watching, disapproving but affectionate. Thank god Mary and Marianne had had a mutually amicable break-up, or else this would be awkward as hell.
With an enthusiastic and well-snogged Ed on her side, Mary plugs up the leak from the rowing team but can’t undo their damage. This is emphasized three days later, when Mary walks into her last class of the week and finds out that she shares it with Crawford, who is sprawling at their usual table, his legs crossed at the ankle. She stops in the doorway, hovering and uncertain for the first time in her life, and she can’t think for a moment on how to proceed. All she can think about is Crawford, loose-limbed and mostly healed, his head bent over his notebook.
A solid wave of lust washes over Mary, slamming into her chest and almost knocking her back on her heels. She wants to do lots of unspeakable things to Crawford, which is not an unfamiliar state; but they haven’t been together since before the Fanny Price/Maria Bertram mess, and it’s been months.
“Chin up,” she whispers to herself. “Don’t be an idiot.” Shreya Govindarajulu, filtering into the room behind Mary, gives her a strange look and pushes through to the front of the room.
As she places her books on the table and slides her bag off of her shoulder, Mary tries to come up with something to say-something just witty enough to indicate that she’s thought of his ultimatum and finds it full of shit-but all she can manage through her dry throat is, “Heya.”
Crawford says, neutrally, eyes fixed on the lecture podium in the front of the room, “Bennet.” His fingers tighten on his pen and he rustles through his things, making noise and avoiding contact with her. There’s no hope that any amount of wit is going to rescue this situation. At least here girls in the back row are whispering and pointing at them; how do they all know?
Mary drops guiltily into her seat. Embarrassment prickles her skin and she shrugs her shoulders, trying to shift the wool of her jumper into a more comfortable configuration. She can feel herself begin to turn a flustered, frustrated red. “Jesus, Crawford,” she says abruptly. “It’s not like I murdered your pet.”
Crawford replies tightly, “That’s a comfort to me, Bennet. Not the issue.”
“Oh, grow up,” she snarls under her breath.
“How’s Robert?” Crawford continues nastily. “Still completely wrong for you?” Now that she’s broken the spell of perverse shame, he has no compunction about nailing her to the floor with a particularly angry glare.
“My relationship with Richard isn’t any of your business, and I would appreciate it if you’d just shut your gob and concentrate on this incredibly important class we’re currently sharing.” Mary stabs him in the back of the hand with her pencil. “We’ll talk about this afterwards, all right?”
Crawford swears and bats her pencil away. “Jesus, fine. And you say I’m the psychopath.” He rubs at the skin along the back of his hand and swears again as the professor loudly clears her throat.
“Good morning,” Professor Jennings shouts. “Shut up you lot, pay attention.”
At the end of class, Mary can’t say for certain that she’s digested more than 13% of the material, but she also hasn’t stabbed herself or Crawford in the eye with a pen, so she’s willing to mark it up as a success. “Let’s get a coffee,” she says to Crawford, exhaling loudly as Jennings sweeps out of the room, trailing a small posse of devoted students behind her.
Crawford finishes returning his designer notebook to his bag and says, “Great, I’ll host,” and locks his hand around Mary’s forearm. He then proceeds to bodily drag her across campus, grimly silent and with a horrifyingly severe expression affixed to his face. Most of the bruising has gone down and after six more weeks his zygomatic arch should be as good as new, although things can be tricky with facial injuries.
“How are you feeling?” Mary asks before she can help herself. “Are you taking your medication?”
“I’m fine,” says Crawford shortly. The King’s College green is thick with snow and Crawford, taking a turn too quickly for someone of Mary’s lesser weight class, almost flings her into a nearby drift.
Jesus, Mary thinks. He’s completely lost it. This would probably be romantic to the kind of person that finds abusive Twilight-esque relationships endlessly dreamy, but Mary has never been that kind of person. “Slow down,” she says, “you’re going to wrench my arm out at this rate.”
“Sorry,” Crawford snarls, and speeds up. He takes the stairs to the third floor two at a time and uses centrifugal motion to fling Mary into his room as he pulls the door shut. “Not up for a polite chat, I’m afraid.”
“I can tell,” Mary gasps, out of breath from their stupid dash up the stairs. “Fuck, Crawford, I might actually hack out one of my lungs at this rate.” Wheezing, she doubles over and pounds on her chest with her fist. “Do you have coffee, or were you going to drain my blood and drink that?”
Crawford pulls a Nespresso (of course he has a Nespresso, Mary isn’t even surprised) out of his wardrobe and plugs it in by his desk. “Har, har,” he says. “Brilliant, Bennet. Go fill this up.” He shoves the container that holds the water into her hands and directs her towards the floor’s kitchen. “Get.”
When Mary returns, it’s apparent that he’s tidied up some of his desk since last term. Now that his coats aren’t just flung on top of his stuff, Mary can see that he’s got even more books piled on the back half of his desk than he does on the shelf. “Is that Mists of Avalon?” she asks before she can help herself. “Are you serious, Crawford?”
“Shut up,” he says, wrenching the water out of her hands. “Not a word, Bennet.”
Mary ignores him. “That’s the seminal nineties feminist take on the Arthurian legend! Crawford. You didn’t buy that because of me, did you?” But as soon as she says it she knows that it can’t be: The book’s binding is almost completely destroyed; it’s been read at least two dozen times over the course of many years.
“I like science fiction,” says Crawford dismissively.
“That’s fantasy,” Mary points out.
“Science fiction and fantasy are always shelved in the same area of bookstores,” Crawford says, like Mary’s going to believe that he bought Mists of Avalon because he thought it was science fiction and then he read it thirty times by mistake. “My reading tastes are unrelated to the point at hand, Bennet.”
“They’re related,” Mary promises him absently. She moves forward and squints as she tilts her head to the side, her glasses sliding against her nose. “Are you secretly a romantic, Crawford? Because that looks like the works of Sara Douglass-Wayfarer Redemption and Troy Game series?”
Crawford pulls his jumper over his head and throws it over the books, obscuring their titles. “I’m serious,” he says tightly. “We need to talk.”
“It’s not that my entire opinion of you as a person is going to change because you happen to own a copy of Darkwitch Rising, but that one’s my favorite of the Troy Game boo-”
“It’s my favorite, too,” says Crawford repressively. “Not the point.”
The Nespresso machine beeps to indicate that it’s finished, so Mary swipes the first cup of coffee and leaves Crawford to growl with frustration and stuff another capsule into the top. “I don’t know,” says Mary. “Considering that I’ve judged you in the past on your obsession with Robert Heinlein, knowing that you also read a lot of Marion Zimmer Bradley is a new step for us.”
“I like Robert Heinlein,” Crawford says through his teeth. “What I don't understand is why you won’t date me because I read him.”
“He’s a misogynist arsehole.”
“So’s James Bond,” Crawford points out, “and that didn’t exactly stop you from suggesting we watch Casino Royale last term, did it?”
“Vesper Lynd is the greatest female character ever invented for the Bond series,” Mary says, as she had said last term when they’d torrented a copy of Casino Royale and watched it on her laptop with a shared pair of headphones. “Eva Green was a revelation.”
“You,” says Crawford, “are a snob and an intellectual arsehat. For some unfathomably reason I find that devastatingly attractive. But I’m not going to let you continue to shove me into your handy categories if it means you won’t admit that we should be dating.”
The Nespresso machine beeps again. Crawford ignores it, but Mary uses her foot to unplug the machine; it’s one of those habits years of watching global warming documentaries has instilled in her bones.
“You’re the snob,” she finally says, when Crawford shows no sign of continuing, simply breathing heavily and clenching and unclenching his fists. “You’ve got your rich family and your lovely trust fund and a truly appalling amount of expensive clothing and because of that, you haven’t the need to regulate your behavior.”
Crawford reaches up and mimes strangling her. “Bennet, I know who Nelson Mandela and Idi Amin are. The fact that you still bring that up just tells me that your sense of humor is hideous.”
“All we do is fight,” Mary bellows at him, catching herself before she gestures expansively and pours coffee over everything. “All! We! Do!”
“Because you think you want a relationship where you’re morally superior, and the only way you can prove that is by picking fights that support your claim,” Crawford shouts back. “I’m not a beast, Bennet! I give money to Save the Children and I made that joke in admittedly bad taste about East African dictators because getting you riled up is hilarious. And, just because I enjoy reading about sixties-era space espionage does not mean that I actually believe that women should be one-dimensional breast implants while their male lovers explore the great frontier.” While yelling, Crawford’s face turns slightly purple and the flushing shows where the bruising in his face has not entirely healed. “I was willing to let most of it slide because of that aforementioned hilarity, but since you insist on judging me, I’m not going to let you anymore. Making me out as a horrible person doesn't make you a better one, Bennet!”
Mary rears back; this time she does manage to spill her coffee, but most of it splatters onto his bedspread and not onto her. “Excuse me!” she gasps, like a parody of an offended lady of the manor. “What the hell, Crawford?”
“Do you ever listen to yourself?” he asks her, in a lethally level voice. “When it comes to women’s rights and CUSU LGBT and God fucking damn Médecins Sans Frontières I don’t know anyone who is more invested or active than you. But in terms of interpersonal relationships, you are a sorry mess of a person.”
For a very long series of seconds, Mary feels like everything inside of her skin has been crumpled up and stepped on. Even the bits of her that are being fueled entirely by anger suddenly feel delicate and bruised, like the inside of Crawford’s face. “In that case,” she says, “and you are wrong, I think we’re rather done with this parody of a relationship, aren’t we? Clearly you don’t respect what I value, and clearly I have no way of telling whether you’re joking or are actually being an insensitive arsehole.”
“Shit, no, Bennet,” says Crawford, deflating as the purple-and every other color-drains from his face. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You should get that phrase tattooed on your knuckles,” Mary suggests, slamming the mug down on his desk. “Considering the frequency with which you must have to say it.”
Crawford, still pale, shoot out a hand and props it against the doorframe, almost hitting Mary in the nose as she attempts to leave. “You don’t get to run off.”
“Why not?” Mary fires back. “You did!”
“You’re the more mature one, remember?” Crawford smiles without a shred of humor. “Bennet, I’m sorry that I said that. I just meant-”
Mary counts to five in her head, and when he’s yet to finish his sentence, she offers, “You meant that I’m shite with relationships, didn’t you? This is, of course, coming from the man who, as far as I’m aware, has yet to go two weeks without shagging something in a skirt.”
“I have never been unfaithful to a monogamous relationship,” says Crawford tightly. “That thing with Fanny; it wasn’t what everyone assumed.” Crawford could be lying about his history of fidelity, but as far as Mary is aware, he’s never lied to her or to anyone else she knows. One of the many screws in her chest loosens slightly.
Mary has nothing to do with her hands, and looking at his fingers as they dig into the wood of the doorframe doesn’t seem very practical. “I know,” she admits. “Fanny came and told me. About your-friendship, I guess.” But she still wants to know: “Were you in love with Fanny? That whole making you a better man, changing yourself business-was it because of Fanny?”
Crawford relaxes his grip on the doorframe. As it turns out, it’s so he can shift, using his proximity to push Mary back into his room, away from the door and an easy exit. “No, Mary. I wasn’t in love with Fanny.” There’s just enough humor in his voice that Mary jerks her head up. “It’d be a bit difficult for me to have managed that, because I was crazy about you.”
His eyes are sparkling, like Lizzie’s do when she stares at Will when she thinks no one will see. Mary’s read about this phenomenon, but she’s never actually seen them happen in the context of herself; she’s never looked twelve inches away and seen someone’s eyes light up and dance, the way that Crawford’s are at this very moment.
Faintly, Mary is aware that her proximity to a copy of Mists of Avalon is making her unforgivably saccharine, but she can’t seem to push down the odd feeling in her stomach. “You have an odd way of showing it,” she says. “Since you just called me a snob and an intellectual arsehat.”
“I told you,” he reminds her, “that I found both of those things very attractive.”
“You also find Maria Bertram attractive.” Mary makes a face to show how she feels about fucking Maria Bertram. “Jesus, Crawford. If you were so crazy about me, why were you fucking her?”
“Are we seriously going to have a discussion about the disconnect between romantic expectations and reasonable parameters of poorly-defined casual relationships?” Crawford asks. Mary recognizes his sentence, because it’s lifted verbatim from a text she sent him during Michaelmas term.
“Cute,” she says sourly, meaning fuck you.
“I’m not going to apologize for Maria,” he says.
Mary growls, “Well, I’m not going to apologize for Richard!”
“That’s completely different,” Crawford begins, and Mary points an angry finger at him and interrupts with a loud, “HA! Who’s the hypocrite now?”
Exasperated, Crawford says, “I never called you a hypocrite.”
“No,” Mary agrees, the anger beginning to build again, throbbing at her temples. “You just told me that I’m incapable of forming rational judgments of people. Well, of you, I guess. But while we’re talking about that, you in fact spent the end of last term talking about how you were going to become a better person, and then you just told me off for essentially agreeing with you. Jesus, Crawford!”
“I’m not great by your standards, Mary,” says Crawford, and Mary wants to interrupts, Don’t say my name, not like that, not like I’m breaking your heart, but he barrels on, “but that doesn’t mean I’m unforgiveable. You see me as an absolute, in this case absolutely horrible, which is I assume why I’m only good enough for casual shags. But I’m not, you know.”
“You do a very good job pretending to be,” Mary replies. “All of those jokes, the girls, the rowing, your infamously trashy parties with your rich friends. What was all of that? Did you make that up?”
Awkwardly, Crawford explains, “It’s easy.”
“Oh, that was beautiful,” Mary says. “It’s easy. Right.”
“Mary,” says Crawford through his teeth, “please shut up and let me explain.”
Mary would much rather crawl back to Girton and lick her wounds in the peace and quiet of her own room, but she folds her arms across her chest and says, “By all means.”
“Thank you.” Crawford rubs at the line above the bridge of his nose, sighs, and rubs it again. “Being who I am-you know, my grandfather’s title and my sister and her wretched husband and the rest of my family, of whom you are so witheringly disdain-it’s much simpler to be exactly what’s expected. But there’s not a single human being on this planet who can exist on just one shallow plane of existence.”
“Are we getting existential now?” asks Mary snippily.
“Shut up, Bennet,” growls Crawford. “You asked me at the train station if anyone really knows me. The answer is no. But I’d-like it to be you.”
Part of Mary wants to ask if he’s imprinted on her like a baby duck, but she’s not quite cruel enough to do that. Reasonably (she feels), she points out, “You seem to find plenty about me frustrating. Maybe you should try someone more like Fanny.”
“What are you so afraid of?” Crawford demands. “Every time I try to move beyond a casual shag, you run full tilt in the opposite direction. There’s no way you have intimacy problems, not with your crazy family.”
“I’m not afraid,” hisses Mary, stung. “I’m practical.”
“That’s an utter load of shit,” says Crawford flatly. “You’re terrified. What, that you’ll actually like me? What will it say about Mary Bennet, one of the most vocal members of Cambridge’s social justice organizations, that she’s romantically involved with Henry Crawford, general cad and bounder?” His voice hardens over ‘vocal,’ and Mary scowls at him. She wishes she was still holding the coffee mug, just so she could have the pleasure of throwing it at him.
“Thanks for that incredibly flattering analysis of my personality and completely incorrect assumption, seeing as how, thanks to your rowing friends, everyone’s already sure I’m “romantically entangled” with you, and not a single one has impugned my honor.” Three milliseconds after she uses air-quotes Mary already regrets them, but she moves on. “God, I can’t believe that I missed you. I must’ve had brain damage.” She slips out from under the hand that he lifts to stop her and in seconds is pounding down the stairs and erupting into the green, which is turning even more white because it’s begun to snow, the clouds angrily spitting out wet clumps.
As she stuffs her hands into the pockets of her coat, there’s a loud shush from above her and she hears Crawford’s slightly tinny voice. “Bennet!” he shouts. She looks up before she can stop herself, and he’s leaning like a lunatic halfway out of his window, getting snowed on. “We wouldn’t have to spend all of our time fighting if you would just accept that you like me.”
“I don’t like you!” Mary reminds him. She has to squint because the snow that lands on her glasses is melting into her eyes. “We just had a fight, you moron! Go sulk inside your room before you catch hypothermia.”
Crawford leans further out of the window. “Have dinner with me.”
“You just called me a sorry mess of a person!” Mary shouts. “You arse!”
“Seven-thirty,” Crawford counters. “Kashmiri Palace.”
Whatever he sees on Mary’s face makes him throw back his head and laugh. “You drive me nuts, Bennet,” he calls down to her. “I bet you feel the same way.”
“Of course I feel the same way,” Mary says loudly. “Because you’re clearly suffering from some kind of personality disorder!” Crawford just continues grinning. For once, the sight of it inspires a part of Mary’s brain not devoted to murderous impulses. Oh god, she can’t actually like him, can she? What’s happened to her self-preservation instincts? “What are you smiling at me like that?”
“Because you missed me,” he says. “Seven-thirty, Bennet. Don’t forget.” Before Mary can do anything-remind him that she hates his guts, offer to remove his spleen, and throw a snowball at his head all come to mind-Crawford ducks back inside his room and slams the window shut.
“You’re criminally insane,” she yells, just for the hell of it, and a group of first years coming up the walk behind her immediately scatter like chickens at the outburst.
vi. | watch out, cupid
Twelve minutes before Lizzie’s supposed to be in the ballroom slicing cake in front of the 300 people Will’s insane aunt had insisted be invited, Mary finds her camped out with Lydia on the stairs leading to the east wing, drinking from a bottle of a 2007 Gaja Barbaresco.
“This is exceedingly classy,” Mary notes, leading across the banister and swiping the bottle to check that its contents are nonalcoholic. “It suits your very posh wedding.”
“Oh god,” says Lizzie blankly, staring at the mirror at the base of the stairs, her hands still formed around where the bottle of wine had been. “Did you see what his aunt is wearing?”
“Oscar de la Renta: Fall Collection for Hags?” replies Lydia. “It was hard to miss, what with her gigantically awful hat. If she doesn’t shut up about her luncheon last week with Wills and Kate, I’m going to stab her with my shoe.” Lydia wriggles it in the air for emphasis.
Lizzie buries her head in the crook of her arm and moans, “Who am I kidding with this charade? Me? Mrs. Darcy?”
“That’s you,” agrees Lydia drunkenly, elbowing Lizzie in the side. “Mrs. William Arthur Pemberly Darcy! Is there a reason why is one of his names is the same as this stupidly large house?”
Mary takes a mouthful of the contents of the bottle, which are ginger ale, and then returns the bottle to Lizzie, who clearly needs it most. “I thought this is an estate?”
“It is,” Lizzie says. She gulps down a fourth of the bottle and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing some of her lipstick into the corner of her mouth. “Have you been sent to fetch me for something?”
“Mum was yelling about the cake, but Da was pouring her another glass of champagne as I left, so she’s probably not yelling about anything anymore except how beautiful all of her daughters are.”
“Dear thing,” says Lizzie. She begins to look slightly teary-eyed and the tenor of their staircase interlude shifts in the maudlin direction. “Oh god, I’m going to have a baby in a few months in this cavern.”
Swooping down the stairs, Jane says, “Oh, darling,” as Lydia points out, “It’s at least four caverns, Lizzie.”
Mary rescues the bottle of ginger ale as Jane pulls Lizzie into a tight hug, crinkling the back of Lizzie’s hugely expensive dress with the force of her affection. “We love you so much,” Jane says into Lizzie’s hair. “Were you checking on Penelope?” Mary asks Kitty, who is trailing down the stairs after Jane.
“Yeah.” Kitty rolls her eyes. “Out like a light. If only Lydia had been this perfect. Is the cake done yet?”
“Waiting for Lizzie’s waterworks to end,” Mary replies. “Ginger ale?” She offers Kitty the bottle, and her sister accepts gratefully. Kitty raises an eyebrow and tilts her head inquiringly towards Lizzie, blubbering like no one has ever blubbered before. “She’s upset about Lady Catherine’s couture.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Kitty wrinkles her nose. “Old hag. Might as well have hung a sign around her neck, ‘I’m the poshest tosser here, bite me.’”
“You wouldn’t be able to get anything out of her,” Lydia says critically. “She’s like a leather handbag that’s a kazillion years old. Lizzie, stop crying, or else you’re going to be puffy when you cut the cake, and we’ll have to burn all of those photos.”
“Puffy,” Lizzie wails. “I’m puffy.”
Jane and Mary both turn evil eyes on Lydia. “Shut it,” Mary advises her. “Or else none of us will ever be getting cake.”
“Boring,” mutters Lydia under her breath, turning the word into two long syllables.
Thank god for the best adjusted of the Bennet sisters. “Lizzie,” Jane coos, running her hands over Lizzie’s head, “you’re going to be a wonderful mother, because not only have you got years of experience from watching Mum, you have the best partner to help you do it.”
Kitty jokes, “Who, Jane, you?” and all of them laugh, even Lizzie. “You have to admit,” Kitty continues, “he’s a teensy bit frightening.”
“Please, he’s going to fold like a bad hand of poker the moment Lizzie puts his daughter in his hands,” Mary predicts. “They always do, you know. And the ones that don’t aren’t worth marrying or procreating with at all.”
“Was that supposed to be encouraging?” Lydia inquires sweetly. “It wasn’t.”
Mary kicks her in the ankle. “Oh, shut it. We all know that Will is the good sort. He hasn’t killed his aunt yet, which is a sign of impending sainthood, and his best friend is Charlie. You couldn’t get a better character reference than that.” Jane blushes as she releases Lizzie and hands her a white linen handkerchief.
“Why are we vetting him?” Lizzie asks as she dabs at her eyes. “I’m already married. It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late,” says Lydia gravely, which is hilarious coming from a seventeen-year-old.
Mary props her elbow on the bannister as Lizzie chokes on a laugh. “There’s nothing you need to worry about,” she tells Lizzie quietly. “The baby is healthy, you’ve married a man that is, incongruently, one of the richest, handsomest, and nicest in the entire U.K., and you don’t have to worry about seeing any of our sorry faces any time soon because you and Will’ll be back in Glasgow before you know it.”
“Actually,” says Lizzie bashfully, “Georgie’s graduating at the end of this year. Once she’s out of the Royal Conservatory, there’s no reason for us to stay in Glasgow. So I’m transferring to the firm’s offices in London.”
For half a second, silence descends on their deserted staircase, before Kitty shrieks and launches herself at Lizzie, taking Lydia in with her. “OH MY GOD,” she yells. After a few seconds of flailing, she manages to hook Mary around the neck and drag her into their lopsided hug-pile. “You’re coming home!” Kitty squeals.
“Mum’s going to go insane,” predicts Lydia from under Kitty’s armpit, but she sounds like she’s trying to smother her pleasure. “And Da’s going to be happy that his favorite will be back home.”
“I’m not-” begins Lizzie, but the rest of them drown out her half-hearted denial.
As they’re picking themselves up, Georgie appears from the direction of the ballroom where the wedding guests have been stowed. She’s so adorable that Mary wants to pick her up and protect her from the rest of humanity, not in the least because she’s so nice to Penelope even though her biological father had tried to seduce Georgie the same way he’d succeeded with Lydia. “It’s almost time for the cake,” she says quietly. “Are you ready, Lizzie?”
“Yes, yes.” Lizzie checks her make-up in the mirror and pushes a few strands of hair back into her pins. “As ready as I’ll ever be for getting cake smashed into my face, I suppose.”
“It’s institutionalized humiliation,” Mary tells her. “Go on then, give us a show.”
Lizzie affixes her best queenly expression and sails out with Georgie, closely followed by Jane, and then Kitty and Lydia, bickering about something stupid and useless. Mary tells herself that she’s being shallow but she still ducks in front of the mirror and checks that her hair, which is too short for her mother’s tastes but dyed to a color found in nature (blonde, if more honey than her own natural color), is in at least some semblance of order.
“Vanity’s a sin,” Henry says from behind her.
Mary gives half a shriek and whirls around, her bridesmaid dress fluttering as madly as her nerves. “Jesus. You prat! You gave me a fucking heart attack.”
He grins lazily, hands in the pockets of his nice suit trousers as he pushes himself off of a doorframe. “If you’re done with your preening? Let’s go back. I’m only here for the cake, after all.”
Mary scoffs before shepherding him into the same corridor down which her sisters had disappeared moments earlier. “Have you seen that five-layer monstrosity? There’s no way it’s going to be palatable. There’s a law about wedding cakes, and it’s all about how the fancier the outside is the more the inside resembles cardboard.” The halls of Pemberly haven’t much changed since the house was built 500 years ago, so Mary counts four suits of armor as they make their way out of the residential east wing to where the wedding reception is being held towards the front of the house.
“I’m sure you’re a wedding expert,” agrees Henry, crowding against her the further they travel down the corridor. “What with your vast experience of-what is this, the second wedding you’ve attended? And you missed this bit of Jane’s, didn’t you?” He catches up to her and casually links her hand with his, his warm fingers gentle as they curl around hers.
“Yes, because you’re much more qualified,” Mary says, eyes fixed straight ahead. “What’s this, your third? Your sister, my sister, and now my other sister?”
“Fourteenth, actually,” he replies as they come to one of the side entrances of the ballroom. “I’ve got a lot of cousins. Gentry, you know.”
Mary can finally hear the faint, teasing thread of his voice. She gives a loud, overdramatic sniff. “Aristocrats. Inbred, the lot of you.”
Right before he tugs her through the doors to dart behind a pair of potted palms so her mother won’t catch them returning and not socializing with the party guests, he turns to her and smiles. The expression provokes something in her belly, making it tighten pleasurably and spill out onto her face through her eyes and mouth. After a long second, he says, “Oh, all right. I’m here for the cake and to finally beat your father at chess.”
“Ha!” Mary says. “That’ll be on a cold day in hell.”
“Mary, dear,” observes Henry pleasantly, drawing her closer with an arm around her waist, “You need to stop issuing definitive statements like that.” He nips her bottom lip, and then tilts his head and slides his mouth across hers. He tastes like champagne, now slightly flat, and the strawberries from the cheese plate that had been served after dinner. Mary inhales deeply and curves her arms around his neck as he pulls back slightly. “We can’t have you being wrong,” he says. “After all, Mary Bennet is never wrong.”