Chapter Text
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Well to be fair, perhaps it did not reach such heavenly heights of perfection and rectitude as good, rather more realistically indifferent.
To be honest, it was not indifferent or good so much as not bad, and really, in the scheme of things, was that not quite a ringing endorsement - for in a dichotomous world of heroism or villainy, black or white, good or bad, is not the absence of evil by very definition a utopia?
Of course, rarely are prognostications made in the moment true for much longer than it takes to finish saying it. A thousand butterfly wings beating and all that.
His father used to say that if one were to get their hands dirty, the cuffs were the most likely to get soiled - proximity and probability and all that. Thus the only man who had any business saying something off the cuff was one who was not at all involved.
“Either way the fool is a fool, only questions are whether he’s aware of it and if he’ll gain your company.”
He’d known, that foreboding tingle low in his gut that heralded either a truly prophetic intuition or a reacquaintance with his commode, even as he thought formulated that perhaps he ought not to proceed. Alas, like a fish he had drunk, and like a fish his mind was woefully too drenched in drink to interject with this rather important realisation, and thus he had continued.
—
“Well”
“Well”
“I cannot believe it of him”
“Indeed sister it is so so—“
“Assertive? Honestly, for all that he looks as though he’d like to worship you I never thought he’d actually worship you— oh dearest do close your mouth, I have nothing to give you, unlike your beau it would seem. There that’s much better, but let us sit down darling you do look rather flushed and we are rather missing an audience to appreciate it if you do swoon.”
For all her love and sweetness and mild temper, there was nothing quite like the insouciance of a younger sibling, delivered with a gleeful smirk to make Jane take a very deep breath in.
“Come now Jane, surely he has whispered sweet somethings to you on all those walks we take?”
“I I we.. we talk! About the future and our home and the wedding and our families and —“
“Mppphh. Poor Mr Bingley. Rather, stupid Mr Bingley—“
“Lizzy!”
“No I questioned his sense back in November, after all what sort of fool would walk away from you? No, no Jane I shall prevail in this, do not worry we are friends now for he had the supreme sense to come back, but really I do begin to wonder if I had not it more right then — “
“Lizzy!”
“No honestly, all those walks in the woods and he’s not backed you up against a tree once?”
“..”
“What, no chastising Lizzy? It is an odd timeline, to write such things before having even given you a peck on the cheek, but then again he is friends with Darcy, and much as I love the dear man, his timing was also a tad questionable what with the whole precipitous proposal. Of course then he went the right opposite way, leaving me in fits of despair, wondering, yearning for what I thought would never be - don’t give me that look I was bereft, bereft I say! But he quite made up for it, perfectly picturesque the second go around, so there’s hope yet! In fact, perhaps he is meaning to encourage you, a prelude to your pas de deux!”
She would not say it to her sister, but Lizzy had always reminded her of their mama - same bounding energy, resilient spirit and determination of mind. Of course, the two of them quite often determined different things, and in the process reminded her of two billy goats she had once seen in the paddock, both resolute that that patch of grass was their own, butting heads, stubborn to the last curl on their head.
They were also both rather voluminous. Of course there were positives. When they had been children, mama had worn rather large skirts, made all the larger for the ruffles of lace she would add — Papa used to call her his little iced treat — which were rather handy to crouch behind when they would play hide and seek. And Lizzy, with her bounding tongue that would confuse gentlemen so sweetly they’d still be twisting the words around while she and Jane were long gone. She’d always been free with her tongue —
“Perhaps that’s what Mr Darcy likes.”
“Pardon?”
“Hmm? No! Nothing! What were we saying?”
“.. You’re going to write a letter.”
“I —what?”
“You’re going to write your suave suitor a billet doux and I shall help! And don’t worry a ‘hair of gold so fine, I could find it in a mine’ of yours, for I have plenty of practice, passionate and poetic!
“You—what — Lizzy!”
“Ah there it is.”
—