A/N: Thanks so much for everyone reading and voting on this!
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On arriving back to Longbourn, Mary sat down almost at once to pen a letter to Georgiana, but found she could not think what she had actually intended to write. To ask of Mr. Crawford's whereabouts, or news of his eventual return – to tell her of how fondly she recalled yet their days at Pemberley – to confess that nothing in her life ere or after had ever changed her, as had that exquisite, agitating summer – but the words did not come. She sat in the study, and gazed upon the stolid walls, the stately furniture, chosen by her father, eschewing any pretension in favor of expressionless austerity; the paintings, a maudlin, inexpert collection with disparate colors, picked by her mother's hand; the stray letters and half-finished sketches and music sheets decorating the shelves – all of it so profoundly familiar to her she might shut her eyes and see it all identically before her. It had been once a deep comfort, one of her only comforts, perhaps, to be so intimately acquainted with every turn, every hollow and mark of Longbourn – to find a safe refuge within its walls, which could she could not hope to find in the world without –
But now they seemed, more so than sheltering, constricting – and it felt ...not a disloyalty, but a cowardice, almost, to have stayed stubbornly shuttered here, away from the world, for as long as she had. She put down the pen and set aside the page. She would return to the letter later, she decided, when her thoughts were a little clearer.
That evening she sat at the fireplace in the library, a book forgotten on her lap; her father was blinking mildly at a novel of recent print, which he had received from the lending library, and was that day in an unusually amiable mood, on account of some affairs of the estate which had long hung over him being at last seen to.
"Papa?" Mary said, though it was generally understood between them that the silences of such evenings, where they read in companionship, should not be broken for trifling reasons.
Mr. Bennet peered up at her bemusedly, and she continued, resolutely, "I have been giving some consideration to a discussion we had some months earlier, in the weeks before I departed for Pemberley."
Mr. Bennet smiled wryly at his daughter. "Well, I do hope your consideration does not require my recollection of it, Mary; for I am often ill-pressed to remember discussions I am purported to have had but a few days ago, let alone several months."
"You had said, I believe, that my uncle had invited me to visit them in London, for the season."
Mr. Bennet gazed at her thoughtfully a moment, before removing his glasses to polish them. After a few more moments of silence, he replaced them upon his nose, a bemused frown decorating his brow. He seemed to be considering his reply, and for a horrible moment Mary thought he was recollecting the disdainful response she had first had to such a proposition, and preparing to tease her on a rather dramatic change of heart; and her cheeks were just coloring in embarrassment at the thought, and she had decided she must abandon the subject after all, and tell him she had only meant to pass on her thanks to them, for the offer - but then, when Mr. Bennet spoke at last - "The Gardiners should be happy to welcome you still, I think, if you have an interest in it," was all he said, in a rather placid tone, which bespoke none of his usual wryness. "May I take it that you do have an interest in it?"
Mary turned her gaze to her book when she replied, for she did not wish to see a knowing expression, or glimpse in it his opinion of her suddenly altered predisposition. "I think perhaps, after my stay in Pemberley – that is, after some months at Longbourn, it should be quite... -" The collected explanation Mary had prepared had all at once had seen fit to desert her, and the words to mix themselves hopelessly between each other. She continued on stalwartly, "Georgiana spoke highly of her time in town, and I thought if the offer were already made, and the circumstances lent themselves to it, I might... yes, if they are still amenable to it, I think I should like to visit them in London – if it is not too close to my proposed arrival."
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Pomp and Circumstance: A Pride and Prejudice Continuation
Fanfiction"In the character of Mary Bennet there existed a profound irony which was as follows: the only quality that saved her from being wholly ordinary was the extraordinary degree of ordinariness which she possessed." A Mary Bennet romance and Pride and P...
