Page 56 of The Vanished Bennet Sister

Chapter Twenty-five

Mary

Mary’s awareness that help had arrived began with the voices.

She heard Alice's voice first, stating something she couldn’t place, and then other subdued tones. One of them had a timbre that did not halt or diminish when Alice's retort rose to counter it. She could not make out the words being uttered, but from the direction of the tones, it grew clear that this was a conversation that was not going the way a party, likely Alice’s, had intended.

She told herself this was likely an ordinary event. It was probable that Alice conducted various kinds of business from this house, with callers that were not always inclined towards quietness, and that whatever was happening below was unrelated to her.

She told herself this for only a couple of minutes, with reasonable success, and then the tone she heard was no longer unidentifiable.

Mary.

She was calling out a response before she had consciously made the decision to do so.

"Here." Her voice came out hoarse, the hours of stress having reduced it to a tone that barely carried. She pushed more force into it. "I am here. Upstairs, behind the locked door—"

The same voice was closer now, from the corridor directly outside: "Mary. It is Thwaite. Can you hear me?"

She was unable to formulate a proper reply. The sound that came out of her was not a word. It was not dignified and had nothing strategic about it. It was what happened when a person like herself, who had been held under considerable pressure for many hours was faced with the possibility of rescue.

She pressed a hand to her chest and exhaled deeply before managing, after a moment, to say:

"I can hear you. The key. Alice has the key."

There were murmurs outside, an order being called out, a brief interval and then the key was in the lock.

The door creaked open and Mr Thwaite was across the room in the time it took her to register his presence. He did not pause at the threshold, did not consider the approach. He hurried in her direction with absolute directness. His arms were around her, and her face was against his coat, and for a moment neither of them said anything, because no word that could be said was equal to the occasion.

He smelled of cold air and the damp wool of a fresh morning. As she pressed her face into the fabric and breathed his scent in, she felt, for the first time since she had sat on the cold bench in the park the previous day, a calming sensation she could only describe as the total absence of loneliness.

"Do not disappear again," he said, into her hair.

She almost laughed. It came out close enough to a laugh to be identifiable as such. "I will not."

"Promise me."

"I promise you. I absolutely promise you."

He held her for a moment longer, as if he were holding a valuable piece he had been afraid of not finding, and then there were more people in the room. She was aware of them before she properly saw them. There were voices she knew, footsteps she could identify, the distinct sound the door made when it was held open by specific family members.

Before she had collected herself, she was cognisant of being lifted, the whole of her gathered up with a matter-of-fact capability that did not require effort or ceremony, simply a decision and the will to act.

She had never been carried before. She had not known it would feel like this: completely safe, wholly held, tethered to a reliable piece that was not the ground.

Her mother crossed the room and flung both arms around Mary, who was still in Mr Thwaite's arms, with the complete absence of any concern for the logistics of the embrace. The arrangement — Mary held close by both of them simultaneously — ought to have been awkward and was not.

Her mother made a sound that could best be described as a cross between relief and pain. It was a sound made when a person had been afraid of a thing for a long time, and what they were most afraid of, had ultimately not come to pass.

"Forgive me," her mother murmured. It was not the average, social version of the generic request. It had none of the scaffolding that usually surrounded her mother's expressions of feeling. None of the performance, none of the extra management. "I should have told you years ago. The truth surrounding your birth. Mary, I am so sorry. I am so sorry."

"I forgive you," Mary replied. She said it because it was true, and because it had been that way since she learned Alice’s true identity and discovered how immensely entitled and cruel she was. Her real mother was not the one who had only attempted a reconnection because it provided an avenue for improved finances. Her real mother had nurtured her throughout all the years of her life and continued to do so. "Your love for me is the only thing that matters. You kept me when you did not have to, and you refused to give me back when she asked. You are the only mother I have ever had or wanted."

Her mother wept with an intensity Mary did not think she had heard from her before. Quiet, and real, as if there was no audience in view.

Elizabeth came through the door. She put her hand on Mary's arm, a brief, firm contact. Elizabeth had always had the talent for saying things best through body language and Mary understood everything she said. The relief, the joy at having her back in their lives.

Kitty was behind her, with eyes that had been weeping for some considerable time and which she was not making any effort to conceal. Lydia clapped her hands in delight, wiping a few stray tears away.