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From Colonel Brandon to Mr Edward Ferrars:

Dear Mr Ferrars,

The widow Egerton you describe sounds deserving; if she is as respectable as you say, I encourage you to help her establish the proposed dame school, under your supervision.  I will write to my bailiff directing him to provide material aid as may seem appropriate, in the meantime, you may show him this letter.

I have the happy pleasure of advising you of a change in my circumstances: Elinor Dashwood, your sister, has honoured me by accepting my proposal of marriage.  We intend to be married on the —st of January, in Barton-park, and would be grateful for your attendance and that of your lady wife.

My good wishes, etc.

Brandon

From Mr Edward Ferrars to Colonel Brandon:

Dear Colonel Brandon,

I wish to congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials; my sister Elinor is the finest of young women, and my wife and I sincerely wish you all happiness.

I have imparted your happy news to Mrs Egerton.  There are some small matters of carpentry that would assist in furbishing her cottage to receive students, which I have taken the liberty of requesting from your man.  In other business, as it has been some few weeks since last you were in Delaford, I have taken the separate liberty of calling on the Brooks’.  Their house is clean and well-furnished, their table plentiful, and your ward, Beth, continues to thrive.

My sincerest felicitations to you and my sister,

Edward Ferrars

From Mr Edward Ferrars to Colonel Brandon:

Dear Colonel Brandon,

I deeply regret this breach, particularly in light of your great kindness to my family, but I am unable to attend your wedding in person.  My lady wife has taken ill with the influenza and, while the apothecary does not express great concern, I am yet unwilling to leave her in her condition.

Please express my regrets to Elinor and my wishes that she have a happy day.  I will call as soon as practicable on your arrival to Delaford.

Your humble svt,

Edward Ferrars

From Mrs Elinor Brandon to Mrs Marianne Wick:

Dear Marianne,

Well, I am married now.  There is a mystery to marriage which Mother does not explain very well—when you introduce me to the young man who is to be my brother, we will drink a bottle of wine together, just you and I alone under the covers with your old quilt, and we will talk.

Lucy Ferrars is here.  She is already dropping little remarks about the size of the tithes available.  I don’t think she really understands that the whole village keeps her, and we have nothing to do with the parsonage’s income….

***

After their early awakening, Brandon had fallen asleep with his head tucked into her shoulder and his arm across her stomach.  Eventually, Elinor slept also, and she woke, chilly and warm, to find him still there and the thump of his heart beating against her side.  He opened his eyes and smiled sleepily.  “Well, Mrs Brandon?”

“Well, Colonel Brandon?”

“Christopher,” he whispered, smiling.

“Elinor,” she mouthed back.

A clock began to chime the hour, and he rolled onto his back with a groan.  “’Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.  It was the nightingale, and not the lark.’”

The ninth chime sounded.  “It was the lark,” Elinor capped him. 

“But really,” Brandon said, “we should get up.  If we don’t appear at breakfast, they’ll wonder what I’m doing to you.”  She widened her eyes at him.  “They’ll wonder even more.”

Brandon, who was in his very own bedroom, had a splendid banyan that had been embroidered with gold dragons, and Elinor envied it.  He kept his word and helped her to comb out her hair, but then disappeared into his dressing room and she pulled her chemise, now a crumpled and worn thing, back over her head and wondered if she would need to drift through the house like a ghost searching for her clothes when the maid came in.

***

“This is the sitting room my mother liked best,” Brandon opened the door to her, to a goodly sized room with bowed windows overlooking a garden.  One of her trunks was set neatly in the middle of the floor.  “It has a very favourable aspect, and the light is good, most days.  I thought you might like it for your painting.  You will say if you prefer another room, of course.  Many rooms are due for refurbishing, but I thought it best you should see the house before anything is decided.”

She walked into the room, turning around and around.  The furnishings were old, but they had been polished until the wood and the brass fittings gleamed; the carpet undusty; the windows clean—the servants here were proud.  “Your housekeeper does a wonderful job of looking after you,” she said, where a servant could hear her.  She leaned onto the window sill to look out at the garden again.

Brandon stood at her shoulder.  “I see the dreaded cap has made its appearance.”

“You are being foolish,” Elinor said, colouring a little, “you know that married women wear these.”  But in truth, she had selected the filmiest, skimpiest caps that the warehouses of Exeter had had to offer her, because she was unused to people liking her hair, which was dark and fine and straighter than the fashion.  She felt the caress of fingertips tracing the escaping strands along the back of her neck, and her mouth curled.

“Mr and Mrs Ferrars are here to see you, sir and ma’am,” a maid announced, and Brandon dropped his hand to clasp it respectably behind his back.

In the hall, Edward was dressed as black as a crow in his parson’s getup.  Lucy was well tricked out in a new frock and the bolder colours of matronhood.  Elinor had known that she would see them today, the first time they had spoken since she had advised Edward of the living that was here for him… she had known that she would see him, she had expected the thrill of her nerves and could only hope that her face and her voice did not betray her too obviously.  She held to a lifetime of ingrained courtesy and invited the pair to take tea—betrayed herself in a small way by glancing at her husband to get some clue as to the location of her parlour.

In the morning room, Lucy settled herself on the couch, pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose ostentatiously, and placed another hand affectedly on her round belly.

“I hope you are feeling a little better, Mrs Ferrars?” she asked politely.

Lucy made some conventional remarks about her health with a limpid smile, and the conversation stumbled on.  Edward, a man who always looked conscious of something, hovered, tongue-tied, beside her.

When she made a casual remark on the dress Lady Middleton had been wearing yesterday, Lucy perked up, and took the conversation off in the direction of fashion plates, silks, and muslins, and Elinor was able to relax a little and make conventional remarks of her own.  A stray, guilty thought kept running through her head of “down sleeves, and up sleeves, and skirts with blue tinsel” and she fought mightily against the intense urge to colour and look conscious in her turn, but she pressed her lips together and managed it because some jokes were too, too private, too obscure to share.

“Oh, but Mrs Brandon,” Lucy said, reaching forward to pat her hand.  “You’ve always been so modest in your dress, such a model of piety.  I can see that marriage has not changed you.”

The best way to deal with Lucy had always been to blank her.  What conversation they had been managing died its own death soon after, and after the compulsory cup of tea had been consumed, the parson and his wife were off again to do what business God, or the village, or Lucy’s fashion plates, demanded.

Brandon held out a hand to her and squeezed hers tightly, a comrade in arms.  “I’m proud of you,” he said.  “Shall we go for a walk?”

***

Brandon donned one of his rougher coats, and took her out to walk the estate.  “It’s smaller than you would expect from the size of the house,” he warned.  “My brother was expensive.  So were my father and grandfather, actually; pieces of land were sold off here and there over the years.  I had some money when I sold out of the army—enough to clear the debts at least—the rest I’m buying back a bit at a time.  Hi there, young Wilkins!” he called to an elderly man, spry, who was digging out a hedgerow, “are you ready to sell me your farm yet?”

“No, Master Christopher,” Mr Wilkins chuckled.  “You’ll have to pry me out of my coffin for that, sir.”

“I should hope to live so long!” Brandon called back.

He turned her down a little lane that led her to a well-cared for farm.  “This is the Brooks’,” he said, shy again.

It was a well-kept little property.  The yard was tidy, and the interior rooms of the cottage had the tidiness of a housewife’s pride.  Brooks the farmer was a genial, round-bellied man, who clapped Brandon on the shoulder and took them both inside to meet his wife—and Elinor’s first child.

It was a genial crowd in the cottage’s main room.  Brooks and his wife both wanted to talk to Brandon, and gave them homebrew cider to drink.  The little girl, Eliza’s daughter, Beth, was a small bundle tucked behind Mrs Brooks’ skirts.  Elinor let them talk and knelt down.  “Hello, there.”

The little girl giggled and peered out at her with large expressive eyes.  She pulled her foster mother’s skirt over her face, and away, and giggled at Elinor.  “Peepo!” Elinor said.  The child giggled again.  They sat down together by the hearth, and Elinor pulled out of her pocket a large handkerchief and covered her own face, and let the child pull it off.  “Peepo!” 

She felt a warm hand on her back, Christopher was kneeling beside her, smiling at them both.  He held out his hand to Beth, and she crawled happily onto his lap, carolling at him, and he jostled the baby on his knee.  “Ride a cock horse, to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady, upon a white horse,” he said, bouncing her in time.  “With rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes!” and he raised the giggling child up high.

“Dearest,” he said, kissing Elinor’s cheek.  “Old Brooks wants to show me some problems with the dam on his farm.  Might I leave you two to be become acquainted?”

Elinor nodded, feeling shy, and pulled out of her reticule the little doll she had brought with her.  The little girl thought it was tremendous fun to suck on the doll’s dress, and so it appeared a success.

“Please, ma’am, what are we to call this little girl?”  Mrs Brooks had also left the two of them to meet on their own terms; she was at the kitchen table kneading bread dough.

“Beth,” Elinor said, surprised.  The child was not really crawling, she noticed, but had a method of locomotion of pivoting on her left knee and hand, and the ball of her other foot, a hard biscuit held triumphantly in her other hand.  Beth could move in a flying clip, Elinor noticed; the little girl’s stockings were emphatically patched and darned and padded on the knees and toes.

“There’s some,” Mrs Brooks said, as she worked on the dough, her fists wrist deep in the great white mass, “there’s some,” and she glanced in the direction of the parson-house, “who have been saying that this wee thing is the master’s love child and it’s a great insult to you bringing her into this village.  But I say, I say, there’s not a lot of the ginger about her.  And Master Christopher and his siblings, well, they all do take after their grandmother, who was a Scots woman and red as you please.  Little and dark makes me think of young Miss Williams, who used to visit in the summer and at Christmas, little and dark like you are, and like old Miss Eliza as was.”  She was pounding hard at the dough.

“Colonel Br—my husband intends to raise this little girl with the rights and privileges of a daughter, Mrs Brooks.  I knew this, agreed to this, when he offered for me.”  For it was best to get this settled straight away.  She stretched her arms to Beth, who grinned at her with great huge eyes, and dragged herself off again.  Oh, what a little bit of a thing to already be the target of rumours.  “Brandon cares deeply about Beth’s mother.  I think that gossip would pain him greatly.”

Mrs Brooks nodded and scraped the mound of dough into an oiled bowl, covered it, washed her hands, and put the great thing into a warm spot in her kitchen.  “Beth Brandon, your little noonchine will be soon,” and, efficient in her work as farmwives had to be, pulled a pot in which apples were simmering out of the fire and began to mash them, ripped some two-day bread into a small bowl.  “There was a great to do when this girl came here.  Our Master Christopher arriving after dark, unannounced, asking me please, as a great favour would I take her in for a few days—for he knows me, you see, from when I was nursery maid at the Big House—would I take her in because her foster situation had fallen through and he must be posting up North at break of day.  And this slip of a thing, that exhausted, all she could do was cry, and me sitting up half the night in this kitchen dripping goat’s milk into her with a rag, because she didn’t have the trick of bottles quite yet.  Oh, Master Christopher, he did pace and shift about.”

Elinor nodded, imagining the scene.  “She’s a credit to you, Mrs Brooks.  She looks fat and happy, now.  I wanted to ask—is this time of day the best for visiting her?  I mean—”

“Aye, a bit before this, for I put her down for a nap after she’s eaten; or in the late morning, around 2 or 3 of the clock, say.  She’s that under my feet when I’m trying to cook Brooks’ dinner.  It would do us both good if a body were to take her for a walk just then.”  Mrs Brooks scooped up the one year old and settled her into a high chair, and Elinor found herself holding a bowl of mashed apple.  “If you would be so good, ma’am, to feed her while I see to the goat?”

She was trying to clean up little Beth, feeling clumsy when the old woman came back in with a bucket of foaming milk.  “I was thinking, Mrs Brooks, if you would consent to it, would you be willing to keep Beth here for a little while?  Not forever, but enough time that she can get used to me, before we move her into the Big House?  It’s a hard thing to be in a strange place, amongst strangers.”

“It is.”  A doorstop of bread covered with fresh butter was put on the table in front of her, and a horn cup of milk, and Mrs Brooks took over spooning in sops of bread and milk to her foster child.  The baby was making big smacking “mmmMAH, mmmMAH!” sounds, and the old woman nodded.  “Yes, Bethy, your Mama is here to see you,” and Elinor blushed at it, but she kissed the little girl even so, and was rewarded with a big “mmmMAH” kiss of her own.  “You visit every day, if you would, ma’am.  That Miss Williams was a wild thing, but ever so charming with it, she always could get around Master Christopher.  I’ll put you in the way of managing this one.  And there’s my niece, Lilly, just coming up ready to go into service—I’ll have her here in this kitchen in a few days when you’ve settled yourself, ma’am, if you would consider her for nursery maid.  She’s five younger brothers and sisters; there’s not much she don’t know about babies.”

“Thank you, Mrs Brooks,” she said, and nibbled her bread and drank her milk, feeling as if she’d been sent back to the nursery herself.  This old woman looked to be an ally in this place of strangers, and she valued it.

***

At dinner, they were quiet again.  Elinor felt very shy of Brandon now, as she had not in all their walks in Devon, and she had not much to say apart from essential nothings about passing the salt and such like.  Finally, after the tablecloth had been lifted and their dessert had been set before them, the servants left the room, and Brandon suddenly laughed at her.

“I’ve been watching you having thoughts all day,” he explained.

She coloured.  “If you must know, Br—Christopher, I was thinking that Mrs Jennings and Charlotte had been very complimentary about your cook, when they visited three years ago.”  She put her spoon down.  “Most people tell me that I am too reserved, that they never know what I am thinking.”

 “I’ve never thought you so.  I don’t always know the why, but I see you.”  He put his own spoon down.  “I could see that you were sad when we first met in Barton.  I did not know all the particulars then but… six months is not too long to mourn a parent.” 

She shook her head, and he smiled at her.  “Come, I usually take my tea upstairs, when there’s no company.”  He held out his arm, and she let her hand take its accustomed station in the crook of his arm, secure and comfortable.  The sitting room was in the corridor near their bedroom, small and crowded and comfortable—here, she had a greater sense of her husband than she had gotten in his house’s bigger, more august rooms.  There was a trunk in the middle of the floor, and she gave a glad cry, because she had packed it with her own hands three days before.  “My books!”

Christopher knelt down beside her.  “Shall I help you unpack?”

She looked down, shy, then met his eyes.  “I would rather you didn’t.  It’s been such a strange day.  I think, just a few minutes to order my own affairs…   Do you mind?”

His eyes were kind.  “But do you mind if I play?” and he exchanged his coat for a dressing gown and sat down at the little five octave pianoforte that resided there, to play a frivolous ditty that, somehow, seemed to exactly match Elinor’s mood.  Room had been made for her in this little parlour: a small bookshelf had been cleared, and there were empty picture hooks on the walls with dark rectangles speaking of past glories; there was space, obvious space, on the mantel piece for her to place keepsakes of her own.  She spent half an hour placing her things, feeling oddly touched.  Eventually, she sat down on the piano stool next to Brandon and waited for him to look up.

“You took down your pictures for me,” she remarked.

“Only the ones I didn’t much care for.”  He quirked her a smile.

“Well, so long as they were ones you didn’t much care for…  Would you like your wedding present?”

The parcel she handed him was the framed picture of a day at the beach out with her family, the day she had first really heard him laugh.  “That was a good day.”  He covered her hand.  “Thank you, Elinor.”  He chuckled when she failed to smother a yawn.  “It’s been a long day, dear one.  You should go to bed—I won’t be long.”

Elinor looked up from her book when Christopher came into her bedchamber.

“No,” he said smiling, as he wandered about the room shedding his clothes.  “If you’re going to wake me up at the crack of dawn again, I need my sleep.”

She felt her face colour mightily.  “I’m not—I’m not entirely sure of what’s expected,” she said.

“What’s expected, dearest Elinor, is that you get some rest.”  Christopher put out his candle and settled into the bed next to her, reached an arm around her.  “Oh, Elinor, it’s been such a lovely day.  We should have done this years ago.”

“When I was ten?” she asked, her mouth curling.

“Perhaps not quite so long ago,” he modified.

Elinor snuffed her candle but did not extinguish it, and curled her own hand around her husband’s and leaned into the weight of a body against hers.  She drowsed in that dim room, let herself be prisoned in a warm and comfortable cage, watching that little pinpoint of light dim and flicker—and was asleep.

***

When she woke from her first sleep, she lay in the breathing dark trying to remember where she was.

“Christopher?”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind rolling over?”

They manoeuvred under the blankets until she was curled up against his back, and reached her own arm over his side.  This was very fine too.

Christopher said sleepily, in a voice she now recognised to contain a smile:

Now welcome night, thou night so long expected,
That long day’s labour does at last defray,
And all my cares, which cruel love collected,
Has summed in one, and cancelled for all:
Spread thy broad wing over my love and me,
That no man may us see,
And in thy sable mantle us enwrap,
From fear of peril and foul horror free.

And again, she was asleep.

Chapter Text

Later that week, she, her husband, and their new daughter were walking together through the village.  Brandon had picked up little Beth, rather than have her drag herself over chilly cobblestones, and she was watching the two fondly when a voice behind her said: "Elinor."

She turned to see Mr Ferrars, Edward, who was smiling at her, as sometimes he had greeted her at Norland.  She bowed, and greeted him in turn.

"Good morning, Colonel," he said to her husband.  "And to you, Miss Beth."

She giggled: “Frssh.  Frssh.”

"Yes, I am Mr Ferrars," he said gravely.  “I hope you are studying hard, young miss, I’ll tie a hornbook to you yet,” he warned.

“Hssh.  Hssh.”

“I liked the fish, too,” he agreed.  “Perhaps we can visit them together again.”

“We are walking out to the ford now, Mr Ferrars,” Brandon said civilly, “if you should like to join us.”  Edward nodded and fell in with them.  Her husband, she noticed, was losing the openness he had shown in his own house, on his own land, speaking to his own tenants.  Without touching his clothes in any way, she could see him becoming buttoned up. 

She was still finding her way about this little village, but the path to this landmark was well trodden, a deviation that had once been the main road into the village before a turnpike trust had undertaken to build a bridge fit for heavy traffic some half-mile away.  The ford that gave the village its name was wide with dark, smoothly flowing water, the edges of the bank a little frost-rimed with weeping willows guarding the borders of the river, and mossy green stones standing proud of the water.  It was easy, on this short walk, to find a little of the friendliness she and Edward had once had.

“I wanted to apologise again for missing your wedding, Elinor.  I was very sorry about it; you deserved to have more family to support you.  I did not like to leave Lucy when she was so ill, you see.”

Elinor shook her head in a friendly way.  “Don’t mention it again, Edward.  It was bitterly cold that day—I should hate to be sitting in the church with a h— with the grippe.”

Edward looked ahead with concern at the two in front, where Beth was holding to her foster father's hands to practice walking.  “I’m worried you're being taken advantage of, Elinor.”

Elinor smiled at Brandon, walking ahead of her, and thought of the slow hot summer in which he had, carefully and patiently, helped her mend a broken heart; had answered difficult questions with candour; had taken her side for no better reason than he liked her.  That friendship was a rock she could build her marriage on.  “I think I could be happy,” she told Edward.  “How are you?”

“Do you know?” he said, taking deep breaths of the cold sharp air, “I think this is the first place I’ve lived that I thought of as my home?  I always felt like a lodger in my mother’s house for some reason.  Things between Lucy and I will be better, now we have a house of our own.  You’ll like being married,” he said, “for there are compensations.  Lucy’s grown quite fond of being first through the door.”

“Hrssh!  Hrssh!” Beth was saying again, trying to put her hands in the water. 

Elinor knelt down next to her and admired the silver fish flitting this way and that way.  “Yes, young Beth.  Here are the fish.”

***

“What is this room?” Elinor asked.  She had asked Mrs Padgett, her new-old housekeeper, to complete her tour of the house.  They were in a little bedroom that was incongruous to the rest of the house; it had cheerful yellow wallpaper and, under its holland covers, the furniture was delicate and modern in design.  She knelt down to look at the little bookshelf; volumes that she herself had read as a girl, some typical schoolroom fare, but romances as well.

“This was Miss William’s room, ma’am.”  There was a certain something in the woman’s voice, a choked off cough, yes, there was a story there.  The staff had an opinion, which was best not delved into.

She nodded.  “I see.  Then, if you would, please keep this room aired from time to time as you have been, and Colonel Brandon will tell us when next we are to expect her visit.”

Mrs Padgett was a woman in her middle years, a square no-nonsense woman, whose face was seamed and brown from too much sun for too many years.  She had not been raised in this country: she had been born in India, and followed the troops.  Her history, she explained, when encouraged to expatiate, was that of a sergeant-major’s wife in Brandon’s old regiment.  After Padgett had died, she had come to her mother’s country in search of—what sweetness, who could say?—and been known to Colonel Brandon who, newly possessed of an inheritance, sought an old friend to keep his house for him.

Elinor continued to draw the older woman out, asking open questions, encouraging answers that gave her the characters and histories of the servants here without needing to directly pry, to build her map of the personalities of the household, as she was learning the physical building.  She was aping her mother, she knew, who had always had very easy ways with her servants, and she suddenly wondered if Mrs Dashwood had herself been copying her own parent in turn. 

At the end of the tour, Elinor asked the housekeeper to have tea sent to the little office set aside for her use, and they drank it while, Mrs Padgett explained the book keeping to her.  Elinor paged through the accounts for the month, then back to earlier volumes when she noticed an entry that surprised her.

“Why is the draper’s bill so much higher this month?”

“Colonel Brandon ordered that new linen—shirts and tuckers and caps—be issued to the staff in honour of his wedding.”

“Oh, of course.  That was gentlemanly of him, to honour your pride.”  She read through the books some more, noting the precision and orderliness of Mrs Padgett’s ways.  “Well, Mrs Padgett,” she said at last, “I recognise good work when I see it, and you know my husband’s ways better than I do.  I should like you to keep the existing household routine as it is.  There are bound to be some small matters of preference, but we can discuss them as they arise.  I would prefer you to wait upon me directly after breakfast.”

Mrs Padgett nodded calmly.  She had pride, this woman did, the pride of an upper servant who had run this large house for six years.  “And if you would, Mrs Padgett, would you arrange for the maid to bring a tea service for us both when you come?”

***

One morning, Brandon looked up from his post, sighed a little, and said: “I hope you haven’t made plans for the day yet, Elinor, for we are to call on Lady Caroline Thibodeaux.”

Elinor glanced around their breakfast room, looking a question, for it was normal in the villages in which she had lived for the neighbours to call on a new bride first.

“We go to her, she never comes to us.  You will understand.”

Later, in the carriage, Brandon explained: “She’s the widow of the old baronet.  Her nephew, Sir Robert, prefers to live in his other seat in Shropshire.  She is something of a matriarch in these parts.  Technically, the Osbornes, Baron Osborne I mean, outrank her, but we don’t see them very often, they’re about seven miles away on the other side of the town.”

The Thibodeaux’s seat was a large, grey, impressive house, fortified, looking like it had seen off multiple sieges during the Civil War with barely a yawn.  They were ushered into a glassed-in conservatory that was oppressive with smothering heat and the smell of slightly rotten citrus.

Brandon sat next to her on a small love seat in front of the Lady Caroline, a corpulent, grossly overweight individual attended by an aged relict of a maid, who was seated in an enormous three wheeled bath chair that looked as if it might need its own pony to draw it.  The Lady’s hands, Elinor noted with sympathy, were twisted with arthritis; she could admire the Lady’s presence, also, for after some acceptably light conversation for five minutes, Elinor’s husband had been dispatched off to consult on some matter to do with the fishpond.  When he raised an objection, she frowned fiercely, and Brandon, the hardened soldier, quailed, pressed Elinor’s hand in regret and allowed himself to be routed.

Lady Caroline sat back in her huge creaking bath chair, and sent the maidservant on some small errand, also.  Elinor sat politely and waited for whatever it was the Lady wished to speak of.

“So here is the cold fish our Colonel Brandon is said to have brought home.  Is the little love child settling in well?”

Elinor raised her eyebrows over her teacup.

“The daughter of my husband’s friend is in good health, if that is who you mean.  When the papering of our nursery is complete, she and her nursemaid will be joining us in Delaford.”

“Yes, Mrs Brandon, I am known for my offensiveness.  You were wise to marry for money, dear; Brandon is one of the more liquid gentlemen in this district, though you might not think it from his dress.  When you're rich enough, and don't care, you can do very much as you like.”

Elinor affected an expression of astonishment.  “You seem to be very much misinformed, Lady Caroline: I married for affection.”

“Indeed," the matron mused.  “Indeed, I think perhaps you have.  Not much wonder that young Brandon took so long to find you.  Why is it, do you think Mrs Brandon, that the parson's wife has made such whispering comments about you?  Such delicious comments over the teacup of this strait-laced woman so soon to arrive?”

“I really could not say, ma’am.  I know of no action by which I have done material harm to her and, as I have little taste for gossip, there can be no way I might have damaged her reputation.”

“It’s like that, is it?” Lady Caroline seemed to be enjoying a great joke.  “Young women and their quarrels—how you do hate and feud against each other... I remember in my day... well.  No matter.  I expect you to call next Thursday,” she added briskly.  “I am done with visitors for the day,” and Elinor was released out of the fusty overheated room to an antechamber where her husband was waiting for her.

“What did you think of the august Lady Caroline?” he asked, offering his arm and leading her to the door.

Elinor waited until he had hoisted her into their carriage with a strong muscular hand.  “I thought her quite rude, to be plain.”

Brandon nodded.  “She is to everyone.  She always terrified me, when I was a child and hauled off to pay courtesy calls; I still am, I suppose.  I’m sorry for leaving you—old habits of obedience.”

“Well, I'm sorry, but she said we were to visit again next Thursday.  Would you like me to try and get out of it?”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline.  "Good heavens.  You've charmed her." 

***

In his own country, Brandon was a much desired individual and, at the winter assembly held in the nearby town, while Elinor as a new bride was given the privilege both of being the First Lady and of dancing with her very own husband in the initial pair of dances, in the bustle of the breaking up line he was separated and cut away by a crowd of his peers.  Elinor found herself instead sitting in the interval with a group of strangers who seemed amiable but quite unsure of what to do with her, watching the strangers in the assembly room. 

“Oh, Mrs Brandon,” a friendly matron, passing by like a salvage yawl, gave her a lifeline.  “How are you enjoying the party?”  She put her hand on the arm of a lively, pleasant-looking little woman about Elinor’s mother’s age, who was standing near with a young boy.  “May I introduce Mrs Blake to you?  She is the sister of Mr Howard, who is the clergyman of Wickstead parish—near Castle Osborne?  Sarah Blake, this is the new Mrs Brandon, but recently arrived from Devon.  Mrs Brandon, this is Sarah’s son Charles.” 

Elinor smiled at them both, glad of the courtesy in this crowded busy room.  “But is your son well?” she asked.  The boy, round cheeked and dimpled, perhaps ten years in age, had an air of dejection that seemed out of place in the happy bustle around him.

“Miss Osborne was going to dance with me,” he sniffed, trying with difficulty to put on a brave face.  “Our party came early especially so that I might dance with her.  We have had it arranged this entire week.”

“Perhaps Miss Osborne was delayed in finding you,” Elinor suggested.

“No,” Master Blake said dejectedly.  “I saw her joining the line with Colonel Beresford.”

“Oh.  Well, I am sorry for it, Master Blake, for that is a hard thing to bear.”  She hesitated prettily.  “Although, it is very kind of you to keep me company as you do.  I am so new to this country that I have few acquaintances at present, and I fear I may have to sit out several dances for want of an introduction.”

The boy thrust his chest out.  “I will dance with you, Mrs Brandon,” and led her to the end of the line as proud as a bantam cock.

“I think we are a little bit stared at,” she confided to Charles Blake as they stood waiting for the courtesy start to reach them.

“Only because I have the prettiest partner,” the boy said, gallantly, and happily told her about his brothers and sister, and his pony, and the enormous stuffed fox that resided in Osborne Castle and how he would show it to her when she came, so that she was quite entertained and forgot the eyes staring at her.  As the lead couple reached them and they began to skip, she saw a flutter of dark movement in the corner of her eye, a figure striding down the hall—her husband craning his head looking for her.  She caught his eye quickly, and he nodded, his face creasing in a silent laugh.  At the end of the second dance, Master Blake possessively offered her his arm and asked her with utmost formality if she would desire to take tea with him. 

She nodded politely at his beaming face.  “But may I introduce you to my husband first?  Brandon,” she said, because he had found her at last, “this is Master Charles Blake, my rescuer.”  The two bowed formally to each other, and she had the happiness of being attended to the tearoom by not one, but two beaux.  Sir John Middleton, she thought whimsically, would be delighted for her, and if she were thought a little peculiar at this, her debut, well, she enjoyed the conversation over tea.

***

In her rota of polite calls to make the next day in her own village, Elinor went by the house of the widows and spinsters, because there always was one.  Today, the Misses Griffiths had a niece staying with them, Clara Hancock, a tall raw-boned woman of about 30 years who kept herself as a governess and had returned to Delaford for a holiday before seeking a new position.  The two Griffiths spinsters were amiable and talkative and, after making a deprecating joke about how they always liked to talk over one another, kept up a running conversation in which they routinely interrupted each other’s sentences.  The two elderly ladies were twins and Elinor wondered if, perhaps, they had declined to marry for fear that their husbands might make them live apart.  There was a veritable flood of gossip, and Elinor merely had to sip her tea and ask the occasional prompt to become well-educated in the intricate doings of the community of Delaford.

“And you went to a ball last night, how wonderful of you—” Miss Griffiths (Agnes) said.

“It must have been marvellous to see all the fine gowns, I remember in my day, Mrs Brandon, I was considered quite taking—"

Over her teacup, Miss Hancock caught Elinor’s eye and smiled.

“And so many people have said how kind you were to young Charlie Blake last night.  Quite an eccentric boy he is, with his taxidermy, but not an ounce of harm in the soul, and his mother such a dear—"

“I was glad to, Miss Griffiths, he was a fine part—"

“But there, I can see you’re not the dragon we’ve all been hearing you to be.”  Miss Griffiths (Agnes) reached out and touched Elinor’s hand sympathetically.  “Oh, Mrs Brandon, Mrs Ferrars has been so terribly sorry she missed your wedding.  She’s been quaking in her boots, she says, at how angry you were.”

“She was so ill, you see…” Miss Griffiths (Muriel) continued.  “Mrs Ferrars says, her husband says you’ve always been very grave, and a stickler for the courtesies, a stickler.  She really was very ill, Mrs Brandon.”

Elinor set her teacup down with a clink.  “Really?” she asked.  “I hadn’t realised I was angry with anyone.”

“Aunty,” Miss Hancock interrupted.  “Did I tell you about the new sheet music I brought with me back from Bristol?  I have some quite good Scotch airs.”

Elinor seized on the change in subject gratefully and talked with the governess of some music she and Marianne knew in common.

“Clara is such a good musician,” Miss Griffiths (of which sort, Elinor had forgot) rattled on.  “It’s a shame we have no instrument in our rooms, or she would play for you.”

“We have quite a good piano at Delaford-house,” Elinor said.  “A Broadwood.  Should you like to visit tomorrow and practice there?”

Miss Hancock looked wistful, and her fingers twitched.  “If it would be no imposition—”

“No, no, my husband is a great lover of music.”

“And are you, Mr Brandon?” Miss Hancock asked, hearing a little something in her tone.

“No, not all,” she said cheerfully.  “But Brandon and my sister are, so I have a fine array of pleasantries to use at need.”  Miss Hancock looked down, and smiled at the joke.  “I like to listen to it,” Elinor explained, “but I suppose I find it pleasant noise.  My ear doesn’t break it down and find the patterns the way that Christopher and Marianne do.  I enjoy their enjoyment, I could say.”

They arranged then, as Clara Hancock had early calls to make, that she would arrive in the middle morning and be let in by the housekeeper if Elinor had not yet returned from the Brooks’.  It was a small success of the day, Elinor thought bleakly, and walked herself out of the village and into the hills.  She hadn’t found a good eyrie yet, not like she had had at Barton, but on the top of the chalk ridge there was a little ring of the craggy sandstone blocks that some unknowable person had dragged up the hill, and she sat on a fallen stone and hugged herself.  Her ability to fold her darker emotions inside herself to consider later had been lost on the day she took her wedding vows, and today she cursed Christopher for it, for his insistence on robbing her peace.

Eventually, cold and wind-blown, she got herself up and followed the ridge line looking for a path back to the village.  Some man was walking in the opposite direction, and she squinted, hoping it might be her husband.  Such was not to be her joy.  “Hello, Elinor,” Edward said.

She bowed, “Mr Ferrars,” and stood aside to let him by.

He smiled at her.  “There’s quite a good view of the valley along this way, if you would like to see it.”

“I’m on my way home.  I wish you joy of it.”

He fell in with her instead, and tripped down the hill with her, his hands in his pockets.  “How have your first weeks in Delaford been?” he asked conversationally.

“Educational.” 

“Really?”

“Oh yes.  It is a new experience finding my character fully explicated and established before I have ever set foot in a place.  A fine thing, I suppose, for I don’t even have to open my mouth to be found a severe and humourless woman.  It saves me time.  Finding out from a third party that I have been bearing a grudge against my neighbour—that, too, is a new thing to me.  The custom of Dorsetshire, I must suppose, I should make more effort to acclimatise.”

“Ah.”  There wasn’t much to say that, Elinor supposed, or at least Edward didn’t try to.  The wind was seizing her in great gusts, and she blessed it, hoping it might blow away some of the hot anger that gripped her.  “I had hoped that you and Lucy would make friends.  I understood that you spent a lot of time together last winter.”

“We did.”  Elinor savagely stopped herself saying something unforgiveable.  “You must forgive me, Mr Ferrars.  When we knew each other at Norland, I had the mistaken impression that we were becoming friends.  What might have come of that friendship if circumstances were different I cannot know, but at the time, I can say that I thought you liked me.  Now I find that I have caused some grievous offence in your life, and I do not even know why.  It is the fault of my guarded temperament, I expect, for I am often mistaken in people.  Good evening to you.”

“Elinor…”

“Good night, sir.”

When she arrived back at Delaford-house, it was nearing dark and Brandon was standing at the gate peering into the dusk.  “How was your day, Elinor?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around him and hid her face in his chest.  “Terrible.  I can’t explain why.”  He sighed and stroked her hair for, while the former soldier might fight a duel with a man, navigating the heavy crags and chasms of peoples’ relations with each other was something he found even harder than she did.

Chapter Text

Back from Brooks’ farm the next morning, Elinor found her husband leaning in the doorframe of the music room.  “Elinor,” he whispered, “there is a strange woman playing on my piano.”

She closed her eyes and winced.  “Clara Hancock.  I invited her to play, yesterday.  You left so early this morning, I told everyone but you.”

“She’s quite good.”

“I’m glad,” Elinor said.  She had been honest about lacking a particular ear for music, but she could see that Clara Hancock had the habit of the passionate, of noticing her errors and returning to the beginning of those phrases and drilling until she had corrected herself in her habit.  She waited until Miss Hancock had reached the end of her piece before walking in to the room and saying something civil.  Brandon joined them and remembered himself to the governess, who had thanks to give him for some small favour he had done for her Aunts Griffiths a year or two past.

“Why were you laughing at my husband just now?” Elinor asked curiously as they walked outside to take a turn in the garden because, although the older woman had been perfectly polite, there had been a something of a twinkle in her eyes when she spoke to Brandon.

“You married a gentleman, Mrs Brandon,” Miss Hancock, sincerely, but even more twinkly.  “He truly is gallant.  He met me on the street in London the autumn before last, and was extremely polite (if a little vague) and, because he was so gentlemanly, I took pity on the poor man and reminded him of where he knew me from after only a couple of minutes.  I wasn’t quite sure that he had realised he was talking to a governess, you understand.”

Elinor considered this.  “What did he say then?”

“He offered to call on me at my employer’s in two days’ time and take any letters or parcels I had for my Aunts Griffiths.  He really is a gentleman, Mrs Brandon.”

“And one you feel comfortable laughing at,” Elinor added with a smile of her own.  She thought about the conversations she had had these past two days with the tall woman.  “I am surprised you are not more well known to each other, actually.  Brandon has always been fond of talking to intelligent women.”

“We mostly aren’t in Delaford at the same time,” Clara Hancock explained.  “I’ve been earning my own keep these past ten years, and he only inherited the big house five, no six years ago?  The only time the Colonel ever came to this village before the older Mr Brandon died, they had a furious row.  That’s why there’s new window glass in that sitting room over there—” she pointed.

Elinor blinked a little.  Her husband had always been a peaceable man in her presence.  On the other hand… he had mentioned fighting a duel with the off-handedness with which one might order meat from the butcher.

“Have you seen the ford yet?” Miss Hancock asked.

“Yes, but I should like to see it again if you care to walk that way.”

Along the winter stream, the borders were rimed with ice, the middle part rushing.  Clara Hancock seemed to come to a decision: “Oh, Mrs Brandon, I could see you were upset yesterday.  My aunts, they gossip, you know, and they always magnify whatever it is.  They mean well, but they don’t think.  When he called this morning, Mr Ferrars was as surprised as you were, he said, to hear Lucy was worried about a breach, because, he said, you and Colonel Brandon had been so very civil about he and his wife missing your wedding.  He thinks that, Mrs Ferrars having been ill, she may have been feeling fragile and fancying something was there that wasn’t.”

Elinor pondered this for a time.  “Thank you for telling me, Miss Hancock.  I’m glad to know it.”

***

There was an evening when she was quietly playing backgammon with Brandon in the privacy of their own sitting room, when he suddenly asked her if she was happy.

“Except that my husband keeps on leaving me alone with strangers,” she said melodramatically.

Brandon made a deprecating gesture.  “I’m not often so long in Delaford.  Everyone here is used to me departing after a week or two, so they try to get all their business done quickly.  They should settle themselves soon.  Would you—would you like to visit your mother in Barton, for a change?”

Elinor shook her head.  “No.  No, I thought that being married would addle my head, and I was right.  I think I would like the three months we agreed on before we start making visits, really I would, Christopher.” 

He caught her hand and rubbed his thumb on her palm.  “You will say if you change your mind?”

She nodded, seriously.  "I am making new friends of my own, I promise.  Clara Hancock has been taking me around and explaining people to me.  It helps to have a woman friend here—I'm so used to Marianne to talk to, I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it."

"I'm glad," he said.  She felt a smile grow as her husband reached out to trace the smooth lines of her hair.  “I like this new style of yours, Elinor.  It’s very serene.  It suits you.”

She coloured, still shy, still learning this way of being touched.  “I’ll even take off this dreadful cap when it’s just you,” and removed not just the lace, but the pins holding the longest braid of hair and let some of the weight come off her skull with a sigh.  It was then, of course, that a maidservant came into the room announcing that the parson was craving an audience

Edward, brought into the room, was so shy he was practically out the door, explaining that he was hoping to impose on them for the loan of a horse.  “I had meant to visit some of the outlying farms tomorrow,” he explained, “but I’ve just learned that the horse I normally hire has taken a splint.”

“There’s a cob that wants exercising,” Brandon said pleasantly.  “I could go out for a ride with you if you like, and show you some of the shortcuts.  Would you like to stay for supper?” he added.

The young parson, slighter, shorter, and fairer than his patron, coloured again and excused himself.

Elinor looked at her husband.  “He improves on acquaintance,” she explained.

“It’s you that makes him nervous, Elinor dear.  I’ve had some perfectly competent conversations with the young man when you’re not in the room.”

She shrugged and sighed—and had nothing at all to say when her husband helpfully took the rest of the pins out of her hair.

***

In her daily rounds of being displayed to her new neighbours, she was soon greeted with other callers—Mr Howard, the parson of Wickstead, and his sister and nephew, the Blakes.

Mr Howard the parson was tallish, brownish, squarish, middling in years, and possessed of a snub nose; the family resemblance to his sister and nephew was strong.  Young Charles Blake, it transpired, had insisted on this visit and, he soon explained, beyond mortification that they had not called directly after the recent ball “as etiquette demands!”

Elinor was very sympathetic and considered the delicacy of the case with him, secretly glad that she had not herself been caught out in an absence from home the day after the assembly.  She had forgotten—or presumed she was immune from—the custom that young men would typically call on their partners the day after.

“It is a very delicate case, Master Blake, I agree.  For you had two principal partners at the dance and, as this village is a full seven mile from your own, it would have been difficult for you to call on both myself and Miss Osborne on the same day.”  She thought for a moment, and said seriously, “No, I think you were in the right to call on Miss Osborne first—the closer connection and intimacy between your two families demands that she take higher precedence in this matter.  Alas, the exigencies of life as we live it do not always align with the etiquette that conduct books demand of us but, Master Blake, I think you have cut the Gordian knot correctly in this case, and I thank you for having the good manners to explain the situation to me so that I can by no means hold myself slighted.”

Mr Howard said, “I hope my young nephew is not making a pest of himself.” 

“He is a good-natured, open-tempered boy,” Elinor said.  “I think you must be very fond of him.”

“Well, I am,” he replied, a little conscious.  “That is, when he is not so excessively chivalrous it causes breaches with my patron,” he added with a laugh.

The maid announced more callers then, and ushered in Mr and Mrs Ferrars—drawn, Elinor could imagine, by the sight of a strange chaise passing by their house.

Edward and Mr Howard shook hands in a friendly way, drawn to each other’s sombre clothes, and attempting, like strange dogs who sniffed at each other, to gain a sense of each other’s relative status.  Mr Howard explained easily enough that he was holding the Wickstead living for a cousin of the Osborne family, sympathetic, as untenured clergy, are about how to make provision for oneself, until a permanent position might be found.  “Nam mei plenus sacculus est aranearum!” Edward agreed, and they laughed together.  Charles Blake hesitated a moment and laughed himself; while Lucy looked down demurely and sat down with Elinor and Mrs Blake, and made insincerely sweet compliments to Elinor about the more austere, severe, fashion she had taken to keeping her hair in, and how much it suited her.

“What charming music,” Mrs Blake said politely.

“It is the niece of one of our neighbours, a Miss Hancock,” Elinor explained.  “She comes in to practice on our pianoforte while she is visiting them.  When she is finished this piece, I will ask her to join us.”

“Miss Clara Hancock?” Mrs Blake asked in an undertone.  “There’s a sad story,” she said, “four brothers that girl had, and they all died, one way or another, and their little estate entailed off to some distant cousin who is…” she rubbed her fingers together meaningfully “…less than the most generous of men.  And she never complains, never a word from Miss Hancock.  She had her good cry, dusted herself off, and found herself work she could do.  I’ve a lot of time for Clara Hancock.”

Elinor nodded, feeling sympathetic. 

“I like to play the pianoforte,” Lucy intruded on the conversation.  “Some of my friends used to think me quite good, when I played for them.”

“Are you, Mrs Ferrars?  I am sorry I never had a chance to hear you when you were visiting in Barton.  I’m so glad that my husband arranged for the instrument at the parsonage to be retuned before you arrived.”

“Well,” Lucy sniffed, “I never had a chance to play with your sister Marianne in the room.  She was so very passionate about her music.”

Elinor was the veteran of many a drawing-room; she was familiar with the stratagems women might use to manipulate and coerce each other.  She understood this: if she responded to Lucy in kind, then she was shrewish; if she snubbed the encroaching parson’s wife, she was as over-proud and cold as Mrs Ferrars had made her out to be; if she responded with flattery and gifts to demonstrate that ‘really, she wasn’t like that’—well, that would be giving the sharp-eyed shrew exactly what she wanted.  Marianne, with her lively engaging ways, would have been immune to criticisms of severity and arrogance—likely, if her beloved sister had arrived here as a new bride she would have been discovered to be thoughtless and rude.  That was Lucy’s way, Elinor could see it clearly, to identify a woman’s faults and to magnify and distort them.

“Mrs Ferrars,” she added, wanting to be done with it.  “I have heard a rumour that you have been worried about offending me when you were ill, and I wanted to assure you that, while I wished that you had discussed the matter with me directly, your situation was explained to me at the time and I understand completely.”

Lucy looked down and muttered some small polite nothings in reply and Elinor prayed that this matter could be ended, before she left the two matrons to talk together while she fetched Clara Hancock.  They returned to hear Lucy make a little remark about Miss Hancock’s great height, and she finally snapped back: “Is that truly necessary, Mrs Ferrars?  We all have the bodies God made for us.”  Lucy Ferrars looked down demurely, her huge eyes downcast and downtrodden.  Elinor realised with an internal sigh, that she was back to the beginning.  Miss Hancock made some expressive eyes at her across her teacup, and Elinor shrugged back.  Mrs Blake, a kind woman, seemed content to change the conversation to young Charles and her other children, and Elinor relaxed a little and asked questions about the boy and his siblings.

The two parsons drifted back to the women’s circle, their long noses seeking out the fragrance, not of the unguents of Venus, but of the tea tray, and the conversation drifted, as it must, when new brides meet, to the topic of marriage.  It drifted somewhat, as it must, when Lucy Ferrars was in the room, to the topic of another’s marriage.

“Yes,” said Elinor, “Marianne formed an attachment with a young lieutenant while we were in London last winter.  Wick is a distant cousin of my husband’s and so was brought to visit us at Mrs Jennings a few times.  Marianne kept her feelings in concealment out of her desire to avoid distressing us, as he had little to live on bar his pay.”

“I never heard of this Lieutenant Wick when I was in London.”

“Oh, but why should you have, Lucy?  You were visiting with my sister Fanny Dashwood and your uncle in Bartlett’s Buildings when they were thrown together.”  There was more that could be said here, more that could be said about hysterical fits and gossiping doctors and girls thrust from houses—Elinor noticed Lucy’s eyes flicker, and let the hint be understood without explication.

“It was very sudden, her marriage, I take it.  And she was so ill last spring, the poor thing.”

“Yes, indeed.  I can’t say we were particularly happy about it, but, where there is real attachment on both sides, I think it is wisest to be in support of a timely marriage.”

“Oh, but I adore young Beth, Mrs Brandon,” she said, laying her hand meaningfully on her stomach.  “I am sure you must be so fond of her now that you’ve finally met her, such a dear little baby.  She was such a delightful mystery to arrive in this little village.”

Edward had ceased to make friendly remarks to young Charles Blake, and was watching his wife with a careful, wondering expression.

“Did Brandon not mention her origins?” Elinor said vaguely.  “Well, it is nobody’s business but our own.  She is the daughter of my husband’s good friend.  Her mother became unable to care for her, so we offered to raise her as our own.  Beth is my adopted daughter,” she explained to Mr Howard and Mrs Blake.  “She is still being fostered by one of the villagers right now, but perhaps on your next call, young Master Blake might like to be introduced to her, for she is a charming little girl, a little over one year in age now.”

Elinor sipped her tea and watched Lucy Ferrar’s sharp little eyes tick over in calculation.  Yes, Mrs Ferrars, she thought, yes, you can count to nine as well as I can.  This is no secret niece of mine, my sister’s reputation is intact, and much joy I wish you of that knowledge.

Lucy had always reminded her of a spun sugar confection, brittle and hard and sweet.  Elinor reminded herself that sugar was grown by men and women who bore brands in their skin, who slashed at the canes with heavy knives, who boiled the stuff over hot fires.  There was fire beneath that brittle sweetness; fire and rage and malice.

***

There was a morning in bitter February when Elinor said to Miss Hancock as they were walking: “when do you leave for your next position, Miss Hancock?”

“Oh, next week, Mrs Brandon.  I have tickets booked on the stage on Tuesday.”

“I have some business I plan to undertake in Dorchester and have not yet fixed the day for it.  If you would like, I could take you with me, and save you the first leg in the carrier’s cart?”

So Clara Hancock left her native country in style, and Elinor had the opportunity to enjoy one last gossip.  Elinor, who had never particularly had the gift of making friends easily, knew herself to be sorry to lose this older woman to talk with.

Dorchester was a tidy little town, encompassed by its original walls.  The craze for enclosing had not yet reached this area; it was surrounded by green open fields ploughed into strips; and, as they drove down the coach road, they passed flocks of gravid sheep hunkering down against the wind with their shepherds.

There were larger shops, and a greater variety of shops here in this county town, than they had had available in Delaford and its neighbours.  Elinor’s main goal was to acquaint herself with the bookshop and lending library she had seen advertised but, as they passed by a draper’s, she stopped and gazed thoughtfully at the ready-made articles displayed in the window.  With the ring of the bell, a shop keeper oozed up to them to offer assistance, speaking to Elinor’s finer grade of clothing.

“Yes, thank you, I would like some help,” she said politely.  “We are looking for a farewell gift for my friend.”  She was led to a display case of scarves and gloves, but after a quick inspection, asked the man to bring her the pelisse from the window.  She held it up to Clara Hancock thoughtfully.  It was a little too short for the woman’s height, but—she checked the hems—it should let down enough; and the fabric was warm densely woven wool, a vast improvement on the governess’ existing coat.

Miss Hancock blushed in confusion.  “Oh no, Mrs Brandon.  No.  A muffler or gloves would be a fine present.”

“No, I want to,” Elinor said.  “I would be offended if you didn’t accept it.  I really mean it, Miss Hancock.  Would you please try it on and at least see how it fits?”

Clara Hancock, unused to luxuries, turned around and around to let the skirt flare, and stroked the fine wool fabric.  “This is too much, Mrs Brandon,” she said again.

“I wanted to,” Elinor assured her.  “I have been finding it hard to settle in to this new place, and you have been my Virgil,” she said warmly.  For understanding what she had meant, alone, she would love the tall governess. 

They sat outside the Corn Exchange and ate nuts and dried fruit and hard-boiled eggs, and talked about nothing much for some few minutes.  Then Clara Hancock chewed on her thumb and chose to make the subtext text.  “You are not so fond of Mrs Ferrars, I think, Mrs Brandon.”

Elinor made a face.  “I am trying to be civil, Miss Hancock.  Civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion,” she added with a sigh.

“She only ever gets a rise out of you when she’s attacking someone else, have you noticed?  Would you like to talk about it?”

“I detest gossip.  People say it’s all in good fun, but they mean war,” Elinor said dourly.

“I am not given to (simpering) ‘Mrs Brandon told me in the strictest confidence’ revelations, I promise you,” Clara Hancock said sincerely.

Elinor rested her hands on her lap and thought.  “Mrs Ferrars is originally from Plymouth.  Her most respectable relations are a family called the Pratts, who run a school at Longstaple, where she met Mr Ferrars when he was being educated there.  She is the distant cousin of my friend Mrs Jennings, who is the mother-in-law of Sir John Middleton, our landlord in Barton—and our distant cousin in another direction.  So we were rather thrown together when the Steeles visited our village in Devon last winter, and again in London.  She and her sister Nancy rather got into the habit of intruding secrets into my notice, and expecting me to keep them on their behalf.”  She ate another walnut and chewed it slowly while she considered what to say.  “Lucy had a very long engagement with Edward Ferrars, who I had become fond of as my brother-in-law, and he did not feel free to speak of it for fear of angering his mother.  There were some difficulties, as you perhaps might imagine.  Brandon offered the living to Edward because he was my brother, and because he—Brandon, I mean—liked me and wished to be of assistance.  I married a gentleman, as you have said…  He had no particular interest in the matter but goodness.  This was before we were courting, you understand.  There was gossip at the time, but as the principals, we both understood the particulars to be misunderstood.” 

What could she bear to have whispered around the village if Clara Hancock was a little less to be trusted than she seemed?  “I don’t have a fabulous dowry or anything like that—I was raised on a large estate, but we were there to be companions for my great-uncle, who was a bachelor.  He left my father a life interest only; the rest went to my half-brother, who is Mr Ferrars’ brother-in-law.”  Miss Hancock was nodding in understanding.  “My life might have been not so very different than yours in the end, Miss Hancock, if I had been only a little less lucky and the recipient of a little less kindness from disinterested parties.”

“And then you married Colonel Brandon,” Clara Hancock said, admiringly.  “There’s more than one girl in this neighbourhood who has set her cap at him, for he has plenty of money, and is a war hero besides.  He’s famous for never noticing.”

Elinor smiled in fond recollection.  “We were friends for a long time before.  I mean really friends, because he liked my sister Marianne first.  We used to sit and talk, and he’d watch her.”

“That’s the kind of man I want to marry,” Clara Hancock said, looking misty eyed.  “I don’t want burning passion and thrilling nerves.  I want someone I’ll want to have breakfast with for the rest of my life.  Anything less than that is worth being poor for.”

Elinor looked at her with appreciation.  “Miss Hancock, I think that you may be one of the great romantics of this world.”

The governess coloured.  She seemed to hesitate and then spoke.  “Mrs Brandon, might I speak to you with some candour?”

“Yes, of course,” Elinor said, wondering at her hesitation.

“Mrs Brandon, I have a different life than many women of my class.  I have a horse face, and I play the harp—no, no, I can see myself in the glass—and thus I am very employable.  Matrons trust me to rub some polish on their daughters without attracting the notice of their sons, and so I can subdue myself to my situations in the knowledge that when the term is expired I can simply advertise and move into a new position.  Most women do not have that privilege; the choices they make as young women last them for the rest of their lives.  I can also say that I have lived in many different households and in many different localities: cities and towns and rural villages.  I see you, Mrs Brandon, you are used to village ways, you know that your friends are the people your own class who live near yourself, and I see you conduct yourself accordingly: you think before you speak, you are sensitive to people’s feelings, you pay attention to ritual courtesies; I do like you Mrs Brandon, which is why I say this.  You have nice manners, and also you are kind, which is not always the same thing.  But I think also that you are proud, proud in the way that women can be—you do not like empty flattery, and you will not bow your head to what you perceive is injustice.”

Elinor coloured herself.  “I am not sure what you are trying to say, Miss Hancock.”

“What I want to say is this: Lucy Ferrars has town manners.  People stand closer to each other there, they speak more loudly.  She conducts herself as she would in a town, with, well I suppose you might say, with swagger.  She talks herself up, she makes challenging remarks to other women, she is used to this because in the towns there are so many other young women that if you are not fighting to be noticed, you won’t be.”

Elinor felt her face tighten.  “And I should tolerate this?  Miss Hancock, as I said, I do not care to gossip but—there is more to this matter than Lucy Ferrars making her ‘little remarks’ about my hair and clothes.”

“Yes, I know.  What I mean is—Lucy Ferrars may be only just now realising that town manners are not the same as country manners; that if she spoils one group of friends, then she won’t be able to move on to another.  She may only just now be realising that the gossip she spreads is not going to vanish with the arrival of a new ship, or a new set of fashion plates, or a new shipment of muslin.  I can see how you carry yourself, Mrs Brandon, and so can the people in Delaford whom you will wish to have the approval of, and they can see Mrs Ferrars as well.  It isn’t so obvious when you’re in the middle of the storm, but the wind is starting to turn.  Oh, I have made you angry, Mrs Brandon.  (Smiling ruefully) I should give you this coat back.”

“No, no.  Perhaps,” Elinor said, breathing deeply to help contain herself, “you might call me Elinor.  We seem to be on such terms of frankness now.”

“I am so sorry, Mrs Brandon—Elinor.  My father always used to say—he said this to me often in his final sickness, because he wanted me to remember it—he used to say: Clara, sometimes you can choose to be happy, or right.  You are perhaps eighteen, madam?  Twenty?  I apologise; you all look like babies to me now.  But my father… I thought I knew what he meant when I was not twenty-one, but I really know it, understand it, now that I am thirty.  Would you think about what I am saying, perhaps in a year or two, or five?  When you have some space, would you think about whether you are choosing to be happy?”

Elinor shook her head, too wrapped in sensibility to have words to speak.  She had been used to listening to challenging speeches calmly, and her husband had claimed that from her at the same time he had consumed her legal identity.  She scrubbed her face.  At last, looking up at the town clock: “we should walk to the coaching inn, Clara, so that you do not miss the stage.”

As they were loading Clara’s trunks into the stagecoach, Elinor made her decision, and embraced the older woman.  “You will write to me, Clara, will you not?  I should be sorry to lose your friendship.”

As the coach rattled away, with Clara waving her handkerchief out of the little window, Elinor waved back, before turning to her waiting groom.  Because she was now a gentlewoman who had the privilege of her own chaise, she made good use of her husband’s gift of privacy.  In the protected space of her own carriage, she left herself have a good cry.

***

“I hope, dearest Elinor,” Brandon said to her one day, “that you do not feel you must give up your drawing.”

They were sitting together over the sandwich tray, and Elinor set her knife and fork down.  “It isn’t that I feel I must,” she said.  “It’s that there always seems to be someone who wants to call on me.  Or Mrs Padgett has a matter she wishes to discuss, or… well, there’s always something a good wife ought to be doing.  I always used to laugh at women who gave up music as soon as they’d found a husband, but now I see their point.  I can find myself a spare half hour here and there, but it’s more than half an hour that I need.”

Brandon looked at her thoughtfully.  “Fortunately, my dear Mrs Brandon, I have a robust solution for you,” and, ringing the bell, he informed a maid that his wife would not be at home to callers for the rest of the day.

In the sitting room that had been his mother’s, her trunk remained unmolested, and there was a cheerful fire burning.  “Did you really give orders to light the fire in here?” she asked.

He shook his head, looking pleased.  “I think Mrs Padgett has taken a liking to you and arranged matters on her own.  She was very round with me when I announced I was to marry, that I ought to find myself an older woman, a widow, with some sense, and I’d no business bringing a green girl to this house.  She changed her tune quite quickly after she met you in the flesh.  I hope you are happy, my dear?” he asked, sounding worried.

She nodded, and she turned around and around in the room, thinking about what it might be, how it might feel to have a room entirely of her own in which to bring the pictures in her mind to life, with no interests in the matter but her own.  “I hope you will stay and help me unpack,” she said shyly.

He ducked his head, and she tugged him closer to her to stand in the bow of glass that gave out onto the garden.  She unbuttoned his coat and reached inside to put her arms around him, and leaned her head on the warm beating heart of her friend and ally, and remembered that sometimes it was allowed to be easy.

Chapter Text

Spring brought Mrs Jennings and the Palmers on their way home from London for a short visit, and also a reward for Elinor’s restraint.  Too many village maidens had found their tenderly confided secrets in the hands of their enemies, the parson’s wife had started looking in the nearby town for her friendships, and Elinor, at least occasionally, was able to pour a little oil on the troubled waters of a country village’s normal life.

One morning, very early, Christopher said to her: “I’m glad you like this part of marriage.”  He was lying over her, sweat-slicked, his face ruddy, holding his weight easily on his arms.

Elinor bit her lip, and smiled, sweat-slicked herself.  “I do.”  She tilted her head, feeling shy.  “I didn’t know what to expect exactly, from being married, but this I like.  Like for its own sake I mean, it’s not just wanting children.  It’s just as well you have warm hands,” she added, sly.

Her husband brushed a lock of hair from her face, his eyes tender, his mouth pressed into a buried smile, and she pushed at his shoulders.  “Roll over,” she ordered, and she rolled out of bed herself to use the chamber pot and put on her chemise, because she did not quite like the sticky feel of skin on skin when she was trying to sleep, before climbing back into bed and hauling his arms around her.

His voice sleepy, Christopher said “I would like you to have children, too, Elinor.  I see such affection when you are with Beth.”

She ducked her head against his chest, embarrassed.  “I didn’t expect to,” she confessed.  “I thought I’d like her, but I didn’t…”  She talked around the huge lump in her throat.  “I don’t exactly care for the Middleton children, or my nephew.  I thought—forgive me, Christopher—I thought that everyone has children when they marry, and an extra ready-made daughter would be alright.  I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know how I would feel—”

He tilted her chin up so he could hold her eyes with her own, his face naked.  “Elinor.  Elinor don’t apologise for feeling love.  You have an affectionate heart, dear one, never feel shame for it.”

They lay in the dim light while Christopher’s breath eased, and Elinor, wide awake as ever she was in the mornings listened to birdsong broadcast into the world.  When he was all the way asleep, she climbed out of bed again and pulled on an old round gown that she did not need a maid to help her with and twisted her hair into a plain knot.  The garden of Delaford-house was at its most peaceful in the early morning, and she liked to take her stroll before any of the household was awake bar the kitchen staff setting the bread to rise.  She had a trug with her, and selected some of the early daffodils and narcissus to take back with her to their room.

A voice came from outside the garden, calling through the gate.  “Elinor?  Is that you?”

She let her brother-in-law inside.  “Good morning, Edward.”

“Persephone gathering flowers.”  He raised his own trug and scissors in explanation.  “We’re about the same errand, I think.”

“I’ve no interest being kidnapped by the God of the Dead,” she said, smiling.  “I like it here in the early mornings, when it’s so quiet.  I didn’t realise until I lived at Barton how much I like having the opportunity for solitude.  No, I didn’t mean it like that, stay, if you will.”  She sat down on a bench and gestured to him, and he settled next to her.  They both suddenly spoke: “I remember—" “I was thinking of—” and Edward stopped with a “Ladies first.”

“I was thinking,” Elinor said, picking at her fingers, “about sitting with you in the garden at Norland, when it was spring and so early, and there were blackbirds—”

“And I lent you my handkerchief.  A gentleman always has two,” he said.

“Would you like it back?  I still have it, in my things I brought from Barton.  We don’t often talk alone together, you and I, and so I don’t think to carry it with me.”

He shook his head, smiling, then hesitated.  “Yes, we don’t often speak alone.  I wanted to say—Elinor, you have deserved better from me; I am sorry I didn’t explain my situation to you, when we knew each other at Norland.  We were becoming friends.  I meant to do so, in my thoughts I did, but when I tried my courage kept failing me.  It wasn’t about you, Elinor.  My brother and sister have used my words against me, so many times, I’ve lost the habit of trusting, even when events prove to me that I should have.”

Elinor ducked her head, her throat swollen and blocked from remembrance of the old hurt.  Edward had the grace to give her time, had the grace to offer her another handkerchief, and she took it with a slightly soggy smile.  “I had a letter from Marianne yesterday, did I tell you?” she said to change the subject.  “She’s already quarrelled with her landlady, which I think means she’s settling in.  She’s had quite a lot to say about how long winter nights are up in Scotland, but the spring, she says is quite lovely.”

“I hope you will remember me to her in your reply,” he said.  “I miss our discussions quite a lot.  (Smiling) I can seem quite fashionable in my opinions when I remember to quote her.”

“I shall.  Of course, I shall.”

“Elinor?” Edward asked.  “I was wondering—is there actually a Lieutenant Wick?  It's just—" he shifted awkwardly— “it’s just, you and Mrs Jennings were chatting about him so very much last month.  And Mrs Jennings is a warm-hearted friendly woman but—Elinor, I’ve known you for much longer and you don’t talk that much about anyone.”

Elinor cocked her head at him.  "I don't exactly care to have my private business broadcast about the neighbourhood, Edward," she said simply.

He had the decency to blush.  “And events have proved to you that you are wrong to trust.  I am sorry about my Lucy.  You absolutely had the right to give her a set down, and chose not to.  She’s having a harder time with her pregnancy than she’s letting on,” he explained, “it makes her cross.”

Elinor sorted through the daffodils in her trug and placed half in Edward’s.  “A gift for Lucy.  I think our garden is flowering about a week before yours, and she might like the colour.  How is she?  I suppose the she must be very near her time, now.”

“In about a month, the midwife says.  Nancy, and her Aunt Pratt will be here next week to help.”  Edward was silent for a long moment.  “I suspect that becoming a father changes you, more than even becoming a husband does.  I wonder what sort of man I will be on the other side.  Well.”  He got up, and smiled at her as a leave taking.    “Have a lovely day, Elinor.”

***

In the early summer, Mrs Ferrars had her lying in, days of it, that nobody could avoid knowing about; the baby was produced at last and Mrs Ferrars, pale and dredged-looking as she was, seemed happy to hold the little girl.  Elinor made some polite remarks at the infant, without staying too long to fatigue her mother, and conversed pleasantly with the other visitors in the antechamber.  Edward, hanging about the house, was fatigued and grey, but he brightened when she congratulated him.  “If you’ll excuse me,” she bowed, “I want to have a word with your housekeeper.”

When Edward found her in the kitchen, she was ringing a peal over the maid.  “Mrs Ferrar’s confinement is no excuse for you to let your work go,” she insisted to Mary Wilkins.  “You have a good character from your time with the Purbecks, and it would be a sad thing for you to lose it here.”

“Yes, madam,” the maid said, stony-faced.

With her point made, Elinor could afford to give some ground: “I can see that you’ve had your hands full with the Steeles visiting.  I’ll send Gracie over for a few weeks to help with the heavy cleaning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” and Mary Wilkins escaped.

“Thank you,” Edward said, a little embarrassed.  “Lucy hasn’t quite got the hang of running the servants yet.”

Elinor looked with distaste at the dusty shelves and the fireplace full of ash.  “And how would she, Edward?  How would she know?”

Edward looked non-plussed.

“Running households is work.  Lucy grew up in a neighbourhood where having two maids is social success, and affording the manservant tax is showing off.  In the town, too, with no garden, no stillroom, and no pigs to fatten up and kill in the autumn.  Where did you think she would learn this when she’s trying to ape the manners of the gentry and too proud to turn her hand in the kitchen as she once might have?  I haven’t even mentioned the charity work that everyone expects her to be doing, which she isn’t.  Did you really think, brother, that all these fine ladies you know do nothing but pick flowers, play piano, and sew needlepoint?”  Evidently, he had. 

“Delaford-house ran smoothly before you arrived,” he said carefully.  “You have remarked on it yourself.”

“Brandon was in the army for thirteen years, successfully in the army.  Two of his promotions were paid for by his men running a subscription.  Do you think he would tolerate an untidy house or bad habits in his servants, any more than in his company?  I’ve heard enough of his stories of camp wives to know he understood their work.  Mrs Padgett who keeps the house used to work for him as a sutler, for Heaven’s sake.” 

Edward’s and Lucy’s long engagement had damaged both of them, she thought.  Marrying at ages 19 and 17 would have been absurdly young, but they would have grown up together; finding each other as lovers at 24 and 22, they would have known themselves more soundly; as it was, Edward’s long years of idleness, and Lucy’s hanging on to the burden of a secret engagement had warped and stunted them both.  Elinor wondered, sometimes, if there had been some tradesman’s son or professional man that Lucy had sent away in her quest for the heir of a gentleman, wondered if Lucy thought the exchange worth it.

She crossed her arms, for she really was angry with him.  “Edward, for everyone’s peace you need to find someone to put her in the way of it.  If circumstances had been better with your mother and sister, you could have sent her off on a long visit and seen what resulted, but that seems impossible just right now.  But If you’d even said something to Mrs Jennings, who likes Lucy, they could have spent a few days discussing the household.  Lucy isn’t stupid, Edward; she hasn’t been educated to this life,” she added savagely.

He was thoughtful, and then hopeful.  “No.  No.  Your wife dislikes me and has made that clear.  Anything I have to say she would assume is condescension.”

“Please?  I’ll find some way to repay the favour.”

She scowled, annoyed.  Finally: “Very well.  In a few month’s when she’s recovered from her lying in, I’ll make up some excuse to throw her in my housekeeper’s way.  I’ll try to phrase it as a favour, although Heaven knows what that might be.”

“You’re a good sister,” Edward said gratefully.

“You go back to your wife and baby.”

Chapter Text

October:

“Brandon?” Elinor asked.  She was sitting half undressed as he got into his own nightshirt, and he reached behind her to unhook her gown with a smile.  “Do you actually want to go to the assembly at Bromsford next week?  That is, I shall go if you would like me to to keep you company, but… don’t feel you must for my sake.”

 “Would you like to go dancing, dearest?”  She got up, and peered out the window into the Stygian darkness.

“Not particularly.  Not when the weather is so bad and I could be in my own bed instead.  The thing is, the thing is it feels as if the main reason to go is to give the parson’s wife a ride in our chaise and if you don’t particularly want to go, and I don’t...”

“I’m not sure if you’re trying to convince yourself that you don’t want to go, or that you do,” he said.

He was looking at her curiously—patiently, she realised.  She pulled off the rest of her day clothes and sat down next to him, felt a comforting hand on her back.  “You’re waiting for me to tell you about it, aren’t you?” 

Brandon’s smile for a moment was mischievous.  “Only when you want to, my dear.”

She chewed on a thumb and sighed.  “Lucy and I were not terribly fond of each other, when we knew each other at Barton.  Or much in London, either, although there were more people around so it didn’t matter so much.  I suppose I was hoping that now she’s married to the gentleman she wanted, she would let things go but that hasn’t particularly happened.  I suppose I don’t want to be perceived as committing a slight.”

Her husband squeezed her side.  “Elinor, if Lucy Ferrars wants to go to the assembly, she can do as the rest of the world does and hire a chaise, or beg a room for the night from a friend, or even—yes, even take a room at the White Hart.”  He leaned close and whispered: “it will be alright.”

He snuffed the candles and they lay down together in the breathing dark.

***

November:

“Have you been gossiping with your maids again?”

In the orangerie of Lady Caroline, the air was stultifying warm, somehow muggy despite the sleet outside.  Lady Caroline Thibodeaux, as cross as ever, had remarked on some minor sin of the parson’s wife of Delaford, like a hook baited with maggots laid out temptingly for Elinor to seize upon.  It made Elinor tired, and yet the casual malevolence of Lady Caroline’s raillery always had the air of an intellectual exercise; it stung less than Lucy’s actual barbs which, buried beneath layer upon layer of insinuation and false flattery, wedged underneath one’s skin like a thorn left to the sufferer to worry at for days.

“Now,” Elinor said encouragingly.  “I have made you some of the liniment that my mother used with her mother, and they both were strongly encouraged by it.  You are to get your maid to rub it into your joints in the evening, and onto your hands, and cover your hands with loose cotton gloves when you go to bed, so that the goodness will not be dissipated.  And my carpenter has made you some better handles for your crochet hooks, so that you may have something to fidget with instead of lowering yourself to cheap rumours and pamphleteering.”

“Sharp tongued girl.  You are as bad as the Hancock woman, who abandoned me.  I would have paid her a very good salary to live here and keep me company, and look how she repaid me?” 

“Did she consider the circumstances of your situation and make sensible suggestions that would improve your life if only you followed them?” Elinor asked.  “Sensible people are so provoking, are they not?  I can say this as the acknowledged prig of my family.”

As disagreeable as Lady Caroline could be, there were times in which she almost felt affection for the old bat—although this was tempered by the knowledge that holding some position of dependency such as daughter-in-law or companion might easily become intolerable.  She picked up the new thread of Lady Caroline’s complaints, a matter regarding which she had been wrangling with Brandon for some time.  “As to that,” Elinor said, “my husband was very specific that if you wished to discuss enclosures, I was to refer you directly to himself.  As I am not twenty-two, and only a woman, I doubt very much that I could be of use to you on this topic and encourage you to discuss it with the head of my household; however, I can relate to you his concerns that any increases in rents would be eaten up by necessary additions to the Poor Rates, and if so, why bother?”

“You cannot tell me that that boy does not discuss his affairs with you,” the old lady demanded.  “He does not want to improve the farm land around here because of his interests in trade.  Not all of us are so fallen as to keep company with shopkeepers, Mrs Brandon.”

“If you should like to apply to my husband for introductions to my husband’s City acquaintances,” Elinor blinked limpidly, “I can undertake to bring him with me and I will admire the picturesqueness of your fish pond while you two discuss these matters.  Now, Clara mentioned that you are very fond of Sir Charles Grandison; I thought I might read a little before I go.”

***

Two weeks after the missed assembly, Brandon took his brother-in-law with him to the monthly whist game in nearby Bromsford, and they returned with A Letter.

“Howard gave it to me last night,” Brandon said conversationally when he offered it to her at breakfast the next day, “which is just as well because otherwise that’s two shillings we never would have seen again.”

Elinor glanced curiously at him, for there was humour underlying his tone, and opened the missive.  “Oh.  Oh.  It’s from Charles Blake.  He hopes I was not too seriously ill, and begs leave to secure a dance with me at the next assembly.  And…” she held up a paper filled with capitalisations and florid phrases of devotion.  “Oh dear.  He is so very serious and earnest.”

“Hello, Edward,” Brandon said, as the parson walked in to the room.  “Would you like some coffee before we begin our business?  Elinor has received a letter from an admirer.”

“You don’t mind, do you?  Oh dear.”  Her feelings were an extraordinary admixture of embarrassment and bubbling mirth, and the Blake boy’s sincere earnestness was such that she felt no response but the utmost sternness and gravity could possibly be considered appropriate to the occasion, and yet, the effort to avoid laughing cost her dearly.  She looked at the second page, and was relieved to find a covering note from Blake’s mother.  “Oh, I see.  Mrs Blake explains that Charles is always fancying himself in love with some young lady or other, and that she hopes he won’t be too vexing.  Apparently, this is the first time he has set his cap at a woman who is already attached but, well…  You don’t mind, do you?”

Brandon chuckled.  “It makes me feel like King Arthur holding the centre while enthusiastic young knights excite themselves over my young and beautiful wife.  If you could bring yourself, my dear, to venture out after dark for the next assembly, I will endeavour to be gothic and brooding and give him pause; perhaps we could bring Edward as well to be a jealously overprotective brother: that should acquit the boy’s feelings creditably.”

December:

“Thank you, Mrs Ferrars,” Elinor said, “it’s very kind of you to ask, and I wish you well in your musical society.  Unfortunately, I don’t play at all—Marianne was born with all the talent in our family—but if you would like to practice in our music room you would be welcome to.  When Clara Hancock was visiting, we all enjoyed to hear her play, and it would be gratifying to have someone else use our piano.”

This was a gesture.  Elinor recognised that Mrs Ferrars was making a gesture, and yet there was that about the older woman’s tone and phrasing that still made her grit her teeth.  Well, a gesture had been made and responded to, so there was that.  Perhaps they might have another gesture, in a year or so.

***

On Elinor’s birthday, Brandon smiled at her with the mischievousness which she had been seeing more and more often.  “I hope you have not made any particular plans for today, Mrs Brandon.  I wanted to acquaint you with your birthday present.”

Her birthday present was in the stables.

“Oh, you spend too much money on me, Christopher,” she said, colouring.  It was a mare, mostly black, with good conformation, chewing comfortably on some hay.  Elinor stroked her hand down the horse’s nose, and said the little nothings that would make her comfortable.  Brandon gave her a carrot he had evidently put by for the purpose, mouth twitching in enjoyment.

Elinor had a riding habit, although she had not worn it in several years, and she found that she had to ask her maid to hurriedly let the skirt down several inches.  Even that was not sufficient, evidently, for when Brandon and she took the mare out to check her paces, he watched her critically for a few minutes then suggested that they get her a new habit with a divided skirt.  “I can’t abide side saddles,” he said, not particularly apologetic, “how anyone jumps in them is beyond me.  Don’t look so worried, Elinor, our officer’s wives used to ride straddle and they did excellently well.”

“I am not hunting, even for you,” she insisted, “I feel too sorry for the foxes.”

He nodded in assurance and took her out cross country over their fields.

On their way home, she pulled up, because she could see her brother-in-law taking a long walk home from some outlying farms, and she dismounted to speak with him.

“You’re cutting a fine figure, Mrs Brandon,” Edward said with a smile.  “Happy birthday.”

She looped her hands through the horse’s reins, scooped up the skirts of her habit, and walked alongside him.  “I’m sorry you had to sell your horses, Edward.”

“Don’t mention it.  I would much rather have set up my household the way I like it then prance around with a hunting pack.  Your husband was very generous in fitting out the parson-house, Elinor, but a man likes to have a hand in choosing his own china.  Perhaps next year when the accounts have settled out from the month-nurse and the physicians.”

That afternoon, she made Brandon spend the rest of the day the way she really wanted, in her studio, sitting in the other end of the bowed window.  She curled up across from him, armed with her sketchbook, enjoying the feeling of being safe and warm while it rained outside, and teased her husband until she could coax out of him his inner mischief and try, vainly but enjoyably, to catch his expression on paper.  She did not even need the fire to feel warm.

***

Moved by the spirit of the season, Elinor attempted a gesture of her own.

“Mrs Ferrars,” Elinor asked.  “I wanted to let you know that I’ve been talking with Miss Abbott over in Dorchester.  Do you know her?  She keeps house for her brother, the bookseller.  It transpires that we like many of the same books, and we decided to hold a literary discussion group in the tearoom near her brother’s shop.  Would you like to join us?  We intend to meet every other Tuesday at 11 o’clock.”

Lucy made some polite nothing comments to decline, and Elinor nodded in acceptance.  Well, she had tried.

January:

They arrived in Barton a little before Christmas, to happy cries from Sir John and Mrs Jennings, insipid greetings from Lady Middleton, and a multitude of barking dogs.  Elinor’s mother had been cautious at her first introduction to Beth the summer before, and yet, blessed with a few months to mull over matters, her natural affection and easy ways had overcome her disquiet and she was quickly engaged in fond discursions on the cleverness of her granddaughter.  This caused friction, alas, in her relationship with Lady Middleton, who only really became animated when discussing her children, and had the pride of a new babe of her own to whom she expected flattery to be delivered; the situation might have become desperate, however Sir John had fortuitously discovered some new distant cousins who were both young and pretty, and only slightly indigent, who found themselves quite at their liberty to make a Christmas visit to Barton Park at which point they earned their board by flattering everyone.  It was a relief when their chaises were loaded up.  Brandon had offered to host both Elinor’s mother and little sister with them in London, and Margaret was so bubblingly full of enjoyment at the thought of this great treat that Elinor wondered if another nursemaid might need to be provided, and nobly avoided saying this until she was alone with her husband.

In London, it is a truth that most of the Barton Park set spend most of their time visiting each other; requiring the business of London, the dirty streets, the expensive lodgings, and the din of street vendors to creditably perform the same courtesies they might generally occupy themselves with from the comfort of their own homes.  There was one exception to this general guidance: the necessary calls of ceremony to and from Elinor’s brother and his wife, who were exceedingly pressing on the subject of their ‘deceased’ brother.  Elinor, feeling sorry for Edward, did not bother to defend him and moved the topic to her imaginary brother instead, who remained a mystery, a fantastical and enigmatic mystery to John and Fanny Dashwood; and whom, when prompted to do so, could be encouraged to feel neglected and out of humour from the dashing soldier’s lack of attentions to them.

“Oh, did Wick not pay a call on you, Fanny, when he was in town last winter?”  Elinor said, as they dined together.  “He promised so faithfully that he would; I can only apologise for our brother-in-law.”  She glanced at her husband with affectionate, embarrassed reproach; until he promised to be round with his cousin.

“I really know very little about your cousin Wick,” John Dashwood entered the fray.  “Does he have family in Scotland?  Is that why Marianne settled there?”

This was defendable ground for Brandon, as he actually had very many second and third cousins north of the border, through a shared great-grandparent, some of whom he had actually met; and Brandon and Elinor, comrades in arms, survived the rest of the dinner party by a shared alliance of concerted dishonesty.  And yet, the brave lieutenant was not quite equal to the fight, and Elinor called in the reserves:

“I do hope that you bring Harry with you next time you call, Fanny,” Elinor said sociably.  “I am so sorry that Margaret and Beth were out walking when we saw you last week.  I think it is so important that cousins be on good terms with each other, do you not?”

Fanny’s elegant smile grew rigid, and Elinor glanced an apology at Brandon, hoping that this at least, had beat back the invaders from their door.

February:

Elinor looked up from a long and thoughtful meditation.  Sitting next to her was the little parson, her brother, who had come to sit quietly next to her while she prayed.  She unfolded her hands, got up from sore knees and sat more comfortably in her pew.

“You are getting a reputation for great piety, in this village,” he said, smiling.

“I own to as much self-interest as everyone else,” she replied, smiling herself, “I never tell you all what I’m praying for.  I liked your sermon today, Edward.  It’s such a powerful image: each of us punished—no, corrected, you changed it to—we are each of us corrected as to our particular fault, and we have to go down and down to the icy lake, and through the devil himself before we can find a mountain to climb up towards Heaven.”

“Do you read Dante?” he asked curiously.

“Only a little.  My Italian isn’t quite good enough, but my great-uncle used to write out English translations to keep us encouraged.  He liked the bits in Hell best,” Elinor said, in fond remembrance.  “And quoting St Augustine: ‘Lord, give me continence and chastity—'"

“—but not quite yet.”  Edward laughed.  “Yes, it is easier to consider the views of Church fathers who acknowledge their own imperfections, is not it?”

“It’s too hard trying to be perfect, it really is.  Improving on a first draft, or a first sketch; that’s worth trying for, I think.”

“Oh, I like your metaphor.  Do you mind if I quote you next week?”

She shrugged noncommittally, and they both rose.  Shrugging into his greatcoat, Edward offered her his arm as they walked down the lane.  “We are glad to see you home safely,” he said.  “I suppose I should inquire as to the well-being of my sister and mother?”

“Fanny seemed well.  Well, as she always is.  Your mother, Mrs Ferrars, was not at home on the occasions on which we called.”  He rolled his eyes, and Elinor continued, tactfully.  “My brother John made me promise to convey to you that Mrs Ferrars expected a letter of submission...”

The gentle and mild-mannered parson’s face suffused with rage: bright red, tight-lipped.  “She can kiss the great, black, hairy a—"

Elinor coughed.  "I said I would convey the message, only.  I know it’s unfair, Edward.  Property laws in this country are so dreadfully at the whim of a few individuals and their eccentricities, and the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.  Still... having money is not the worst thing in the world.”

“No, no it is not,” he said, resigned, forcing himself to be calmer.

They reached the front gate of the big house and she asked him if he wished to speak to Brandon.  “I expect he'll be in his study at this time,” she added.

Edward shook his head.  “It’s such lovely open weather, I fancied a stroll.  Have a lovely day, Elinor.”

March:

It was some weeks later that Elinor received a call from her brother-in-law at an hour so early she was still sitting with her housekeeper, and sat with him, perforce, in her office.  “Is all well, Edward?”

Edward Ferrars had returned to his old shyness and she was patient with him while he worked himself up to explaining what he wanted.  “This book club, Elinor, I wish you could bring yourself to extend a hand of friendship to my Lucy, she feels it very hard to be excluded—”  She shook her head, smiling.  “I know—I know things didn’t get off to a very good start between you, but I promise you, Elinor, how often I see her putting on a brave face as she tries to fit into village life.  She is trying so hard to form friendships, with no one but me to support her, and you have so many advantages that she does not.  First you won’t aid her in the music society she is trying to form—”

“Edward,” she interrupted, “you know I don’t play.  Any woman in the village but me would be a better choice to ask—”

“And now she’s been left out of the book readers—”

“Edward,” she said more sharply, for now she was feeling nettled.  “Whoever told you Lucy was not welcome in our reading group has misinformed you, for interests I cannot begin to fathom.  I invited your wife to join us months ago, before we had even had our first meeting.  If she has since changed her mind, she has only to say so.”

Her brother-in-law turned bright red.  “I hadn’t heard that.”

She carefully poured another cup of tea, her mouth in a tight line.  “Edward.  I am aware that women like to gossip like cats, but have you actually asked your wife what she wants?”

***

“Mrs Ferrars?” Elinor asked, as they were sitting one morning working on sewing together with some other village matrons.  “I recall asking if you had an interest in our book discussion group—I realise you said no at the time, but now that young Anne is a little more grown, perhaps you would reconsider?”

Lucy Ferrars mumbled something non-committal.

“Excellent, I shall call for you tomorrow at nine.”

Mrs Ferrars had, perhaps, when she married a gentleman’s son, been hoping that carriage rides might become a regular part of her convenience; unfortunately for her, the patroness of this particular village had a fondness for driving herself and, in this open weather, had called for Lucy in an open chair.  The little parson’s wife with her careful curls looked crestfallen, but there it was; the fresh windy air awaited both of them.

The drive to the larger town of Dorchester blew some cobwebs out of her head, and by the time they reached Abbotts’ Booksellers, she was almost feeling charitable to her sister-in-law.  Their hostess, Miss Abbott, had a very happy vanity: she was so openly fond of—so enthusiastically pleased by—any compliments given her that the woman broadcast kind words to all her acquaintance like birdsong on a sunny day on a summer meadow filled with wildflowers.  Elinor, who by nature had a temperament that was closed and careful, had found herself warming to the small bird-like woman in fewer minutes than she could ever have thought possible.  It had been not so very long ago that Elinor had been carefully raised to avoid any contact beyond the professional with those who earned their own living—a guard against the Lucy Steeles of this world she supposed—yet her connection with the kindly, garrulous Mrs Jennings, had taught her much about finding friendship where friendly souls had seeded themselves; and she had ceased to punish herself with false snobbery.

“Oh, this must be the famous Mrs Ferrars!” Miss Abbott chirped.  “I can see why Mrs Brandon called you beautiful.  Come in, come in, and take a moment to freshen yourself; just up this stair here, dear, don’t mind old Abbott, he only cares about his books…” The merry chatter kept them all going until they were settled into the little teashop next door with a plate of macarons.  Elinor was amused to see Lucy’s sharp little eyes twitching to and fro wondering if the string of compliments she had just received contained a status asserting insult.  We each of us are punished according to our own natures, Elinor thought, and raised the recurring theme of Edward’s sermonising over recent weeks.

“I suppose the image has been turning over in my head.  Most preachers I’ve heard talk about Hell as a burning fire, with the worst attentions reserved for the worst sinners; and yet, here is this idea of the Inferno as a cold place.  The worst thing that could happen to a soul is an absence, to be separated from grace, to be frozen in a lake of ice, silent and alone.  What do you think, Mrs Ferrars?”

“I can’t say that I’ve particularly thought so, Mrs Brandon,” Lucy was sitting stiff and rigid, consumed by excessive pride.

“I suppose you take more of the view of Pope,” Miss Abbott said cheerfully, “that God sees equally heroes perish and sparrows fall: we are observed in everything we do; but is that a mercy or a punishment?”

And so, the conversation drifted to Alexander Pope, because everyone had read Pope, and generally had an opinion.  Elinor’s sister Marianne had had a great multitude of opinions; and indeed Elinor and Miss Abbott were divided in their conversation about whether his merits as a poet outweighed the man’s vicious sarcasm and personal attacks.  Lucy Ferrars had no particular thoughts she considered worth sharing and sat on the ride home in complete silence.

***

Lying in bed that night, Elinor had a sudden compelling thought; so compelling, so complex and complete in the musings of one softly woken from sleep, that she was moved to slide out from under the warm arm that held her, to kindle a candle from the fire, and tiptoe downstairs.  In the sitting room in which they received company, she carefully placed her little volume of Pope’s poetry down on the floor as if it had fallen, unnoticed, in sight of the chair in which Lucy sat when she came in to sew.  She hurried back upstairs on frozen feet, and climbed in with her husband, feeling a fool.

Out of embarrassment, Elinor did not mention her night-time excursion to anyone, and almost did not remember it herself, until after dinner when she was collecting her work box from the larger downstairs room.  The little volume was gone.

Chapter Text

The little book of stolen hair and fallen sparrows ‘mysteriously’ returned to the sitting room three days later, with no comment or thanks from the parson’s pretty wife.  Elinor grimly reminded herself that the prize at stake was more interesting—or at least more elegant—conversation, and selected a little volume that offered itself to be a primer of Greek myths.  It seemed that this gesture, perhaps, had taken.

***

Summer came and, with it, parties of pleasure.  Brandon and Elinor were invited to a grand day out at Osborne Castle a full seven miles distant, and a fixture on the calendars of the county families who could travel to it.  Lord Osborne was an awkward young man, prone to saying the wrong thing and lurking too close to the prettier of the single women invited; his mother, the Lady Osborne, the true mastermind behind this gathering, was a handsome widow who kept catching at the attention of her local parson, Mr Howard, with “I’m sure you’ll agree” glances; and her daughter, the Miss Osborne, was still exhibiting some pique that the eligible Colonel Brandon had cruelly married someone else without even having the decency to pursue—and be rejected by—her first.  It was with some relief that Elinor stayed with her family party, well protected from the churning undercurrents of the matrimonial market; happily, she joined forces with the Blake-Howard party, keeping up a genial maternal conversation with Sarah Blake that provided their menfolk with some cover.  Thus, it came to pass that the attack she fell to came, unheralded, from within her own lines: when young Charles Blake invited her to see his pony, she had no ready excuse for him.

Elinor scooped up little Beth as a chaperone and walked with him to admire the little horse.  “Shall Beth have a ride on my pony?” he asked, and she helped the two children get settled and honourably refrained from offering to hold the reins as they walked.  “You haven’t replied to my letters,” Charles Blake said, fighting manfully to not appear crestfallen.  “And you will never speak to me alone, either.”

“Oh, Charles, you know I cannot.  Any woman who is not your relative or your betrothed cannot.  Mr Blake,” she said, elevating the boy to honorary adulthood.  “You must consider my position.  I know that your feelings towards me are purely that of friendship; but my husband needs to know that also.  The rules of propriety are laid out to protect us both.”

He nodded, dejected.  “Are you laughing at me?”

“Oh, never.  I am flattered, but—I married for affection, and I would never do anything to compromise that affection.”

“If Colonel Brandon dies, I will marry you.”

She coughed, desperate and determined not to laugh.  “But let us hope that the vicissitudes of life never bring us to that pass.”

“Of course.”

“You are more patient with my nephew than most, Mrs Brandon,” Mr Howard said later that day, as they departed the castle grounds.  “I thank you.”

She smiled politely.  “My sisters feel very fiercely as well, Mr Howard, and he reminds me of them, in the best sense.  It is very hard when your interior life is at odds with the duties that community life places upon you.  Although—your sister Mrs Blake is so very kind and practical, I do feel that he must sometimes feel wounded by her matter-of-factness.”

“I think we may be in luck—” he nodded at the barouche carrying Beth and her nursemaid, next to which Charles rode as he showed off some wildflowers he had picked “—if only all attachments were so easy to transfer as Charles’ to your ward.”

“I wish you would refer to Beth as my daughter, Mr Howard.  That is how I feel about her, and I married with the understanding that she would inherit co-equal to my own children.”

“Well then, as we live in mercenary times, I will not try to dissuade Charles too avidly,” he said.  Smiling: “we must think ahead.”

Elinor laughed.  “I think your nephew may be in love another four or five times before either of them could possibly be old enough.”

“Very likely,” he replied.  “I think you are a very understanding wife, Mrs Brandon.  Not many would be so.”

She tilted her head.  “I can be understanding when I haven’t been truly hurt, Mr Howard.  Speaking to a man of the cloth, I can own to having my own wounded feelings over which I brood in private; I merely do not care to share them.”

***

One day, in the parsonage, the younger maid sent her straight up to Edward’s study, rather than calling him down to his sitting room.  Her brother-in-law was working on some accounts, a straight line manifest between his brows.

“Are there a few too many spiders in your pockets?” she said sympathetically.

“Nothing that a fortuitous legacy from a mysteriously unknown uncle wouldn’t correct,” he said, rubbing his forehead.  “We’ll manage.” 

“They’re nice if you can find them.  Although not always so generous as the novels might encourage us to think, alas.”  There wasn’t much more that could be said: there were material comforts that Brandon might have been providing, but why should he, when Mrs Ferrars liked to needle his wife?

“How can I help you, Mrs Brandon?  Not that it is never a pleasure,” he added with a half-smile.

“A small favour.  We’re having trouble with one of our maids.  She’s a good-hearted girl, and I think highly of her, but… well, she’s too clever for her work as it happens.  She keeps going off in a daydream thinking about how clouds are made or trying to commit a poem to memory, and the other girls resent her for shirking.”

Edward laughed, then looked down at his accounts.  “Ah…”

“No, you wouldn’t want her either.  The thought I had is… Alice reads quite well for a charity girl.  I heard from the Widow Egerton that you helped her a great deal in founding her school when she first came to Delaford, and I was wondering if you would sound her out about taking Alice on.  She could help with the housekeeping, and perhaps teach the younger children?  I like the girl, it’s just that there aren’t so terribly many choices for employment when you’re 15 and unconnected.”

“I’ll see what I can do.  Mrs Egerton has taken on a few more students lately; it might work out.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.”  Then: “Good Heavens, Edward,” she said, looking out his study window.  “I had no idea that you could see my house through these trees.” 

“Yes, I sometimes see you painting.  I don’t mean to spy on you Elinor.  I suppose that it is… comforting to know that there is someone engaged in their work at the same time as I am.”

He was interrupted by a terrific caterwauling and loud clatter, and Elinor jumped.

“Oh, Anne is teething.  No one has much had any sleep lately.”

She went out into the main part of the house where Lucy was clutching a vomiting baby and the two maids were fluttering about dealing with a kitchen catastrophe.  She caught the younger maid, talked her through how to fix the disaster, and packed Mary off to boil the tea kettle.

“Mrs Ferrars—Lucy, let me hold the baby while you change your dress.”  Lucy started at her with big wide eyes—for the briefest moment they stared at each other in total understanding before Elinor schooled herself to reserve—here, now, was Elinor’s revenge.  If ever she had wanted to exult, to be revenged, this was her moment: sharp eyed little Lucy Steele had gotten everything she had said she wanted; and this fatigue, the piercing cry of an overtired baby, the house falling to pieces around her: this was what she had claimed to want.  With her triumph ready made for her, Elinor could not bring herself to delight in it, and she knew, as she and Lucy had always known each other, that any performance of pity would be despised more than scorn.  Elinor washed the baby’s face and let the little girl suck on her finger, patting her back, and crooning “you poor old thing.”

When Lucy returned, Elinor smiled at her, accepted a cup of tea, and talked calmly about the calls she had been making in the village, and how she always found a filigree basket or paper house that some young occupant wanted to show off with such open pleasure, with such delight at the attentions paid to them by the elegant Mrs Ferrars.

When she returned to her own house, her blessedly quiet house, she asked the cook to look out some of the ice that remained and send it to the parson-house.  Many things in this world could not be corrected, but sore gums—that she was equal to.

***

It was blessedly quiet in Elinor’s stillroom.  This year, as with last year when the fruits of the Delaford garden came in, she had abstracted a maid from Mrs Padgett’s careful roster and spent soothing hours working in the dry and precise room: Mrs Padgett might be proud of the house, but Elinor had her own book of family recipes and valued it, exerted her own talents, took her own pride in her work.

On the day Edward visited, they were not preserving food or making wine, but extracting oils from the herbs of her garden, and she and Alice were surrounding by the fragrant vapours of lavender and rosemary and mint.

“You are so very precise, Mrs Brandon.”

“I am for this work, Mr Ferrars,” she said warily, for her reputation for severity had not left her.

He smiled through the steam.  “I wanted to let you know how the conversation with Mrs Egerton went.”  She nodded and sent the maid against whom she was conspiring to fetch some more wood from the store.  “She said that she would like to try Alice on a six-week trial if that is alright with you.  She hopes—she hopes that you would be willing to take the girl back again if things are not as successful as she might wish.”

Elinor nodded.  “Thank you, Edward.”

He stayed to survey the work, and rubbed his fingers in some of the shredded herbs so that he could smell the oils more clearly.  “I never see Lucy in this work,” he said conversationally.

“I doubt she has the room,” Elinor said frankly, “and probably not the time, with Anne so young.”

“I suppose.”

“Edward, if I suddenly moved to London, or York—or Plymouth; I should likely be wanting someone who had grown up used to the markets to put me in the way of things, just as much as a city girl moving here might need to adjust to country ways.  I can see she’s a quick learner.”  She caught his look.  “No, even if you are my brother.  The last time I let you talk me into including Lucy in my affairs very much did not go well.  I’ll repay you the favour about Alice in some other way, but not in here, and not in my painting room, either.  I need my own spaces.”

“Don’t mention it, Elinor.  It was a simple favour to do.”

She gave him some jars to take home anyway.

***

Her acquaintance with Edward grew that summer.  As must happen as they grew into their adult lives as spouses and parents, their perspective on the doings of their neighbours must change, and one early morning, two solitary walks conjoined into a doubled ramble homewards and Edward talked with her, in a mild way, of the woes of two of his parishioners who had married in a great show of romance, followed by a brief, but spirited, diminution of affection.  As the priest who had married them, Edward had taken the marital strain of the newly-weds as a personal reflection on his own pastoral care. 

“Yes, it is very delicate,” said Elinor, who had information of her own.  “But rather difficult to discuss in mixed company.”

“Would you—please, as a favour, would you give me some insight, my dear sister?  I am quite at a loss as to how to guide young Cartwright.”

She sighed.  “Well, if you really must know, Mrs Cartwright is unhappy about how her husband conducts himself in the marital bed.  Apparently, he climbs on her, does his business, rolls off, and goes to sleep; leaving her feeling unloved and, more importantly, uncomfortable.  And yet, this was revealed to me in confidence, so while I may suggest to you that you offer Cartwright some hints, some gentle hints, if my name enters the conversation at all, Edward, I will never forgive you.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” she said.  Fresh from the arms of her own husband, she was expansive.  “Let there be love-talking, and fond caresses.  Suggest to him that he present her with flowers from time to time.  Expatiate on the merits of a gentle embrace.  You are very eloquent in the pulpit, I’ve noticed, remind the man that his body was designed to feel pleasure, and more importantly remind him that his wife’s was, also.”

Edward, fair skinned Edward, really was incapable of hiding a blush, and his face grew redder and redder while Elinor observed him with patient curiosity.

“You, ah, you appear to have put some thought into the matter, Mrs Brandon.”

“I am a happily married woman,” she said primly.  “Brandon mentioned once that young men usually have their brothers or cousins to give advice at such times: does Cartwright not have one?”

He coughed.  “Perhaps I will enquire.  Do you really talk about these things with Brandon?”  His eyes were bulging a little.

“We were in a position of some frankness before we married.”

“Should I, as your brother, give him a post-dated punch on the nose?” he asked, incredulous.

“It wasn’t that much frankness.”  She smiled in fond memory.  “If you must know, Edward, he spent the summer before he proposed encouraging me, as a man of the world who was my friend, to consider the virtues of the young gentlemen of our acquaintance who were potential candidates for marriage.  I asked him some difficult questions, and he was kind enough to address my doubts with gentleness and honesty; I appreciated his candour and his friendship on the matter.”

Edward appeared to be in some sudden, unexplained distress.  Elinor frowned in concern and perplexity until he had regained himself.  “Well,” he said.  “Well, I suppose there was a considerable difference in your ages.”

***

August brought the Pratts to the village of Delaford.  Mrs Pratt, Lucy’s aunt, Elinor had met before at Lucy’s lying in and, after meeting the poor woman’s husband, she understood to her own satisfaction why the older woman had seemed so faded and meek.  Uncle Pratt was a large loud man, fond of the table, and fonder of his own voice.  At the dinner the Ferrars had held in his honour, he had pontificated greatly on the perils of educating women, quoted Edmund Burke a great deal, blamed Mary Wollstonecraft for much of the ills that befell England, and interrupted Lucy’s anecdote to her aunt about her pet bird dying by announcing “Oh miselle passer! Tua nunc opera meae puellae / Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli” at which point Edward, the classicist of the Delaford party, had sniggered.  Elinor glanced at Lucy to share a rare look of sympathy and saw the young woman looking down at her plate, ugly spots of red blooming on her cheeks.

As a guest, Elinor bore it; as the hostess two nights later, when a return dinner was held, she found that she had had enough, and on the receipt of a dismissively phrased remark about supposing that Brandon’s lady must have her own accomplishments, she replied with an innocent face and sweetly toned voice that she had very few.  “Mostly French and Italian in languages, I’m afraid; only a very little Latin.  Our Great Uncle did like to read us Catullus, though, so some small pieces of it have managed to stick in my memory.”  Edward, at least, had the grace to look a little embarrassed and stammered a compliment to his hostess about her very good drawing skills.  As Elinor had not yet forgotten the dismissive remarks that Edward’s mother and sister had made about gifts made to them this was, perhaps, not the most acute timing.  The conversation degraded from there.

At one point, as her debate with Pratt was descending, as hostile conversations must, through the varied layers of Hell on its way to the icy lake that was religion and politics, Elinor glanced at her husband—he was sitting back in his chair, watching her with buried mischief.  Noticing her look, he gave her one sliver of a wink, and she continued in her engagement, comforted by the presence of an ally to hold her rear.

“And yet I don’t know why you should think so severely about women’s educations, Mr Pratt,” she said in a semblance of interested curiosity.  “Lucy has always seemed to me a clever girl, and I own that you must value her greatly.  We have been talking frequently this summer about the relationship between Milton and Dante, I can honestly say that I was very struck by her opinions.  Do not you agree, Edward?”

“I, I do,” he said, stuck between his sister-in-law and, Elinor supposed, the closest thing to a father-figure he had, and she let the topic of conversation switch to India.  This was no improvement in the general tone of the evening: it transpired that Pratt had strongly held opinions about the impeachment of Warren Hastings who had, as it happened, been a personal friend of Brandon’s.  She was very glad when the dessert had been eaten and she could lead Lucy and Mrs Pratt to her sitting room to pick up needlework and leave the ‘gentle’ men to their port.  The door did not close in time to avoid her hearing a ‘gentle’ comment made to Brandon and Edward about encouraging wives to think they’re clever.

Brandon’s reply was simple: “Yes, I do see what you mean.  I was so lucky my wife accepted me.  I think my military experience has given me a slight edge, however; I know how to quit the field with honour.”

In the sitting room while they drank their tea, she kept looking up to find Edward watching her, a curious expression on his face.  She bent her head to her needlework and let her husband stand the shock in her place.

***

Another night, another supper party:

“I have a copy of that book,” Brandon mentioned.  “You’re welcome to borrow it, Ferrars, if you should like to.”  He turned to Elinor, as his hands were full of cards, and his table full of Pratts.  “Dearest, would you mind showing Mr Ferrars?”

She nodded, and led Edward through the house.  “I’ve never seen Brandon's library before,” he said conversationally.  “He seems a very well-read man.  Well, you both are.”

“He is,” Elinor said, opening the door.  “But his library isn’t so fine as you might expect, given the size of the house.  I think Brandon Senior must have sold off the books - everyone says he was expensive.”

Many of the shelves in the wood panelled room were still bare, a collection that must have been years in the making leaving only an echo of sun-bleached markings in the polish.  There were newer books, also, smartly bound volumes mostly, a few more worn that bore the marks of a life of travel, all put together to make a clew for Elinor to follow in her quest to understand her husband.  There were military histories, as one might expect, and travel volumes, a collection of neatly bound plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, verse and philosophy from later authors; also a proud sprinkling of volumes bearing women's names: the Clarissas and Pamelas and Evelinas of literary England.  “Yes, Christopher really does like novels,” she said, smiling.  “None of these are for me; the pages have all been cut.”  She traced her hands along the shelves looking for the book the two had been speaking of.

“I think I have a small contribution then,” Edward said with his head bowed, pulling out a little volume from his pocket, wrapped in a fine linen handkerchief.  “I should have given it you earlier, but as I missed your wedding, it never quite felt the time.”

Elinor took the volume and opened it.  The frontispiece declared it to be the poetry of John Donne and Edward explained: “He is not so well-known as Shakespeare, but one of my dons at Oxford was mad about him.”

She traced the inscription: “To my sister Elinor, on the occasion of her wedding” with a smile, then balanced it on its spine to let the book fall open to a favourite page, for it was an old edition and well-loved. “Though I must go, endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to airy thinness beat.  That’s beautiful, Edward,” she said. 

In the hallway, she looked up, fancying she heard a cry from upstairs, and excused herself.  “Beth is such a poor sleeper,” she apologised. 

“Of course,” Edward said, holding the history in front of himself like a shield, and he escaped to the drawing room.  Upstairs, Beth was indeed crying, and Lilly the nursery maid looking frayed.  Elinor took the baby in her own arms and hushed her, walking around and around the night nursery until the little girl allowed herself to be settled in her crib again and the maid could be sent away to get some rest in the housekeeper’s room.

Deep into the night, Elinor curled up in the chair next to her daughter’s bed and read the little book of poems by candle light, alternately touched and frustrated by the boy who never had anything to say for himself until it was too late.

***

Late September, and Lucy and Anne were whisked away by their uncle and aunt to spend a few weeks in Plymouth.  On an autumn day when the rain fell, a solitary figure stood in the yard of the parsonage stripped down to a wet-slicked shirt, chopping wood.  After some hours, his neighbour donned a greatcoat and went out to speak to him.

“I think you’ve got enough fire wood there to last a week,” Brandon remarked casually.

Edward let the head of the axe fall and leaned on it, gasping for breath.  “It will pass.”

“Walk with me,” Brandon said, and they took a turn about the wet garden.  “I liked those poems you gave to Elinor, young Ferrars.  I wouldn’t exactly call them beautiful, for the verse was too rough for that; nor easy, for one has to think through the conceit.  They were worth the effort it takes to get to know them, I would say.  The images are compelling.”

Edward nodded glumly, and awkwardly worked his arms into his discarded coat.  Brandon clapped him on the shoulder.  “Keeping busy is the best thing.  I’m going shooting tomorrow if this rain lets up.  Would you like to join me?”

“I don’t—I don’t know that’s appropriate—”

Brandon nodded, as if a positive answer had been presented to him.  “I’ll expect you at breakfast tomorrow.”  He looked critically at the younger, slighter man, his bare head drenched.  “Go home, Ferrars.  Everyone thinks taking a chill will be terribly romantic, and then they have to deal with a dreadful headache and trying to give sermons with a stuffed nose.”

***

“Is it entirely wise having Edward here so often?”  Elinor was sitting at her dressing table, shed down to her shift, yawning as she pulled the pins from her hair.  Brandon, likewise shedding coat and waistcoat, slipped his black-and-gold banyan over his shoulders and stood behind her, catching the falls of hair as she unpinned each lock.  Smiling, he picked up her brush.

“I used to see it in younger officers sometimes,” he rumbled.  “Young men making themselves miserable over their commanders’ wives.”

“Do you mind?” she asked.

“Not enough to make myself unhappy over it.”  His hands pulling the brush were smooth and sure, and he began to braid her hair loosely for the night.  “Or you, dearest.  Is it too hard to bear?”

She shook her head.  “I did have an attachment to Edward, a true one, I think.  But it feels so very distant now.  I suppose I’m too fixed to the here and now; it’s easier to love the one I’m with.”

Christopher laid her braid over her shoulder and leaned his hands on the chairback.  “I think Edward may be suffering from an excess of poetry; I think, perhaps, he sees you now as an ideal woman, a princess in the tower: the more unattainable you are, the more perfect you must be.  And how can anyone challenge perfection?  No, let him visit and find life here to be as it is: mundane.  Let him see you being disturbingly wide awake in the morning, and crotchety if someone makes you stay awake longer than you like; let him know that you break wind as much as the rest of us, and that you mind if the tea things are not the way you want them; although perhaps not, dearest, let him see you baring your flesh to the fire when you believe yourself to be undisturbed.”

She laughed silently.  “So long as my idiot brother doesn’t bother you too much.  I like being married to you, even if I was so foolish as to give my vows to a man who never shares his dressing gown.”

Brandon wrapped his gold dragon dressing gown, himself still inside it, around her shoulders and kissed her neck.  “I was once a junior officer, too; I can afford to have sympathies.  Perhaps I should improve my poetry reading.  O, my America, my Newfoundland,” he said roundly.

Elinor blushed for, as inapposite it might be to be compared to a geographical location, she knew the poem he meant.  She reached up behind her and brushed Brandon’s bristled cheek, caressed her fingers down to his naked throat, turned her head so she could breathe the smell of his skin and the trace of foreign spices still infusing the brocade.  Christopher traced the line of her collar bone, let his hand slide under the wide neck of her chemise and down to cup the point of her shoulder, his fingers warm and dry.  “We could take this off you,” he suggested.  “I can think of much better things to cover you with.”

***

It was a quiet autumn morning in her protected garden, and Elinor was sketching.  Not from observation, but happy memory.

“Hello?” a voice floated through the grill of the gate.

“Hello, Edward, you’re up with the larks again,” she said, smiling.  “Come and sit with me.”  She closed her sketchbook firmly.

“I was impressed with how you debated my Uncle Pratt, when he was visiting.  He isn’t used to being bested in conversation like that.”  (Bested by a woman, Elinor thought sourly, but let it pass.)  It was just like having Marianne back in the family.”

“I didn’t need to argue like that when Marianne was here, she did it for me.”

He made a small sound.  “It seems a very Brandon thing to do to sit back and stay in reserve until you needed him.  The two of you have a such a lot of trust in each other.”

“You should stand up for your wife more, Edward.  It isn’t just that she is your wife, and deserving of your protection.  She is an intelligent woman who happened to be less fortunate in her education than you.”

“I suppose so.  Yes, you are right, Elinor, as you always are.”  He sighed and changed the subject.  “What are you drawing?” and he reached for her sketchbook before she could stop him.  It fell open, and: “Oh,” Edward said.

The picture Elinor had been drawing, clear in her mind’s eye, was Brandon, sleepy eyed, one bare arm flung over his head, languorous and relaxed as she had left him half an hour before, and she was annoyed that her memory of a happy moment was so taken from her.  It was not her responsibility to be embarrassed for Edward, and she very much wished that he would exert himself and hide his dismay better.

“Edward,” said said firmly.  “I wish you would end this.  I am not going to insult your feelings by calling them nonsense, but this is unfair to us both.  I did marry for affection.  No.  I married for love, although I did not have the sensibility at the time to understand what I was feeling.”

Edward sat for a long time, looking older than his years, as if he had lost a precious thing that could not be regained.  “As you say, Elinor.  I will exert myself and think of myself as your brother.  But—” he took her hand and kissed it, with the formality of a knight swearing fealty to his liege-lord’s wife— “one who is in your service.”

Chapter Text

In the spring there was an epidemic of influenza, the real influenza.  Every woman in the village was busy nursing and preparing baskets of food to help their neighbours.  Elinor, run off her feet keeping her house going with half the servants ill was one of the last to fall and, as these things go, went down the hardest.

She was a long time in bed, heavy boned with a fever and too weary even to be annoyed at being ill; fitful sleeps with strange upsetting dreams that she was wandering from room to room in some alien house, trying to catch at the pieces of music she could only half hear.  But there came a morning when she woke to see her mother’s round, soft, lined, moon-like face smiling above her.  Elinor blinked, her mouth dry as a boneyard.  “Christopher?  Marianne?”

Mrs Dashwood pressed her to stay down, and gave her a beaker of barley water to sip.  “Colonel Brandon is asleep, dear Elinor, just in the next room.  He was sitting up with you all last night, until your fever broke.  How do you feel?”

“Foolish.”

Her mother gave her a knowing smile.

***

There were long, fatiguing days of convalescence to be got through; particularly when Elinor was feeling well enough to be bad-tempered and cross; and the patience with which her husband and mother treated her made her even crosser.

A mercy, unexpectedly, was the little parson’s wife, for when Mrs Ferrars came to sit by Elinor’s bedside, she preferred to read from the court papers and discuss the lives of people the two of them were likely never to meet, and talk endlessly about her needlework and the papercrafts she liked to do.  For these few long days, Elinor found the chatter not dull, but peaceful, and was grateful for it.

Finally, the day came when she was allowed to put on her oldest softest gown and walk the few paces down the hall to her very own sitting room.

Edward burst in.

“Oh Elinor,” he said, maliciously cheerful.  “In the forest, a mighty oak hath fallen.  When King Canute had his chair set in the sea so that he could order the tide to be stilled, then he knew that the power of kings is empty, and worthless, and there is no King worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven and earth and sea obey eternal laws.  In this example, Elinor, you are King Canute.”

She leaned over trying not to laugh and bring her cough back.  “I hate you.  You are so mean to me, Edward, and when your wife has been so kind.”

Brandon was in the hallway, talking with her physician in a low murmur.  When he came in, he had the air of someone who had made plans, and announced that they were going to Bath for a few months.  “Ferrars?  Might I ask you to keep an eye on my wife for some two or three days while I take Mrs Dashwood home and travel ahead to arrange accommodation?”

Edward nodded happily, his hands in his pockets.

“Yes,” Brandon said, stilling her protests.  “We will go and drink the waters, and if you are very good and take the vile smelling potions the apothecary has left for you, I will take you to the play.”

Tired again, Elinor gave up fighting, and laid her head back down on the sofa back.  Lucy Ferrars, sitting on a chair across from her, had a very complicated expression which Elinor found difficult to construe.  The woman rose to take her leave after a few minutes and, speaking quietly to her husband in the doorway, was quickly embraced.  “That’s marvellous, darling,” Edward said.  “Elinor—Brandon— my Lucy is with child again.  What a happy day for us all.”

***

From Mrs Elinor Brandon to Mrs Marianne Wick:

Dear Marianne,

I have been a little ill, and I pray that you do not take alarm.  Brandon says that he has written to you already, and please do not read too much in whatever he has said because, while I have a case of pneumonia, I am very definitely mending.  I have had the humbling realisation that not only does it rain on the just and the unjust alike; but illness come to both those of us who change our stockings and those who do not—I would like to post-date my sympathy for how weary you were that long summer at Barton, and wish I had been more understanding on how you felt.

We are in Bath, which is so full of fireworks and concerts and marzipan that I personally find it a wonder that anyone ever recovers their strength.  I am to take a hot bath tomorrow, which makes me feel revoltingly fashionable, but I suppose will do me some good…

***

It was an impressive train of carriages, the day they left for Bath.  Brandon had ordered his own chaise for himself and his wife; hired a second to carry Elinor’s maid, Beth’s maid, and the child herself; and, furthermore, tacked on his barouche as rear guard for, he said, they would want it later.

“Don’t you think you’re showing off?” Elinor said drily.

“It pays to show off, in Bath.  All the old tabbies are watching who comes into town and gossiping.  Once you’ve established yourself, then you can do pretty as much as you like.”

The procession held for this first hour and a half, until Beth was violently ill, Lilly the nursemaid likewise, and they hastily wrapped themselves in extra cloaks and travelled in the barouche anyway.

***

“Good heavens, is that Mr Perkins walking over there?”

Elinor craned her neck.  “Mr Jenkins.  And Miss Carey with him.  No, I remember—he married Susan Carey last year; it’s Mrs Jenkins now.”

“We should really invite them to dinner while they are in Bath.  I owe young Jenkins quite a lot for his cold, fishy hands.”  He glanced warmly at Elinor and patted her own hand, settled comfortably on his arm.

They were walking around the sweeping curve of the Circus, past house after repeated house built in blistering white limestone, with their windows and doors arranged into some ideal of form and harmony.  It was a relief to be turned into the centre of the circle, where there was new grass put down, and the beginnings of flower beds on which Elinor could rest her eyes.  Brandon was not just buttoned up in his best town manner, but puffed out, a married man enjoying promenading with his much younger wife, and Elinor laughed at him, at least inside her head, and enjoyed the feeling of the velvet coat he wore beneath her fingers.

“I hope,” Brandon said conversationally, “that you will feel free to visit the shops while we are here.  Our accounts are wonderfully beforehand with the world.”

“Am I too dowdy for you?” Elinor asked, smiling.

“No, never.  But you deserve nice things.”

“I think you already buy me too many presents.”

“I would say to that,” he manoeuvred her to a park bench, and they sat down, “I would say to that, that I worked hard for my money and enjoy spending it on other people.”  His face softened, vulnerable.  “I had a fright, Elinor.  Would you indulge me by letting me spoil you a little?  It’s self-interest, really—I’ve gotten too comfortable with the weight of a woman’s hand on my arm.”

It was inappropriate in this public place to touch his face, but her mouth quirked a little.  “Only one new toy for Beth.  She already wraps you around her finger.”

“Two.”

“Alright,” she sighed gustily, “you’ve bargained me down.”  They sat for a time contemplating the pleasant green space, then: “Brandon?” she asked.  “How do I make you happy?”

He answered her question seriously.  “By being happy.  Let me find it in you.”

When they arrived back at their rented house, Brandon sat with her for a time in their room, reading a volume of poetry that Beth would like as well: the little girl had been banished to Brooks’ farm while Elinor was ill—less for infection, more for the child’s habit of sneaking into her mother’s room and savagely tearing off the covers, demanding that Elinor wake up.  Returned to family life, Beth had been insistent on taking her naps with company, and Elinor, still out of wind, had given in.  She blinked muzzily when Brandon closed the book; Beth’s breathing had eased into slumber, and Elinor half sat up on the big bed.

“Sleep now, dearest, I am away to see if your get-well gift has arrived.”

“You buy me too many presents,” she said, yawning.

“I think you will like this one.  Rest.”  He patted Beth’s shoulder, kissed Elinor’s cheek, and left.

Elinor woke later to the sound of the pianoforte, a river of tumbling notes, and a woman’s voice, mature and operatic, singing the delicate lyrics:

Sleep is a reconciling,
A rest that peace begets.
Doth not the sun rise smiling
When fair at even he sets?
Rest you then, rest, sad eyes,
Melt not in weeping
While she lies sleeping
Softly, softly, lies sleeping…

Elinor yawned and walked, only half awake, into their drawing room.  There, ensconced on the well-built instrument that had led Brandon to hire this house over any other, was her sister Marianne: older, taller, more polished, very smartly dressed.  The younger woman looked up from the instrument she played with such vigour and delicacy, and winked at her older sister.

Brandon walked in quietly and sat beside Elinor on a love seat.  “Did I do well, Elinor Brandon?”

She leaned against him.  “You did.”

Marianne put her hands on her lap and turned her head in moment of contemplation of the fading final notes.  She raised her head and said: “I am your aunt,” very impressively, and Elinor looked behind her to see her little three-year-old daughter watching with bright round eyes.

***

Brandon, sadly for his gesture, became as a visitor in his own house.  Elinor had wondered for years what she might say to Marianne when they met again; what they were recalled to was their own youth, as sisters who had been inseparable—and there was much news.

At last, they made it to Elinor’s invalidish bedtime, and they lay on the covers of Elinor’s bed together, talking over old times, talking over new secrets they both had discovered in their separate journeys.  In response to a story about Beth, Marianne suddenly wrinkled her nose.  “Why haven’t you had children yet?  Are the two of you doing something medieval like sleeping with a sword between you?”

“No.”  Elinor coloured.  “Sometimes it doesn’t happen straight away.”

“Well, if they do come a little too thick and fast, my friend Mrs Buchanan advises taking Brown’s tonic for the ‘green sickness.’”

“Marianne!”

Her sister shrugged.  “It’s better than being worn out by the time you’re thirty.”

“I think Brandon might like to come to bed soon.”

Marianne glanced at the clock.  “Oh.  Well, he is old.”

“Yes, but he can’t come in here until you leave.”

Now, it was Marianne’s turn to colour.  “Papa always slept in his dressing room.”

“But Brandon is not Papa, and I like him in here with me.”

Routed, Marianne fled.

***

It was exhausting taking the hot baths.

Elinor generally felt like a piece of meat wrapped up in muslin from the butcher and boiled in brine; from thence, to be packaged up in blankets and carried home in a chair to collapse in her own bed until she was recovered enough to rejoin the household and eat breakfast like a civilised person.  However, with Marianne present, at least she could have company and be boiled up together: Christopher had gone into the baths with her on the first occasion, but she had felt so stared at, even with his protection, that she had refused thereafter to go into the most fashionable bath house, and patronised the more dowdy (but woman only) Queen’s Bath, instead.

They talked about Edinburgh, and the interesting people to be met there after all the aristocrats and politicians had moved south to London.  There were vaguenesses in what Marianne had to say; Elinor suspected, but did not ask, that there had been troubles with money, but she admired the ambition of the two young women: young Eliza sounded like a character she would enjoy reading about in a novel.

When asked what she herself had been doing, Elinor was vague, not from embarrassment but domesticity.  “Well, I manage the house, I suppose, although Mrs Padgett doesn’t much need supervising exactly.  Beth takes up much of my time—she’s fond of attention and—well, she takes some attention.  And I do charity works as we always used to, in the village.  There is a Miss Abbott in Dorchester who likes books as much as I do, so we meet every couple of weeks; and my friend Clara I write to who knows everyone’s history back to the end of time.  Edward is doing very well in Delaford, he has grown into himself very much since he realised his vocation.  I think you would like to see who he has become.”

“Oh, Elinor,” Marianne said with a pitying look.  “You only talk about books once a fortnight?”

“No,” she laughed.  “I talk about books with Brandon every day.  We like walking together, and often talk then.”

“I do not like to see how you are with Brandon,” Marianne said suddenly.  “Have you noticed?  He always goes where you go, and touches you all the time, as if you were a prize pointer or doll or some other valuable possession.  And you so faded and quiet.”

“I have been ill, you know,” Elinor replied.  “And domesticity is very quiet… but it’s comfortable.  Warm and comfortable and inviting.  It’s the infelicitous couples who make a lot of sound and fury.”

***

There was one advantage to this busy crowded noisy city.  The flux of wealthy consumers visiting to be entertained was such that it could sustain rather more entertainments of the reading room and cake shop and art gallery sort than one might expect from a strict census count of the population.  It was this last establishment which Elinor insisted on patronising.  Some group of watercolour artists had convinced the gallery owner to exclude the bolder thicker colours of oils from his display, and thus, the walls were filled with brilliant white paper filled with sweeping studies of the sky, delicate domestic moments, and luminous lighting effects.  Elinor was quite enraptured, and leaned closer to particularly fine work to consider the details of the artist’s technique.

“It’s quite a lot harder to paint well in watercolours than in oils, I’ll have you know,” she explained to Brandon and Marianne.  “With oil, if I don’t like it, I can scrub it off with turpentine; when I paint with watercolour, once the colour is laid down, it’s there for ever.”

“A Lady Painter speaks with true wisdom!” a stranger’s voice interrupted them.  Brandon was taken aback by the interruption, and loomed, but let the man, somewhat bohemian in his garb continue with his self-introduction.  “Macrahanish,” he said, “at your service.  I am the artist exhibiting today.”

Marianne gave a glad cry, recognising the name, and started a conversation with the man about some mutual acquaintances, ignoring Elinor’s disapproving hints that they would need to be on their way.  There were some old arguments about decorum and politesse that would perhaps never be resolved between them.

***

There was, Elinor realised, a curious tension between Brandon and Marianne that had not been there in their early acquaintance.  The two manoeuvred around each other, always careful to have Elinor or Beth or some acquaintance in their presence with each other.  Sometimes they debated with a fierceness that had not been there before: a fierceness pursued by Marianne, Elinor thought, who had become fond of quoting philosophers and writers with whom she now was personally acquainted.  Her sister’s philosophies had changed in the last two years.  She was less of a romantic than she had been—Romantic, that is—and had become much more interest in what could be proved through one’s own sense experiences; or conversely what principles could, or should, be construed in their absence: it led to lively conversation with Brandon, for he was an introspective soul who had considered much on the nature of thought, and had opinions of his own.  It also, Elinor considered, brought some new perspectives on Elinor’s and Edward’s own careful dance around each other.  They had, Elinor now realised, looked quite ridiculous, or at least they had done so to Brandon, whose opinion mattered the most to them.

She was now sandwiched between the pair in then Tea Room of the Assembly Rooms providing countenance to them both, as they listened to a revival of the Messiah.  The room was quite splendid, and the choristers decked out on the upper balcony looked quite lovely, and yet, while Elinor did not despise music, she did not thrill to it as her neighbours did either, and found much amusement glancing from face to face watching Brandon and Marianne both react to each musical phrase.  Marianne was more vigorous in her expressions, Elinor rather thought, at times the younger woman looked pained, at others joyful, and she twitched, as if she were wishing to take over from the conductor; Brandon, was equally absorbed, but quieter in his attention, and she was happy to hold his hand as they listened.

At the interval, they were faced with a choice.  Elinor and Marianne had risen to take a turn about the room, and there were in view two very different men with whom they had spoken in the past.  The one, regrettably, they were actually related to, Mr Robert Ferrars, was decked out in collars as high as his cheek bones, and an ostentatiously large snuff box which he snuffled at loudly; the other, the painter from this morning.  Elinor steeled herself to her duty, and turned towards Mr Ferrars, hoping that Marianne had not seen the Macrahanish fellow.

Alas, her sister had seen through the ruse: “Oh yes, Elinor, we could absolutely go and have a conversation with a man to whom we have been introduced, who stares at us, and lectures us about living in cottages.  And who is very, very boring.  Or, we could have a delightful conversation with a professional artist, who would have things to say that interest you.”

“The rules of propriety are for our own protection, Marianne.  You and your friend Eliza have already come afoul of a man whose character was not fully known.  I don’t—I don’t pretend to think that you’ve never had some stranger treat you with impertinence, living alone as you do.”

“I promise you I’ve never had the green sickness,” Marianne said sweetly.

“You’ve gotten harder since you went to Edinburgh,” Elinor said.

“You haven’t.”  Marianne’s tone made it clear that this was not to be taken as a compliment.

The dispute was ended by an arriving convoy: Mr Macrahanish had acquired the offices of the Master of Ceremonies to conduct an introduction in proper order.  Elinor quirked an eyebrow at Marianne, but, assured of the man’s bona fides was happy enough to speak to him.

Brandon had found his own acquaintances with whom to speak when they returned to their seats: a couple of the middling sort, a little way into their thirties.  They seemed honest enough, the woman had a full plump figure, and a dimple that made her look often pleased, and Elinor spoke kindly to the woman and noted the slightly wary stance that Brandon took as he spoke to her.  It was not pride, she thought, because Brandon was often very civil to those in the professional classes.  It was…

“Anne Morgan seemed a very pleasant woman, I thought,” she said to Brandon at bedtime.  She looked at him in the mirror, a laugh half bubbling out of her.  “A very merry widow.”

Brandon leaned his hands on the chair back, and looked at her, his lips pressed together, his face a little suffused with the dreadful desire to hold in a blush.  At last, he said: “yes, yes, Elinor you are correct in your surmise.  I did, in the past, have a friendship with Anne Morgan, before she married and sent me away.”

She laughed, feeling a small triumph at divining another Fact about her husband.  She was getting better, she suddenly thought, the waters at Bath had given her, at last, the vigour with which to tease her husband and she thanked them silently for that forgotten gift.

He kissed the top of her head.  “Dearest, you are a very peculiar woman.  In the best sense.  Most wives don’t care to know too many details of such things, and I do not wish to hurt your feelings.”

She turned her head to lean against his chest where she could feel a deep, chuckling, silent laugh building in turn.  “I like knowing you weren’t always lonely.”

***

Elinor did go shopping in the end.  The fashions in Bath had seemed strange to her at first: the waistlines on all the dresses had climbed so high, they were not waistlines at all; and some of the more daring women had their hair cropped entirely, which fashion she was glad her smarter sister had not adopted.  So, she went to a mantua maker and had some new gowns fitted that were an acceptable compromise between the new and old ways and, while there, selected a pattern drafting book to take home with her.  “I think Lucy Ferrars might like it,” she explained to Marianne.

“Are you best friends now?” Marianne said with a wrinkled nose.

“No, but she spent a lot of her time keeping me company when I was cross and disagreeable.  It’s expected.”

“Ah, good dear Elinor who always does what is expected of her.  You are a walking conduct book.”

They were back again.  It was an odd thing, but Marianne would often treat Elinor’s calmness in the face of disagreement as a licence to really exercise herself, as if she needed an opponent who was equally emotional to feel sure of her own position.

“No, Marianne, I do not like Lucy Ferrars.  But she is my neighbour, and I owe her a duty.”

“Here is your true goddess: Propriety.”

“Even so.  Consider: Marianne.  The laws of this land are hard on women, because they expect men to behave in a proper way.  We two were treated badly by our brother—and our great-uncle, however much we loved him—who had lost their sense of propriety, who chose what is selfish over what is right.  Our lives were made materially better by men, Sir John and Brandon, who chose propriety, who chose kindness for no better reason than a sense of duty.”

“You are so devoted to your ‘little platoons’, Elinor.  All is tradition with you, and duty, and inheritance over reason.  But where is the mind, where is pure thought, where is your sense of justice?  Lucy Steele harmed you, and revelled in that harm; she got everything you wanted.  And you reward her for it?  You are a perfect exemplar of the downtrodden.”

“Are you reading my character as a polemical pamphlet, Marianne?  A paper sister, a convenient parable of someone’s political views?  It’s a little easier to do so from a distance, do not you think?  No.  No, I have consideration for Lucy Ferrars because she is my neighbour.  Because she is part of the same continent as I am; because if I wish harm to her, I wish harm to myself; because if a part of her life tumbles into the sea, then a part of me is lost, also.  Is that abstract enough for you, Marianne?  To be kind to someone I dislike from purely self-interested motives?  To be kind to a neighbour who is in want, even if I should shy away from a stranger who is a gentleman and an artist, who I can see is clever?  You should visit us in Delaford and listen to Edward preach—he’s gotten quite good.  But if propriety and duty are what I need to hold to a straight course in life, criticise me not.”

“You were rather busier than that, were you not?  Very proper of you, Elinor, to accept a proposal on the first time of asking.  Your conduct is, of course, unimpeachable.” The sparking tension between Brandon and Marianne suddenly became plain.

“Oh no, oh Marianne, no you cannot have.  You cannot have thought that Brandon would hang about waiting for you to decide to marry him after all.  Not in the situation he was in; he could not have.  He had a child to provide for, and no will to have her raised by strangers: if not me, he would have married someone else, some kindly widow or honest clever spinster.  He would have found someone he liked well enough and taught her how to love him.  He had no other choice that was acceptable to him, and if you must call that service to the goddess Propriety, well, have at it.”

“And so you snapped him up.  Did you wait even a day?  The living conditions are good I expect, although we cannot assume it was a love match.”

“I married my friend,” Elinor said doggedly.  “Whose character I well understood, with whom I felt comfortable in conversation, to whom I felt I could do a reciprocal service in exchange for his protection.  More than that you cannot ask me.”

“Would you like to go out driving tomorrow?” Marianne said, changing the subject.  “Mr Macrahanish—and his wife—know a very sweet spot along the River Avon.  He said there is good fishing,” she added, in disappointed tones.

“I will have to ask Brandon if he would like to go.”

“Do you ask Brandon before you do everything?”

“No, but I’m used to blaming Lieutenant Wick when there’s something I don’t want to do, and that won’t work with you.”  Elinor nudged her elbow against Marianne’s arm and grinned slyly, their old intimacy, for a moment, restored.  “Please go without me, and enjoy yourself.  I have an appointment at our lodgings in the afternoon.”

“Oh, your mantua maker.  Well, why did you not just say?”

***

“Was all well with the doctor today?” Brandon said as he brushed her hair the next day, his voice deliberately casual.

“Yes,” she said.  “More hot baths and drinking the waters.  No sea bathing,” she said with thankfulness.  “I can’t imagine voluntarily jumping into freezing cold water and having someone hold me under until I feel like I’m drowning.  Well, I can imagine it, but I’d have to be very desperate.”  She bit her lip.  “I just wanted to have some privacy.  It wasn’t a secret exactly.”

Brandon squeezed her shoulder.  “Doctor Arbuthnot happened to tip his hat to me on the street and he mentioned he was on his way to see you.  No spying, I promise.”  She put her hand over his for a moment.  He looked at her in the mirror for a long moment, searching her face, then wrapped his dressing gown, himself inside it, around her shoulders in a firm embrace.  “Concentrate on getting well, Elinor, that is all that matters.  You are your own dowry.”

She fell asleep that night fingering the gold band on her left hand.

***

They drove out to the river, anyway.  The Macrahanish party was otherwise occupied on the day that was eventually appointed, but, by happy coincidence, Brandon had finally managed to call on the Jenkins when the Jenkins were home, and arranged a joint outing with the old Barton contingent instead.

Sukey Jenkins was showing the roundness of a baby under her gown, and looked pleased about it.  Elinor could be happy for her, of course she was, but yet there was that little voice in the back of her head warning that the young woman might be worn out before she was thirty.  Fertility was a mixed blessing.

It was a good day.  Brandon, surrounded by young women who were used to treating him so, reverted to his old role of genial uncle-by-proxy while Marianne and Susan danced around him with the enthusiasm of school girls.  Jenkins, a good-natured fellow, for all the dreadful disability of his hands, followed behind with Elinor.

“She has your eyes,” Mr Jenkins said in a friendly way, nodding at Beth who had joined the teasing throng around Brandon.

“Ah,” Elinor said.  Beth was quite small for her age.  “Beth is my adopted daughter.”

“Yes, I’d heard, Mrs Brandon; your lady mother was very proud of her granddaughter when Sukey and I were last in Barton.  But I still think she has your eyes, quite conveniently so.”

“You have a more baroque sense of humour than I had taken you for, Mr Jenkins.”

He smiled happily.  “I didn’t really think I was up to your fighting weight, Mrs Brandon, not when we met in Devon, but I can venture a sally occasionally.  I think it a very good thing that you and the Colonel sorted out the tangle between you, complications and all.  That summer I almost felt I was an actor on a stage, a bit part supporting the principals in some grand play.”

“Susan makes a very good heroine in her own right, Mr Jenkins.”

“Indeed, she does,” and he smiled, as a man does, when he truly loves his wife.

***

“Thank you for coming all this way,” Brandon said to his sister-in-law, as they waited at the coaching inn.  “I can see how much your sister has welcomed seeing you.”

“You didn’t exactly leave me much choice,” Marianne sniffed.

“You always have a choice, Miss Mar—Mrs Wick.”  He smiled drily.  “Are we friends again, Marianne?”

“We aren’t enemies.”  Marianne tilted her head, sharp and arrogant and proud, “I was right, Brandon.  It is a very gilded cage you keep my sister in, but it is still a cage.  Does she sing for you, my grey linnet of a sister?  Do you let her draw?”

“You know she does.”

She pursed her lips, considering.  “We aren’t enemies.  And I wouldn’t exactly mind ten pounds to help with the fare home.”

He chuckled, and produced some banknotes.  When the stage coach rumbled up, he hoisted her in, and waved her goodbye with goodwill.

***

Elinor fell asleep on the journey back to Delaford.  She woke, blinking, leaning against her husband’s shoulder, as their carriage cut off from the turnpike road and into their own valley, and she could see their rambling old Elizabethan house with its protective wall and its arching mulberry tree; and their own parson coming out of doors to meet them.  Edward strode up cheerfully to open the chaise door and help Elinor down, and Brandon said to her: “oh, how lovely it is to be home, and able to do just as we like again.”

That night she was uncharacteristically wide awake in the darkness.  She sat and read by candlelight while Christopher slept beside her, turning a page back and forth while she reflected.  Being with Marianne had brought up old hurt feelings, new perplexities, confusions that took some mulling over.  After a time, a clear and illuminating idea rose to the surface of her thoughts with a bubbling “oh,” and she put her book down and stroked Brandon’s hair away from his face.  “I’m not at all sorry I got you instead of Marianne,” she whispered, understanding, at last, that what she felt was possessiveness.

“I’m glad,” Brandon whispered, drowsy, and a long wiry arm snaked around her lap to rest there.

“You were supposed to be asleep,” she said sternly.

One eye half opened.  “No spying, I promise,” he said with a quirk of his mouth.

She snuffed the candle and wriggled down in the bed so that her husband’s arm could embrace her more fully and, in the pinpoint light that remained, reflected on another long-buried feeling rising to the surface; a spark of desire.  She wriggled some more, easing her husband’s weight to lie more fully over her.  Brandon blinked himself more awake and raised himself on his arms.  He half yawned and tried to stifle it, which made her giggle, and she stroked his hair away from his face again.

“Are you very sure you’re well, dearest?” he asked her.  “I had such a fright.”

In the breathing dark she nodded, and felt the gentle touch of a man’s hand over her skin, her skin he had taught to be touched; returned that touch, knowing desire for a man’s body that was hers to possess and be possessed by; fitted into the spaces he had made for her.

Chapter Text

From Mrs Elinor Brandon to Mrs Marianne Wick:

…Lucy Ferrars has decked herself out in a coquelicot walking gown, and little Nancy in a welter of French lace, by which we are to assume that Mrs Ferrars-senior has come around at last.  I can be happy for Edward’s sake, but she does seem rather to exude clothes at the best of times, and with her ‘handsome present’, she is a sight to behold.

Have you decided if Wick is on furlough at this time?  The Misses Griffiths who live in my village are convinced that their cousin almost saw him in London last month.  They told me a long story about Mr Pritchard following an officer who matched his description all about the Tower of London, and up and down the Lion Tower of the menagerie, and I nodded and said that ‘it might have been, but I could not be very sure,’ so as you can see, he has rather taken on a life of his own.

We are to have a regiment of the militia soon, which makes me grit my teeth.  I can absolutely contemplate how much a troop of redcoats will set us all about the ears, when an entirely fictional singleton officer can be so compelling to the imaginations of the village girls—and its aged spinsters…

***

From Mrs Elinor Brandon to Miss Clara Hancock:

Dear Clara,

Your Aunts Griffiths have told me that you will be coming to them in the summer for a holiday after your term expires.  Would you like to stay with me at Delaford House for a portion of your visit?  My husband is making plans to travel abroad for some three months, and I would very much welcome your company.  It is crass to cross money with friendship, but we would be happy to pay your regular salary while you are with us, so that you would not be out of pocket if your stay with me in the Big House should mean delaying your next situation.  Brandon and I would also be pleased to take you with us to London in October if it would agree with your own plans.

Your Aunt Agnes has been suffering greatly from joint pain, but she is the happy recipient of so much calf’s foot jelly from neighbouring well-wishers that she has started giving jars away to everyone else.  By my calculations, the village stockpile of jelly is in fact increasing from a vacuum of empty nothingness, like worms spontaneously creating themselves from horsehair in the rain, and if she does not recover soon there will be no room in anyone’s storeroom for anything but restoratives.  I have suggested that she found her own Shop and go into competition with Black’s Emporium, but so far my hints have fallen on deaf ears….

***

At home in Delaford, from one day to the next, Elinor suddenly transformed, as a butterfly might, from a frail invalid to a healthy woman in the prime of her life.  With renewed vigour, she began to prowl around her house, looking for some small matter of housekeeping with which she might reassert her control.

On the day the chimneys were swept, the man who was brought in was a stranger to the village, an itinerant sweep with no character to speak of and a little boy made black by the soot of his trade lugging heavy brushes about with him while his taller, heavier master lounged about with his fat stomach oozing out of his shirt, leering at the serving girls, and dropping crudities and blows on his apprentice.  It was when the little boy got stuck in a particularly twisted part of the chimney that all went wrong.  The sweep did not waste much time poking at the boy with his rods, but lit a fire under him, leering at the great howls emerging from the chimney piece.

At this, Elinor lost her temper.  She took a broom to the sweep and chased him out of house, cursing like a fishwife, demanding that the blackguard never cross her threshold again.  With water poured on the fire, the sweep’s boy was at last persuaded to come down, whence she seized the boy, black with coal dust as sweeps’ boys must be, and dragged him to the kitchen where she called for maids to heat water for a bath.  Scrubbing was a Herculean task, with three changes of water before it ceased to come out dirty and, rising from the soap suds, a small boy with the whitest teeth and brightest eyes and blackest skin she had ever seen.  Elinor stood back in surprise at his newly cleaned appearance.

“Where did you come from?”

Thus began the incident that became known in local legend as “Mrs Brandon’s Blackamoor.”

***

Brandon happened to return home quite late that night, and Elinor was sitting in the downstairs sitting room determined to speak with him as soon as he arrived.  When she heard the rattle of the gate and the clink of tack, she was out the door at once: “Brandon,” she said, quietly but intently, in the heavy darkness of a winter evening, “might I have a word with you?”

She was too late.  The sweep, rank with body odour, the stench of liquor exuding out of his skin, swaggered to the front gate demanding redress for the theft of his property, demanding the miscreant be punished, demanding that the magistrate be presented to him on the spot.

“You have found him,” Brandon said, his eyebrows almost up to his hairline.

“I can explain,” Elinor told him.

There was nothing for it but to hear the sweep out, all three of them in Brandon’s study.  Her husband, damn the man, had insisted that she take a chair on the opposite side of his desk, right along with the sweep, and only the glance of amused wonder directed at her in an opportune moment staved off the threat of marital reprisals later.

“Mr, er, Belcher,” Brandon said, after the matter had been explained to him.  “I confess that I am at a loss as to your accusation of theft.  The ruling in the Somersett case was quite clear: there are no written laws in England regarding slavery, therefore a Black may not have his movements compelled.”

“You think you have me, you soft-handed toff.  Lucky you didn’t lose your head like the aristos in France.  I have the boy’s apprenticeship papers right here, legal and proper.  He’s mine.”

Brandon studied them with interest.  “Oh dear,” he said.  “Mr… Belcher, I think I am in a position to give you some disinterested advice.  My wife happens to be a quite litigious soul, and your papers say very clearly that you commit that your care of this boy, ah, Thomas Button, will include cleaning him at least once a week, and keeping him out of chimneys that are actually on fire.  My wife describes him as quite filthy and scabrous when she discovered him, and she can present numerous witnesses about the fire you lit.”  Brandon leaned forward, as if to give advice.  “If you continue in this complaint, I am afraid it quite likely that my wife would take suit against you for breach of contract, and, henpecked as I am, I don’t think there is anything I can realistically do to stop her.”

Elinor glared at him; but the threat was sufficient.  Brandon and the sweep conferred for some time, until they eventually reached an arrangement for Brandon to buy out the boy’s contract for the handsome sum of ten pounds.

When Belcher was gone, she reached for the papers in some confusion.  “Thomas Button?  What a name to give a boy!”

Brandon shrugged.  “That’s what it says, dearest.”

She sat back in her chair, suddenly bereft of motive power.  “Oh Christopher, what are we going to do with him?”

He reached out and clasped her hand.  “It will work out.”

***

Elinor was sitting with the boy, Thomas, in their garden the next day, getting some sunshine in the cold air, when she heard over the wall her brother Edward explaining the situation to Brandon.

“First, we heard the howling, the dreadful howling, and ran to your house wondering if something was on fire, which actually there was, because the bristles on the broom Elinor was waving around had caught alight; and this great buffoon was scuttling out as if he were being chased by a regiment of horse cavalry.  And then, my Lucy goes into the kitchen to see what the servants are doing, and she looks at this boy, and says, dumbfounded, ‘but he’s a black’, and then Elinor shoots her this look as if to say ‘well, I suppose you also eat babies,’ and, and, matters deteriorated from there.”

“I can hear you,” she called back over the wall, shook her head, and went back to teaching the boy how to shape letters on the slate she had abstracted from the Widow Egerton.  “Both of us can hear you.”

Edward popped in through the gate.  “Sorry, Elinor,” he said, unrepentantly, then to Brandon: “your wife, Colonel Brandon, always a new chapter to read.  Although, I will say that my Lucy did not mean what she said in the way you took it, she is no enemy of the Abolition I can assure you, she was just surprised.  I promise, Elinor.  But, oh my, all these years you were so kind to Lucy, and she never knew it…”

***

From Colonel Brandon to Mr Cesar Picton:

Dear Mr Picton,

I am intruding myself on your notice.  You were pointed out to me once by my friend Mrs Jennings, whose husband used to do business with you, and I am writing to ask your advice.  My wife has sponsored a little negro boy, who was being used terribly, and we are now considering what provision to make for him.  I am in a position to fund an apprenticeship for the boy, and moved to do so out of charity; however, in this county, people of your race are virtually unknown, and I feel that if it is possible to find a good place for the child with his own people, it would be best to do so.  Of your good nature, may I ask if you know of any craftsmen or tradesmen of respectable character who are seeking an apprentice?  His papers say that he is seven, but he is quite small for his age, quick with his fingers, and sings tunefully.  My wife says that he is learning his letters well, is compliant, and has a gentle temperament.  I would be obliged if you were to furnish me with any contacts in this matter.

Your obedient servant,

Christopher Brandon

***

Thomas Button turned out to be a bad influence on Beth, in the worst way.

It was not that the child’s origins in a workhouse stood against him—after a few dreadful weeks, the little boy had comprehended the household ways and adapted—no, the true difficulty was that Beth’s temperament of wild independence and fierce clinginess had found the presence of an older, more responsible child to be a boon.  Thomas, who was unsure of his place, she could rely on to follow her around and give her a leg up into trees she must not climb; to help her steal food from the kitchen she must not eat; and, on this particular day, to follow her across the household linens, placed on the laundry lawn to bleach in the sun. Elinor truly could not blame the boy, the evidence of the footprints was compelling.

When she eventually found the pair, preparing to rip a peal over her troublemaker child, and reason with sorrow more than anger with the girl’s protector, she instead found them stooping around little Anne Ferrars.  Thomas had wrapped his arms around the podgy girl’s waist and was trying to lift her; Beth ran up to her mother and announced “it wasn’t me,” with the offended indignation of one for whom it often was.

“She scraped her knee, Mrs Brandon.”

“It wasn’t our fault,” Beth insisted.  “One of Papa’s pointers ran past and knocked her over.”

“Oh dear,” Elinor said.  “Papa’s dogs are so very rowdy, are they not?”  She knelt to examine Anne’s knee.  It was a mighty scrape, sure enough, torn through the girl’s stocking, and she was properly sympathetic until little Nancy, in the absence of anyone else’s fuss, stopped crying with a little hiccup.  “Well, Miss Anne, I think we will need to take you to the kitchen and give you a proper bandage.  Shall you walk or shall I carry you?”  Anne, plump as toddlers are often plump, reached her arms up and was carried inside in style, the two older children dancing around her, to be placed on the kitchen table and have her knee washed out with rose water.  “Thomas?  Would you run upstairs and ask Nurse for a fresh pair of Beth’s stockings?  If we ask her nicely, perhaps she will mend this one as well, especially when you tell her how brave Nancy has been.”

She had tied a bandage on the girl, and was feeding the three of them a cheering up treat from the kitchen’s precious jar of confit ginger, when two avenging angels found them.  Thomas saw them first.  “It was my fault, Mrs Padgett,” he said, covering for Beth.

“I don’t think it was, actually,” Elinor explained for him to the housekeeper.  “The worst of the footprints are from the smaller shoe size, Thomas.  Were you trying to get her off the linens?”  Thomas, torn between three mistresses, looked from Beth to her mother to their housekeeper with eyes growing bigger and rounder and warier.  “Never mind.  Beth, your punishment shall be to help wash and iron them next laundry day—it’s time you learned how to run a household anyway.”

The second angel was more terrifying.  Mrs Ferrars swooped on her daughter in a great fuss and bother—Anne, who had been more interested in the novelty of her sweetmeats, saw her mother and collapsed into a great fit of weeping, much to the disgust of her playmates.

“Oh, it’s different with your own,” Lucy cried, bearing her daughter away.

***

The evening Clara Hancock came to stay, Brandon was in an odd mood.  He sat at the little upstairs piano playing an old queer piece of music, with a swooping strange melody, and lyrics dripping with irony, around which the women talked:

Tobacco, Tobacco, sing sweetly for Tobacco,
Tobacco is like love, O love it
For you see I will prove it…

“My Aunt Agnes say that you have been very kind about visiting,” Clara said, over her needlework.  “The calf’s foot jelly situation did not seem quite so dire as you suggested, but I did consider your hint and refuse to bring any here with me.”

Love maketh leane the fat mens’ tumour,
So doth Tobacco…

“And she says the ointment you brought her has been very helpful.  She says your medicines always smell much nicer than the ones from the apothecary…  The little boy you told me of seems quite nicely mannered.”

“Yes,” Elinor said, uncomfortable.  “I don’t think he quite knows what his place in the household is.  Nor do I, not really.  He isn’t a son of the house, he isn’t a servant, exactly—and I refuse to be one of those people who keeps a fashionable black page dressed up in a turban.”

“I can say, as a condition of my stay, Mrs Brandon, that I very much do not want to be dressed up in a turban either,” Clara said seriously.

“I promise you won’t be,” Elinor assured the governess.

Love makes men sail from shore to shore,
So doth Tobacco
Tis fond love often makes men poor
So doth Tobacco
Brandon added darkly.

“If you actually smoked a pipe, Brandon, we would take you more seriously,” Elinor said, smiling.

“Shall we punish him, Mrs Brandon?” Clara asked.  “I have some long and very dull sonatas with which I could regale you both, if your husband ever gives up the piano to me.”

“I shan’t have a chance for a few months,” he said, possessively patting his instrument.  “Miss Hancock,” he said with what was, for Brandon, effusive warmth.  “I do hope you have a pleasant visit to Delaford.  Elinor always speaks of your letters with such fondness.”

The stern governess suddenly coloured.

He struck some last, dominant chords: “So doth Tobacco!”

***

The militia arrived in the environs of Bromsford that week.  Brandon walked out with both women to view the encampment being set up: he watched it with an experienced, critical eye; Elinor mostly wondered why there were so many soldiers gathered together when their country had just signed a peace treaty.  They were joined on the hillside by the regiment’s commander, and old friend of Brandon’s from his India days, of whose current position Brandon was immediately scornful.

“How did you end up with these green recruits, Caldicott!” he cried, when the regiment’s Colonel walked up to meet them.  “Shouldn’t you be off in the real army?”

“Ah,” the Colonel was self-deprecating.  “A combination of complicated family circumstances, and a favour for Henry Dundas.”

Brandon looked with interest at the growing encampment.

“Yes,” the Colonel said.  “He wants these new men up to more than getting drunk and—” he glanced at the two women— “and running up debts with the local tradesmen.”  He looked with his own interest at Elinor and Clara.

“Dear Elinor, Miss Hancock, this is an old friend of mine, Colonel Caldicott.  He is an old friend from my days as a green recruit,” Brandon did his duty.  “Caldicott: this is my wife, Mrs Brandon, and her friend Miss Hancock.”

Colonel Caldicott bowed.  “There has been a great rumour that you were horribly in love with someone.” 

“No, no,” Brandon denied, “I can’t be in love.” 

“I think you should punish him for that remark, Mrs Brandon,” the Colonel rejoined. 

Brandon shot Elinor and Clara a sly wink.  “I can’t possibly be in love: lovers sail about looking wretched and starving themselves and setting everyone by their ears.  Here I am, a humble married man who likes nothing better than to sit quietly by the fire with my wife.” 

“Shall we forgive him, Clara?” Elinor asked.

“Only if I get to play on his piano this evening,” she replied.

“Ah…” Colonel Caldicott said carefully.  “My comment about Dundas was not for general circulation…”

“Of course,” Elinor said.

They became a party of four to walk along the ridgeline.  While the forms of gentleman-like behaviour were observed; Elinor could not but feel that she and Clara were present on this walk as a form of camouflage: both Brandon and his friend were both more interested in the growing tent town than the young women they walked with—she let herself and Clara drop back on the path, to give them some privacy with which to speak.  Most of what Brandon had to say was what she might consider an intelligence briefing about this part of Dorset, she noted with interest, and more, quizzing the visitor about his intentions.  But there was personal news as well: when she and Clara turned a corner on the path, they found that they had caught up with the pair, and overhead a low-voiced conversation about another of Brandon’s old friends, a Major Beauchamp, before they could drop back again.  “I spent a few weeks with Beauchamp before I sailed from India,” Caldicott was explaining.

“How is Alex?” Brandon asked.  “And Mrs Beauchamp?”

“Not terribly well.  Their son died of a fever last year, and Mrs Beauchamp has taken it very hard.”

“I am sorry.  I hope that their other children are a comfort to her.”

“They would be, if she’d had them,” Caldicott said with pity in his voice.

“Ah,” Brandon said.  “Would you say from me all that is needful, next time you write?”  He looked up and lightened.  “Elinor and Miss Hancock, you’ve found us.  We were just realising that we had been walking too quickly,” and the party was rearranged so that Elinor could lean on her own husband’s arm.

When they had sent Caldicott back to his work, the three walked back to Delaford in the darkening spring evening.  As they walked, Brandon suddenly said: “I should like you both to take a groom with you when you go walking outside the village.  Robert, for preference, but any of them will do.”

Elinor looked a question, and he covered the hand on his arm gently.  “I don’t exactly expect trouble.  But a wise man avoids it, rather than deals with it too late, and I am a little too familiar with standing armies.  Would you and Miss Hancock humour me while I am away?”

She nodded abruptly, and waited for Clara’s agreement in turn.  This journey of Brandon’s was supposed to be a routine business trip, but yet, the thought of it filled her with foreboding, and there was nothing that could be done about it but to extend the offices of an accompanying servant to the Ferrars household as well.

***

On Brandon’s last day, they took their walk together early, before breakfast, and they crossed over dewy grass up into the hills, hands swinging together, Elinor feeling as shy as a new bride.  At last, Brandon felt in his pocket and offered her a shiny copper penny.

“I was thinking how much the weather is like the day you proposed, actually.  It was wet like this, and your long hair straggling in the rain, so I kept wanting to brush it back.”  She followed the thought with the deed.  “A full six months after everybody we knew had expected you to speak—dearest, did I ever tell you about Mrs Jennings and her assumptions about our conversation, back when we were in London?”

Brandon’s eyes creased.  “She may have mentioned it a time or two.  I am glad we had our summer, though.  You and I, Elinor, we are not made to form our attachments easily, to let intimacy grow without some thought and care.”  He made a small sound.  “I don’t think we’ve been separated for more than a few days since.”

“Once, when you made that journey all the way up to Scotland.  Two weeks, or a bit more, that was the longest.  Would you like me to come with you after all?  I could be packed in half an hour.” 

Brandon brushed back her own hair from her face, looking at her carefully, searching her with his eyes.   “No.  No, I’ll go and come back quickly.  My sister and brother-in-law left Avignon in such a scrambling rush that it’s best to tidy up their affairs in person, and William is far too gouty to travel with any speed.” 

“Brandon, I don’t mean to distress you with a fit of weeping but—your friend, Colonel Caldicott—he does not seem to think that the peace will hold.” 

“His role in life is to prepare for the worst.”  Brandon blinked back dewdrops of rain.  “I’ll return as soon as I can, dear one.”

She threaded her hands through his cold wet hair and tugged him down for a kiss, gentle, insistent, enough to remember someone by.

Chapter Text

Elinor and Edward’s brother and sister, by birth and law respectively, made their first arrival in Delaford that summer.  Elinor had been sitting in the yew arbour, idly taking in the sun, and watching the coach road when they arrived, and put her book in her pocket to stroll down the hill to meet them.  “Beth and Nancy,” she addressed the puppy pile rolling down the bank.  “Your aunt and uncle are arrived.  Go to find Nurse to tidy you, and wait in the drawing room.  You as well, please, Thomas,” and the three children sprang away into the house.

She had time before a mirror to make certain her own appearance was tidy, and sat with the three children in her company sitting room to work at some stitchery, until her relatives were announced and the residents of Delaford rose in a gentle wave of bow and courtesy, and the rituals of greeting were begun with a diligent conversation about the roads and weather.

The interview was shorter than it might have been.  Her brother John kept glancing to the sofa where Thomas sat with uncomfortable eyes, making hesitating comments, until he eventually blurted out: “I had heard you had taken on a page, sister.”

“No, no,” she replied with polite interest.  “Master Thomas is our guest until a place is found for him.”

Flustered, her brother and sister-in-law asked to be shown their rooms so that they might freshen themselves after their journey, and courteously, she let them flee.

“You are earning your keep, Thomas,” she said drily, after they had gone.

“I could go and make some grass skirts, Mrs Brandon, and then Beth and I could run around your sister and brother with our faces painted, if you like,” Thomas said earnestly.  “I am sure they wouldn’t break their journey for too many days if we put our backs into it.”

Elinor eyed the boy.  “Did you just make a joke, Thomas Button?”

“Yes, Mrs Brandon.”

“Very good.”

Thomas did earn his keep.  He had turned out to be a gentle and clever child, had slotted himself neatly into the role of poor relation: he often ran helpful errands around the Big House; provided companionship to Beth; teased the servants with friendly, winking jokes.  He was patient learning the women’s work of the house because, Elinor and Clara had realised with ruthless pragmatism, teaching the boy would keep Beth pinned down for long enough to absorb some lessons herself.  It wasn’t wasting the boy’s time, Elinor reasoned: tailoring and confectionary and assisting an apothecary, these all were respectable trades; to be a skilled valet was to command superior wages; these would help when it came time to find him a place, but it could wait.  It could wait until Brandon came home.

But it bothered Elinor, it bothered Elinor indeed.

Here was a nice boy, a gentle imaginative boy, who must have suffered terribly under his master’s hand: but would a rowdy farmer’s son have deserved a sweep’s fate any more than he did?  He had come to Delaford with dreadful callouses on knees and elbows, that all her softening ointments could do little for, that were there by planning not chance because Thomas had told her, matter of factly, that his master had rubbed chafed skin with briny water and stood him to the fire to ‘harden.’  Would little Beth, with her baby soft skin, have survived such a regime?  The workhouse might have been her fate as well, if Brandon had been a less honourable man, it might have been her mother’s; and some sweeps did take girls to climb their chimneys.  Or if not that, the mill or the sweatshop, or some other hard trade where low wages were expected, and the survival of the worker was not.  Would her impulsive sweetness of temper have survived?  Would she have been able to thicken her skin enough to stand a harsh mistress’ blows?  Would plump Nancy have survived on the meagre food most workhouses allowed to their inmates?  Children somehow scrambled themselves to adulthood in such circumstances, but how, how could anyone call gentleness the just dessert of those born with the money to lead idle lives.  How could anyone think a child deserved the fate of poverty, and yet this, this was the creed of church and politician and gentleman.

Oh, it bothered her.

***

“Oh, Edward,” she said, as her brother-in-law arrived for dinner, a little early as planned, so that he could act as host in Brandon’s place.  “Did Brandon get around to mentioning?  He said, of course, you shall have the chaise to go to Bromsford to play whist.”  She affected a deep and solemn tone.  “For the honour of Delaford.”

“I thank you, Elinor,” Edward said.  “I will gratefully take you up on your generosity next week; but after that, Howard has offered to take me.”

“Mr Howard of Wickstead?  Seven miles away?”

“Mr Howard who is soon to be our neighbour.”  Edward was bouncing on his toes in his sober black coat, pregnant with news.  “The fat toad who used to hold the living over the river has finally met his Maker.  I have to admire Howard’s dispatch—he was waiting on Lady Caroline before the rest of us even knew the man was ailing.”

“Do you wish you’d gotten it for yourself?” Elinor asked.  “I’m afraid we don’t keep you as well as some village’s might.”

“Well,” he said, deprecatingly, “there’s always the trouble with arranged marriages.  The pin money with Lady Caroline might be good, but you’ll have to earn it.  Howard knows what he’s in for.  Easier not to envy something I didn’t have a chance at.”

Lucy came into the room behind him.  “Goodness, Mrs Ferrars, you are lovely tonight,” Elinor said.  This was an easy compliment to make, and also true: Lucy had taken great care with her clothing.  Elinor could admire the woman’s bottom; Elinor herself had been sorely tempted, on receipt of the letter announcing John and Fanny’s journey, to delay some planned refurbishments until after her brother and sister-in-law had departed.  Concern for the pride of her servants had defeated the little core of spite in her at last, but it had been a fiercely fought battle.

Nonetheless, Elinor had done her duty by the Dashwoods.  There were multiple courses prepared for their guests; officers from the nearby militia, and the Misses Griffiths of their own village, and a few more gentlewomen from their neighbourhood had turned out to grace the dinner.  Elinor could be tempted to wonder how many were curious as to the new wallpaper, but they came, they still came.  As much as she disliked Lucy’s insincere flattery, it was in this case a boon, as it kept John and Fanny’s attention away from Elinor, and she could consider how to manage her other guests.  Still, when the attack from Fanny came, Elinor was ready, and retreated to a prepared redoubt, the fecklessness of her imaginary brother-in-law who, being imaginary, could be happily sacrificed to the wolves of gentility without touching upon any real individual who mattered to her. 

“Of course, people have seen Lt Wick,” she said, deliberately non plussed.  “Miss Hancock’s aunts were telling me all about her cousin meeting him in the Tower of London.  Very civil, he was, or so they said.”  She nodded kindly at Miss Agnes and Miss Muriel.  “That would be Wick, of course.  He can be very charming, but only when he wants to be.  Did he not leave a card last winter?”

Elinor knew for certain that a card had been left, not by the imaginary Wick, but by Brandon’s nephew Jack who had been directed to watch the Dashwood house until the family had left, and then present a forged card to a servant.  The young man’s uncle, whose inner mischief had been much engaged by this project, had maintained that it was small details like these that really sold an intrigue.

As they settled into the largest drawing room, Elinor presided over the tea service, Clara Hancock opened the pianoforte, and Lucy Ferrars settled onto the sofa with her sister-in-law.  From behind her fortified position, Elinor watched wryly as the fair Lucy sat with demure downcast eyes, and with dulcet tones flattered Fanny Dashwood for more than her life was worth.  She hoped it stuck in the young woman’s craw: Mrs John Dashwood was no such easily led patroness as the vague Lady Middleton.  But she smiled at the officer who came to her for a cup of tea, Colonel Caldicott, who then took a chair by her and conversed with her easily.

“Brandon mentioned before he left that you are a woman of great gentleness, sense, and information,” he began, “and that I should consult with you first before troubling Bromsford’s mayor”

She cocked her head at him.  “Do you usually flatter the natives when you are on campaign?”

“The friendly natives, very much so.”  He sipped his tea.  “Mr Purbeck of Bromsford is a very affable fellow.”

“Indeed.  Brandon and I usually find it best to consider what we think would be the best course, and agree with him until he agrees with us, and call it settled.”  The Colonel nodded in understanding.

“I was hoping to ask your advice regarding Lady Thibodeaux,” he continued.

“She is Lady Caroline,” Elinor corrected.  “She is the daughter of an Earl and very proud of it—honouring her ancestry is the easiest way to get on her good side.” 

“Ah, I thank you.” They paused so that she could make some tea for her brother John and an officer, then spoke for a little while of Elinor’s neighbour and Lady Caroline’s concerns with the common land on which the militia had built their tent town, before she raised concerns of her own.

“But what is this I hear of Lieutenant F— and Captain W—?” she said, naming two officers who had been purposefully excluded from this invitation to dine.  “There are considerable debts run up by them already; some of the items from the tradesmen seem rather exigent for the stipend they are drawing from the militia—” she listed the more pressing items.

“You seem very well informed, Mrs Brandon.”

“It is my friend, Miss Hancock.  Everyone calls on her aunts, and they pass it all on to her—long-memoried spinsters are an asset to any commander, do not you think?”

“And good Generals thrive on good intelligence, yes.  Who is your advance guard, may I ask?”  He was playful, extending out the metaphor of village life to a military campaign.

“Oh, Mrs Ferrars, of course.  When she chooses to be charming, she is very charming.”

“And when she doesn’t choose?” he asked in a low voice.

“I would say that I prefer to be her partner in whist, rather than her opponent,” and the Colonel laughed.  “And yet, Colonel Caldicott, we have not yet finished discussing my concerns with your officers’ conduct.  This is more than debt.  There are too many whispers coming to my ears of young girls being gifted with ribbons and trinkets beyond their station; there is too much of flirting.  Do you think the tradesmen’s daughters and farmers’ nieces of this village have no protection?”

“Ah…”  Caldicott seemed reluctant to discuss the matter.  “As a man of the world, Mrs Brandon, I can tell you that the division between saint and sinner is not always so unequal as sentimental novels would have us believe.”

“And as a woman of the world, Colonel, I can tell you that the consequences of dalliance are very much as unequal as the novels tell us.  They are more so.”

“You are angry, Mrs Brandon.”

“How can I be angry, Colonel?  You see me smiling.  And yet, I have no patience for libertines, and nor does my husband.  That the garrison may have a settled time in this encampment, I would ask you to communicate to your officers the understanding that the parish Officers here are very much the dour and humourless souls who pursue maintenance suits into a foreign county.”

“I will hold friends with you, lady.”  Caldicott had that same habit her husband had, of quoting from plays that he liked.

“Do, good friend,” Elinor replied, capping him with a smile, and the skirmish was over.  “It is very good to meet a friend from Brandon’s youth; he doesn’t much talk about India.”

“Well, no, he wouldn’t,” Caldicott replied absently, as he watched the room, perhaps inspecting his officers for appropriate politesse.

“Oh?” Elinor’s eyebrows rose.

“Ah.”  He turned back to her, apologetic.  “Brandon also mentioned that you pay attention to what people aren’t saying.  There was nothing of dishonour in it, Mrs Brandon, quite the opposite.  But vexatious.  Vexatious in the outcome.”

“I see,” Elinor replied thoughtfully.  “Well, he will tell it me, when he is ready.”

Colonel Caldicott changed the subject on his own.  “Now, I understand from Brandon that I am to sing for my supper with tales of Richard Wick.”

“If you would be so good,” Elinor smiled.  “But also—” she glanced through the opened folding doors, into the music room where Clara was playing on the Broadwood grand, with a young officer to turn the pages for her.  “If we are able to flatter Mrs Ferrars into playing a jig or a reel, I should be grateful if you or one of your officers would invite my friend Miss Hancock to dance.  I think she does not get so many opportunities.”  He nodded, kindly.

“Are you speaking of Wick?” Edward asked, as he approached the table for some tea of his own.

“Yes—” Colonel Caldicott turned to the parson, and stood, to converse more easily.  “I saw him in Northumberland a month ago.  He—”

“No, thank you.  We do not need stories of Northumberland, or flower pots, or garrisons on a foreign shore, nor the Lion Tower.  It is his presence in Delaford that is required.”

“I am not sure I understand you,” Caldicott responded.

“When we were at war, it was understandable that Wick’s time was not his own.  But there is no reason an officer could not get a furlough now.  He has a duty to my sister and brother to wait upon them, his own sister and brother who have been kind to him after he behaved so irregularly; it is a disgrace that he has not presented himself to them already.  I crave a boon that you will communicate his duty to him.”  Edward, a shortish, slightly built, soft handed man, stood his ground before the taller soldier, four-square, solidly planted into the ground: brave when he felt he needed to be brave, and Elinor was suddenly sorry, really sorry, that they had included Edward in this trick. 

She poured tea, and mixed the cup the way her brother-in-law liked to drink it, as a silent unknown apology, and Edward accepted it gratefully.  His finger brushed her hand and she sat back, her hands hidden under the table as she rubbed her fingers, needing to parse for herself how it had felt and what that touch meant.  “Oh,” she eventually realised.  “Oh dear.”

***

One morning, in the high summer, she was sitting sewing with her companion and her neighbour, when their manservant brought into a calling card.  “There is a, a man to see Colonel Brandon, ma’am.  On business, he told me.”

“Thank you, William,” she said.  “Will you send him in?”

William looked as if he wished to say something more, then bowed and left the room.  Elinor looked at the card curiously, a fine-ish quality of paper, elegant printing: “Mr Anthony Brevard | Violinist, Soloist, Music Lessons.”  Was he some friend of Marianne’s, she wondered?

Mr Brevard turned out to be dressed very much in the mode of a professional man or a superior artisan; of middling height, he carried himself with a very straight back, and a solemn lugubrious expression.  He was also possessed of the warm reddish-brown skin of a man who had more than a hint of Africa in him; and as the three women stood to make their ritual courtesy to their guest, Elinor thought rapidly on what his business must be.

Brevard had turned first to Lucy Ferrar’s bright colours and richer fabrics, discounting the bed gowns in which Elinor and Clara spent their days when they did not expect to be paying calls.  “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs Brandon.  I have a letter of introduction from my friend, Mr Picton.”  Bright spots of colour bloomed on Lucy’s cheeks.

“Do sit down,” Elinor said, and he realigned himself, noting now the subtler marks of status: the pendant watch clipped to Elinor’s gown, the pins and earrings she wore which were of modest style and elegant execution, the white-on-white embroidery that she had time to work, and he repeated his bow.  Mr Brevard, she thought, had the fierce admixture of pride and humility that people living precarious lives had to have.

He sat, very primly with his legs crossed at the ankle, while Elinor read the letter.  A merchant that Brandon had some small acquaintance with had recommended him.  She explained when she looked up that her husband was expected to be away for some months, and that she was delegated to act for him.

“Is this your husband?” Brevard asked, gesturing at a picture drawn in red chalk, placed on the wall where Elinor could glance at it from her favourite seat.

“It is.”

“Is it a fair likeness?”

“Very fair,” Clara Hancock responded.  “Mrs Brandon has a good eye when she draws.”

The musician turned and looked at Elinor and nodded, as if he had taken the measure of her; as if an arrangement might possibly be made.

***

“So then,” she explained to Edward, later that day in his study, “we called little Thomas downstairs, and he looked at Mr Brevard as if he’d seen a ghost.  I suppose he’s always lived away from the ports and never met someone of his own race before.  He is a mystery, our little boy.  All the workhouse he came from had to say was that his mother had left him a button.  A very nice silver button, I warrant you, but what a thing to be called after.”

“And what happened then?”

“They sat down at the piano and played some tunes together, and he, Mr Brevard, I mean, quizzed Thomas on whether he knew his letters and numbers, and did he read his book and say his prayers?  Thomas looked very guilty when he was asked if he were a good boy, and I had to explain that Beth keeps dragging him into trouble, and he tries terribly hard to get them both out of it.”

Edward laughed.

“But anyway, then we arranged that Mr Brevard would dine with us this evening, and discuss the matter formally.  Edward, dear Edward, would you come to dinner and lend us some countenance?  And Lucy, of course.”

“I would love to, Elinor, it will make a pleasant change from adding up, which makes my eyes cross.”

She glanced at his accounts with sympathy.  “I take it your mysterious long-lost uncle has not yet had the grace to die on you.  I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, we’re managing.  The tutoring I’m doing is helping, and it’s work I like, so there is that.  My advice to you as my parishioner is that it’s best to appear virtuous by doing virtuous tasks that you actually enjoy.  It’s much less bother.”

She smiled.  “Would it help if I arranged for the physician to attend to Lucy and the baby, and send his bill to us?”  She didn’t much like the puffiness of Lucy’s hands and the dark circles under her eyes that had remained even after little James was born; she was beginning to wonder, also, if the startling hue of Lucy’s clothes was not the outcome of a handsome present from the elder Mrs Ferrars or her brother John—but rather the result of its absence. 

Edward frowned.  “It actually would.  I don’t like to ask for these things, Elinor, you know I don’t, but...” 

“You could make an exception for my womanly sympathies?” 

“You’re a good sister, Elinor.” 

She nodded, once, sharply. 

“May I walk with you to the Big House, Elinor?  I could do with some fresh air.”

As they swung along the lane, Elinor suddenly said: “I do hear what people are saying about me, you know, Edward.  The servants in my household know better than to speak where I might notice them, but I know the opinions of the rest of Delaford; I know they think I’m going batty to take such interest in a child who is no relation of mine.  At best.”

Edward glanced at her sympathetically.  “Do you think you are taking the right course in this case?”

“Yes.  The Abolition—” she waved her hands vaguely— “it’s too hard.  There are too many people tied up in it, too much money, too many people who like sugar and cheap cotton—and I do like sugar in my tea, Edward, even if I pay more than I have to, to get it from a free plantation.  What they say is a free plantation.  It’s too hard to save everybody.  But one boy, one boy at least can be helped.”

“Then as my parishioner, Elinor, I advise you to accept the virtuous task that is disagreeable, and leave it to God to sort out your accounts.”

“Your spiritual advice does not make my life any easier, Edward.”

He smiled happily.  “I must be doing something right.  Next thing, I might turn into a Methodist, or even a Quaker, and then where would we be?”

***

Beth, when she had woken and been advised that Thomas was to leave them, had been proudly maternal—so determined to provide the boy with enough stockings and handkerchiefs and toys that she had tenderly tucked her own into his little valise.  At the moment of separation, however, raw emotion had overcome her, and she had wailed and clung to the boy, until she had to be physically carried away by her nursemaid so that Thomas could climb into the chaise in peace.

“Now, Thomas,” she told the boy.  “Do you remember that I am your godmother, and that I wish you to read your book, and to write to me of how you fare.  I have given Mr Brevard some money for you so that you may receive my letters, and have some sweets from time—if you are obedient and work hard for him.”  Thomas nodded back, with huge eyes.  She spoke then to Brevard.  “I would like you to have this letter of introduction to my sister Mrs Richard Wick—Marianne, if you should ever travel so far north as Scotland.  I think she would be pleased to meet you.”

As they drove away, Elinor did her best to avoid pulling out her handkerchief until the carriage was out of sight.

“You will miss him, won’t you?” Clara asked.

“If we’d kept him, he always would have lived as a stranger, he must have, in this little village.  But—I wish we had kept him.”

“You have an affectionate heart, Mrs Brandon.”

Elinor held up a finger to her mouth.  “Careful—I should hate to lose my reputation.”

They linked arms and walked inside together.

***

“Have you enjoyed playing the part of a country squire?  Brandon will be back soon.”

Edward and Elinor were sitting in the garden of Delaford House again, enjoying the early morning, the crispness of the weather beginning to turn.  He considered this for a long time.

“No,” he said frankly.  “No, it’s not for me, not really.  As much as there is pleasure in genially waving my hand at the table telling my guests ‘you see your dinner’ and inviting officers to go out shooting with me… no, I don’t really have the taste for being a rich man.  I like having Brandon here to make all the difficult decisions; he lets me bumble about being terribly nice to everyone and promising I’ll do my very best to advocate for them, even when I think they’re ratbags.  It’s been doing my head in, rather, trying to fill in as magistrate and worry about pastoral care at the same time.  I’ll be glad to have him back, Elinor.”

“He values you as much,” Elinor said shyly.  “His letters keep asking about you.”

“Have you heard from him lately?”

“Yesterday.  Just a few more weeks he thinks, so long as the weather holds and his crossing isn’t delayed by a storm.  It was a lovely letter, but I will be glad to have the real thing.”  She chafed her wrists and shivered.  “I feel so foolish being worried.  We are hearing so many accounts of travellers returning from France, brim-full with delight and pictures of the new fashions, and here I am, mooning about as if I’ve lost a leg.”

Edward was silent for a long moment.

“Do you know, Elinor, last year when you were ill—I know that we were joking and jollying you along to cheer you up—but you really were ill, and there were a few days in which we were in fear.  I remember the worst night, when you had your crisis, I could see a light burning in your room all night and in the morning, Brandon came down and sat here with me, right in this spot in his garden—I don’t think he’d slept at all—and he just sat there, and then he said you were out of danger.  And, oh, he cried, Elinor.  I've never seen a man weep so; I haven’t myself since my father died.  If I could have any wish granted at all, it would be that everyone loved and was loved so much that they felt they were missing a limb when they were apart…  Well, we will all be glad when Brandon is home again.”  He patted her hand gently.  “I am sure he will be well.”

***

“Two more days, I think, if we’re lucky” Elinor said, watching out the window.  The autumn evening had settled into darkness; the longer nights had come quickly and heavily and, while she felt foolish watching for Brandon’s return, still she sat up later than she was used to, just in case.

“Clara,” she said.  “Miss Hancock.  I wanted to say how much I have liked having you to stay in Delaford House.  I hope you have felt happy here?”

“I have enjoyed myself very much, Mrs Brandon,” Clara replied with a smile.

“I wanted to ask—” now Elinor felt foolish again, “—I wanted to ask if you wanted to stay here permanently, as my companion.  Your aunts are always so pleased to see you, and Brandon thinks highly of you.  As do I,” she added quietly.

Clara sat down next to her in the window seat, and gave her a gentle embrace. “No.  No, Mrs Brandon, I should not.  You make me too comfortable.  (Smiling) I can cross money with friendship for three months, but I don’t think I could manage it longer.  If I stay here in this nice position for many more days I should start to wonder if I meant what I said or if I were flattering you for something I wanted—and so would you, Mrs Brandon.  No, I’ll keep my independence and my friendships honest.” 

Elinor coloured.  “But you will come and visit again, will you not?  As my friend?” 

Clara dimpled.  “Well, so long as it’s as your friend.”

“Clara,” Elinor asked.  “Do you think that now we have determined that we will not sully the terms of our friendship with money, do you think that you could go back to calling me Elinor?”

They were interrupted by the noise of a carriage drawing up to the house with a rattle of tack and cries from a coachman.  Elinor opened the curtains a crack to peer out into the darkness.  “Who could it be?” she wondered, squinting at the chaise and the unfamiliar driver.  “It cannot possibly be Brandon so soon, can it?  I hope there’s been no trouble with my family—”

Clara joined her, looking out with her better eyesight.  “No,” the taller woman said, “no, I think it is Brandon…” 

But Elinor was already on her way out the door.  She had to slow on the stairs to keep her candle alight but, in the hall, was able to really run.  She was out of the front door along with their servant, who was yawning as he lit up more lights than the solitary lantern left burning at the gate, and collided with the warm solid bulk of her husband, rooted down into the earth; who was his own continent.

“Oh, you are two days earlier than we thought you could possibly be!” she cried.  “How did you get home to us so soon?” 

He wrapped his own arms around her, a cold body wrapped in his woollen great coat.  “I had a good crossing and decided to push on and sleep in my own bed tonight.  Is all well?”

“Except that we have missed you!”  She unbuttoned his coat and slid her arms around him, trying to warm him up.  “Oh, I had such plans to have the house ready for your return, and you’ve come before your time.”

She felt a chuckle deep in his chest.  “I’m not sorry.”

“Nor am I,” she said, and led him into the house where light and warmth and hot water awaited its master.

***

“Brandon?” Elinor asked, late in the night.  Her husband had taken a long bath and a late supper, and was mellow in his nightshirt in their room and, similarly ready for bed, she had settled on his lap where confessions were a little easier.

“Oh, how good it was to see a light burning in the window when we drove down the lane,” he said with a sigh.

She rubbed his bristly cheek with her hand and dodged a kiss.  “I missed you so, Christopher.  But, but there is something I need to say.  I—  You know how I always used to say that my attachment to Edward was long gone.  While you were away, I realised it was not quite so diminished as I had thought.  And I hate feeling that I’m lying to you… or putting you in doubt…”

“Oh dear,” Brandon said, rubbing her back in a familiar way.  “Well, I suppose you should tell me the worst of it, dear Elinor.  Am I to consult a lawyer regarding a suit for criminal conversations?” 

“No,” she said, ducking her head, “it wasn’t like that.” 

“Should I now be inspecting my shrubbery for odd rustles and squeaks?” 

“No!” 

“I think I need more details to paint this picture… were there fond caresses and love talking?  I hope he brought some good poetry.” 

“Oh, you are laughing at me.  We brushed each other’s hands when I gave him a cup of tea and…I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but—I did not feel entirely as virtuous as I would wish.” 

She could feel the laugh shuddering through his body.  “Seducing my wife with cups of tea?  The dog.  Well, it will have to be pistols at dawn, although—Elinor do you think you could wait a couple of days to have your honour redressed until I teach him how to use a pistol?” 

Elinor tucked her head into the hollow of her husband’s shoulder and tried to stop giggling.  “Are you—are you going to sleep in here tonight?” she asked. 

He tilted her head and kissed her, eyes gentle.  “So long as you’ll have me, dear one.  Assuming there’s room for both myself and your cicisbeo, of course.”  She pushed against his shoulders until he fell backwards onto the bed, and she began to tickle him with the only punishment that mattered.

***

In the morning, Brandon’s eyes were dancing as he greeted Edward, who had come to discuss the business of the parish that needed to be handed back over.  He was profuse in his offers of coffee and tea when Edward sat down to breakfast with them first.  Elinor pressed her lips together tightly, and refused to look at either of them, and kept up a friendly conversation with Clara and Lucy instead.

At last Edward was straight with his patron: “I can honestly say that I have no idea why you are laughing at me.” 

“It was a private conversation between my wife and myself which ought not to be shared.  Would you and Mrs Ferrars like to join us for dinner this evening?”

Chapter Text

From Colonel Brandon to Mrs Elinor Brandon, one month ago, Avignon:

Dearest,

This wretched business of my brother-in-law’s is taking even longer than I had thought, but I think I have broken its back.  If all goes well, and the sea crossing is not delayed, you may expect me on or about the _th, and we may hint William to be forthcoming with a fine dinner when next we are in Devonshire.

Dear Elinor, you were astute in your deductions.  I do not think this peace will hold, either.  I would have liked to have brought you with me, but I cannot bear the thought of you coming to harm on the journey.  Ah, I am sounding maudlin.  There are so many pleasure seekers about me in the south of France, that I may well be eating my words; but yet, I feel better keeping my doubled heart in Delaford.  I have been collecting drawings as I travel along, sketches and watercolours from local artists, in a folio that will give you an idea of the country.  It is a poor replacement for the Grand Tour, but perhaps in a few years when France has had time to settle itself, we might see what can be done.  Right now, La Belle Française has the feel of enemy country.  The aristocrats and the gentlefolk, they have a candy sugar sense of pretending that nothing is wrong, that life is back as it always was; yet the middling sort, such as they are, are worried—there are fewer of the tradespeople and the professions in this country, which I think is part of what ails it; for how can anyone connect the chain of being with so few links?  The peasantry of course, are angry.  Much is being made of this new consul and his ambitions—well, we will see.  For all I know he will fall off his horse tomorrow, and they will resurrect the monarchy after all.

I have received your letter about Thomas Button.  If all goes well, perhaps he will adopt a better name!  This violinist you describe, Brevard, I have heard of, and heard him play once; he has a good character, and we will be able to check on the boy from time to time.  If he is poorly treated, I assure you that I will do something.  Elinor—

Elinor, I miss you.

That sounds very plain, and very melodramatic, mixed together in a farce; I have been too alone these past months and my thoughts are preying on me.  Yes, sensible Elinor, I have gone down to the coffee room where there is light and fire and the company of other human beings to write this letter.  But I miss you.  It is hard to believe that a mere four years ago, this was my normal state.

I have loved and been loved before, dearest.  Every time was different.  There was a very pert young woman who teased me at a reception at the Embassy on my way through Paris: she recited some very pretty poetry and teased me about Englishmen and their mistresses; I was not entirely clear if she was or was not a member of the demi-mondaine—they do not seem to mind so much here.  I do think she may have been angling for a protector… and no, Elinor, before I hear one of your interested little questions, no, I do not have nor seek a mistress: I am an engaged man.

But I have not been loved by you before.  You are not, forgive me, you are not a woman who falls in love; nor will you wish yourself into an attachment or fancy desire with some eligible bachelor from reading too many novels and fragments of poetry.  No, you are someone who considers.  You think, and you observe, and you do not fall in love, dearest, you choose to love.  And in that choice, you surrender: to love, to pleasure, to motherhood, to passion.  It is a frightening thing, is it not, to put one’s self in the care of another?  To allow one’s self to be undone.  I did not know I was married when we spoke our vows, my darling; nor even on our wedding night, whatever the law might say, and I am sorry, because I know that it hurts to lose your maidenhead—no, I shall not shy away from my actions, I am sorry that I hurt you.  No, I knew I was married our first morning together, on the first of so very many early awakenings, watching you dancing about exploring the room and thinking.  Of all the places you might be, you were here with me, knowing what it meant, and you chose that we were not to be two friends who had married for our own convenience, nor a conduct book marriage of male agent and passive receptacle; no, you chose that we would have a marriage of equals, that you would ask what you wanted to know, that the act of love would be on your terms as well as mine.  Yours is the love of a connoisseur, dear Elinor.  It is not so easy to come by; and I am the richer for having it.

If we had had that marriage of friends, of convenience, I would still be the richer.  If we had known each other only a year before our ways parted, before you had donned that wretched cap and gone off to be a married woman in Kent; if the particular arrangement of individual preferences had differed and you had gotten Edward after all and come to Delaford as my neighbour—I would still be the richer for your friendship.  When we met, we both had had too many blows from outrageous fortune to be entirely comfortable with anyone.  We both were guarded, reserved, careful of our company because we needed to be, to keep our inner selves safe.  But you have shown me, dearest, how I might peel back the layers of myself, you have taught me how to be vulnerable, to place myself in the care of you.  I have not come so far as you, Elinor.  I have had a longer road to walk, and some of my colours are darker, uglier, they may not be scrubbed out with a rag soaked in turpentine.  But I can see that there is a way to translate them, to be translated, and I will keep on trying, for you.  Dearest Virgil, for you I will take my skin off.

Your love, who hopes to see you soon,

Christopher

Chapter Text

In the spring, they learned they were at war again.

***

One day, as they drove the chair back from Dorchester, Elinor suddenly said: “Mrs Ferrars?”

Lucy shifted, her face wary.  “Yes, Mrs Brandon?”

“I’ve been mulling over this for a while… do you know Mrs Vicary?  She’s been coming in to help with some sewing in my house and—I suppose I have an uneasy feeling that her husband may be laying hands of violence on her.  You have such easy ways with the younger women of this village—I was wondering if you might speak to her?”

“Oh,” Lucy said, then recovered herself.  “Oh yes, I do know Mrs Vicary, I quite dote on her; I am sure she will confide in me.”

Elinor could actually believe this.  After four years of village life, Lucy Ferrars really had changed her ways or perhaps reverted to her true ones, and the court she held of younger wives and older daughters were the regular recipients of affection and gifts and kindness—so long as they toed the line and kept their place in the artificial hierarchy of Mrs Ferrars’ making.  It was independence that Lucy was moved so instinctually to punish.  It made her tired, but Elinor had become ruthless enough to use the tools available to her.

***

1803 was looking to become an extraordinarily hot summer.  It was better in the muggy weather to begin stillroom work in the mornings before breakfast, and little Nancy Ferrars had found Elinor and her daughter deadheading roses just as dawn was breaking, and stayed with Elinor after the now lanky and leggy Beth had taken her scratched hands elsewhere.  The little girl had helped her to shred up the petals and toss them into the vat, giggling, ready to be simmered over the fire.

At nearly three and a half, Anne had suddenly found a delight in speaking, and was pleased to practice her newly acquired skill, keeping up a running chatter of life in the parsonage, the details of her bedtime routine and who read what to her, and the game of pretend that she had been playing with Beth.  “This smells like you!” the girl suddenly announced, watching small wisps of steam escape from the cover of Elinor’s still.

“I suppose that it does,” Elinor said.  “I use this when I wash my face in the morning, and when I wash my hair.”

While the first distillation simmered, Elinor wrote out bottle labels and helped steady Anne's hand to carefully draw shaky “AFs” on them.  “There, when you take some jars home to your mother tomorrow, you can tell her you helped to make it.”

“Mama does not make this with me.”

“Wouldn’t it be a dull old world if we all liked to do exactly the same things. The paper theatre your mama helped you make is so very beautiful, is not it?”

“Mrs Brandon?” Anne asked.  “Do you want to know what Mama said about you?”

“Well, I don’t know, Anne.  Do you think I would like to?”

“She said, she said: how lucky you are to have kept your figure,” the words innocuous on her tongue, the tones and emphasis of her parent mirrored out of the girl. 

Elinor did not quite mask the roll of her eyes.  “Did she tell you that?”

Anne’s face was a picture of malice and innocence at war with each other.  “I was listening at the door after I was meant to go bed.  But I hadn’t.”

“Then, Miss Ferrars, perhaps you might not listen at doors,” Elinor said firmly, “because it usually makes us no happier.”

“Do you want to know what Mama said about Beth?” Anne whispered, her eyes very wide.

“No, and I think Beth would not either.  You may ask your father about any words you don’t understand and leave it at that.”

The little girl nodded, thoughts ticking behind her eyes.  The war resolved itself, and Anne tucked her small hand inside Elinor’s larger one.  “Do you want to know what I think about you?  I tell all the children, I say you are very nice.  And I say that even when there aren’t any sweets in Delaford House, not even any at all.”

Elinor laughed.  “Well, Nancy, if you would like to know what I think about you, it is that you are trying to be a very nice girl, too.”

“Anne Elizabeth Ferrars!  Where have you been?  You are late to breakfast and your nurse has been looking for you.”  The expression on Lucy's face, intruding into the stillroom, was peculiar, hard to read.

“I am sorry for keeping Nancy so long, Mrs Ferrars; she has been helping me and I am glad of the company.  (Smiling) Beth always makes herself scarce when I mention the stillroom, she doesn't have the right kind of patience for this work.”

Lucy Ferrars took her daughter firmly by the hand and held her close to her side.  “She should not have been intruding on your privacy, madam.”

***

The summer was getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter.  On a day when Elinor was working in her herb garden, in the evening when some shade might be expected to fall upon it, she was the unwilling recipient of an unguarded conversation between Mr Ferrars and his wife.  They were walking along the hot, dry, dusty lane beyond the wall of Delaford House, and Mrs Ferrars was cross.

“She gave you baby clothes for Anne and James,” he said agreeably.

“Only for her vexed pride; she doesn’t want to be caught in a slight, she wants to show off her fine embroidery,” Lucy said waspishly.

“And yet here you are, possessed of some beautiful baby dresses which you did not have time to make for yourself.  Do her motives really matter?”

“Why should they not?”

Edward sighed in a small puff of air.  “I agree with you, my Lucy, that my sister has a very reserved temperament.  And yet, I think if you took the trouble to cultivate her friendship, you would value her for her honesty and her loyalty.  I do not know so terribly very many women who mean what they say and say what they mean; I do not think you do either.  Would you consider what I am saying, Lucy?”

“I am on the same terms as the Misses Griffiths,” she replied.  “The just recipient of charity.  A do-er of chores.  Get-at-able, but not permitted beyond the public rooms of the house.  Do you know, I have been in that woman’s private sitting room but once in my life?”

“Lucy…”

“All these years, Edward, you have been telling me that I am, that I am… because I am not bookish enough for your sister.  Sarah Blake is not bookish.  I exist to your sister as a decorative bird in a cage.  Any time I speak, she looks at me in wonderment as if I were a performing bear or a talking parrot.  And she’s always looking for a double meaning in what I say, something she can take offense at, always, as if I were a talking cipher.”

“Oh, Lucy.  Be reasonable, I beg of you.  You told everyone in the village that she was angry with you for missing her wedding, when the only thing she had to say on the subject was that she hoped you were feeling better.  What did you expect her to construe?”

“That was a long time ago,” Lucy said sharply.  “I was ill.”  More quietly: “it was the way she said it.  She was laughing at me.”  There was some blessed silence, as the pair walked down the dusty lane.  “I was thinking, Edward, that I would like to re-cover the chairs in our parlour.  They are got so worn with the children playing in that room and you will let them—I did not know what to say, when Mrs Purbeck came to call yesterday.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Edward said.  “I am not much fond of borrowing money from my sister-in-law.  Call it my vexed pride, if you like.”

They continued down the lane, and Elinor bent to her work among the fragrant herbs: rosemary for remembrance, sweet thyme for courage, roses for—well, a lot of things really.  A head came through the little gate to the parsonage.  “Elinor?” Edward said, “I remembered that you had said something about working on your garden this evening.”

“I am not trying to spy on you,” she said, sitting back on her heels, watching a humblebee bat about in the lavender, biting back a sarcastic remark about parsons who liked to discuss personal matters with their wives in the open air.

“No, no, you are not,” he said quietly.  “I think that you and Lucy have trouble seeing each other for your virtues, and I am sorry for it.”

“I try to be polite to her,” Elinor said.  “More than that is unfair to ask.”

Edward nodded, once, as he stood to take his leave.  “Well, I have the honour of loving you both, at least.”  Then he hesitated, and sighed.  “Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare, I suppose.” 

“But if I do know why?  And it is impolite to speak of?”  Elinor’s face was tight, her fists clenched behind her back, old hurts rising suddenly, kraken-like, to the surface.  “Are we speaking as brother and sister, or parishioner and priest, Edward?”

His face was very grave.  “I think… I think I will need to ask Howard to stand in for me on this one,” he eventually remarked. 

***

A few days later:

“I wanted to say, Edward, how lovely it is that you have a friend living so close now,” Elinor said, maliciously cheerful, “it isn’t good for clerics to be always alone.”  They were travelling in her open chair together, as Elinor had promised to spend the morning with Mrs Blake, now moved to a neighbouring village, and Edward had hitched a ride with her and Beth.

“Yes, yes,” he said, resigned.  “I understand you.  I think you are fond of Mrs Blake, at least,” he said over Beth’s head.

“I am, I do like her; even more now that she is living only a mile and a half off and we see each other more often.  She is a very kind woman.”  Elinor concentrated on her driving.  “Yes, Edward, I have observed in myself that I find it easier to form intimacy with those senior to me in years.  Mother was used to call me old in the cradle.”  This was a true thing.  Sarah Blake the mother, Mrs Brooks the farmwife, Clara Hancock the spinster, Dianna Abbott the eccentric bookseller, the garrulous and genial Mrs Jennings, Brandon… especially Christopher Brandon.  All these had had their sharp edges worn smooth by the years, had a patience that helped Elinor feel safe enough to expose her soft skin to them.  It was Marianne she had used to need to lighten her. “…are we friends again, Edward?”

“Of course we are.”  Edward was suddenly frowning, his voice high and husky.  “I am so sorry, Elinor.  I am sorry about all of it,” and they were saved by an unseemly display of sibling intimacy only by their chaperone bobbing up and down between them, pointing out the parson-house gate.

Edward busied himself in jumping down, and lifting the 5-year-old girl out of the gig; Elinor focused on handing her reins to the parsonage servant while her throat was so tight.  As Edward offered her his hand, she asked if they were also transporting him home, and he said not to worry about it.  “At least, I should not expect you to wait for me—if Howard and I are not back by the time you wish to go, it is a lovely day for a walk.”

***

They were walking out in the downs when Elinor suddenly announced to Edward that their brother-in-law was no more.  “Marianne’s letter arrived yesterday,” she explained.  “She says he was reporting back to his battalion and he took a coastal ship that ran onto some rocks.  Apparently, a mast fell on him while he was helping civilians into the beach company’s life boat,” she added tartly.  The framing of this story, and the last words attributed to the feckless officer had struck her as having the florid overheatedness that belonged more properly in a lending library novel.

“That’s terrible,” Edward said, horrified.

“It is, very.  I’d grown quite fond of Lieutenant Wick,” Elinor said sadly, “even if he was called Richard.”

“I’m sorry to have lost him as my brother-in-law,” Edward said, sympathetic, “even if we never did get to meet.”

“I know,” she replied.  “He was such an interesting person to invent, with all his ways and little peccadillos.  I have never exercised my imaginative faculties so intently before, and I must say, I have far greater respect for novelists after having made Wick a part of my life.  I am sorry to lose him.”

Edward looked horrified.  “No.  No, you really didn’t— He can’t have been so entirely made up, surely—”

She looked placidly at her brother.  “I hope that you have learned your lesson from this, Edward.”

“That when my sister tells lies, she does so with close attention to detail and full commitment?”

“Exactly, Edward.  As I have known you for some years, I now feel entitled to hint you a little, just a little hint.  Dear brother, when you are trying to conceal some fact or feeling, you immediately look so very conscious that we all wonder what on earth you are hiding from us and we begin to speculate amongst ourselves.”

“I will try to do better,” he said with humility.  “How is this: Elinor, I do not like you.  Not at all.”  But the corners of his mouth were twitching as he said it.

She laughed at him.  “Edward—Edward, this was not entirely a bit of fun for me and Brandon.  Marianne ran away, yes, but there is another lady in the case.  A young and charming woman—she is charming in her letters at least—who already had enough scandal against her name without people attaching a fatherless baby to her.  Having Wick to gossip about was… convenient.”

“The famous Miss Williams?” he asked, and she nodded.

“My Lord,” Edward said suddenly.  “Beth is Brandon’s granddaughter?  No wonder there was such a great mystery about her arrival in Delaford.”

“Eliza William’s daughter, yes,” Elinor said, suddenly solemn.  “Brandon’s granddaughter, no.  They are related in their own way, second cousins once removed, if you wish to be nice about it but… some of the rumours about my husband are also overegging the custard.  The true story is much sadder, and I beg you leave to wait until Brandon wishes to share it of his own desire.  He feels a duty, and he feels love; that is all other people need to know.”

The wind ripped around them in the high hills, and Elinor seized her hat and pinned it more firmly to her head, remembering another walk, so many years ago, in which her hat had been lost.  Edward looked at her and laughed.  “I suspect you have some other prevailing thought on your mind, Elinor.”

She gave in.  “Years ago, before Brandon and I knew we were courting, and I lost my hat.  He ran down the hill to fetch it for me.  It was a very unruffling walk.”  She touched her mouth in fond remembrance.

“You?  Unruffled?  Never,” Edward rejoindered in humorous disbelief.

She shrugged.  “In private, I often am.  In front of others, it’s… frightening.  All consuming.  If I let myself reveal all my feelings, I would be torn apart by them, blown about by any little breeze.”

“And your sisters and mother cannot hold you steady, because they need you to steady them more…”

“I suppose so…” she considered.  “Yes, that is a way of putting it, I suppose.”  She smiled at him.  “My father was a very sensible man.  He loved Mother very much.”

“I wish I’d met him.”

“He would have liked you.  Do you know, Edward?  I married Brandon for affection; for friendship I should say, but not love,” Elinor said reflectively.  “I feel I should apologise to Marianne, but there it is.  But it was friendship.  I liked him, and I thought—I knew—that he would give me a chance to stand out of the wind for a while.”

“Oh, Elinor,” Edward laughed.  “My sister.  Only you would think that making a wife’s bargain: marrying for protection and trusting that love would come in its own time; only you would think that that would be too much of a lie.”

It was Elinor’s turn to colour.

“Well, sister.  As your parson who has from time to time been asked to provide marital advice—some small portions of which have even been considered efficacious by the recipients—I can tell you this: you have a loving heart, and Brandon thinks himself a clever fellow for having put himself in its way.”  Edward looked at her speculatively, leaning against one of the great standing stones on the top of the hill.  “But I can tell you as well… There should be laughing, Elinor.”

“If you say so?” she said carefully.

“In your recipe for marital felicity.  You need more than love talking and fond caresses with your spouse, you need to be able to laugh with them.”

“Do you have a good wedding night story, Edward?” she asked, because this was something she thought he wanted to share.

“We giggled.  Giggled a lot.  Take that, Elinor.”

She laughed, too.

Chapter Text

To all things, are come their season.  To autumn, must come the picking of apples, the harvest got in, the bare ruined choirs where once sweet birds sang; to winter, reflection and cold bare earth, the celebration of the long dark; to spring, the green bud, the crocus bulb unfurled.  But summer, summer comes like the sun at noon, all shadows are illustrated; to summer are mercy and judgement come together; to summer, that great augustness, are come the parties of pleasure.  All they who wish to name themselves gentle must lay down their tools in summer; their duty lies not in the spindle or the gun, nay, they are sent to the green wood, the mellow lake, the wildflower meadow, the gurgling brook—yes, must all those ladies, all those gentlemen, all those who pretend to such affectation: to the river, to the river, they must go.

With Marianne’s recent ‘widowhood,’ Brandon, who had become the de facto head of the Dashwood family, had found himself making a flying visit to Edinburgh so that he might clarify matters with her banker and his lawyer.  Returned, he had taken Edward out fishing, and the parson gave him improved intelligence on the news lately of the parish.

“…my Lucy and your Elinor have not been getting on so well lately,” the parson said eventually.

“I see.”

“Has she spoken of it with you?”

“She hasn’t.”

Edward grimaced.

Brandon looked at him sidelong, many thoughts crossing his face.  “I was not so terribly pleased, four years ago, to find my wife and daughter’s reputation made for them,” he said gently.

“I do understand you,” Edward replied.  “I spoke to Lucy at the time, I explained to her what meanings a stranger might take on words she had spoken in innocence.  She did stop.”  He made a small huffing sound.  “I owe you a black eye, by the way,” he added.

“Oh?”

“Yes.  For all the debauching of my sister the summer before you proposed.”

Brandon laughed, and touched his mouth.  “If that’s what you think debauchery is, Edward, I’m surprised you have two children in your nursery.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t, with all the fond caresses and sweet love talking going on in the big house.”

Brandon’s face was very still.  “You can’t always have what you want exactly when you want it.”

“Oh.  Well, I am sorry,” Edward said.  He cast his rod again, and lapsed into silence.  “And that’s another thing,” he added querulously.  “How can you not know you are courting someone?  All of London was full of it that winter.  My own brother-in-law was quizzing me on ‘did I know this Colonel Brandon fellow, and how much was his income?’  What on earth did you think people were going to construe?”

The older man chose his words carefully.  “I… had an inconvenient and pressing infatuation with Elinor’s younger sister that winter.  I can laugh at Charlie Blake, but there’s little more ridiculous than an old man making a fool of himself over a girl straight out of the schoolroom.  Particularly when the lady in question is so averse to the idea that she elopes to Scotland, merely to avoid the suggestion of a possibility that something might be asked in the future.  Elinor and her family were kind enough to let me settle my feelings with some company.”  He quirked his eyebrows at Edward.  “Esteem and gratitude are the foundations of love, so say the conduct books.  Sentiment followed on their heels, when it had its chance.”  A fish took the lure, and he paused to reel it in.  He recast, and watched the water studiously.  “There was a piece of information I did not have available to me that winter.  I might have made some different choices if I had been aware of it.  I settle my affairs in favour of my own interests, Edward, but I try not to be cruel while I do so.”

Edward breathed out slowly.  “I see.  I see I should have frank discussions more often.”  Brandon glanced at him and clapped him on the shoulder with a smile.  “Marianne eloped to Scotland with an entirely fictional lieutenant?  That must have been some aversion.”

“Too much reading of Spenser and Wollstonecraft had something to do with it.  For my mind, young women would be far less likely to get into trouble if they stuck to torrid novels from the lending library; it is elevating literature that gets them thinking.”  He turned to Edward with a rueful gaze.  “I should say that I am sorry for keeping Wick’s nature from you, Edward.  You are so very terrible at lying to people, and so determinedly good-natured in trying to see the best in us; I always feel very virtuous after hearing one of your sermons, sometimes for as much as half a day after.  I hope I am not too much in your black books.”

“I will manage.  I am merely beset right now with speculation on how else events might have played out, if I had been more open.”

“You are quite good at being a priest, Edward.  I’ve met too many place holders who did nothing more than drink, hunt, and collect their tithes.  You may have come to your vocation the long way around but, as the patron of your living, I am glad I offered it to you.  There art thou happy.”

“As you say, Brandon,” Edward said ruefully.

***

Elinor was standing in her garden when she saw a rider approaching in a dusty haze.

“Ho there!  Behold the brave Tom Thumb, to King Arthur’s court is come!” she said smiling.  “Although,” she said as Charles Blake swung down from his horse to greet her and stood eye to eye with her, “I can hardly call you little anymore.  Are you come for your Greek lesson, Charles?”

“I am, Mrs Brandon,” and he handed the reins of his horse to a groom.  “But may I take Beth out riding afterwards?”  He threw himself dramatically to his knees: “and may I beg the boon of a favour from you, my Lady?”  He got up and said cheerfully.  “Mr Ferrars lets me read his copy of Malory, if I do well on my construes, and I have been taking copious notes.”

She shook her head, smiling, but gave him a sprig of lavender as a buttonhole.  “Whatever will we do with you, young Sir Charles?  I will walk with you to the parsonage, if I may—I wish to speak to Mrs Ferrars about the dinner with your uncle tonight.”

The matter stood thus.  When the parish boundaries had originally been set through the competing forces of feudal custom, ecclesiastical ambition, pragmatism, and the energetic actions of a troop of geographically displaced Roundheads, the village of Delaford had been smaller, more isolated, and huddled to one side of the river Del from which it took its name.  Time, tide, and the toll road had brought prosperity to the little village and it had for many years sprawled into the neighbouring parish of Oxhill on the other side of the river.  Oxhill had for many years been presided over by an absentee incumbent, rumoured to be fat, and idle, and the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose sole interest in the cure of the Oxhill-on-the-river partition of Delaford consisted of sending his curate to promptly collect the tithes of his half of the village each quarter day.  The souls of the neighbourhood who considered themselves Church of England took turns visiting whichever church they felt like of a Sunday, the sole family of Catholic recusants kept quietly to themselves, and the Dissenters held their rather noisier prayer meetings on the river bank; all of which would please everybody until someone needed parish relief, at which point they all trotted hotfoot to Edward’s doorstep to arrange it for them; following the principle that Dr Throgmorten was known for his stinginess with the poor relief funds and Mr Ferrars had “the quaint notion that God does not much care for the indigent dying on His doorstep.”  The last time Edward had written to Throgmorten asking his agreement to redraw the parish boundaries—and therefore the tithe map—a long and highly educated missive had been returned which, while a marvel of Latin quotations, polished prose, and references to obscure ecclesiastical court cases, could be summarised as: he really did not want to.

Now, however, that the new younger man Mr Howard had taken the Oxhill-living, the matter was up for debate again.  Elinor did not waste her time pleading her case directly with Howard, but drew directly on a distant familial connection with the Bishop of Salisbury, and invited the whole pack of them to dinner.  Thoughtfully, as she planned her table, she recalled a rumour that Mr Howard was dangling after a young Miss Emma Watson, recently arrived back in the county from some years living with relatives, and invited the young lady and her older sister in order to ‘balance’ her numbers.

“Damn it,” Edward said in frustration, walking back to the Big House with her.  “I have the moral high ground here.  I’ve spent countless hours visiting Howard’s parishioners, and he doesn’t even thank me.”

“When did morality and virtue have anything to do with church politics?” Elinor asked.

“I shall try to pretend I did not hear that.”

At the dinner itself, with the Right Reverend Bishop of Salisbury a good eater, Lucy and Elinor kept up a lively conversation, tossing the ball of contention back and forth between them so that the facts of the dispute might be aired out while everyone was still smiling.  The Misses Watson looked interested, Mr Howard looked wry, and Mr Ferrars was seated next to his brother-in-law who had been under firm orders to keep him from speaking.  As they finished their dessert, Elinor caught the eye of her husband.  He nodded reassuringly, and she took the ladies with her, leaving him to conduct some more liquid diplomacy of his own.

After the tea was served, Elinor stood at the window for a time watching hot rain sleet down outside, thinking about this strange evening in which the men were locked away by a bottle of port, leaving her lady guests to their own devices while she cleared her thoughts.  She was interrupted by a servant who gave her an expected message, and she moved to sit down near her three guests.  “Miss Watson?  Miss Emma?  Might I prevail upon you to accept the hospitality of my house and invite you to stay in our guest room tonight?  My groom has been out to inspect the ford, and he says the water is rising.  He will not warrant that it will be safe to take our chaise across if you should stay to supper as we had originally planned, and I should prefer to be cautious as not.”

Although the elder Miss Watson, Elizabeth, if Elinor remembered her Christian name correctly, perked up at this; the younger, Miss Emma, blushed bright red and stammered out some confused apologies about always wanting to sleep in her own bed at night.  Elinor glanced at Lucy in a question, but yet Mrs Ferrars was a study of innocence, and so the carriage was called for before any of the menfolk were released out of the dining room to attend them.  She supposed that she would find out what Lucy had said to Emma Watson—or she would not—in the fullness of time, and spent the remaining quarter hour of her dinner party drawing the young woman out and answering artfully ingenuous questions about Mr Howard, and his sister Mrs Blake.

“You will like Mrs Blake,” Elinor said comfortably to the girl later, as they stood at the gate watching Miss Watson and Mrs Ferrars climb into her chaise, for the parson’s wife had elected to depart before her husband and leave the rain to rain—justly or unjustly—on his head alone.  “She is a very kindly, sensible sort of woman; I think very highly of her.”

Miss Emma, a pretty, slightly impulsive girl, with a brown, very clear complexion suddenly spoke.  “She said that I would like you too, Mrs Brandon.  She said: Mrs Brandon is very quiet with strangers, but she always listens.”

Elinor turned to the girl.  “Thank you, Miss Emma, it was kind of you to say.”

It was some time before she saw her husband: tempted by a fine vintage and the chance to speak with their own bishop in an unguarded setting, both Mr Howard and Edward had availed themselves of Brandon’s liberal hospitality; she was sitting alone in her parlour working some needlepoint when they finally spilled out.  “The Bishop has a hollow leg,” Brandon whispered to her, smiling, “I should not have brought out my best port.”  Edward, a happy drunk, was rather the worse for wear, and she took a sister’s privilege to clean him up and take the young man home. 

“Now then,” she manoeuvred the tipsy priest through her garden to the connecting gate, clumsily trying to open the gate and keep her umbrella above them both. “We have gotten Mr Howard’s agreement that, as you have been de facto acting as his curate, he should be paying you a curate’s salary: it is only fifty pounds a year, but it’s something.  We will keep working on him for funds for parish relief—”

“You’d make a marvellous parson’s wife, Elinor,” Edward was swaying on his feet.

“No parson ever asked me,” she said firmly.  “Go to bed, Edward.”

Their neighbour, Mr Howard, was standing in the hall, accepting Brandon’s invitation to stay the night himself, rather less in his cups: “If you were not so very kind to my nephew, Mrs Brandon, I would be quite annoyed with you right now.”

Elinor shrugged.  “Please take my assurances, Mr Howard, that if I had not been convinced of the justice of my brother’s case, I would not have pursued it so intently.”

Mr Howard smiled, with resignation but not rancour.  “Would you give up fifty pounds a year if you did not have to?”

“I have had times in my life when that was the whole of my fortune.  No, Mr Howard, I would not.”

He bent his head in acknowledgement.  “Ah well, at least my Miss Emma knows what she’s in for.  Church politics are not the friendliest, and it’s time your gentle brother realised that himself.  I…  Mrs Brandon…” he leant forward, conspiratorially.  “My Miss Emma—”  He was not quite so sober as he was pretending.

“Your Miss Emma…?”

“I can hope.  Her aunt has not treated her so terribly well.  She was raised away from her family in the expectation of an inheritance, and packed off home without a penny as soon as her uncle died and her aunt wished to remarry.  Perhaps if I can lure the aged woman into this country, you might invite her to dinner.”  They both smiled at each other with their teeth showing, and she let a manservant take him upstairs to the bedchamber made up for him.

“You and Lucy Ferrars are quite terrifying when you both want the same thing,” Brandon said as he undressed that night.  “It’s just as well for the male sex that women dislike each other so much—if you stopped fighting, you’d be in charge of everything.”

Elinor stopped her brushing and looked at herself for a long time in the mirror, for her feelings were complicated.

Brandon wrapped his arms around her.  “Getting along with people is hard.  If ladies were in charge of everything, you’d probably stop fighting and run the country properly for once.”  She put her hand on his cheek, stubbled after the long day.

***

It was the season of pleasure parties, and Elinor knew her duty, as she had known it in years past: it was her role in the neighbourhood to hostess outings for the young people and their chaperones.  She did not relish in the task as her once landlord, Sir John, had; nor in keeping a fine table as his lady wife had, although she prided herself that no one should feel stinted; and she would not, she would not delegate the resources of her household to Lucy Ferrars’ management and bountifulness.  So to the river, to the river, she must go.

It was to the ford, that the finer households of Delaford and Oxhill gathered for an informal party on the day in question.  Here in this little narrow valley, they might gain some shelter from the beating sun of this sticky hot summer, and the ladies sat under their parasols and conversed languidly amongst themselves, while the men and older boys walked upstream to the swimming hole.  Elinor envied them their freedom; envied Beth and young Miss Blake, and their protector Charles who had stayed behind, as they waded ankle deep in the water looking at the fish that swam there. 

“Shall you see the fish with Beth and Charles?” she asked Anne Ferrars, who was sweating silently beside her.  The plump overdressed girl jumped up, to be called back by her mother.  “It is not lady-like, Miss Ferrars,” she was told sternly by her mother, “you will soil your clothes,” and Elinor had nothing to say that would not be taken amiss, so said nothing, until the slightly elder Miss Griffiths addressed her with a cheerful remark about the weather.  She looked up to see Brandon walking back to their party, hopping from stone to stone, terrifically unbuttoned.  His hair was damp and slicked against his skull, his cravat looped loosely around his neck, coat and stockings draped across his arm, hairy shins proudly on display, and she felt envy for the freedoms allotted to his sex.  She smiled fondly at him, at his wolfish smile, and pressed her lips together in an avoided laugh, when he directly called young Anne Ferrars to admire a particularly large fish that Charles Blake had caught.  Mrs Ferrars said nothing as her daughter ran into coolness; of course, she would not, there was a privilege allotted to Brandon’s sex.

Little Nancy had been having a hard time lately, and Elinor could understand it, without being able to intervene on her behalf.  The plump girl was the recipient of that combination of fussing and put downs that her mother was used to direct at the other women of the village, that was the primary reason the woman could not keep any of her maids past their term.  Elinor would not have minded so much but little James, just starting to toddle, did not receive the same treatment.  He, the first-born son, in a world that deeded most of its wealth on the male line, could clearly do no wrong.  It made her cross, and there was nothing to be done about it: when she tried to show kindness to young Anne to cheer her up, her mother treated her worse in consequence; nor yet would Edward intervene in that part of parenting that was considered women’s work.

As the afternoon dragged on, they retreated into the garden of the Big House where a cold meat dinner had been left for them in the garden by servants let out to take a precious evening off of their own.  Elinor sat down at the table, enclosed by the four stone walls of her garden.  Normally they gave her a precious feeling of safety but today, today she felt as if the enemy were inside her gates.  She looked up at the sky and shivered.

She was intruded on by Lucy, who had a certain intent stare.  “I suppose you are going to threaten us with rain, Mrs Brandon?”

Elinor held a hand out in the muggy air, gazed up at the louring clouds massing in the sky, “no, I think it will hold, for this afternoon at least.”  She was too headachey to follow many of the forms of hospitality and sat back in her chair letting the chatter flow around her.  Brandon touched her hand with a smile, and stepped forward to play the host.  James had been hauled off by his nursemaid, the younger Blake children dozed leaning on their mother: the two girls of Delaford, one lanky, one plump, revelled in being permitted to sit with their elders at this family dinner before scrambling off their seats to spread out their dolls in the elaborate adventure they had been playing at for days.  Beth, older, taller, and stronger willed, was letting the heat—or her impulsiveness—get to her, and began quarrelling with her friend.

“I will go first, for I am the elder.”

Elinor called her over and spoke to her, quietly but sternly.  “You may be the elder, Elizabeth Brandon, but that does not exempt you from the common ways of civility.  You are the elder, so it is your duty to show the other children the way to go about.”

Lucy spoke then: “You are always so very correct, are you not, Mrs Brandon?”

“I try to be.  Civility usually costs me little.”

“Your roses are coming along very well, Mrs Brandon, I must compliment you.  You are a clever gardener, are you not.  I hope you have enough for all your potions.”

“I should think so,” Elinor replied.  “It has been a good hot summer for growing things.”

“And if you have not enough, you can always get what you want from someone else’s garden, can not you?”

Lucy’s face was complicated.  Truculent, stubborn, challenging.  Elinor forced a polite smile.  “All the contes de fées model the moral for us, Mrs Ferrars: stealing another’s roses—or parsley—comes with a price.”

As the Blake party was assembling itself into carriages, Elinor heard a remark that had been meant to be unheard, and sighed, for she recognised the truth of it.  “Yes, dear Miss Emma, they are always like that,” Mrs Blake was telling the young woman.  “Of course, you will make your own choices, dear, but I wish you will consider the connections you will be acquiring before you make any rash decisions about marriage.  It’s more important than money or love, or any kind of influence I should say, to have in-laws whose company you enjoy.  Those two women: they hate each other, nor yet will they leave each other alone.  It is a great pity.”

Yes.  It was a great pity.

***

In Elinor’s parlour, the engagement was not yet over.  She served cups of tea to everyone who wanted it, brought by the one remaining servant in the house, and noted with a smile that Edward and Brandon had taken themselves to the far window in search of what breezes may come.  Lucy—hot, bothered, red-faced Lucy—sat on the settee near to Elinor and chattered away about nothing, while Elinor pulled out her work and young Beth and Anne played together on the floor.  She drank her own tea thirstily, hot and headachey, convinced that never would she be cool, feeling prisoned by the four walls of the room, the house, the enclosure about the place, the close confinement that was Delaford-village, where everyone knew everyone else’s business.  Lucy began to flutter and flatter the two girls, and finally Elinor heard a remark she could not choose not to notice, Lucy’s sympathetic epithet to young Beth: “Oh, you poor motherless child.  So dear you are, and so kind of Colonel Brandon to raise you in such luxury, such a lucky thing.  I quite dote on you.”

Elinor stood up suddenly.  “Beth Brandon, look at you up so late.  And I promised Nurse that I would have you in bed by seven.  Go, go now, dearest.”  She chased the girl out of the sitting room and stood before Mrs Ferrars, rage in her heart, murder in her face, a cracking whip in her voice.  “Lucy Ferrars, get out of my house.”  She had started low, but the intensity of her voice grew and grew until it overwhelmed her with its fury.  “Get out.  You are a hollow woman, do you understand me?  You could have everything you wanted, and you would still fight, and demean, and despoil the people who are near you.  None of it shall make you happy.  You have such gifts, Lucy Steele, and you waste them.  You have a bright agile mind, and you use it to diminish and harm your own sex.  You have a husband who loves you, and you treat him as a resource to be eaten up.  I am done with you.  Your daughter who loves you, and wants only to impress her dear mother, you are trying to make as little and as petty as yourself.  Your son, you are raising as a little princeling who cannot stand on his own.  I have had enough.  I do not want you in my house; you are not welcome to my food.  Get out.”

They stood there, the two of them, both with murder in their hearts, facing each other down—alone but for each other.  In the end, it was Lucy who broke first, she ran crying from the parlour with her husband following after, and Elinor gasped in shock and went to her own room.

She stood in her bedchamber, bound up in silence, clinging to the post of her bed as her body was wracked with dry sobs.  This was more than a body could bear, and she held her hand over her mouth that the cry “I am in agony” might not escape her.  A door opened behind her, and she stared fixedly at the wall gasping for air, knowing that if she turned to the figure standing behind her, dimly glimpsed in the mirror behind the hag’s face, her own grotesquery of dishevelled hair and red rimmed eyes and contorted mouth; that if she turned to the river of compassion and goodness who stood and silently waited, then she would be undone.

“Dearest?”

It was too much to bear, and she turned and fled to her husband’s embrace; buried her face in his chest and let what tears may come; let her hair be stroked and a soft deep voice murmur gentle nothings until the wracking sobs had left her.  At last, she looked up and scrubbed her face, earnestly tidied up her hair.  “I have to, I have to put Beth in bed...”

He gave her a tender look and, careful as the finest lady’s maid, stroked the loose hair off her face and repinned it for her, wiped her eyes with his calloused thumb.  “There.  You’ll pass our old Nurse,” and she returned him a watery smile.

In the nursery, her daughter was happy in her enjoyment of an illicitly late bedtime, with her toybox opened and blocks carefully lined up in an elaborate game... she was good natured about being bustled into night gown, and Elinor let herself fall into the sober graces of such an everyday routine, let herself be calmed by the nightly ritual.  Beth yawned as she was got undressed.  “Mama, why does Mrs Ferrars keep saying I have no mother?”

“Well, now,” Elinor said.  “Mrs Ferrars was having trouble counting.  Most people only have one mother, but you have two: I am your ready-made mother, and Aunt Eliza in Scotland who writes you letters is your natural mother.”

“Are not all mothers natural?” Beth asked.

“Eliza is the mother you grew inside, like James grew inside Mrs Ferrars,” Elinor said, winding Beth’s hair into another rag.  “There were some things that made it hard for her to look after you just when you were born, so you came to me.  Wasn’t I lucky, young miss?  I got to approve you by post.”

“Did the stork bring me?” Beth said, her eyes wide.

“Oh yes, a big white one, with great black wings.  She dropped you down the chimney and you were all covered with ash, and it gave you ideas,” Elinor said, widening her eyes.

“Silly…” the little girl said, and let herself be tucked into her bed.  “Mama, when I have babies, can they have my room…?” and she was asleep.

When Elinor came down to her sitting room, Lucy Steele—Ferrars was gone, and Edward was leaning against the mantelpiece.  She knelt and began collecting her threads from the floor, her mouth set in a hard line.  “I do not mean to interfere in your marriage, Edward,” she said, winding thread onto a reel, “but I pray you would ask Lucy to end this nonsense.  It hurts my husband.”

He nodded.  “I will speak to her again.”  He might have said something else, but she was done looking at him.

In her bedchamber, she sat unpinning her hair, exhausted, her matron’s cap a bit of lace on the table.  Brandon walked in behind her and gently took over, smoothing the hanks of her hair down and running a brush through them, feeling her shiver in the muggy heat.  “I could see, but I could not hear,” he rumbled eventually.

“It was nothing,” Elinor said, her mouth still tight.  “A pack of women who don’t have enough to do, picking fights with each other.”

“I was thinking,” he said, “now that Beth’s grown so, it’s best to arrange for formal guardianship.”

“I didn’t know we have to do that?”

“For some things.  When she’s older it will matter.  I will speak to our attorney when next I see him.  It is not so much difficult as it is tedious,” he warned, “the courts care more about orphans with money.  It took over a year with Eliza.”  She put her hand over his, resting on her shoulder.

A thought long dwelled on rose to the surface of her heart.  “Christopher?  You have never reproached me for not having children of my own…”

“Oh, dearest,” he wrapped his arms around her tightly.  “Never that.  I feel sorry for it, but—I hope—Oh, Elinor, I can hope that it does not grieve you too greatly, but—”

“Have I contemplated that my ready-made daughter might be my only?  Well, it is just as well I love her so,” Elinor rubbed her hand on her husband’s rough stubbled cheek.  “Have I thought that I should have asked you if we could keep Thomas, purely for my own selfishness and vanity?”

“Thomas, we will see in the autumn, when his master travels into the west country.  We will talk then.”

She bowed her head, her mouth tight, and let her husband hold her.

***

It was only later that she remembered Beth had left her dolls in the garden and that it looked like heavy rain.  The parson-house was too close for anyone’s comfort, the shield of trees not enough.  There was a fight going on there; a man’s voice, loud, a woman’s voice, shrill; a host of hurts too long bottled-up festering to the surface.

“Is that bastard to take precedence over our—”

“Yes.”

Something unintelligible.

“Because we can’t afford more children.”

Someone crying.  “If you hadn’t—if you didn’t—” The little parsonage was tiny; a dreadful place to be cooped up in the rain, with nowhere to go when the person you lived with was the last person you could stand to see; Delaford the small village, where everyone knew your business.

Edward’s voice grumbled.  “My sister-in-law is a reserved woman with great kindness for the people she cares for.  If you treated her better you would know this.”  More of the woman’s voice.  Edward, to his shame, was shouting louder than her.  “No.  No, if you can’t fit in with her ways, we will have to give up the living.  This is unbearable.  No.  I have already made enquiries,” and Elinor could see a silhouetted figure brandishing a letter.  Doors slammed, and Elinor slunk away, leaving one doll behind her in the garden.  It would have to be Beth’s sacrifice for domestic peace, for this was unbearable.

And the storm crashed down.

***

In the blessedly cool morning, Elinor was chasing her daughter down the stairs, trying to stop the girl before she crashed through the door of her father’s study.  She was too late.

“Do not worry about it, Ferrars,” Brandon was saying.  “Everyone’s humours get unbalanced from time to time.”

Edward was standing before Brandon’s desk, his feet wide, his shoulders down, hands jammed into his pockets, his head bent as if defeated by life.  He nodded.  “Thank you, old man.”

“We expect you to take your potluck with us tomorrow,” Brandon added.  Beth scrambled into the shelter of his arm, stealing his attention.

“I’m sorry,” Elinor said. “We were going into the garden and she wanted to show you her kite.  We didn’t know you two had business.”

Edward forced a smile.  “That’s a splendid kite, young Beth.”  He turned to Elinor.  “Lucy is going to take a rest cure.  She’s been very pulled down since James was born, some time away should do her some good.”

Elinor nodded.  “To Bath?”

“London.  She has relatives there she can stay with, and friends.”

“She works very hard, I know.  Lucy has done a lot of good in this parish.”  Edward nodded, acknowledging the compliment.

“Shall Nancy come and play with my kite?” Beth asked.

“If you want her, you shall have her, old thing,” Edward said, and they went off to find his daughter.

***

“Brandon and I have fights, too, sometimes,” Elinor said suddenly.  She was standing with Edward watching Lucy’s chaise depart.  The summer storm had finally taken the heat out of the air, and in the light breeze she was finally able to think a little bit more clearly.  “It’s just that we take them out onto the hills, and nobody notices.”

“How did you do your courting, Elinor Brandon?” Edward asked curiously.

“We took long walks on the downs.  And in the woods, and along the river.  Oh, and the day by the sea side.  That was a good day.”  She shrugged.  “Brandon and I, we neither of us perform to strangers; it’s what suited out tempers best.”

“It’s an odd thing,” Edward said, as Lucy’s carriage rattled away.  “I almost think my wife would get on with you better if you lost your temper and gave her set downs more often.  It must be a hard thing to be spoiling for a fight for four years and always feeling you’re in the wrong.  Women are peculiar, aren’t they Elinor?  I think Fanny would feel genuinely sad to lose my Lucy to have her rows with, and the other way around of course.”

Elinor crossed her arms and watched the carriage turning onto the turnpike, her face grim.  She had heard too many impassioned remonstrations from her sisters and mother not to understand Edward’s meaning.  A want of openness was her particular fault; when unhappy, or threatened, or even just bored, Elinor knew herself to be one who retreated into the unimpeachable correctness of politeness, of the performance of virtue, locked away behind her silence and her platitudes.  “I hate fuss.”  She blew her breath out slowly.  “I’ll try to find something to tease her about, something that doesn’t matter much.  I won’t pull anyone’s hair, mind you, not for you or anyone.”

Edward nodded briefly.  “You’re a good sister.  Did Brandon mean it about dinner tonight?”

“He did.”

“Elinor?  What you said about little princelings… did you mean me?”

“You left.  No, I did not.”

He forced a smile.  “And you always mean what you say.”

She kissed him on the cheek.  “And I say that I am proud that you are my brother.  I promise I will try to make things work with your wife.”

He took her hand and kissed it in turn.  “And I am ever at your service.”

Chapter Text

From Mrs Elinor Brandon to Mrs Lucy Ferrars:

…your sister Anne stopped at the parsonage for a few days on her way back to Plymouth.  She has a new scarf of pink worsted, so I think she must be on the catch for the Doctor again.  Dr Davies must be an extremely shy kind of trout, I think, he wants tickling.  I have given Nancy your pelisse pattern, after much pleading, and not without misgivings: some wish, some prevailing wish is necessary to the animation of everybody’s mind, and in gratifying this, perhaps we leave her to form some other which will not probably be half so innocent.

Brandon is reading me Much Ado About Nothing in the evenings.  It is a play very dear to us—we were reading it the summer we were courting—and I must apologise to you, four years after the fact.  You may not remember this, but all those years ago, you called on us on my wedding morning and were speaking very kindly to me, and all I could think about was Margaret’s speech about the Duchess of Milan’s best blue tinsel gown.  We were not on such terms of openness then, so that I did not feel I could explain, but I feel my expression must have been something risible, and I thank you for your forbearance.  You who have gone before—and Edward has spoken so fondly of your honeymoon—of course you understand a new bride’s giddiness, and I am sorry that I did not trust you better to explain my errant thoughts at the time.

I realise that you’re surrounded by the warehouses of London right now, but the draper in Bromsford has a new muslin in that I think would suit your colouring.  I’ve enclosed a patch—would you like to me to ask him to put a length by for you?

Edward and your children are busy decorating the parson-house for your return.  I must advise you to buy up a stock of coloured paper before you depart London, because they have been making paper flowers, and they are very proud.  When you’ve arrived, shall you come to dinner and tell us about your holiday?  I have somehow never been to Astley’s, and everyone says I must…

***

Elinor put her pen down.  She couldn’t ever imagine she and Lucy being friends, but after two months of absence, there were things she wanted to tell this woman in person, kindly things.  It had taken them four years to get over their old hurts, but it was something to say that perhaps, finally, they had both managed it.

She could reflect now on her own behaviour.  Four years of watching children settle fights, of being the final arbiter when village women feuded, of observing who could find a way to let things go and who would dig their grudges in ever deeper—it was always easier to see in other people.  Four years ago, she had hated Lucy Steele for the sin of rubbing in her own thwarted hopes; she had hated her.  And for what end?  The insincere flattery? the holding to the burden of a long engagement? the sins of playing the matrimonial game as well as she knew how, punishment enough one might think.  Poor Lucy had played her cards as high as she could, only to find too late that her partner didn’t have the court cards she needed him to have ready for her. 

But regardless, Elinor could see her own role in this unhappy marriage: with a different patroness, Lucy might have, would have, thrived—an older woman who liked to be flattered, perhaps; a younger woman who liked to gossip and tease; those women might have formed affection for her.  Even in the absence of a lady of the manor, as Lucy had expected to find when she finally married Edward, assuming him to be the rector of a parish whose landowner was an established bachelor—there in that space she might have grown into maturity.  What would have become of Lucy, Elinor wondered, if Edward had married her immediately he proposed, and they had been able to grow up together?  It was too hard to say.  What Elinor could know, in hot, angry, silent self-reproach was that in this matter, her conduct should have been as her sister’s.  Marianne was quick to take offence, and noisy about it; but she forgave as easily when she had cause to, and her impetuous affections won her friendships where Elinor’s silence did not.  Four years were lost, but she could pray for the next four, for Edward whom she had loved and who had become her friend.  She could, would do better.

Ten day later, when the post-chaise clattered into Delaford, Elinor was standing at the front gate of the parson-house.  “Hello, Mrs Ferrars,” she said.  “We’ve missed you.”  And she meant it.