Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (9 page)

Seventeen

I am stuffing myself with hot rolls and strawberry jam in an effort to stop obsessing over whether or not he will come to see me, how soon after his return that might happen, and whether or not I even want him to, since Mrs. M will no doubt whip herself into a frenzy if it happens, when the woman herself sweeps into the breakfast room.

“I shall send your father to pay his respects to Mr. Edgeworth the day after tomorrow. And I shall dispatch an invitation to dinner for as soon as may be. Otherwise Mrs. Moore will get to him first.”

I put down my roll, appetite destroyed, and go off to cut roses in the garden. My basket is almost filled when the image of Edgeworth at the stables comes back again, but this time instead of a quick flash, it is an entire scene. A scene in which I am a participant as well as an observer. I see myself (or, more accurately, I see myself as Jane) watching Edgeworth as he emerges from the stables. My/her stomach tightens and my forehead perspires as he walks toward my hiding place behind a bush. I/Jane have not been deliberately spying on him per se, but nonetheless I dread the possibility of his finding me here. When he suddenly changes direction and walks off without discovering me, my body relaxes in a huge release of tensed muscles and cautiously exhaled breath.

And there the image ends.

I look down at the half-filled basket of roses in my hands, the soft pink of their velvety petals and the sweetness of their scent as real as the soft breeze that caresses my face and carries the scent to my nose, as real as the image of Edgeworth coming out of the stables, and as real as the bodily sensations I had as I watched him do so. There’s no use denying that this is a memory—Jane’s memory—and that it has become my memory. A memory that is recurring so frequently, and becoming so detailed, that it has to be significant.

I retreat to my room, hoping for some quiet time to think. But less than half an hour has passed when Barnes knocks on my door and tells me that the man himself is waiting downstairs in the drawing room.

My throat goes dry and my palms start sweating. He’s not even supposed to return until tomorrow. But I force myself downstairs, where Mrs. Mansfield is offering him food, drink, a comfortable chair. Edgeworth turns to me, his hazel eyes sparkling with warmth and friendliness, his hair golden in the sunlight coming through the gap in the curtains. There is no awkwardness to stumble past.

Mrs. Mansfield wastes no time in inviting him to dinner.

“Thank you but I cannot,” he says, “for I came here intending to ask you and your family to dine with me on that very day. My sister Mary is come from London, and since she and Miss Mansfield,” he adds with a significant look at me, “took so much pleasure in their acquaintance when Mary was last here, I had no doubt that the prospect of meeting again would be desirous to both parties.”

Not a bad idea, meeting this sister of Edgeworth’s. If I play it right, she could be a valuable source of information. As for her brother, he is even more appealing now than he was the last time I saw him. I’m even starting to appreciate his clothes, or at least how he looks in them. Of course, what’s not to like about the tight trousers, and the long tails on his coat are kind of cute. But to me even the more outlandish parts of his outfit look sexy, like the immensely tall hat, and the collar of his shirt, which almost meets his jawline.

A timid knock on the door announces Barnes, who glances at me almost sheepishly before addressing Mrs. Mansfield. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but you asked me to let you know—”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” says Mrs. Mrs. M, rising out of her seat and shooting Edgeworth a look of exasperation. “I do not have a moment’s peace. If you will excuse me, Mr. Edgeworth.”

Edgeworth is already standing, and makes his bow.

Mrs. M says, “Till Sunday, then, when we shall have the pleasure of seeing you and Miss Edgeworth at church.”

“My sister and I shall be with our aunt tomorrow, and thus shall accompany her to church there.”

“Well, then. I hope you will not be in a hurry to leave now on my account.” Face turned away from Edgeworth, she raises an eyebrow at me and sweeps out of the room. I can just imagine whose idea it was for Barnes to have such a well-timed need for her mistress.

Edgeworth takes a chair much closer to mine this time. “My sister desires me to beg your forgiveness for being unable to wait on you herself today. She is most anxious to see you. As was I.” He gazes into my eyes with such intensity that I feel the heat rising up my neck.

“I need not ask if you are well, as your looks tell me everything.” He looks down at his hands, then meets my eyes again. “Forgive me, but I cannot help saying how happy I am to see you. If business had not detained me in town, I would have returned even sooner.”

He reaches out his hand to me, and I place mine in his. He turns my hand over and grazes my palm with his thumb, and my whole body tingles. I look up into his hazel eyes, and—in stalks Mr. Mansfield on his spindly legs.

Edgeworth drops my hand and leaps to his feet, and I don’t know how much Mr. M saw, but Edgeworth looks as flustered as I feel, and Mr. M scrutinizes us for a moment before launching into a polite welcome.

I hardly hear the exchange of courtesies and Edgeworth’s stammering something about having some pressing business with his steward. Within a couple of minutes he is bowing his good-bye and wishing us a good day.

I mumble something to Mr. Mansfield about needing something from my room, and escape.

I am sitting on my bed reliving the touch of Edgeworth’s fingers and the magnetic pull of his eyes when Mrs. Mansfield barges in with barely a knock.

“Jane, I expect you to visit Miss Edgeworth on Monday morning. After all, it is incumbent upon her neighbors, especially a neighbor singled out as a particular friend, to welcome her.”

As it turns out, there’s no need for me to make any such effort. Just as I am about to leave the house to meet my so-called friend, I hear the clatter of carriage wheels and the subsequent sound of two female voices in the entrance hall, one of which is Mrs. M.

I steal down the stairs to get a look before they see me, but Mrs. M’s radar is up, and she instantly turns around and sings out to me, “How delightful, Jane! Here is Miss Edgeworth!”

Mary Edgeworth, a round little brunette, rushes to my side and kisses me on each cheek before enfolding me in a hug. “Thank God you are well, dearest Jane.” She pulls back to look in my face. Her eyes are chocolate brown, and her face is round and soft. Not the sort of girl to turn heads at first glance, but when she smiles, she has deep dimples in each cheek, and the light in her brown eyes reveals flecks of gold. But best of all is her voice, a surprisingly deep, cigarette-sexy sort of voice that does not go with the rest of the package, but which instantly becomes absolutely and totally Mary Edgeworth.

Mary proposes to Mrs. Mansfield that she take me out in her carriage. “An airing would do us good, Mrs. Mansfield, as the weather is so abominably hot that walking would be insupportable.”

Perfect, I think, until she asks Mrs. Mansfield to join us. But, thankfully, Mrs. M declines; her motive, no doubt, to promote the friendship between me and the sister of the most prized bachelor in the neighborhood.

No sooner does the coachman close the door behind us when Mary’s face turns grave. “I was beside myself when I heard of your fall. And furious with my brother for not having told me sooner. Thankfully he gave me swift news of your recovery. But I could not rest till I laid eyes on you myself.”

I squirm as her eyes examine me, wondering if she will notice her friend is not quite the same. “So what do you think?”

But she just keeps regarding me steadily. I try to act nonchalant, glancing out of the carriage window at the passing trees and fields. But I keep returning to those gentle brown eyes. A couple of times it looks as if she is about to say something. Finally she says, “You are too good to reproach me, but this alteration in your manners—I know the cause.”

“You do?” That makes one of us.

“My dear Jane, it took all the self-command in my power not to write again after you failed to answer my last. I assumed you were angry or shocked. Or maybe both.”

She sighs. “What a fool I was to have waited. Had I written again, no doubt your mother would have told me of your fall, and I would have come instantly, instead of weeks later.”

She searches my face again. “You do not seem angry with me now. Have you forgiven me for what I wrote you?”

“What you wrote me,” I parrot, trying to buy time because I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Good God. I never once considered—did you not receive it? It should have reached you at least a week before your accident.”

“I don’t know; I mean, I don’t think so.”

“I cannot imagine how this could be.”

“Was it important?”

“Oh, dear,” Mary says, twisting her handkerchief in her hands and looking out the carriage window. “Somehow writing such things is less unpleasant than speaking them out loud.”

She blinks fast and bites her lips; she’s trying not to cry.

“What is it, Mary?” I find myself squeezing her hand.

“Has my brother any hope of securing your affections? If so, then I am persuaded it is my duty to tell you what I know. But if you are still as set against him as you appeared to be when last I was here, then I will have no need of repeating to you now what was so painful for me to write. Had I not heard from Susan Randolph that your feelings for Charles seemed to take a turn again, I would never presume to burden you now with what was in that letter. Which, it seems, has been no burden at all because it never arrived.”

Apparently Jane had either burned that letter or hid it too carefully for someone like me to find it.

“Perhaps your brother and I were not the best of friends in the past,” I say, watching her carefully, “but he seems like a decent human being.”

“I see.”

“Then again, I don’t know him very well.”

“Oh, but you will know him,” Mary says. “You will know exactly what he wishes you to know. And nothing else. Which is precisely what I fear.”

“Am I missing something? This is your brother we’re talking about, right?”

“And you are my friend Jane, are you not? You know how it is between Charles and me. Have you forgot everything?”

While I contemplate a plausible answer, Mary shouts to the coachman to stop the carriage.

“Jane, would you walk with me in the lane? If we reach the village we are sure to meet with some of our acquaintance, and there will be little chance of continuing our discussion.”

The coachman hands us out of the carriage, and Mary and I walk arm in arm in the heaviness of the heat for a few minutes. Thankfully, she’s not pressing me for an answer to her question.

And then I remember that it’s she who wants to tell me something about her brother, something she’s supposedly written to Jane.

Either she tells me now, or I’m going to wilt in this heat. I steal a glance at her, and her face is as red and sweaty as mine feels.

“Please,” I blurt out, “tell me what you wrote in that letter.”

She turns to me, answering my smile with a flicker of one, then gently disengages her arm and takes another couple of steps. She stops again, taking off her bonnet and smoothing a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead.

“Very well,” she says, her voice a raspy whisper. “I fear that my brother is not a man to be trusted. In short, it has come to my attention that he is…”

“Yes?”

She won’t meet my eyes. “…a libertine. There. Now you know everything.”

She looks at me for a moment and bites her lip before casting her eyes down again.

“Is that all? You don’t expect your brother to have lived like a monk, do you?”

Mary draws herself up to her full height, which is about a head shorter than I am. “No, but neither do I expect him to seduce a servant in our household.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“On more than one occasion I came upon them conversing most freely, and once I even saw them kissing. Then, when I discovered she was in a condition certainly not suitable to continue in our service, I confronted Charles.”

“A condition.” When was he kissing this other woman, is what I want to know.

“Yes, Jane. She was with child.”

“Don’t tell me you made her leave.”

“I gave the poor girl ample money so that she could return to her family for her confinement, and I supplied her with references that would enable her to secure another position. But I could not let her remain in the house. Nor did she wish to do so.”

“And your brother?”

“He denied he was the father of the child. And insisted he had never taken liberties with her.”

“Obviously, you don’t believe him.”

Mary’s eyes widen and her mouth opens as if to speak, but at first nothing comes out. “I saw them kissing!”

I force myself to take on a neutral tone. “And how long ago was that?”

She hesitates for a moment. “At least eight months ago.”

I realize I’ve been holding my breath. “So what does that prove?”

“You cannot be serious. A girl who is in his service? Who is under his power? Even if she were his equal, no respectable man kisses a woman to whom he is not even engaged.”

“If there were coercion or intimidation, then I agree he should be strung up. But it doesn’t sound like that was the case. And the fact that she’s pregnant doesn’t mean your brother was the doer. Did she say he was?”

Mary sputters but nothing comes out, then looks at me as if I really am a stranger. When she does speak, her voice is practically a whisper. “Of course she said nothing of the kind. To me, his own sister?”

We walk on for another minute while I contemplate the prudishness of a society that can hardly admit to the means by which the human species reproduces itself, let alone that those same humans actually participate in the process.

“Of course I suggested that Charles marry the girl, despite the fact that all our friends would shun her society. And his.”

“And?”