For You Alone (Frederick Wentworth, Captain: Book 2) Page 20

“You were invited?” Sophia asked. She raised a brow.

  “Yes, I was with the Musgroves yesterday and was invited by Miss Elliot herself.”

  Her puzzled look disappeared and Sophia went back to the mail. “Well, yes, Miss Anne is very thoughtful about such things.”

  “I agree, but it was Miss Elizabeth Elliot who invited me. She saw the card into my hand herself.” His sister was again perplexed.

  “Do you think the affair and the company too exalted for me, Sister?”

  “Of course not, Frederick. I merely wonder at it. Miss Elliot is not the sort to include everyone.”

  “True. I think the invitation was on a whim. It is born of nothing more than the idea that the blue and gold of a uniform would complement the furnishings of her sitting room nicely. Anyway, I am invited if I am inclined to attend.”

  “You may not?”

  “I haven’t really put my mind to it.” This was true. His decision to attend the party had been made the day before. “I am not otherwise engaged, but depending upon the day and how it goes, I may stay home, drink some of the Admiral’s fine brandy, and read a book.”

  Later in the morning, Sophia asked that he escort her to the White Hart so she might visit for a time with Mrs. Musgrove. He readily agreed, knowing that arriving with his sister would be perfect cover if Anne should be there as well.

  The walk was considerably shortened when Sophia remarked on the darkening sky. “We’d best hail a cab now, or we’ll certainly be caught in it.” A carriage was procured, and they were comfortably settled when the first drops thumped on the roof.

  “I am surprised, Frederick, that you failed to notice the quickly shifting conditions. Have you been on land so long you are losing your weather sense?” She looked out to watch the now rain-slicked streets clearing of pedestrians. A woman with good taste in perfume had occupied the carriage prior to them. As he watched the streets begin to shimmer with the downpour, Frederick tried to identify the flowery scent. Sophia touched his arm. “Well?”

  “We were saved by your superior abilities, Sister, which is good, as I must be terribly distracted.”

  “Please tell me your distraction is not because of Miss Elliot.”

  Frederick examined Sophia’s troubled expression and realised she was speaking of Miss Elizabeth Elliot. It was obvious this was a continuance of their discussion at breakfast, and he wondered why she would concern herself with the matter. He crossed his arms and leant back a bit. “And what if it is?”

  She sighed and looked out the window. Turning back, she said, “I have no objection to marrying for advancement. I could well see you marrying the daughter of an admiral or a well-placed peer, but the daughter of a baronet with no connections to help you?”

  “So, you think I would marry for such a reason?”

  “I should be surprised if you wouldn’t. But you have a good heart and would only marry someone you could learn to love. I do know that much about you. You could not stand being trapped in a hopeless cause.”

  “And you think a match between Miss Elliot and me would be hopeless?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Then, it cannot be so.”

  The carriage came to a halt, and Frederick opened the door.

  “Does that mean then that you are not thinking of her?” his sister asked.

  Offering her his hand, he said, “Come, Sophia, the Musgroves await.”

  She stepped out and avoided a torrent of water flowing along the curb. “I think you are up to something, Frederick.”

  He paid off the carriage and offered his arm. “I hope you are right,” was all he offered in response.

  ~~~~~~~&~~~~~~~

  The room was alive with the usual Musgrove enthusiasm. To his disappointment, Anne was nowhere to be seen, but he was heartened to overhear she was expected momentarily. “She was likely held up by the rain,” Harville said, joining Wentworth in the chairs by the window. “It has cleared up, ladies,” he called over his shoulder to Miss Henrietta and Mary Musgrove. Both were exceedingly eager to be off.

  As they were leaving, Charles entered the room and was told he must turn right around and accompany the ladies on their shopping expedition. He looked longingly towards Harville and Wentworth, both of whom gave him a sympathetic shrug, but he wisely chose to live to fight another day and left with his wife and sister.

  “Poor fellow,” Harville said, only a little seriously. “He’s not got it too bad; though, that may depend on what the ladies are shopping for today.”

  “Quite true,” Wentworth agreed. Having little experience of it, he wondered how dire shopping with ladies might actually be. He reached into his pocket and withdrew Benwick’s portrait. Just then, the door opened. Both men turned to see who joined them. It was Anne. Everyone and everything was forgotten as Frederick admired the brilliance of her eyes and her flushed cheeks. Her bonnet strings were carelessly tossed over her shoulders by the breeze. The effect had charmed him in Somerset; it now was trebled.

  She looked about the room and greeted Harville. For him there was a momentary hesitation, a smile and then a murmured greeting as well. He fancied her gaze lingered a bit on him. His sister smiled and spoke to her warmly, for which he was glad. It occurred to him that their conversation in the carriage might have been enlivened if he had shared with Sophia his hopes concerning the future and the second Elliot daughter.

  He could feel Harville shifting by his side, but he could not resist observing Anne. The simplicity of her removing her bonnet and laying it on the table, to be followed by the finger-by-finger removal of her gloves was too tempting to be missed. She took a seat at the table and poured herself some tea at the behest of Mrs. Musgrove. If he reached out, he could touch her bonnet—

  “Good, you brought it,” Harville said, taking the portrait.

  The feel of the portrait sliding through his fingers was enough to remove his attention from Anne and back to Harville. Wentworth asked what particular sort of framing he wished accomplished. Harville was so caught up in examining the painting he had to be asked twice how he wished it framed.

  “Nothing special or too expensive. A dark frame to match his hair, I suppose, might be fitting.”

  Taking a seat at a nearby table where a good supply of letter writing paraphernalia was kept, he could not help feeling that the table was situated close enough to Anne for him to be happy and miserable at the same time. It took a moment to find a pen with a tip to satisfy him. Arranging the blotter and ink and paper took a moment or two more. When he was finally able to put his mind to the letter, he was unaccountably drawn into the conversation between his sister and Mrs. Musgrove.

  “—at any rate, I said, it will be better than a long engagement.”

  “This is precisely what I was going to observe,” his sister replied. Her voice was adamant on the point. “I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than to be involved in a long engagement. I always think that no mutual—” Her thought was interrupted with a stronger agreement on the part of Mrs. Musgrove.

  Wentworth considered what a passionate ally his sister might have made in ’06 had she been in the country. Though, in the long run, passion was of little use. He had been passionate in his objections to Anne’s breaking their engagement. In the end, it had been the still, small voice of Lady Russell to which she had listened. But here were good, sensible women agreeing that when two young people chose to throw in together, reduced circumstances and the difficulties borne of them were not to be recoiled from and were even preferable to a situation of uncertainty.

  An engagement to him had been uncertain. To marry him at that time in his career was to forge blindly into the future. He had been confident of his own abilities, but she could not see the world from his view. Whether she saw their situation more clearly or she had been guided into only seeing what her godmother wished her to see, he could not tell. As a young man he had pushed and scoff
ed at all the dangers surrounding his chosen profession, while she rightly perceived them. She had been frightened of the prospects.

  The shaft of the pen rolled easily between his fingers as he paused in his writing and considered the harsh things he had said when she said she would not marry him. He was once again ashamed of how brutal he’d been in accusing her of ill-using him. Though he feared what he might see, he looked to see if she, too, was listening. He wondered if she was remembering.

  She was, indeed, listening. She was looking directly at him as well. Were her cheeks still coloured by the walk from home? Surely, she’d had time to catch her breath, but that would mean she breathed quickly for some other reason. He looked away, conscious that to continue watching her was to put them both in danger of being noticed. The ladies seemed intent upon their conversation, and a glance towards Harville revealed that he remained by the window, still looking at Benwick’s portrait. As he turned back to the table, he could hear Harville rising and moving to the other set of windows. Everyone seemed settled. He continued with the letter.

  It was simple enough to list the requirements for the framing. He added that he was to receive the bill, and requested that, when the task was accomplished, the portrait be sent to him in care of the Admiral’s Gay Street address. Simple enough, he thought. As he folded the letter, it occurred to him that it was an excellent vehicle to convey, without excessive confusion, a person’s specific desires. One could tell a craftsman precisely what one desired in the way of a service, or one might tell the woman he loves everything on his mind and heart.

  If there was another man in Bath who needed such an advantageous vehicle more than he, Wentworth pitied the fellow greatly. As he considered how he might start such a vital missive, he heard Anne rise from the table and join Harville at the window. He was showing her the picture and recounting where Benwick had it made. Wentworth ached for his friend, for the man’s voice, deep with emotion, choked as he revealed to her the object’s history. “It was a commission to me! I am not sorry, indeed, to make it over to another. He undertakes it.” He indicated Wentworth. “He is writing about it now.” His voice dropped. “Poor Fanny! She would not have forgotten him so soon!”

  “No,” replied Anne, in a low, feeling voice. “That, I can easily believe.”

  “It was not in her nature. She doted on him.”

  “It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved.”

  Wentworth touched pen to paper and opened his heart:

  I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.

  The words poured from him, honest and true to everything he would now allow himself to feel. As he finished his opening, he could hear her continuing, speaking to a woman’s lot of being quiet and confined.

  “Our feelings prey upon us,” Anne said. For nearly nine years her feelings had preyed upon her to the point that she had refused the proposal of a better man and had become almost a nun. No wonder she could have walked by him unrecognised on any street in the city or country. He, on the other hand, had pretended that no such hold was upon him.

  “If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man’s nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick,” she said. The business of which she spoke must be forgetting.

  Wentworth wrote in protest:

  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

  “No, no, it is not man’s nature. I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved,” Harville countered.

  It is not our nature to forget, Wentworth thought. He continued writing:

  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.

  Her voice continued. He heard phrases such as, “man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived,” and, “neither time, nor health, to be called your own.” It made little sense to him; he’d missed too much of her reasoning. It mattered not whether his thoughts matched hers exactly. It only mattered that she knew how he felt and what he wished.

  I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me.

  Again he considered, rolling the pen from side to side. His thoughts were disrupted when the pen slipped from his fingers and rolled across the table.

  “Have you finished your letter?” asked Captain Harville. Both he and Anne were looking Wentworth’s way. Both were closer than he had realized.

  “Not quite, a few lines more. I shall have done in five minutes,” he said, awkwardly turning the pen nib-side down. The pen hovered over the paper. Her expression had been one of surprise. She looked happy. Being in conversation with someone who respected her intelligence agreed with her.

  You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others.

  He heard few intelligible words and thoughts, but he knew her well and knew that she spoke only kindness and encouragement, even when she disagreed with his friend. A surge of emotion on Harville’s part raised his voice somewhat, allowing Wentworth to be privy to the specifics of the conversation once more. Harville spoke in general terms of a sailor waiting for his family, but the Captain knew he spoke from the experience of the spring. Frederick had watched through his telescope as his friend paced the docks, waiting for the Laconia to bring him his wife. When Frederick had offered Elsa the use of his best glass, knowing she would see Timothy on the wharf, her anticipation had been palpable. He had surrendered to her the exclusivity of his sacred quarterdeck so she might have the best view. The conversation between her and her cousin was excited and punctuated with sighs and profuse expressions of thanks to him and his officers. Harville’s voice was nearly as full of emotion as he had been that day. And when Anne spoke, she acknowledged it, not directly, but with her sweet wisdom.

  “—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex—it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it—is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” He chanced a look their way. Both Harville and Anne were consumed with their conversation.

  Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in me, Frederick thought.

  “You are a good soul,” Harville said, eventually. “There is no quarrelling with you. And when I think of Benwick, my tongue is tied.” Before Anne could answer, sounds from the main table announced the rising of its occupants. This would signal to Harville that they could leave for the framers. The time was short for him to finish.

  I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.

  “Here, Frederick, you and I part company, I believe,” Sophia said. “I am going home, and you have an engagement with your friend. Tonight we may have the pleasure of all meeting again at your party,” she said to Anne. “We had your sister’s card yesterday, and I understood Frederick had a card too; though I did not see it. You are disengaged, Frederick, are you not, as well as ourselves?”

  The paper was being uncooperative as he tried to fold it. It was crooked, but it would do. Slipping the letter to the framer into his pocket, he sa
id, “Yes, very true; here we separate, but Harville and I shall soon be after you; that is, Harville, if you are ready, I am in half a minute. I know you will not be sorry to be off. I shall be at your service in half a minute.” For a moment, he panicked and worried he’d switched the letters. He opened the one and held the stick of wax over the candle. To his relief, it was the letter to Anne. As he’d fiddled with the letter, he’d held the stick of wax over nothing, and now had to wait another moment more for it to soften.

  Wentworth replaced the wax, seal, and pen. Harville was bidding Sophia farewell and returned to Anne to take his leave of her as well. Wentworth shoved the ill-folded lump of paper under other scattered sheets on the table and walked to the door. They passed into the hallway, Harville speaking about his just-finished conversation. Before he pulled the door closed, Wentworth looked through into the room. Anne was moving towards the table while Mrs. Musgrove remained seated.

  It was possible she might find the letter on her own. Perhaps she would straighten the sheets he’d left scattered, but an equal possibility was, out of her respect for the privacy of others, she would leave the papers alone. He had scuttled enough chances with her over the past few weeks and knew he must put his hand to the tiller and guide the letter into her hands.

  Fortunately, his gloves were on the table. They would be the reason for his return. He stepped through the door, begged Mrs. Musgrove’s pardon, explained his return and crossed the room. His appearance startled Anne. She hesitated. He turned his back to the main table and, moving aside several of the sheets, revealed the letter. Her eyes were on him and then on the letter. Assured she understood him, he took his gloves and left.

  Chapter Thirteen