Days may pass and years may pass

I.

Elizabeth Mary Parker cried. In her cradle, at the plump breast of the plump wet-nurse, held in her aunt's arms walking around the drawing room; held in her father's hands, their faces mere inches apart so that Sidney could not fail to see his daughter had inherited his mouth, his long lashes—Elizabeth wailed. She fretted and turned red and pummeled anyone she could with her little fists and how could he blame her? She was motherless, Eliza dying of fever within a fortnight of the baby's birth, never knowing she was a she and not the boy Eliza had been convinced she carried. She was motherless and her father was not sure he could ever bring himself to love her, a grave admission he could admit to no one though he thought Mary suspected. Suspected and most generously, did not judge him for it. Sidney tried to love her, he willed himself to do it but since the day he'd parted from Charlotte, her cheeks streaked with tears, her lips trembling, his heart had been nothing more than a pebble on Sanditon's shore. Something cast about by waves, something to be thrown as far away as it could be, to sink to the ocean's blue depth. Elizabeth, never Eliza, never Bess, was his child, made from his sacrifice and his lust, from the insatiable hunger he woke with after a night full of dreams- such vivid, aching dreams of Charlotte, her beautiful dark eyes watching him with a tenderness Eliza Campion Parker had never known.

He'd brought his daughter to Sanditon because where else could he go? There was a wide pavilion Charlotte had never walked on and the shore, silver in the dawn, where the water came up against the sand like a lover. The baby cried and cried, inconsolable until the day Charlotte arrived. Mary had written her, because she might and he might not. She had pinned up her hair the way the other ladies did, but her eyes were just as bright and her mouth as sweet; she picked up his baby from her cradle and held her in her arms, her shawl tucked around them both. Elizabeth had quieted, finally soothed, and then cooed, a sound Sidney had never heard but had still recognized.

"There now, Lizzie dear, see, you're set to rights, my little love," Charlotte murmured, the baby held against her breast long enough for Sidney to have a fantasy elaborate as James Stringer's third pagoda; Charlotte the child's mother, hers and his again, her shoulder bared to him in their bed. Her breath soft against his bare chest in the moonlight, her gloves tucked into his top-hat. Her hand reaching out to touch the swaddled baby in the cradle the way she'd taken his hand to touch her own round belly.

What would it take for Lizzie Parker to have such a mother? Sidney looked at Charlotte and wondered. It was fortunate Sanditon had cliffs to walk, that Sanditon had the sea beckoning, ceaseless as his heartbeat, as the love he'd tried to starve and chill. There was a place, a time to find an answer in Sanditon, to find a question Charlotte might answer with the word yes.

II.

Sidney had only agreed to attend the ball because of the look Lady Babington gave him as he tried to hide behind the smoke of his cheroot; it was much the same expression he'd seen on her face as she scraped something feculent from her dainty high heeled boot. She'd refused to wear them again, no matter the effort her maid had put into cleaning them, he remembered that as he let his gaze wander across the ballroom, what a waste it had seemed and how William had grinned at Esther's decree, how he'd caught up her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her wrist, sure he would not be shrugged off. Once, Sidney would have sneered at the exchange and a little while after that, he would have smiled, but now he was impassive. There was no one who welcomed his touch, no one who cast him off. There was a ballroom, filled with the pale golden light of a hundred candles trying to challenge the setting sun, and dozens of well-dressed, perfectly attractive ladies he couldn't give a damn for. He was out of mourning for the wife he'd never loved and it was impossible to believe Charlotte Heyward would agree to dance with him. Not simply because of what had come before, but because now he was Eliza's widower, Elizabeth's father, not the same man he'd been before. She might quote Heraclitus, she might sit tucked up in a worn armchair and read straight through her father's collection of leather-bound philosophers while rain slid against the window-pane, but none of it would matter now, when she was still everything fresh and young and utterly lovely and he had left his youth behind forever.

"Do you mean to glare at the assembly all night? Or brood? I cannot quite decide which you are attempting, but perhaps you might reconsider. It does cast a pall," Charlotte said, interrupting his reverie. In her thin dancing slippers, he hadn't heard her approach, hadn't expected to seek him out. Everything about her suggested a pearl, her softly gleaming dress and her even more exquisite skin, her dark eyes. One chestnut curl hung over her shoulder, an arrangement he recalled Esther favoring before her marriage, and it took all his willpower not to reach over and see if it was a silky as he remembered.

"I did not mean to ruin your evening," he said shortly. Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't her laughter.

"Oh, Sidney, you haven't. You aren't. But I fear you are ruining your own and then what's the use of coming out?"

"You mean to say I cannot ruin your evening, do you not?" he heard himself saying, rude as he'd been when they first met, when he'd thought of her as that silly chit, Mary's folly, a hoyden who'd no place in society.

"No. I'm certain you can if you put your mind to it. Do you intend that?" Charlotte said.

"I've ruined everything else between us. What's one more night?" he asked. He wished for the sea, cold and salt and so blessedly impersonal, Sanditon's most undeniable asset.

"You've ruined everything?" Charlotte said.

"Haven't I?" He suddenly saw Elizabeth, sleeping, her head nestled on Charlotte's shoulder, a sharp reproach he didn't heed.

"When you," she paused, biting her lip, "when you married her, I understood. I knew why and I could not blame you. I didn't blame you and I knew—Sidney, I knew it broke your heart as it did mine. Knowing that took the bitterness from it."

"Charlotte," he began, finding he had wanted simply to say her name. Charlotte. Beloved. He was quiet and she let him be for a minute and then another.

"Yes? It's not like you to be at a loss for words," she replied.

"I want to ask you a question, but I am afraid of your answer," he said.

"Perhaps you shouldn't be. You've often been wrong about me. Quite often, you've not had the faintest idea about what I thought or why," she said, looking up at him. A year apart, two, and a lifetime, for him but also for her.

"You're right. I'm a coward. Lady Babington wouldn't have the least hesitation in agreeing," he said.

"She likes to play at that, like putting on a diamond tiara," Charlotte said. "She's tender-hearted, she must protect herself and she doesn't always believe Lord Babington will do it."

"William worships the ground she walks on," Sidney said. "He's besotted with her."

"Yes, of course, I know that and you do, but she doesn't. Not always. Shouldn't you ask me your question? It will torment you if you don't. That's the way of it, I find, everything you don't say, you regret the most." Her cheeks flushed a most delicate rose and he saw the way she held her breath, her sudden stillness. What had she wanted to say to him that he'd never heard or read in her curiously angular hand? Had she wished to call him dearest or confide some longing, some wish he'd have jumped at the chance to grant?

"Charlotte, Miss Heyward, would you dance with me?"

"Yes, Mr. Parker," she said, moving so that he could take her hand in his. There was the same irresistible tension they'd had the last time they'd danced together and something else. Something that came from Eliza and Elizabeth and the sea at winter, Heraclitus at midnight, dreams you woke from crying out your beloved's name. He took her in his arms and they let the melody guide their steps. Oh, how she looked at him!

"This wasn't my question," he said in a voice so low only she could have heard him.

"No?"

"No."

"Will you ask your question then?" Charlotte asked. "I won't run away, no matter what you say."

"Could you still love me?" he said, almost mumbling, worse than a green schoolboy. Far less than she deserved.

"Could I still? I don't know," she said, holding his hand tight in hers, drawing slightly closer. "I am not the same Charlotte you knew before and you are not the Sidney. Still—could I stop? Love is not love which alters, when it alteration finds, no?"

"What are you saying?"

"Dance with me, Sidney," Charlotte said. "Just now, dance with me. Please."

III.

Sidney Parker had a newfound sympathy for lovelorn maidens. With their mooning and their worries, the wringing of hands and the endless plucking of endless daisy petals. In the days and weeks since their dance at the ball, a dance Lady Babington had crowed over orchestrating as if she'd placed Charlotte's gloved hand in his herself, he had suffered over their relationship, one that defied definition. He had asked her a question, two in fact, and she had answered one direct and the other… well, that was the source of all his troubles. That oblique exchange he was afraid might be due more to candlelight and the violinist's skill and the baby currently perched upon his knee, her undimpled chin shiny with drool.

"A lady must be neat and mind her manners, Elizabeth," he said, using the cloth Mary had given him to wipe his daughter's face. He knew he was lying. How often had Charlotte walked the countryside and Sanditon's crowded avenues with her hair unbound, curling over her shoulders, rioting from her bonnet's brim? Her hems were scalloped with sand and salt and her reticule most often held a sea-shell rather than smelling salts. As to minding her manners, he imagined she would argue she did so, following her own principles. When they'd first met, he would have used that as the reason why she was manner-less, almost certainly adding a sneer for good measure. Now, he knew how little such things matters, after a year of marriage to Eliza and the year without her. He bounced the baby on his knee and she chuckled, a surprisingly low sound from someone who most often sounded like a particularly angry blue-jay. He was almost sure he loved her now, his little daughter, and that made it more difficult to face, that he still sometimes wished she'd never been born.

How could Elizabeth Parker not keep Charlotte from him? Even if he were sure about Charlotte's affections, asking her to raise another woman's child, to have to recall every day his choice, seemed insurmountable. At least Elizabeth wasn't a boy, he found himself thinking, at least she was not his firstborn son, his heir as well as Eliza's. But there was little chance a boy would grow up to so closely resemble his mother as Elizabeth seemed likely to do, having Eliza's fair coloring, her delicate pointed nose and grey-green eyes. If Charlotte had never met Eliza, perhaps she might tolerate it but they had met, often enough for Charlotte to remember the woman he'd thrown her over for, and how could he ask her to love Eliza reborn? If he truly loved Charlotte, how could he risk hurting her again, understanding more deeply what it would cost her? She'd grown up in a large family where the girls were educated at home; how could he propose to send Eliza away to a school and make Charlotte the villainess who required it?

The only person who might have helped him untangle this knot was Charlotte herself. His brothers had only the vaguest sense of what went on inside their own heads and could never imagine a lady's. Mary and Diana were sure to say Charlotte wouldn't mind, not a whit, and Georgiana would say he was burdening Charlotte with his own troubles. Esther Babington might be helpful, if he found her at the right time, or she might say something so cutting, so true that he would not recover from it. He wasn't sure how William could sleep with a woman like a dagger, but his friend was clearly made of sterner stuff than Sidney himself.

"What would she say, do you think, little Elizabeth? Would she say I was a fool before and I still am? The greatest fool in all Creation? She only gave me a dance, she only said she might still feel what she once felt- but could that be enough now that we are two, you and I?"

Elizabeth gurgled, but not ominously, as if she might ruin another pair of his trousers with curdled milk. He kept speaking, feeling the weight on her on his knee, knowing she only understood the tone of his voice, not the words.

"How can I ask her to do what is so difficult for me, to love you, when she is not even your mother? How can I risk hurting her again by asking?"

He saw Charlotte's face, how she could make it become still and how she might bite her lip and turn away. Or worse, how she might smile, sadly, and nod at him with a wisdom gained from sleepless nights and cold, grey dawns, a gesture that meant it was too late, that love was a blossom and not the endless sea.

"How can I bear it if she says no? If she is the one to walk away because her heart alone cannot decide things and her conscience, her very soul tells her what she must do?"

Elizabeth's arms flailed about, her hand catching at his sleeve. He looked at her face and saw her curious expression, her little mouth moving as if she would speak.

"A walk on the shore is a very good idea, I agree," he said. He could not swim, bare in the cold waves as he once would have, hoping the exertion and the water would present a solution his mind could not discover, but the wind would be at their backs and the sky always came down to the edge of the world. And Elizabeth might sit on the beach and throw handfuls of sand at a gull. If there was no revelation available, there might be respite and in either case, Elizabeth would sleep better for the outing even if he did not. At least one of them should find their dreams sweet.

IV.

"Oh, here you are, Mr. Parker!" Charlotte exclaimed breathlessly, dropping down beside him, facing the sea. She was flushed as if she'd run and didn't seem at all dismayed by the prospect of her fine muslin dress becoming sandy and damp. Her cheeks were red as summer poppies and her eyes bright; she looked like she knew a delicious secret and he would have fallen in love with her then and there if he hadn't already been longing for her for the past two years. She was so very near, so very enticing and there was no etiquette he knew for their situation. He resorted to his former curtness bordering on incivility.

"Indeed, I am, Miss Heyward," he said. "I don't see how this can be a surprise."

"It's not. It's just as Lady Babington said, that you'd be sitting on the shingle watching the tides go out, as if you could make them stop with the force of your glare," she replied, laughing a little at the end.

"Lady Babington has a way with words," he said.

"She does, but she's not a liar, is she? For here you are and I do think you're trying to rival Lord Poseidon himself," Charlotte said. She hadn't drawn back, not an inch, and he fancied he could feel her soft exhalation on his cheek.

"I'm only wool-gathering, I suppose," he said.

"That seems a waste of time for Sidney Parker," she said. He liked to hear her say his Christian name, as if she'd return to that night when she said it alone, Sidney, and he'd thought it meant she loved him.

"Lady Babington sent you? Is Elizabeth all right? They said they'd bring her back to the house, she'd fallen asleep while we were walking," he said. Esther had nearly ordered him to relinquish the baby but he'd noticed how her eyes softened as he put Elizabeth into her arms.

"She's perfectly fine. Lord Babington is doing quite a credible impression of a nursemaid. Lady Babington is delighted, though she's trying not to show it," Charlotte said.

"Esther didn't tell you to find me then?"

"No, she didn't. I asked her, you see, if she knew where you were, since they had Lizzie and she said I might find you here. If I hurried. Though I wonder if she only wanted me out of breath, my hair falling down, all mussed," she said, pushing back at the chestnut curls near her face. The ribbon binding them had come loose and she looked as she had before, every time she'd come into a room at Tom's, when they'd rowed on the river. In every dream he'd ever had of her, in her bath, at her dressing table in a silk peignoir. In his bed, those dark curls unbound, caught in his hand as he kissed her bare throat.

"How may I be of service, madam?" he said, retreating again, this time to the formality of the beau monde in a ballroom. This was despite the fact they were sitting alone on the shore, the only music the waves, the wind and the occasional fluting call of a gull.

"Be still, Sidney," she said and he was, suddenly, hers to command. "Just be still for a moment and let me—let me…" She leaned towards him, her right hand cupping his cheek and kissed him. Her lips were parted, soft, and he was shocked, his own mouth open; he felt her taste him, the hand at his jaw tender, implacable, her tongue stroking his. He was dizzy, dazed; she was claiming him, leaving no room for doubt, for confusion or decorum. She kissed him like his lover, like his wedded wife, as if it they were in their bed on a sunlit morning, as if they'd woken in an embrace at midnight, halfway to completion, the scent of her like frangipani, like brandy. She clung to him and he heard himself growl, a low, rough sound from his throat, a sound that made her hold him tighter.

"Since you won't ask, since you can't, I must—will you marry me, Sidney Parker?" she murmured against his lips, her hand at the nape of his neck, her fingers gentle, the way a candle's flame seemed gentle until you touched it.

"Charlotte?" He said her name, half-gasp, half-cry. Once he'd calmly told her Now it's your turn give me your hands and he could remember being that man, the stroke of the oars through the placid river. He remembered how she'd looked at him as they'd moved, as she'd known what he'd meant.

"You've worked yourself into a state, haven't you? Over Eliza and Elizabeth. How you think I cannot love you the same way, cannot want you the same way and I don't, Sidney, I don't," she said, still so close he could kiss her again and make her stop talking, except he wanted her voice more than anything, more than her next kiss.

"You don't?" he said.

"How can it be the same, when it is different? I love you better now, since I understand you better, since you have become Elizabeth's father. You think your marriage, your daughter, they mean the end for us and you are such a dear, darling, adorable idiot," she said, giving him the smallest, lightest kisses with each endearment and then something more intent with the castigation. He let her do what she wanted, since that was what he wanted: Charlotte desirous, ardent, impassioned. Charlotte with her dark eyes like smoke, her sweet mouth reddened from his kiss. Charlotte, like a rose in full bloom. Some part of him began to believe in happiness again and it made him impetuous, determined, confident; the man who'd walked out of the ocean and let her look her fill if she would, the man who'd taken her gloveless hands in his to pull a boat through the water.

"This is—I am what you want?" he asked, some time later. There was no clock made to measure them, not now.

"You are," she said and not Of course, you goose and that was when he knew she meant it entirely.

"Elizabeth won't…"

"Elizabeth is a baby. Your baby as much as Eliza's, Sidney. If you want her to be, she may be our baby and I'm not very worried about loving her. She is far sweeter than Alicia and she has your mouth and a very decided personality, far more Lizzie than Elizabeth even if you won't accept it," Charlotte said, every word calming him. Making him imagine them all together in his house in Sanditon, in the garden, asleep in their beds.

"I didn't want to ask you. I didn't want you to feel you must say something that wasn't true. Or that you'd tell the truth and I couldn't bear it," he admitted. She nodded; she knew.

"Can you bear being my husband? I don't believe it, but my sister Alison says I hog the covers most dreadfully," Charlotte said. How had he let her wait so long to hear him say yes?

"Yes, yes, except I wish it had not come to this, you forced to ask me," he said. Charlotte smiled, the most beautiful smile, ravishing him with it.

"Have I ever been forced to do anything, Sidney? I think not," she declared, so much like the girl he'd once thought a lady's maid he took her in his arms and rolled them so she was beneath him. She looked delighted and then he saw the yearning in her eyes.

"Will you be my wife? Will you take me and Elizabeth together and make us a proper family? Will you let me be my true self again, my dearest?" he asked, finally, nearly sure.

"Oh yes!" she said, pulling him down. He let her rule him, her lips, her hands, her sweetly curved hips against him, for the space of an endless moment before he considered what it would mean if anyone found them. He knew he wanted their bedroom windows open to the sound of the waves, the subtle salt fragrance of shells and sea-grass when they were alone in the moonlight, Charlotte naked except for his ring on her finger.

"Not here, dearest," he said, very low. She laughed and he did too, simply to echo her.

"Lady Babington will collect," she said, sounding not at all distressed. "She told me so and she doesn't break a promise."

"Esther has gotten her reward already," Sidney said. William with Elizabeth in his arms, the smile in his eyes as much as his face, was what Esther wanted. To be right, to be known for it, was what she wanted and she had it, earned it.

"Shall we go home, Charlotte? Shall we go back to Sanditon?" he said. He waited for her, though he was certain this time, and he felt the sand fall from their clothes like sugar as they stood up.

"Oh yes, yes indeed," she said softly.

"We will be happy now," he said, a prediction and a question. A vow he would never break.

"I suppose we shall. Though you mustn't complain if it turns out Alison is right," she said.

"I won't," he laughed. "I can think of far worse than having to claim my share of the coverlet from my beloved. I may be cold but you, Charlotte, you'll be warm enough for both of us."

V.

"Mama!"

"Mama! I don't want porridge, I want egg!"

"Mama, Charles and Frederick won't mind and Charlie has a frog in his pocket!"

"Ma-ma-ma-ma," Kitty babbled, trying with all her might to join in the fray. She reached out her hand to take something from her mother's plate, but the rasher of bacon eluded her perpetually sticky grasp. Charlotte laughed, already a bit tired, and prayed Cook had used enough tea in the pot. It wouldn't do for the brew to be too weak, not with the day ahead. She toyed with the toast, knowing it would be better to eat it but setting it down just the same.

"And you were worried we wouldn't feel a real family, Sidney," she smiled. Somehow, he was perfectly turned out, his neckcloth snowy white and neatly tied, his cuffs spotless. Charlie knew not to bring his contraband frog anywhere near Papa at the breakfast table. Mama however was fair game.

"I was the most terrible fool and fortunate you enlightened me, madam," Sidney said. "Charlie, your frog mayn't come to breakfast, you know that. Anne, you must eat what Cook has made you but you may add some more cream if you like. Frederick, you cannot go to Lady Babington's in your riding boots. And Miss Lizzie, we have one mother in this house and that is enough."

The children were all somewhere between mollified and chastened by their father's tone, though there was a devilish gleam in Charlie's brown eyes that Charlotte knew meant his frog might be anywhere at the house at any moment. She said a quick prayer for Sarah, their nursemaid. And then for the frog, for Cook had said she was prepared to make Georgiana's favorite French dish if one more lily-pad sitter came through her kitchen.

"Everyone must finish their breakfast and then make sure they are ready for Lady Babington's," Charlotte said calmly.

"May I wear my corals from Aunt Georgiana?" Lizzie begged. Charlotte caught Sidney's eye and saw the answer in his resigned expression. Managing Lizzie's little vanities sometimes seemed a Sisyphean effort.

"You may but you mayn't boast about them to Jane," Charlotte said.

"Thank you, Mama!"

There was a very brief period, the space of Charlotte's cup of tea perhaps, while the children were close to silent, other than the general clatter of their eating, spoons dashed against the rim of the bowl, the splash of milk, Anne's second, more successful attempt to wheedle Sidney's soft-boiled egg from his egg-cup to her mouth. Charlotte managed a bite of the toast and more of the bracing tea. Esther would keep all the children entertained with some elaborate game that had them roving all over the estate with a nursery-maid and a groom to make sure they didn't come to any harm and there would be a chance of some real conversation, perhaps a discussion of the latest novel by Miss Edgeworth while Sidney enjoyed a cheroot with William. Charlotte surveyed the table just as the hush was about to recede and spoke.

"Lizzie, Frederick, Charlie and Anne, you may leave the table and have Sarah help you with your things. Papa and I will finish breakfast with Kitty."

With a degree of alacrity that signaled a complete awareness of the treats and games awaiting at Lady Babington's, the children left the table and hurried towards their rooms to have hair brushed and faces washed, pinafores buttons and with any luck, frogs dispatched to Charlie's latest effort at an amphibian Eden. Charlotte picked up the slice of toast, gazed at it and sighed.

"Will it be February then?" Sidney asked, having missed nothing. He'd risen with the children and walked to her side, taking Kitty from her lap and settling the baby in his arms. He shifted her so he had one hand free and that he used to brush back some curls that had come loose from Charlotte's informal morning coiffure.

"January, I think," Charlotte answered. She looked up at him and saw the fondness in his eyes, his pleasure and his concern mixed the way the milk swirled through her China tea. "You must keep in mind that my parents had eight children when they were ten years married. By that count, we are behind."

"I'm not sure the Parkers will ever match the Heywards in that regard," Sidney replied. His eyes positively twinkled and if she didn't know him so well, she would not have seen the heat behind the light.

"You never know," Charlotte said. "Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit."

"I'm not sure Homo nor Deus has ever encountered anyone like Charlotte Parker. She's a force to reckon with, I've found," Sidney said, smiling.

"This time, I believe it falls on Sidney Parker and his predilection for surprising ladies after he's gone swimming," Charlotte said, remembering the afternoon and how like that earlier day it had been except that the sunlight had gilded Sidney as he came from the water, making his familiar beauty new again.

"You didn't run away," he said softly.

"I never run away from you, Sidney. With you perhaps, but that's all," she said.

"Mightn't be worth it now—I'm fairly certain the children would follow," Sidney said. As if to make his point clearer, there was the emphatic thump of Frederick trooping down the stairs and the softer sound of the girls afterwards.

"And here they are," Charlotte said. "Heaven help us."

"Heaven and Esther Babington," Sidney said, taking Charlotte's hand as she rose from the table, squeezing it lightly. It still made her catch her breath, ten years later, and he still noticed and smiled at her for it.

"If you ask her for those ginger tea-cakes, she'll know," Sidney said quietly.

"Yes, but then I'll have the tea-cakes. And she'll figure it out anyway," Charlotte said.

"How?"

"She'll see how you're looking at me, love," Charlotte said, squeezing his hand back.

"You might as well get the tea-cakes then," Sidney said. "And the recipe, if she'll let you. I wouldn't be surprised if you want it near at hand in the future."

There was a plague in Sanditon.