Those Prevailing Happy Stars

A Mansfield Park & Stardust fanfiction

Chapter Seven:

The Sky-ship in the Clouds

They were in – as well as all standing upon – a cloud.

Edmund seemed too distracted with his own lamentations to notice this – he just kept grasping his head and muttering to himself, "She cannot have known – she cannot. Not my Miss Crawford. She cannot have known what sort of people her relations truly were."

Even Fanny couldn't mind him – could hardly muster much pity for him – in this state. She fumbled ineffectually with her torn nightgown, attempting to cover herself. If there was even the slightest chance of him pulling his head out of his own problems long enough to look at her, she might have been worried Edmund would see her breasts.

Tom and Susan, though equally preoccupied with their various distresses, were not so accepting and placid regarding their fate to be stranded, suddenly, upon a cloud high above the middle of nowhere as were their siblings.

Having pulled away from his chest and looked up at him, then around, and seen where they were, Susan let out an anguished cry. "What in blazes did you think of?" He had wasted the precious resource of the amber cross on this?

"Wall, of course! Wherever else? Where the devil did you think of?"

"Home!" she shrieked – above her, lightning crackled from a higher-up cloud – waving her arms in dismay. "Like you told me to!"

Tom's brow crinkled in momentary confusion. Then, slowly, comprehension dawned. "Your home? Oh, for pity's sake, you bird-witted hoyden! What did you think of your home for?"

"You ought to have been more clarified! If you wanted me to think of your home – in Wall – you should have said! What sort of rescue plan, anyway, was think of home? You thought of your silly Holiday house in Wall, and I thought of my home in the sky, and now we're trapped somewhere between the two!"

Nearly choking upon his own indignation, Tom gasped out, "A pair of madmen were going to murder your sister – and clearly meant business, being as the sorry devils killed their own servant before our very eyes to boot – and you wanted more specific instructions? What the deuce was I expected to do? Draw you a bloody diagram? Would you have preferred it in writing, perhaps?"

"She cannot have known," groaned Edmund, from his place.

Tom's eyes narrowed and he stared with impatience over Susan's shoulder. "Edmund, do shut up about Miss Crawford before I rip off the sleeve of my greatcoat and gag you with it."

Fanny flared silver and sort of moved herself so she was protectively between Edmund and Tom, just behind Susan. It was one thing for she herself to resent hearing Edmund bemoan Mary Crawford's character, but she wouldn't tolerate it from anybody else. "Do not talk to him in that manner."

"He's my brother – I shall talk to him as I jolly well please."

A few minutes' discussion, once Edmund could be made to respond, confirmed the misplacement of them all in the clouds was not entirely Susan or Tom's fault; no one else had thought of the intended location, either. Tom had thought of Wall; Edmund of Mansfield Park (then briefly of Thornton Lacey, because it would be his home soon enough); Fanny had thought not of any home she had, but of the kind of home she wanted, a pretty house surrounded by flowers, concealed by a sweet avenue of well-tended trees, where she would be safe; and Susan, of course, of the sky she'd fallen from.

"It is," Fanny marvelled, once they had all had it out, "a great miracle we were not torn apart – bits of us scattered everywhere we thought of."

Covering her face with her hands, Susan moaned, "I hate you – I hate you both so, so much. I shall never cease loathing you both. Never!"

"For what?" snapped Tom, gathering – as a sensible person would – she meant him and Edmund rather than Fanny, who as her sister was exempt from any such venom. "Saving your life?"

"Yes!" she cried. "D'you not understand? Now I am responsible for you – as you have made yourself responsible for me – by the laws of our people in the sky; where you and Edmund go, Fanny and I must go."

Fanny did not regret this. She felt she hadn't any real reason to. She only gave a shrug. "We were already doing that."

"But now I cannot run away!" she wailed. "Before there was a chance."

Tom pointed out she could hardly have run off the edge of a cloud, unless she believed she would survive another fall to earth as bad as the first one. With a sigh, he drew the amber cross from his pocket. He was thinking, perhaps, it could take them all back to earth one final time if he got everyone to envision the correct location on this go. But its lack of sparkle startled him. "It is so dull. Why-ever is that?"

"Of course it is dull!" Susan huffed – she was beginning to cry, her nose had gone very, very red. "You have already used it too many times, and for two many people – there is barely one use left."

Tom coloured. "Well, let us make the best of it, then."

"It will never," said Fanny, quietly, her voice mournful, "carry four people. Not again."

"How many could the cross reasonably transport?" Tom swallowed and tried to look stoic.

"Two, with a bit of luck," Susan told him.

He held it to her. "You must take it, lucky star, for yourself and Fanny."

Edmund nodded his consent. He thought he deserved this fate, and being trapped on a cloud for the rest of his life until he – probably – starved to death, seemed not half so bad as having to face up to Mary Crawford's not being the shining person he'd believed her to be.

Stubborn, Fanny shook her head; her arms were folded tightly across her chest now, holding the flimsy torn halves of her nightgown more or less in place.

"You must take it, Fanny," Edmund insisted. "It is yours by right, and we have trifled unfairly with you and your sister."

Susan wiped her dripping nose on the sleeve of her dressing-gown. "Did you ninnies not hear what I said about being responsible for you?" She would have stomped her foot, if she only could have been certain it wouldn't simply go right through the cloud. "We can't leave you here to die after you saved our lives."

Grimacing, Tom slipped the cross back into his pocket.

"I fear we are all getting rather overexcited. Let us," said Edmund, "review the facts, nice and calmly, shall we?"

"Admiral Crawford's a murderer – Henry Crawford's a murderer – Maddison's dead, Rushworth's probably dead, too – and we're trapped on a cloud," came out of Tom in a slurred rush.

"Right." His younger brother could not help but roll his eyes. "Anything we're forgetting?"

Fanny peeked over the cloud's edge. "What do clouds do, after a while?"

"I don't know," mused Tom, as if it were a riddle. "What?"

She gulped, closing her eyes and taking in a long, long breath. "They dissipate – they vanish."

Without filter, Tom gave his colourfully worded, oath-laden opinion of this indisputable fact.

"Tom!" cried Edmund, visibly scandalised and motioning to the women. "Think of the ladies!"

"Sorry," he muttered, though he did not sound it.

The sailors aboard the good sky-ship Perdita were dragging in their nets.

Haul, cried they – haul, haul, haul!

And in the first net to reach the deck was a light-eyed, blonde girl with a dull kind of silvery shimmer about her person.

If the Perdita had been on the sea, rather than a sky-ship, and if they had been fishing, rather than testing the clouds for debris and impurities before the next major storm hit (for they were on a lighting hunting expedition), the men would have thought she was a mermaid – or perhaps, more likely, a selkie, on account of the shedding garments (the weak, torn nightgown set to fall off her might have been a magical seal-coat of sorts, taken in bad lighting) and the fact she hadn't any tail.

Then up came her three companions, in the other nets, and the decided course of action was not to marvel, not to wonder, but to lock them all in the brig until the captain – or the captain's wife, if he were continuously indisposed and she was at hand in his place, as he trusted her implicitly and so did the crew on his behalf – could see them and conclude whether they were dangerous or not.

Fanny and Susan were not too frightened of the sailors; some of the stars they'd known in the sky were a little like them, they did not have unkind faces, but Edmund and Tom were rather terrified as they were dragged off – they had been told, had read in their nursery and at Eton alike, far too many tales of cutthroat pirates as children.

And when you couldn't even trust seeming gentlemen like the Crawfords were supposed to be, how could you be sure of a group of rough sailors who spoke with raspy voices and pulled and grabbed and shoved?

The navy was a noble profession, certainly, but this wasn't England; the rules here, in Faerie, must be very different.

Tom, wishing he still had his pocket pistol, was particularly afraid for the virtue of the stars if these were indeed pirates, and – rather at a loss for anything else to do – actually claimed, blurting this lie in the split second it seemed they were going to be separated from them, Fanny and Susan were their fiancées.

This wouldn't prevent the sailors harming the ladies if they were really set on it, but it might – if they had a shred of decency – slow them down a moment or two.

The end result of this, rather to all of their great surprise, was Fanny – assumed as the elder girl to be Tom's betrothed – was put in a holding with the elder Bertram brother, while Susan was thrown in with Edmund, rather than the girls being entirely separated from them.

Their portions of the brig were right next to each other, and all four could still converse quite easily through the iron grating. There was an awkward moment of silence as they all looked between themselves and sank to their knees, panting.

Tom broke it by saying, "I say we ought to look on the bright side – at least we aren't stranded on that dashed cloud any longer."

"They – these men – cannot be all so very bad," mused Fanny, who never thought they were to begin with. "They tried to be kind – the way they put us in here together. We have not been harmed."

Edmund shivered and, sliding onto his bottom, pulled his knees to his chest. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, sniffed, then asked Tom to give Fanny his greatcoat; he hadn't liked the way the men were staring at her torn nightgown, even if they hadn't done anything inappropriate.

The last thing he wanted was the captain to come down to take his look at them all – and if he was in any way disreputable – start leering at her.

Although Tom instantly complied, thinking much along the same line of thought as his brother, he did have some notable difficulty dragging the heavy damp sleeves off of his tired, swollen arms. He'd also taken something of a knocking against the hull of the ship when the nets first were lowered and caught them up, leaving him with a number of bruises along the arms and legs the others were mostly spared.

Fanny accepted the coat gratefully, declining to tell them it only made her colder – being rather soaked through from cloud perspiration – and she already felt a slight ache in her chest and head, signalling a proper chill might not be too far off.

How strange it felt, she thought, to be able to reach into the pocket and touch William's cross, yet be unable to use it. Already it might be nothing more than a sentimental keepsake. Of course, she and Susan – now they had been rescued and things could potentially be going back on track – might use it to return home after Edmund and Tom were returned to Wall and one of them was presented to Mary Crawford.

But...

But it broke her heart to think – even now – Edmund still wanted to marry her.

She had balked at Tom telling his brother to shut up, however, she felt like a hypocrite because ever since she'd heard Edmund muttering about Miss Crawford not possibly knowing what the Admiral and Henry were really like, she had been thinking – in a passionate inner voice no one used to her gentle demeanour could ever suspect her of having – over and over again, "Finish it, then! Finish it at once! Let me be presented to her – marry her – and let us have an end to this suspense! Fix, commit, condemn yourself! I shall never stop you –I shall never."

But her resentment, even at its most intense, had a way of never lasting very long – it turned, it softened, rapidly, into sorrow.

Still, if there was any chance – any reason to hope – he would change his mind, or even if there wasn't, she was growing that much less certain she wanted to go home; neither, though, did she want to be Mary Crawford's best friend.

No more than she wanted to be her wedding – or rather engagement – present from Edmund.

Susan observed Tom from her side of the grating for a few moments before sticking her fingers through and curling them about, resting her head against the cold iron – a strange thing, she thought, to have onboard a Faerie ship; iron.

Aloud, she said, "I feel, Mr. Bertram, I must apologise – I'm sorry, truly – for being so nasty to you, out there on the cloud, about saving our lives. I don't hate you – or your brother. And it was brave of you, what you did." He might, after all, have ended up like poor Maddison with his head chopped off via a sharp crystal cleaver, and yet he hadn't hesitated to rescue them. "Whatever happens now. Thank you."

Tom smiled – eyes lighting up in a friendly manner, pleased by the seeming conclusion to her former animosity – and told her not to mention it.

"Truce?" she whispered.

He locked his little finger through the grate alongside hers, hooking it as best he could, and giving it a little shake. "Truce."

There came, then, the thudding sound of boots descending.

Susan gave a sharp intake of breath and pulled away from the grating; Tom straightened and positioned himself protectively in front of Fanny. Edmund attempted, shakily, to rise to his feet, one arm reaching back to nudge Susan behind himself.

The captain – a well-looking man who was certainly something and thirty – appeared before them, followed by a small, handsome woman – only slightly younger than her husband, but taller than Mary Crawford and of a near height with Henry Crawford, despite her dainty portions – with wispy curls loosened from an otherwise very severe, raked-back hairstyle.

"Oh," she said very softly, her gentle eyes landing on Fanny and Susan. "Two of them are only girls yet. They don't look like lightning marshals or flying criminals, or even magicians, to me."

The captain nodded. "It appears we have simply caught some lost gentry – assisted them unwittingly – though heaven can only suppose how they came to be on that cloud."

"You'd never believe us if we told you, sir," laughed Tom, slouching forward in relief.

"I'm afraid, gentlemen" – and he doffed his hat – "regardless of my inclination to believe or not, this is still the part where you must tell me who you are and why you're up here."

Clearing his throat, Edmund introduced himself and told an abbreviated version of his story – he did not mention Wall by name, only that he was from an English town within sight of Faerie, which gave it away regardless, making it something of an unnecessary exemption from the narrative – detailing his great overwhelming love for Mary Crawford – more than a few eyes in the with him brig rolled involuntarily; Susan audibly groaned – his faithful promise to her, and the frightening, murderous behaviour of her relations.

It is noteworthy that – in light of how the Crawford men had reacted to the notion of a star's heart, and realising it might have a high monetary value, even to those who did not wish to eat it themselves – Edmund also pointedly – and inelegantly, unused to fabrication or even near-fabrication – glossed over most mention of what Susan and Fanny actually were.

He described a 'fallen object' he had seen with Miss Crawford and promised to retrieve for her, and an unwarranted attack on one of the young women he'd found and taken – here he coloured – captive for reasons he could not fully explain to them at this moment, and the magic cross, as best as well as as vaguely as he could.

Poor Edmund – the attempt was valiant, but it was also needless.

No sooner had he completed his account than the captain – with companionable slyness – glanced at Susan and Fanny and said, "In future, to avoid detection – if they wish to pass for something other than what they truly are, for their own safety – I would strongly advise your lady friends, Mr. Bertram, to pretend to eat something now and again – and to try not to glow when something amuses them."

Fanny blanched. There was something in the face of the captain's wife, something about her countenance, she liked very much, but the captain himself frightened her – all the more so after this last pronouncement of his.

What if, like Admiral Crawford, he wished to eat her heart and remain young – if not forever, then certainly beyond his natural time?

"You have nothing to fear from us, or from the crew," said the captain's wife. "But, as you have already learned, there are others who would harm you. We are, I am more than a little ashamed to say, acquainted with your Admiral Crawford – though we've seen the nephew only once, when dining, and from a distance."

"Might I inquire as to the names," asked Tom, "of our new friends and confidants?"

"Captain Wentworth – and my wife, Mrs. Anne Wentworth."

Tom beamed, sticking his hand through the grating to shake the captain's hand and giving Mrs. Wentworth a friendly wink. "A pleasure."

"Come, let us get you all out there," was Anne's next remark. "The boys will want to eat, and the girls need clean, whole clothing – they might borrow what they like from my dresses; we are almost of the same height."

"But I'm all right," blurted Susan; "it was only Fanny's nightgown they tore open."

Anne Wentworth blushed. "I do not like to contradict a friend, but you are wearing a dressing-gown."

Susan glanced down, realised this was a fact, and – blushing brilliantly herself – demurely consented to go with her sister and the captain's wife to seek out a change of garment.

While her new friends changed into clean, unripped, dry clothing in the captain's cabin she shared with her husband, Anne stood outside the door, both to be certain no one wandered in by mistake and humiliated the poor girls any further, and also to have a private word with Frederick when he approached.

She bowed her head close to his and whispered anxiously, shaking it and regarding any crew members who might be edging too close from the corner of her eye. This was not a conversation she wanted spread among the men, trustworthy though they generally were and as deep a familial love as she often felt towards them.

"So, you do think it's possible Edmund Bertram's Miss Crawford is the same Miss Crawford presently engaged to your cousin William Elliot." There was a tension in Frederick's jaw, one he never fully rid himself of – a kind of memory of jealousy even if jealousy itself did not exist there any longer – when speaking of Mr. Elliot. "There has not been some mistake?"

"It's more than possible, I fear. I pity the boy for being so ill-used," she said, folding her arms, as if against a slight chill, "to be sure, but I do not see how it could be another Miss Crawford – he has told us she was the niece of Admiral Crawford; that she is Henry's sister. And the only other sister Henry has is Mrs. Grant in Wall."

Frederick considered this with a sympathetic expression of gravity. "If we are able to get Edmund to wall, with Fanny, and he presents the star to her – d'you think she will jilt Mr. Elliot in favour of Mr. Bertram?"

"It is difficult to say – that she would have wanted some protection for Edmund Bertram, that he would be the one she'd tell her brother of before my cousin, speaks for her preference, and yet... I have known enough of the position of baronets and their relations to know when a title is coveted. I would not be at all surprised if Mary's greatest wish – beyond having a handsome lover bring her a star – is not to be called Lady with reverence. Lady Elliot, Lady Bertram, it can hardly matter to her which one – but could she sink herself under a Mrs. and still call herself happy?"

"Then Tom Bertram is in more danger in Faerie than Edmund, I should think," concluded Frederick grimly, his expression drawn in. "There are those here – although luckily not aboard this ship, by God – who would – if they knew it would please Miss Crawford – remove Tom from the picture entirely so Mary could have her own way. He is, unwitting, in as much danger – nearly – as either of the stars."

Anne let her hands drop to her sides. "How dreadful for them – one could wish they'd never mixed themselves with the Crawfords to begin with."

"Ought they be told, d'you suppose, Anne?"

"No," she said; "not as yet."

"But – as we can't sail this ship straight to Wall and drop them off at the gap – how can they protect themselves on the rest of the journey if we don't tell them? And Edmund shouldn't be doing this without knowing the risk he is taking. Not simply for himself, but for his brother." Here he paused, a little lost with a mind clearly veering off the main topic. "He might consider a better future for himself – a more amiable future – without Miss Crawford. A future where he is not miserable. What I propose is telling the eldest star what we know – they seem fond enough of each other she could warn him when she felt the time was right."

"Oh, Frederick!" exclaimed Anne, taking his hand and threading her fingers through his. "No. The burden would be much too great for her – have you not seen how she looks at him?" It was not dissimilar to how she used to look at Frederick, back when she had believed she had no reason to hope for his love, before he declared himself to be in 'half agony, half hope' with the most beautiful letter ever written. "We – I – cannot be so cruel to my friend."

Very probably, he had to admit, she was right; he had been thinking, perhaps because of the star's name and her serious face, she was a strong, resourceful little thing like the late Fanny Harville who had once been engaged to his friend Benwick. And she might be. But he had not considered, properly, her sensitivities; the pain such a commission would inflict upon her.

Seeing the sense in his wife's line of thinking, now she explained it, Wentworth squeezed her hand gently. He gave a sigh. "Those poor young men."

A/N: reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.