Snowbear
A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction
Chapter Twenty-Six:
Aghast, Fanny could only stare – half blank, half resentful – at Mr. Crawford as he shifted in the carriage seat and related his fears to her.
William had told him all – or nearly all – regarding Tom's curse; most of what Fanny had relayed to her brother had been passed on, haltingly and in parts, during walks, to his friend.
"Oh, William!" cried Fanny, to herself – though the soft ejaculation was not entirely under her breath – rather than to Mr. Crawford. "William, William; how could – how could – how could you do it?"
"I implore you, Miss Pr–" He caught himself, quickly amending the error. "I implore you, Mrs. Bertram, not to be cross with your brother – he loves you dearly and holds your confidence as his highest priority. He let some little detail quite slip, mere human error – and I, as a friend concerned for you both, pressed him – most relentlessly, for I would not accept his shakes of the head, although I knew full well I should have shaken my own head just so if someone asked me to divulge some secret of Mary's – into telling me the rest.
"I had such a time of it convincing him it would be no evil to relate the true history of your marriage to me. So, you see, you mustn't blame him."
She didn't blame him – not her William, not really, not ever.
If Mr. Crawford could think, even for a moment, she did blame him, he knew her not; he could claim friendship all he liked, until his breath was run out, but it was perfectly apparent the Mrs. Bertram he spoke so to was a creature of his imagination's conjuring rather than the real woman before him.
These Crawfords were so determined – they should always have their own way, even when it came to the personal histories of others which could not concern them.
Henry evidently supposed the expression of betrayal upon her face was for her brother, not for himself, and he went on, "I had fancied you the slave and possible dupe and – perhaps – the plaything of the Bertram family; I knew you must be subjected to the worst of their whims more than ever in marrying Tom Bertram as you did. I did not realise – how should I have ever guessed it? – how bravely you behaved! If I had understood, my offer might have been–" He broke off, then tried again, "That is, it was bad, very bad of me, against a creature so good and pure and generous and selfless as you. I knew you were all those things then, of course, only not to the extent I know it now, but I–"
"Mr. Crawford!" She coloured, and in a softer voice, added, "Forgive me, sir, but I have missed your point in saying all this to me."
"Have you? Nay, forgive me, then – I shall start afresh." He brought his clenched hand to his mouth, then coughed to clear his throat. "Hem, hem. I knew the husband you accepted was a beast – I told you my opinion of him when he twisted back my arm–"
"Why, Mr. Crawford, for shame," she cut in, surprised at the fervency of her own admonishment, in such a time as this, even as she said it – she wondered how she dared. "How minutely you recollect what ought to have ceased to be important to you years ago!"
"I mean you no disrespect when I say – only between ourselves, of course – it can never cease to be important to me!"
She turned her head. "I think you must go – you clearly have nothing to say, after all, or have forgotten, in your rhapsodising, whatever it was you meant to tell me – and it has been more than five minutes – I have the watch Sir Thomas gave me and it–"
"I cannot – in such state as I am in, caught up in so much fear as well as admiration for you – be dictated to by a watch – even one belonging to your uncle." A pause. "Or ought I call him your father now? As your father, though, he might have protected you more."
"I may yet scream and call Wilcox to my rescue if you cannot speak sensibly," she warned. "And as for your gift – this little tinderbox – I thank you for your kind thoughts towards me, but I haven't need of it and think you had better give it to another who does."
"No need?" he breathed, leaning forward. "But you have more need than any other being on earth!"
Fanny's back was ramrod straight in her seat. "I do not understand."
"It is true, is it not, you haven't yet beheld the face of Mr. Bertram since his return from Antigua?"
She admitted it was true but murmured also she could not see how it should matter to Mr. Crawford, nor why it should induce him to present her with a tinderbox.
"To sleep beside a man – unseen – for years!" he exclaimed by way of explanation. "It's monstrous."
"It is the only way to end his curse," said Fanny stoutly. "I trust him, Mr. Crawford."
"Trust him?" he repeated, shaking his head. "You trust a man who took your children from you?"
"Why, William, why? Oh, why?" whispered Fanny, quite the little Greek chorus, horrified he had told this as well. What wheedling art had Henry Crawford employed to extract it from him?
"Even if he means to do right by you, you cannot know what is going on beneath the surface, waiting to harm you – he is a slave to his curse."
Fanny plucked – gingerly, as though it were a hot coal – the tinderbox from her lap and held it out for him to take back. "Which is why I must never see him! Can't you see it's in my power to save him?"
"That is the folly of your sex, my dear Mrs. Bertram, you all believe yourselves capable of saving any man – whatever his troubles – and bringing him into – or back into – his better self; and while I do whole-heartedly believe that if one woman really is capable of saving an ordinary man and keeping herself in the process, it should be you after all – you and you alone are justified as no other woman is in your lofty thinking, for you are such a woman as most men think does not exist in the world – but Tom Bertram, being cursed, is no ordinary man."
"But I am near to ending his curse!"
"Near? How can you count yourself near? See reason. You are barely halfway through what your husband tells you is the allotted time – and it may be longer still, or may not even be the true way of ending his curse – for, imagine, just for a moment, if the real means of rescuing him – or even yourself, given your fates must be so unfairly bound together – was a thing he could not tell you?"
"But this–" The tinderbox fell from her hand, still outstretched, and landed on the carriage floor. Thunk. "What can this–?"
"The first thing you must do – by my counsel, as your friend – is get a good look at him. You must see what you're really dealing with. As you were fond, once, of reminding me, you are not Miss Price any longer, but Mrs. Bertram. What right has he – voluntarily or involuntarily – to keep you in the dark, as if you were yet only an indigent cousin? Knowledge is your right. You must be brave and take it up for yourself where it cannot be given."
Fanny wouldn't hear of such a thing – it was practically tantamount, in her mind, to blasphemy. She would never consider doing such a thing. Mr. Crawford might think it acceptable to betray the trust of one beloved or to go back upon his word, but she–
"If you won't do it for yourself," he urged, nonetheless, keeping his word to her otherwise, for – as the carriage was slowing on a narrower road – he was reaching to open the door and let himself out, "at least consider doing it for your children – the first three may be lost to you, but if you find yourself with child again, Mrs. Bertram, in the future, and still have not the courage to take matters into your own hands, even so far only as to see what their father looks like, well, their fate..." He trailed off, nodded gravely, and – the door opened now – leaped free from the carriage as she reached to close the door behind him so that it was not torn free from its hinges.
Alone, eyeing the menacing shape of the tinderbox on the floor and thinking of Betsey's candle, Fanny shivered violently.
That last had gotten to her.
Tom had had a deliberate hand in removing the twins from Mansfield, and she did not know what happened to her son. Might she have somehow prevented it with more mettle and knowledge? Should she, at the very least, have been scouring Mansfield's library for any books with passages – however short – on magic and curses? Was her passivity to blame?
It was unnervingly true she knew very, very little about Tom's curse.
Had not he himself told her it had many ugly tentacles? That the witch would not make evading it easy?
The worst thought was the idea – which Henry Crawford had placed firmly into her head, when she longed so to dislodge and then dismiss it – her mere obedience to Tom, her wifely submission to him in never looking at his face, never trying to see his face against his will, being with him every night in the dark, held much of the blame.
Ought she have been behaving differently?
If she was not scholarly enough, when it came to matters of black magic, to discover his curse on paper, her resources insufficient to that end even if she were so inclined, should she have been taking practical measures, sizing up the situation?
Who would know if she did look at him as he slept and tried to figure out a thing or two?
In the past, it had mattered little enough to Fanny what the answer there might be – after all, she would know, and God, too, and her conscience should never acquit her of the testimony from those witnesses; that was quite enough.
Moreover, Tom told her, if she looked at his face, his curse could not be broken.
Would she make a liar of her husband and go her own way, hoping to be proven right against her own better judgement?
But her children...
Even so, it would be folly – pure folly – to take Mr. Crawford's advice, when she knew perfectly well he could do nothing without a mix of evil; his habits would never permit him to behave otherwise.
She was in pure agony, the sort of indecision the very existence of was enough to make her ill, warring with her conscience and her principles and her morals.
After almost eight hours, the sun having long set, Fanny was puzzled by the carriage halting in front of a rather fashionable inn and Wilcox opening the door for her as if she were to get out and stay in this fine place.
She'd vaguely expected a stop, for the sake of the horses, but not in the heart of town, in a place like this, and her eyes searched the coachman's face for some sign of there being a mistake.
"Orders, ma'am," he said, hefting her trunk off the carriage roof with an effort and handing it to a man who had come out to fetch it. "Mr. Bertram said you were to be left here tonight. There's been a room arranged for you, I believe, if you'll just follow the fine fellow as has got your luggage."
Fanny nodded sleepy assent; she was half convinced she had fallen asleep and was dreaming, stumbling with numb feet and sore calves and too-long skirts behind the indicated man, nonetheless.
She would be glad of a soft bed, strange and unexpected place or not, and she gawked a little at the splendour of the lobby, marvelling the innkeeper seemed to know who she must be and was offering her all manner of things she herself had not thought of.
The usual dinner-hour was over with, but they should be delighted to bring a late supper up to her room, and wine.
Did she wish for water to be carried up for her bath?
Was she partial to sweets? They had a lovely assortment.
When Fanny found her voice, she managed to stammer what she hoped was an acceptance of the supper, a rejection of the sweets, and a request that – in lieu of the bother of a full bathtub – she should like a basin and ewer to wash her hair.
She thought they must have very good fires here and she should be very comfortable, sleepy and longing for bed though she already was, spreading it out to dry on a rug by the hearth for a bit.
The wine brought to her room was French claret, not her always preferred Madeira, but Fanny found a few swallows of it with her meal a very pleasant thing and even had a second glass afterwards, albeit heavily watered-down.
Unfastening the amber cross and chain, setting them down on the table with the ewer, she changed into her nightdress. She tried very hard not to look at the candle and tinderbox – both nestled amongst her things since they'd been brought up – as she rummaged through her trunk to find a suitable towel for keeping her wet hair, once she had washed it, from dripping onto her shoulders and soaking her entire front.
As she'd planned, she sprawled, comfortable as a house cat, before the hearth with her damp hair facing the fire. She was so wearied from travel and from fretting over what Betsey and Mr. Crawford had both urged her to do, and the fire was so gentle in its crackling, she was soon fast asleep, quite against her will.
And starting awake – at half past three, nearly four, in the morning, the fire far less cheerful, a smattering of weak embers in grey ash needing to be stoked and resupplied with fresh kindling – all but sprang out of her own skin upon hearing the door-latch lift and observing a man's entering unannounced.
For a dreadful moment, she feared it was Mr. Crawford, feared he had somehow followed her here and not abandoned her when he leaped out of the carriage, but she felt her breathing relax, at least a little, as she realised the figure was too tall for him.
"Fanny, who's there," said a familiar voice, soft and teasing, confirming far a happier suspicion as the contour of none other than her husband came and crouched beside her place by the hearth.
"Tom!" She gasped and threw her arms around his neck. "I did not expect–"
"My initial plan was to contrive to be in the carriage when it arrived in Portsmouth and surprise you" – oh, she thought, pulling back, her mind set to swimming, how fortunate he had not – he might have met Mr. Crawford therein, and it would have been an ugly meeting between the two indeed! – "only the distance was too great. I couldn't risk turning into a bear inside the carriage while travelling; it would hardly contain me, once I was in that form, and I shuddered to imagine what our aunt Norris would say if I destroyed my mother's chaise during my transformation, all for the sake of seeing you a day earlier. London was a good deal more feasible – so I arranged this." His fingertips trailed along the sleeves of her nightdress and the gooseflesh rising on her arm. "Alas, we shall have only a couple of hours at most before I must be a bear again – you are to dress and rise early, starting back on your way to Mansfield, and I am to stay behind shut in here with orders for no one to enter until the evening."
Oh, no. If he pleased, she would rather remain shut up with him, even as a bear, and give them more time together – spare him going by public coach at night alone when he was a man again and have Wilcox take them both back the following night.
He had not himself thought to ask it of her, but he said, when she softly made the suggestion, it was capital of her, and she was the best girl alive to think up such a plan. Did she understand, however, he would not be sedated – he had no laudanum – and he might be of a more volatile temperament as a beast here than in Mansfield Wood?
"You're not afraid, mousy?" he asked, his tone a mix of delighted awe and careful caution.
"No," said she. "I am not afraid – you never frighten me any more."
He chucked her under the chin. "Don't I? Not even a little – not even in some trifling measure? It must be a good thing if I do not, I am sure, yet I think – if I touch you at the right moment, in the right place – you will still squeak." His fingertips trailed along her jawline, then down her throat towards her collarbone. "I hope I've not become incapable of inspiring my own little creepmouse to squeak." Of course, he could not see Fanny's colour rise in the dark, but he perceived the occurrence of her blushing – there are four other senses, apart from sight, after all – nonetheless.
It was as if they had been – in their more than two years of frigidity – only resting within a prolonged winter, and now it must be springtime come back to them at last.
They both felt a sort of thawing between them.
Tom felt a measure of guilt he had long been carrying, a guilt that kept him from her, drip mercifully away, for he could believe – in this moment – she loved him in spite of what he'd done, what he'd been driven to do, in spite of all they'd both lost; Fanny was both shy of and eager for him, as he seemed to be much more like the gentleman who had taken her apart at Bingley's ball, the gentleman who had written her such letters as she had received in Portsmouth, than he seemed anything at all akin to the unfriendly person she had shared a sitting room with after the twins were taken away.
She was led off to bed very voluntarily – there was no good to be got in wasting time.
"You're cold," Tom murmured, leaning over her once she had settled upon the mattress.
"No, indeed, I do not think I am – at least, not very – the fire simply died down a trifle while I was asleep and–" She broke off, interrupted into silence by a long kiss. "Ooh," she murmured as Tom pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers.
"I suppose it doesn't signify," he whispered. "If you are cold, I shall remedy it."
"I have missed you," she breathed.
"D'you know, there were times I missed you as well, mousy?"
"Which times were those?"
"Whenever I was occupied or unoccupied" – another kiss – "and whenever I was happy or unhappy." Kiss – breaking away. "Whenever it was either daytime or night. Whenever I was pleased, or I was displeased. Whenever I was breathing, or else holding my breath."
Fanny giggled, grasping one of his arms and squeezing it. "Only those times?"
"Yes, only those – during all the rest, I daresay, I never thought of you in the slightest. I was dreadfully remiss in thinking of you."
"Are you thinking of me now, Mr. Bertram?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, I am thinking of you – I'm thinking if you are not very kind to me, and very soon, I might die for want of satisfaction." He leaned against her, pressing in close. "Fortunately for me, you've always been the kindest person I know." A sick feeling lodged in Fanny's stomach, the knowledge, unshared by him, of the candle and tinderbox among her things making her feel as if she had already done him wrong. "Oh, do say you will be kind to me this hour, Fanny!"
She promised, all ardent affection and sweetness, her soft words and little sounds of pleasure which followed exactly the manner of reassurance he most desired, and she made haste – as she spoke and succumbed – to put away all miserable thoughts; she hadn't used the tinderbox and candle, and she never would.
It mattered not if they were in her trunk at present.
Tom's felicity was all-encompassing and lasting; he was soon asleep beside her, after they were finished, chattering contentedly in his dreams.
Here, though, was a state Fanny could not join him in.
She had been as happy as he was in the height of their passions, but, at its conclusion, she was drawn back down to earth while her husband remained, nestled beside her, with his head yet in the clouds.
Contented, unmarred clouds his were, holding no chance of rain, containing no speck of grey.
Only as she was lying there did it truly strike Fanny nothing whatever had been resolved – Tom was still cursed, his supposed deliverance (if such it really would be) years off.
The coming sunrise (she knew it must be very near by then) would affirm this more than ever with his unavoidable transformation into a bear.
She'd told the truth when she said she was unafraid to spend the day shut up with him. That prospect did not alarm her. It never did.
No, but she was afraid of something else – she was afraid, to the point of being utterly petrified with a thudding heart as she lay there wide-awake beside him, of their future together once they returned to Mansfield Park.
She did not think she could withstand the pain of another birth, preceded by a long stay in the cheerless guest room and followed by the subsequent removal of her child she'd struggled to bring into the world from the park.
But there was no assurance to be had, even, that the honest marital pleasure they'd just shared would not result in her coming to be with child again.
The candle and tinderbox seemed to beckon to Fanny from within her trunk.
This cycle of misery must end – she must find another way out of it before she suffered all over again, before Tom, too, was made to suffer and–
No.
No, of course it was nonsense – pure nonsense – from start to finish.
Tom had told her not to look at him, and she'd obeyed him thus far – she ought to be able to hold out for a little longer. What had been the point of agreeing to marry him if he was not saved from the curse and she, in going against the set terms of it, was following advice from the very gentleman marriage to Tom was meant to protect her from closer association with?
She'd not been in love when she'd wed, that had come after and had muddled a great many things.
Indeed, if they'd only managed not to fall in love with each other, as they had, no children would have been born, lost, or taken away.
The end of the matter was, they had fallen in love and so must deal, must cope, with the consequences without worsening their inevitable tribulation of the flesh.
Besides, it was not as if Fanny had never seen Tom.
She knew what her husband looked like.
Then came a dreadful moment as she tried to recall Tom's face as it had been before he left for Antigua and found little more than a Mr. Bertram shaped blur in her memory.
Memory was a thing Fanny had always taken pride in. No faculty in human nature was more wonderful. What was anything without memory?
She needed it – in her present weakness – to be retentive, serviceable, obedient, and – however much she pleaded with it to show her Tom's face, and thereby ease a little of her fretting – it refused to oblige.
Oh, wicked, tyrannical faculty! It would absolutely not bring his face into her mind, no matter how she strained to that end.
She recollected – or imagined she recollected – him perfectly from those bygone times – she had few enough memories from then to lose, for he'd been seldom at home, and when he was, he had sometimes been an object of apprehension rather than one of delight, depending upon his mood and other factors – only his face, in these recollections became anyone's face.
It might have been Edmund's face, or a younger Sir Thomas (Fanny had seen a portrait of her uncle, done when he was young, from which her mind could conjure up this image – it hung in one of the lesser-used hallways); except, Fanny knew, perfectly well, from colouring and from the memory of what she could not at present remember, Tom did not much resemble his father and brother.
She had told her sisters this and knew it to be a fact.
If only she could see his face in her mind, she should be made easy.
Looks did not signify, not in and of themselves, even if Tom had been the green-faced creature of Betsey's nightmares, Fanny wouldn't have loved him any less for it, but she was brought painfully low by the notion she might – for all she knew – have conceived a fourth child with a man whose countenance and facial manner, unshielded by a mask, she had only a faulty, useless memory of.
What about this Antiguan witch, anyway?
Fanny believed her powerful – and wicked – and a thing to be feared – her curse had taken their son away and had known, after all, when Tom tried to evade her punishment by use of the amber cross, but she did not believe her to be all-knowing; Tom's witch was not God.
She could not possibly have eyes everywhere.
What if, so long as Tom himself was not aware of a thing, the curse – and subsequently the witch – wasn't either?
Could it really be disastrous to simply light a candle and take a quick look, as long as Tom didn't know about it?
Even if it wasn't disastrous, even supposing her on the right line of thought here, was it wrong?
The morality of the thing mattered as much – if not more – to Fanny than the ins and outs – the dos and do nots – the cans and cannots – of the curse itself.
If she chose to look – only once, just a glimpse, enough so she would be able to weigh his present face against the blurred, unreachable image in her head – she must do so almost immediately.
They hadn't much time before he would be a bear again.
Afterwards, when she had far too much time to repent and no chance by then of undoing the evil, Fanny would wish she had prayed on the matter, or at the very least considered how Edmund might advise her, were he there with them, for she was certain his counsel would not have been anything like Mr. Crawford's.
For the first time, Fanny decided to act in what was – for her – rashness and haste.
She pulled back the covers and crept from the bed, halting in a panic as soon as her feet touched the floor, when she thought she heard Tom talking to her.
He was awake! He had known, somehow, she was about to do a foolish, foolish thing...
No, he wasn't – he was talking in his sleep. And not to her, either. He was only saying something about uneven ground for a horse race.
What was it about Tom that made Fanny – otherwise very steadfast – always give in at the very end of the line?
She had been determined not to be Cottager's wife, and yet she'd had her face done and was, as Tom had described his handiwork, a very proper, little old woman when Sir Thomas arrived; she'd given in, against her better judgement, albeit only at the very end.
There was no uncle's arrival this time to prevent her fall from grace, her sinning against her inward guide she had finally silenced; moreover, this time, Tom could not be blamed, at least not directly – not presently – for pressuring her, as he slept so peacefully and had been nothing but kind.
Even as she opened her trunk and lifted out the offending objects – candle and tinderbox, both grown strangely heavy – Fanny knew whatever she was about to do was of her own volition and she alone held the blame.
One look – one glance – to assure herself she knew, and trusted, the man in bed beside her.
This was her only wish, her only desire.
Her faulty memory must be cured, or she should never be at peace.
Another four years of this, without something to hold to beyond vague promises of the curse ending on its own when the time was up, so long as they did nothing to add to it – as days shut up in the guest room inevitably would – might well drive her to madness.
Oh, how her hands shook!
She almost couldn't light the candle for trembling.
When the wick was finally lit, and Fanny stood on weak, quivering legs, looking at the tiny flame atop the tallow candle, she felt as if she were in a dream and not yet awake. She thought the flame, if she dared touch it, mightn't even be really hot – not like a real candle's flame.
But as she cupped one of her hands around it, to shield the glow from falling unchecked and too soon on the sight she would see, she felt it giving off heat and roused a little.
Legs steadying, she approached the bed, walking towards Tom's side, hardly daring to believe she would see him.
If only he had chanced not to have turned at the wrong moment, if he had kept an arm – as he tossed in his sleep – slightly over his face; she might have regained her senses, seeing him so vulnerable, considered the mistake she'd been about to make, and blown the candle out.
If he had even kept his face turned away...
But when she lowered her hand and the candle's light fell upon him, she saw – she gazed down with wide eyes and parted lips at – her husband's unmasked face with perfect clarity.
Her first thought was, a little taken aback, mercy, he's so beautiful!
She remembered thinking him a good-looking gentleman before, though not why in great detail, but loving him, no longer looking at him through the eyes of a submissive child, seemed to heighten this natural handsomeness into something more than she was prepared for.
Her second thought was pure wonderment she should ever have been able to forget this face, for – minus the increased perception she had of his attractiveness – he was, most unnervingly, exactly as she remembered her teasing elder cousin.
She did remember him after all. What was it she'd thought she had forgotten?
She was already conscious of having looked, having stared as one stunned, for far too long – she was already feeling wildly guilty.
Even if she had got away with it, she could not acquit herself of the crime against him.
Not for the world would she have tried to wake him – he appeared so utterly vulnerable in his thin nightshirt, loosely opened at the throat! – yet she would indeed beg his pardon in whatever small way was left to her after this horrible act.
Remorseful, Fanny leaned over to kiss him lightly upon the brow.
She would never look again. She would never think of looking, or about this moment when she had betrayed him, ever, ever again. Whatever happened would happen and she would accept it with grace; she would be faithful and steadfast and obey every rule until–
Without realising what she did as she bent, failing to kiss his forehead and at the same time hold the tallow candle erect, hot droplets fell onto his exposed chest and onto the fabric of his nightshirt.
Tom released a single cry of "Ahhhhh!" Then, his eyes still closed, muttered, rather slurring his words, "T'devil's afoot? Wot'smatter w' this dratted place? What hot–?"
It might have been a little wiser (though it wouldn't have done any real good, as it was far too late for that already) of Fanny to blow out the candle right then, while Tom yet came to his senses.
It all would have come out, all the same, but she would have been spared a little – spared seeing his change of countenance, his look of wounded disappointment.
She was, however, too concerned to bother about the candle in her hand now – she'd quite forgotten it, apart from hastily righting it so no more scalding tallow could land upon her husband's chest, neck, or clothing – and could only gape guiltily in a position of suspended animation.
And so, Tom opened his eyes – slowly, confusedly – and gradually perceived her there, standing above him, in the candlelight.
For the briefest of moments, he felt relief; he did not realise what she had done.
No unknown attacker stood by his bed; there was no natural disaster; nothing hot dripping from the ceilings or the bed-hangings; only his own dear wife with a candle in her hand, the alarming spillage a simple accident.
He was very glad to see her before him, though she looked so inexplicably miserable.
Then, recalling in an ugly flash he was in bed without his mask, he understood.
Tom's initially gentle, pleased expression grew clouded by a look of betrayed fury. Even before he could speak, tears were coursing down Fanny's face and her quivering lips were trying to apologise.
"Fanny, what have you done?"
"I–" she choked out.
"Never mind, I can tell that for myself." He sat up, feeling icy cold despite the tallow burns on his person and the still-hot stain spreading across part of his nightshirt. "Why, for God's sake?"
Fanny sank to her knees. The motion made the candle splutter and go out on its own and a wisp of smoke rose from her place on the floor.
"Damn you!" he growled. "What were you thinking of? Did you want me to be cursed forever?"
Sniffing, she shook her head, and did not dare meet his eyes.
Out of patience, he flung himself off the side of the bed and grabbed her arm, dragging her back up onto her feet roughly enough to be almost cruel.
Then, when she could not even acknowledge the small pain he'd inflicted, too preoccupied with her crying, he gave her a firm shake until – apart from the odd hiccup – she was silent.
"You realise, of course," he snarled, twisting her arm, "everything between us is at an end. I suppose losing me matters very little to you, as I was never the husband you wanted."
Fanny found her voice. "N-no – oh, no," she stammered. "It isn't. Nothing is ended. I know I've done wrong, Tom, very wrong – I'm so very, very sorry – but I'll stand by you, as your wife, even if the curse can't ever be broken now. I will do anything to help you – to make it bearable."
He stared at her, incredulous.
"I shan't forsake you," she promised, looking into his face imploringly.
Sucking his teeth, he began dragging her – she was not, at first, certain where. "You already have."
"Tom," she began, and saw – beginning to feel sick – he was taking her over to a large old wardrobe in the corner of the room. "My – hic – things are not – hic – in there. I've left them all in my trunk." Unaware what his intention was, she imagined, perhaps a trifle naively, he meant to make her pack so they could leave – though she did not understand how they would leave, how they could go any place at all, when he was so near to his transformation into a bear.
Ignoring her puzzled protests, he unlatched and flung open the wardrobe door, then – before she could even think to fight him – lifted her as if she were no more encumbrance than a large doll – and placed her, none too delicately, inside.
She might have been eleven again, and he eighteen. This might have been the pantry at Mansfield, if one replaced the smell of garlic with that of camphor.
Crushing guilt aside, she was quite disinclined to be shut up in the dark – she was suddenly afraid of it; and of him, as well, truth be told.
She lurched forward to – she imagined – dart out past him and then – then, she wasn't sure what she'd do – and was repelled back by a single, hard shove.
In a pitiless, fluid motion, he closed the door and latched it shut with a horrible click.
"Mr. Bertram, please!" rasped Fanny, knocking her fists against the door until her knuckles were sore and she thought one might even have split and begun to bleed. "Let me out!"
It struck her, suddenly and intuitively, she was crying out for nobody – she'd the strong sense he had left the room, left her, and departed from the place entirely with her shut up and unable to follow him wherever he was going.
But, if he were a bear, would not anyone seeing him give chase? Wasn't he in danger?
He must be in terrible danger. She was so extremely frightened for him!
Was it daylight yet?
It was not so long, really, though it felt an age, before the innkeeper himself came into the room and let Fanny out of the wardrobe, colouring apologetically when he saw her in her nightdress, half off one shoulder and a little torn from being caught on the warped wood of the wardrobe.
Tom – even at his angriest – was nowhere near nasty enough to leave without making an amendment to the order nobody disturb this room until the following night; he would never have dreamed of leaving Fanny shut up without air or light or food or water for a full day.
But morning sunlight was indeed filling the room, making it look very different from last night, by the time she was let out, and she could not comprehend how Tom could be gadding about at large, giving orders to people, when–
She glanced at the table, at the place by the ewer she had set her chain and cross down upon last night – they were gone.
There was the answer to the mystery.
Tom must have taken them with him.
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