Snowbear
A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction
Chapter Seven:
"I lied," murmured Fanny, stuck upon the point. "Oh, heaven preserve me, I lied to my uncle twice." Once by omission, in not telling him about Tom, and now directly – telling him it was Pug underneath the table. It wasn't until she'd been calmed a little by Tom's assertion he did not mean to press Crawford's suit on her as his father had that her mind was clear enough to realise what she'd done and regret it. "I must be the most wicked–"
"For pity's sake, Fanny," snorted Tom, uninterested in helping her wrestle with her conscience on what he deemed such an insignificant matter. "Listen, if – at the end of our lives – the devil comes to take your soul to Hell for lying to my father, I shall tell him it was all my doing. There. That should ease your scruples – now, regarding my idea – the notion I've had..."
As Tom began speaking of his plans to resolve their mutual troubles, Fanny at first was only half attending to him – she was thinking, instead, of how little good it would do to blame Tom – either to her uncle or to a supernatural being such as the devil – for something she, coerced or not, had very willingly done. History showed such unbecoming behaviour never paid off – Adam might have tried to blame Eve for giving him the apple, and God for giving him Eve, but he'd been thrown out of Eden all the same...
Soon, though, he had her full attention – she could not help listening with her mouth agape, her still streaming eyes widened so far as they could stretch, for it was quite shocking.
A second offer of marriage, no more looked-for than the first!
She was certain she misunderstood him; surely, somehow or other, she must be missing his real meaning!
Alas, no, he was entirely in earnest.
"The crux of the matter is I need a wife – any wife," Tom explained, playing with his knuckles. "Without one I cannot end the curse under which I presently suffer. And my father wants me married off by Christmas; he has been rather put out with me since things began going wrong in Antigua and has lost his patience. You seem to be suffering the same affliction, in a way – my father wishes you to settle, to accept Mr. Crawford, and the idea doesn't appeal to you. I am right, thus far?"
"To be sure, Mr. Bertram, but I cannot–" began Fanny.
Tom held up his hand. "Allow me to finish. I'm certain you'll see it my way if you give it half a chance – look how I am placed! Alone, we're doomed to making ourselves unhappy. Together, we could outwit them all and live as we dashed well pleased, Fanny!"
"I do not understand you." Her white mouth quivered.
"If we are wed, and you live with me for seven years – that cannot inconvenience you in the least, as you're already here – I am free – and then perhaps I can see about doing something for you."
"Something for me?" Fanny echoed, feeling numb and tingly and vastly confused.
"Yes, little mouse, for you – Mansfield would always be your home by rights, as my wife, and as long as my mother lives, it might be wise to keep you near – I gather from observation she's rather attached to you for some reason or other and will need her daily companion – but, sad as it may be to contemplate, nobody's parents live forever, they're bound to pop off someday and leave me this house... Perhaps, when the sad event befalls us, you will be weary of my company, inclined to yearn for a change of scenery, and would wish to live discreetly with your brother William in well inlaid retirement – I could buy out a cottage someplace, make that happen for you." He smiled at her sudden change in expression, seeing the glittering lure had certainly caught her eye. "Do me this one favour, and I'll gladly give you anything you like. And, if you would rather live at Mansfield forever and always, you won't trouble me – you're quiet and the house is large. You shall do as you like. My gift to you." Coming forward, he took her hands in his and squeezed them companionably. "You would not find it unpleasant hanging upon my sleeve."
This, she did not take for gospel; Tom might gamble away his inheritance yet or run Mansfield into the ground if he never learned to be sensible or moderate – indeed she might find it very unpleasant depending upon her most unreliable cousin for financial stability.
However, even a mind as gentle and lacking in cunning as Fanny's could see a way around this – she was not used to spending much herself, and whatever small allowance might reasonably given her for clothes or books she could always set a small portion aside, a slowly growing nest egg for herself and William if she did, someday, wish to retire to a cottage with her favourite brother and never face household adversity or a feeling of ingratitude or not belonging again.
But to marry her eldest cousin for his money! To marry the brother of the man she did love, had loved for more than eight years and probably would always love, so she might avoid being urged to marry one she did not!
It was monstrous, unnatural, immoral.
"No." Her voice broke; she pulled her hands out of his. "Forgive me, cousin, pray forgive me – it is an honour to be asked – but you must excuse me, for I cannot." She was wretched, her face awash again with fresh tears. "Not even for dear William's sake."
"Fanny! But what about for my sake? Would you leave me cursed when it is in your power, by doing so very little, to rescue me?" He gestured at the mask. "I do suffer; surely you understand it is unpleasant for me and I should like a release from my troubles."
"Oh." She had not considered this part of the arrangement in full.
Imploring, pleading, "I need you."
Blanching bone-white, she began walking unsteadily – gait wobbling – towards the door.
"And, if I'm not mistaken, unless you've changed your mind and want Henry Crawford for your husband, you need me as well."
Her hand stilled in the air. "I have already refused him."
"I know my father," Tom reminded her. "He will give Crawford chance after chance of applying to you again, in hopes you will change your mind – and how long will you hold out if he persists? If, by chance, he convinces you he really loves you – bloody hell, for all I know he jolly well might! He could be perfectly sincere. He's certainly not fortune-hunting in coming after you. But, I think, in a case such as this, you would accept him only out of fear of making him unhappy... And he would expect you to love him in return when you do not even, by your own admission, like the man..."
There would be unavoidable expectations with Henry Crawford, it was true. Fanny knew of love between a man and a woman only from puzzling noises – noises made by her parents, emanating unnervingly from beyond the too-thin walls of her home in Portsmouth when she was very young – and from flowery obscure references, mere hints, in poetry, and yet she knew enough – she thought – to be sure she did not relish the idea of sharing that manner of love with Mr. Crawford.
She recollected his hands, loose and free and eager, on Maria during Lover's Vows, and envisioning those same hands on herself made her feel rather unwell.
To be sure, she didn't particularly want Tom touching her, either, but he seemed far less likely to expect anything of the sort than Henry undoubtedly would. Seeing as an annulment, even between a pair which had not consummated their marriage, would be a horrible embarrassment to the family, one which must not even be contemplated, a situation might in theory arise – should Edmund not have children to inherit Mansfield, for instance, and should the park be at risk of being handed over to another family – obliging Fanny to give Tom at least one child; it would not be desirable, but it mightn't be for years, if ever, and other than in the case of such an emergency they should be allowed to live practically as brother and sister.
She would have no fear from that corner for a long, long time yet.
Mr. Crawford, on the other hand, would – understandably – expect all his rights as a husband from the first night after the wedding onward and Fanny would, legally and morally, be obligated to endure it and give him his due.
And she could not even count upon his faithfulness to her!
Even if he were sincere, if he really loved her now, she could not – certainly did not – expect his sort of loving to last long. Regardless of if he were a particularly desirable husband, Fanny still had no inclination to share him with other women if he was supposed to be hers. She had heard sometime ago a disturbing rumour her uncle kept a mistress, a common-law wife, in Antigua, one she privately believed might really have been circulated, perhaps without intentional malice, by the Grants and Crawfords – though she hadn't proof and did not dare accuse – yet she could never believe it; she liked only to think him faithful to her aunt, could not stand to think otherwise.
She didn't think Tom would humiliate her by having a mistress.
Tom wasn't the sort who managed such double living. He was a bit funny when it came to women. He sometimes talked a little like a philander, made unpalatable comments when it came to the pursuit of the opposite sex when he thought none of them to be in earshot, but while you got the impression a man like Crawford had the goal of conquest, you couldn't quite take that away from Tom's more awkward inflections – he sounded more like he thought, under it all, he was discussing playmates, or horses; there was a strange half innocence to his manners.
Fanny couldn't have known she was, rather remarkably, the first woman Henry believed he could confide in – save for Mary – and was looking at her with a view to her mind as well as anything else; she had only the example of him with other women, with Julia and Maria especially, to take into consideration.
Further, it worked both ways, and Fanny did not have much hope of being able to confide in him.
Tom was not Edmund, but he was far easier to speak to than a man whose mind she thought too corrupted to be worth attempting to reason with. He was also the evil she knew. Tom – even though he was often absent from Mansfield – had been popping in and out of her life since she'd come here as a little girl; he was familiar to her. His passive gestures of good will to her, too, were less overwhelming than Henry's method of doing rather too much and expecting her to adore him for it.
And think of Tom's curse! She might not know the particulars, not know what it was exactly she was expected to save him from, but if he was having such troubles gaining a wife, he might yet be left suffering – both under its thrall and under the angry words of his father – for a long while.
Or he might eventually yield for the sake of peace and marry someone he found abhorrent.
And if he did marry Lady Ravenshaw's niece, and Mary stopped refusing Edmund on the grounds of his career and saw sense and had him, she should find herself by and by, as her uncle pointed to the other married couples and how they were fulfilling their duties, thinking she ought to be glad to accept Mr. Crawford...
Never, never did she wish to think such a thought! To allow him to succeed with her as if her no were really only a veiled yes all along!
To be made to go away with Mr. Crawford, to live in Norfolk, too!
Who did she know in Norfolk? No one at all, save the Crawfords themselves.
She should be entirely subjected to their whims and mercies as the backwards siblings willed them.
Henry evidently oversaw a handful of mills in the north, and – given how little he seemed to be up there doing anything about them, much more inclined to lounge in the countryside with his sister and flirt with already engaged women as his amusement – was not very constant at it.
There might well be those who, turning their minds to fashionable abolition (this was not the same thing as truly believing in good, reasonable abolition and restored freedoms), might well scoff at the Bertrams for eating off the back of slaves, for living the lives they lived while unpaid men and women worked their land in Antigua for the sake of sugar and tobacco, but a neglectful overseer of a mill was twice as bad, in Fanny's eyes, for surely his proximity gave him far more ample time to do something about the wrongs performed under his hands and society (without thought to what was the fashion) gave him more leave to make amends as he should see fit.
Already she found it difficult to respect Henry Crawford, even during those rare moments when she disliked him a little less than at the first. If she should have to see him as a tyrant in another county as well as a much too convincing actor in this one...
Well!
How could she ever live with such a man?
"My father will have his own way," Tom pressed, seeing her face twisting with consternation and lunging in with a final blow. "It would not surprise me if he sent you away to make his point, and I can see only one means of our preventing it."
"Away?" Fanny blinked rapidly. "Away where?"
He shrugged. "He dragged me all the way to bloody Antigua when I displeased him, before any of this rummy curse business even started, there is no telling with you, now is there? He might send you back to Portsmouth, or he might send you half a world away."
She was frozen, bewildered. Surely not... Surely.
"Oh," he burst out, then, "do say yes, Fanny! Do! Think how merry we will be together! D'you know, I'm starting to suppose I might not be romantic after all, though I've often thought I'd like to be, because the more I dwell upon it, the more I believe I could be happy all my life here if we made each other comfortable, if we understood one another. Bother all the inconvenience of these corky love matches! Falling in love hasn't made Edmund very happy – I daresay he went off towards Peterborough Friday-faced when Miss Crawford rebuffed him for the thousandth time since she first learned he meant to join the church."
Fanny's hand, shaking all the while where it had hovered, finally fell heavy as a stone to her side; she was defeated. "You're right, cousin, I daresay he did go off very unhappy. Very unhappy indeed." And she could never dream of making him happy again, for he loved another and looked upon her as a sister, and Tom would take care of her – in his way, as well as he was able – and keep her as a steadier fixture in a home from which a displeased uncle could not as easily banish her... "If you truly believe me capable of ending your misery, then yes, I will marry you."
How strange to think she had resisted with rather more fervency, more resolve, against being his wife on the stage than she had, at this last, when faced with a real offer to bind herself to him as a true wife – how long ago Lover's Vows suddenly seemed!
But Tom, for his part, was elated in his relief.
He strode over to her, gripped her arms, and kissed her on the cheek. She felt the cold press of the edge of his silver mask against her face as he pulled back, the corners of his mouth turning upward; even with so much of his face covered, she could tell he was fairly beaming.
"We will be the better for having reached our little agreement; I feel positive we shall!" he crowed, putting an arm around her and reaching for the doorhandle himself. "Good old Fanny, you never disappoint! I am much obliged to you for being so sporting. Now come" – sliding his hand downward, he pressed on the middle of her back, guiding her through the door as he flung it open – "and let us have our fun telling my father all about it – and shan't he be surprised! I can hardly keep from laughing myself!"
Our fun? Laughing? Is Tom gone mad? Fanny thought dismally, wondering if she'd just made a dreadful mistake, in spite of herself, and had perhaps unwittingly agreed to marry a near lunatic, cousin and friend or otherwise, in order to break a curse and escape Mr. Crawford.
"Sir?" called Tom, running down the stairs and half-dragging a still weary from weeping Fanny behind him by the wrist as he aimed for the study. "Father, are you in here yet? There's news afoot! I am returned home, and it gets better – I'm engaged!"
"My dear Sir Thomas," Mrs. Norris cooed, sitting across from his desk as he sat with his head in his hands, "you mustn't blame yourself."
"Indeed, Mrs. Norris, I do not blame myself." He lowered one hand and gave her a severe look through bloodshot, exhausted eyes. "I blame you."
"Me?" She could not have been more astonished if Sir Thomas had suddenly brandished a pistol and waved it at her face threateningly. "Me? To be sure, I must have misunderstood you! How can you put the blame upon...upon...me?"
"You promised me, or very near, when you first suggested having Fanny brought here, neither of my sons would marry her if she were brought up among them – not if she had the beauty of an angel, you assured me."
"My dear Sir Thomas–"
"Then," he said sharply, "when you ought to have taken the child yourself, to put some distance and distinction between her and them, you pleaded that Mr. Norris could not abide the noise of children – as if Fanny ever spoke above a whisper at that age! – because of his gout! His gout, of all things! And like a fool, trusting you, I let her stay on in this house."
"My dear Sir Thomas–"
"Mrs. Norris, do stop that insipid simpering." The sudden levelness of his tone was a good deal more frightening, even to a woman so hardy as she was, than if he'd shouted at the top of his voice to interrupt her. "I am not your dear."
"Fanny has, undoubtedly, overstepped in putting herself forward," stammered Mrs. Norris, her chin set to quivering. "It was not for lack of my reminders of her place here, I can attest to that most emphatically. Yet... Well, you see, all needn't be counted as lost. Fanny is most wilful and does not like to dictated to; her spirit of secrecy and independence and nonsense is surely her largest fault of character, as I have always observed and advised her to get the better of, but I remain quite sure if you were to give me an hour with her, to remind her again what she owes you – what she owes us all – she would be persuaded out of this silly notion she's taken of marrying our dear Tom and snatching Mansfield for her own." Her hands, lifted slightly, fluttered with agitation. "I daresay it is only a silly, spiteful whim. She ought, as you surely agree with me, to have been more than contented with Mr. Crawford's offer – as it, too, was far, far above what she could reasonably have expected, seeing as he'd have better picked Julia, and I've no doubt he would have if she weren't away, out of sight and mind..."
Sir Thomas glowered. "I cannot believe what I am hearing. You blame Fanny for Tom's scheme? Fanny?"
"Why, to be sure!" she exclaimed. "It never occurred to me to place blame elsewhere. It is her scheme and Tom has been roped in, depend upon it."
"I do not – however much it pains me – grant my niece complete innocence in this matter," said Sir Thomas, slowly. "Her behaviour over Crawford's offer unnerves me – I had thought her spared the wilfulness of temper which is wide-spread in her generation, even among – and don't look at me so, Mrs. Norris, for it is true – my own children, to a greater extent than I like, but while I grant you she is selfish to pass over a man with everything to recommend him, I cannot fault her for accepting Tom's hand after the offer was made." He sighed heavily. "You and I both have too long made it very plain to Fanny she ought to yield to Tom, as heir in this house, in everything he asks of her. She had just been very upset, when I'd left her – I was too angry to tell her I felt so, but I was becoming worried she'd cry herself straight into an illness – and I had been reminding her of her duties, and in saunters my idiot son with his counteroffer. It may well be I had got through to her at entirely the wrong moment and she felt a refusal was quite out of her power." The baronet looked almost ready to cry himself. "Damnation! Why could you not have kept the girl with you, if not at the parsonage, then at the White House after your husband's death, and given her her own way once in a while to prevent this outcome?"
Mrs. Norris sucked in her cheeks – she was white with anger. "You have it wrong, my dear sir Th–" His brow began to lift, and she demurred. "Forgive my saying so, I know you love the girl – you have been better to her than she ever deserved – but this cannot have been done to oblige Tom so much as to ensnare him."
"You realise, of course," he countered warmly, "I have taken an interest in Fanny's education – I have had regular updates, first from Miss Lee and then, when she was too old for a governess, from Edmund – and despite knowing exactly where she falters and lacks, I am too aware she is not stupid – only an incredulously stupid girl would attempt set her cap at a gentleman she has grown up with and knows to be as irresponsible as Tom. She cannot want him, neither for love nor money, not unless she has wholly taken leave of her senses; I believe it far more likely he has prevailed upon her, taking advantage of her natural sweetness of temper and docility, with a great many Banbury stories about his curse and need for a wife."
Seeing her chance, Mrs. Norris interjected, "Fanny is too romantic-minded, sees herself as a heroine, no doubt; Edmund should not let her read quite so much poetry, you know, I've always said it would be a detriment to her mental growth."
In a different mood, despite thinking this statement a load of utter nonsense, Sir Thomas might have indulged her, might even have given her leave to remove some poetry books from Fanny's possession if it would add to peace in the household.
In the present one, however, he only looked all the more sombre. "I don't see where poetry fits anywhere into this mess. William Cowper hasn't made Fanny an offer! No, pray, do stick to the subject at hand, if you please."
"Let me speak with her," pressed Mrs. Norris, desperate to get back into his good graces again. "I shall set it right, I shall."
"You will only make her more determined to keep her word and marry Tom – the way you go at her, she'll probably give herself a fit and be dead by the end of the afternoon."
"Go at her?" she gasped. "Me? Go at Fanny? I never! I have always been most gentle in my–"
"No, no, there is only one thing for it – we must depend upon the same nature Tom has exploited to bring her back to reason." He exhaled in a long, exhausted drag of wearied breath. "By what good fortune, I cannot imagine, but I do believe Mr. Crawford will still have her in a moment if she changes her mind. If they can speak without her letting her nerves get the better of her, she will see the marked difference between the attentions of that manner of gentleman and those of Tom. That is all, and I will manage it myself, as I clearly ought to have done from the beginning."
As Sir Thomas entertained hopes of the engagement being broken off by the end of the day, he forbade Tom – on pain of having him removed from the house and sent abroad, straight back to Antigua and that witch, to do with him as she damn well pleased – to say so much as one word of it to his mother, to the blissfully ignorant Lady Bertram who'd been in a doze stroking Pug and heard nothing of the quarrel raging through the very walls all around her, before the week was out.
So, for Fanny, apart from Mrs. Norris giving her the most dreadful accusing looks, the nastiest expressions with her mouth twisted and eyes darkened, the evening in the drawing-room was much like a hundred others before had been.
Tom came in once or twice, almost as if checking in order to satisfy himself Fanny was still there and his father hadn't got rid of her while his back was turned, but he did not look at her very long once he was reassured they'd not been entirely thwarted.
Apart from that, the only interruption was from Baddeley, who came in asking Fanny set down her work and go to her uncle in his own room.
Sir Thomas was correct in his assertion Fanny was not stupid – she had an instant suspicion regarding what might be going on and was in dread. Her uncle was displeased with the thought of her marrying his son, and she could well understand he might be after all her tearful insisting she would not marry without affection, whatever the advantages, and then not near an hour later being engaged to her cousin; it would not be beyond his power for him to bring Henry Crawford back to the house to try and change her mind.
She rose from her place, colour draining from her cheeks, as ready as she would ever be to face a horror she would much rather flee from if it were permissible, only for Mrs. Norris to demand of her where she thought she was going.
"With Baddeley, aunt – he says my uncle wants me."
"Stay," she hissed, pointing down at Fanny's vacated seat. "You are very eager to put yourself forward today, aren't you? I will go to Sir Thomas. It is me Baddeley meant to ask, I am sure." She must have been thinking back to their last disagreeable conversation, imagining some beautiful reconciliation at Fanny's expense. "Sir Thomas wants me, not you."
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," said the butler stoutly, "but he said Miss Price – he was very particular."
This time Fanny looked to Mrs. Norris before making as if to leave, only to be snarled at that she had better get moving.
Wondering why her sister was being brusque with Fanny – who looked rather white at her curtness – this evening, Lady Bertram repeated she had best go, certainly she had better not keep Sir Thomas waiting, only she said it in a sweeter, more patient tone before promptly forgetting all about it and returning to her former occupation of watching Pug chase a beetle across the room, her collar tags clacking.
Sure enough, Fanny found her worst fears had come true when – the moment she entered the room – Sir Thomas, without a word, left her in it, entirely alone with – who else but – Henry Crawford.
"Miss Price – oh, Fanny – your uncle tells me you mean to marry Mr. Bertram." And he held his hands out to her, as if he really expected she would – under any circumstances save being literally about to fall upon her face – have taken them.
She could not meet his eye, not quite. "Yes." A pause. "Yes, it is all quite settled."
"I beg you not to rush into anything," he implored her. "I think you cannot have understood my offer was real, that I do love you, and under duress you have accepted Mr. Bertram, who–" He broke off, gnawing upon his bottom lip for a moment, overcome. "I daresay there has been some terrible misunderstanding, he can't have meant to wound either of us, not he, only... Only he had no right... But that does not matter, for I'll not despair, I'll not desist, not till I've made you understand. Then I have no doubt my affections will be returned and–"
"Mr. Crawford," choked Fanny, growing angry at his persistence, though her voice was soft and did not reveal her anger, "there is no misunderstanding – not between us. You have made me an offer, without thinking of me, and I have made – I have tried to make – it clear I do not love you."
"But, Miss Price" – it sounded as if he were forcing the name, the formality, past his lips – "it is only because of your youth! You never thought on love before I declared myself; I suppose I was too forward. If you were to think on it, for a few days more, I believe you would find your heart open to me as mine is to you."
Fanny went rigid. How dare he say she had never thought on love? Just because she did not openly pine, because she had not declared herself to Edmund as Mr. Crawford had done to her, did not mean she had never thought on love! Her modesty might often keep her from dwelling upon what was impossible, to be sure, but she knew her feelings and had told them all, keeping to herself only the knowledge of her pre-engaged heart, and surely an honest gentleman did not need that tidbit in order to know a refusal was genuine?
"Forgive me," said Henry, reaching for her hand only for her to stiffly pull it further back, out of his reach. "I never meant to shock you, knowing your delicate nature, I simply–"
"Please understand now I meant it when I said I could not accept you!" gasped Fanny, almost talking through her teeth. "My uncle has told you I am engaged, so what more can be said between us?"
"How can you?" He would not let her break eye contact again, moving his head every which way she tried to move her own. "Look at me. You are killing me – you are breaking my heart."
"When you return to London, your heart will be cured," she said with perhaps more tenderness than she felt, because she did not want to be cruel. "You will forget me."
"Be frank with me, as you would with my sister who is your confident in so much and tell me–"
Fanny nearly asked what on earth he thought she had confided in his sister, when it was in fact his sister who did all of the talking when they were together; Mary did not know her true feelings about anything, not anything at all!
But then he continued on with such impertinence her parted lips were still and silent as he finished his thought. "You must tell me if you intended to wed Mr. Bertram so you might remain in Northamptonshire."
Cheeks gone bright, bright scarlet, she shook her head as if a bee were caught between her ears.
"For I mean to introduce you to Norfolk by degrees, you understand – I have already a place in mind, a good house in this neighbourhood, where we would live at first."
"But, Mr. Crawford, I do not wish to live with you – and I've promised my cousin – given my word – to live with him."
Despite the gentleness he was trying to display to her, hoping yet to win her, there was a flash of hardness visible in Henry's eyes as he thought of Tom's asking her to marry him. "Surely you know you deserve better than to marry someone who has treated you without any kindness."
"Without any kindness?" This claim she would not stand for. "Mr. Bertram has always been better than most men – why, his condescension to a relation he had never met until he was seventeen! You can't imagine it, Mr. Crawford, how strange it must have been for him, for you've known your sister all her life. You spend a little time with us, and you imagine you know what we are to each other, but you do not!"
Mr. Crawford had no idea, she thought, her heart beating faster in defence of one it considered its own, quite firmly lodged in some little chamber above the place of duty where it forced itself to love Mrs. Norris and a little way below the high trumping love which ruled over all else, that love which was reserved only for Edmund and William and the faded memory of Mary Price.
No, Mr. Crawford was wholly incapable of understanding what all those pretty presents – shawls and netting-boxes and trinkets – in the East room given to her over the years by Tom meant.
"But what can he have been to you?" whispered Henry, near frantic. "If he was as good to you as you claim, you would not have felt indebted to him. You owe him nothing."
"I owe him the duty of a friend, Mr. Crawford – and I gave my friend my word."
"And is Tom Bertram the only man who has ever done you good?" He hesitated, then added, "Done your brother good?"
Oh. How that wounded! It cut her so deeply she wanted to clasp both her hands to her heart and crumble to the floor. Her legs went weak with the effort not to, and her arms tingled miserably. "That is not fair."
"I mean nothing by it, only to suggest the Bertrams are not your only friends in this world." He bent forward and grasped her arms firmly, even as she tried to roll her shoulders back to shrug out of his grip. "Am I not your friend? Have I not proved myself?"
"I don't know how to answer you."
"I can make you happy, my Fanny – with me, you would feel a difference in the behaviour of all who approach you. Daily, hourly, you would know respect and love as you can never know it in your present state. Your uncle wishes that for you, as does my sister, how can you deny yourself?"
"Stop." She squirmed, trying to make him let her go. "This is a sort of talking I do not like."
"Only see reason, I–"
"Crawford, don't be so forward – so overfamiliar – with my fiancée, there's a good fellow."
Fanny spun around as Mr. Crawford released her, relieved to see Tom standing in the doorway. She had not dared to hope he knew of his father's plan to leave her alone with Henry and had not expected any help from him. He must have checked the drawing-room for her, as he'd been doing before, and not finding her, put the pieces together and looked for her here.
"Mr. Bertram, how could you do this to me?" Henry's expression was one of having been utterly betrayed. "You must have known I love her."
"And does it automatically follow a woman must love a man simply because he makes her an offer and declares he loves her?" He was not harsh in his tone, viewing Crawford as still one of his good, particular friends, though he did not feel as attached to him as he did to Bingley or even Yates. Still, as it stood, he might have spoken any way he liked; it made no difference. "My little cousin had refused your offer already when I made her mine – there was no conflict of interest, as everything was settled very neatly."
But it was not settled; Crawford would not let go, now might never let go, of the notion he should have forced Fanny to love him in time, that he rightly should have had her and been thereby granted the felicity of improving her life.
Tom Bertram had robbed him of his happiness, of his envisioned future, perhaps for life.
"How you can imagine you deserve her," scoffed Henry, half under his breath rather than fully aloud, walking towards the door, "after how you treated her during the play, I will never understand."
"Oi!" Tom blocked him. "What is this sorry turn-coating, by Jove? I seem to recollect you were as persistent as ever I was in wishing her to act! There's no cause for getting high and mighty, as if your behaviour was anything better than mine."
Henry did not know when to leave well enough alone – if he had stopped here, he might have remained, at least on the one side, friends with Tom Bertram. Instead, he fairly dashed their friendship to the ground and crushed it under his heel by saying, darkly, "I will never let this happen. I won't let you spoil her chances for happiness."
So quickly Fanny almost didn't realise what she was witnessing – she had seen Tom behave like this only towards Edmund when they were much younger, never to another unrelated gentleman, so it was very puzzling – Tom had caught Henry's arm and twisted it back, just slightly, not to hurt him but to get his full attention, and he hissed, "If you don't catch cold and let her alone, I'll tell my father what you were doing with my sister Maria behind the green baize whenever Aunt Norris and Rushworth had their backs turned – don't suppose he'll want you for Fanny then."
Eyes shining, brimming, Henry turned to look at Fanny one more time, one last time. "Congratulations, Miss Price, you have pledged yourself to a monster – a beast." And he had no idea how right he was, or how little it mattered to her. "I hope you shan't repent it."
Fanny held her breath until Henry Crawford had left her uncle's room; after, she exhaled and appealed to Tom anxiously. "Mr. Bertram, you mustn't tell him, not for my sake; Maria–"
"You don't watch me much when I play cards, do you, cousin?" He gave her a reassuring smirk. Behind his mask, one eye twitched, almost in a wink.
She blinked incomprehensibly.
"That, Fanny, was a bluff."
"A lie, you mean," said she, as Fanny tended to see such things as being very black and white. She was not very good at cards herself, usually letting herself lose, even if given the best of hands, because she hated to see the disappointment on other faces when they did so.
"If you want to call it that, sure. But don't worry, I'm not going to tell my father anything. If he wants to love Crawford more than his own son and hold him up for a saint, I say let him be a fool. And I wouldn't do that to Maria – it wouldn't be sporting." He put a hand on her arm. "You're shaking."
"I'm going to make so many people so unhappy." She would be safe from Crawford, and rescue Tom from his curse, but her uncle might never forgive her and the Crawfords themselves, before they could take the cure in town, were sure to remain extremely angry with her; she must seem very mercenary and cold to accept Tom so quickly.
But if Mr. Crawford hadn't been selfish and asked her to begin with, none of this should have happened...
"Poor Fanny." Tom reached into his breast pocket and drew out a little gold ring with a tiny – scarcely larger than a chip – white opal. "Here, have this trifle to ease your troubles. My mother gave it me before I left for Antigua – it was hers as a girl. Supposedly, my father gave it to her shortly after they first met. She told me I was to give it to my future bride. If we're really going to do this, I see no reason for you not to have it."
Her watery eyes studied the ring doubtfully.
"We can have it resized if it doesn't fit."
But, as it turned out, it fit rather neatly upon Fanny's left hand, as if made for her, and looked better there than either of them could have anticipated. She realised suddenly she must have fingers very like in size to those of her aunt when she was a girl.
And she, too, she realised with a newly felt gravity, was going to marry a future Sir Thomas.
She tried very hard not to think how she would have much rather had her aunt Norris' fate and lived at the Parsonage someday, learning to approach the place without restraint or alarm...
Sir Thomas was extremely disappointed when he was finally able to gain an account of what had occurred from Mr. Crawford.
He had hoped for better things; a tête-à-tête, done properly and sanctioned by himself, ought to have worked more change on one such as Fanny!
But according to the saddened young man, she had been against him from start to finish, resolved to keep her promise to marry Tom. He thought she had seemed very cowed by her cousin indeed, and still professed she should have loved him, should have been moved into changing her mind, if Tom had not intervened again with some manner of threat Sir Thomas could not comprehend as Mr. Crawford left it vague.
The end of it was, little as he wished to do so, Henry Crawford meant to withdraw his offer as it would not be taken up – he was going to London, as planned, and he hoped poor Miss Price would be happy in this dutiful marriage she'd shackled herself to and gloomily supposed she could not be, had no chance of being such.
There seemed only one person left for Sir Thomas to apply to – he wrote to Edmund, detailing Fanny's recent history, intending to post the letter at the earliest chance and hope it got through in time, quickly thought better of it, then sent the unmarked missive with Richard Baddeley, his Baddeley's eldest son who had worked for them – largely below stairs – for years.
Giving the trusted servant the loan of his own horse, he urged him to ride to Lessingby as fast as he could.
"God willing," murmured Sir Thomas, watching Dick Baddeley gallop away, "she will listen to him."
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.