Snowbear

A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction

Chapter Fourteen:

There was some wavering disagreement regarding who among the Bertrams would be attending Edmund's wedding, apparently to be held in Hertfordshire where Edmund and his friend Mr. Owen were staying at present.

Six hours, while not an obscenely long way to travel in order to attend a wedding, failed to appeal to Lady Bertram, who kept asking her husband, in rather a bewildered tone, if Edmund really expected her to be there, if it wouldn't be better for her to remain behind at Mansfield while he and Mrs. Norris went ahead.

"And I shall have Fanny to sit with me," was her final conclusion, appealing very prettily but with every bit of her usual languidness to Sir Thomas. "She does want to go; I'm sure she does not." To Fanny, aside, "You do not want to go to see Edmund married, do you?"

Indeed, to see Edmund married to Miss Crawford would be an exquisite pain beyond measure, and Fanny was grateful for anything which might prevent it – even as guilt that Edmund had attended her wedding although he disapproved of the bridegroom as much as she did his bride pricked at her most acutely – but she was preoccupied with the puzzling, nagging thought she could not let go of.

Namely, why were they being married in Hertfordshire at all, when Miss Crawford ought to have been in London, and Edmund's last whereabouts as she knew them had been firmly in Peterborough?

Nobody had mentioned Hertfordshire to her before now.

And why was nobody speaking of the Grants going to see their sister wed? Fanny was sure the inhabitants of the parsonage must have the keenest interest in attending of them all, and was any minute expecting Sir Thomas to say something about sharing a carriage – or at least suggesting he or Mrs. Norris travel with Mrs. Grant, if Dr. Grant could not be spared by the parish church at the moment...

So, it was with very little presence of mind, the smallest stakes in the actual conversation being had at present, that Fanny nodded her assent. Yes, she could certainly remain behind and make herself useful if her aunt wished her to, it was no more than she expected.

"And, of course," added Lady Bertram, smiling with ready affection, "Fanny and I shall be such a comfort to each other, you must allow, with both our Thomases – our own precious husbands – gone away, perhaps for as long as an entire week."

No one made the slightest allusion to the fact of Lady Bertram's having been without Sir Thomas and Tom – son and father alike – peaceful as a cherub on a cloud whistling a hosanna and scarcely seemed to actively miss either of them or lose sleep over their absence while they were in Antigua – and their absence then had been a good deal longer than any mere week.

"But, ma'am," cried Tom. "You cannot think I am going to the wedding."

"Are you not, my dear?" She sounded quite surprised.

He took her hand and sat beside her. Pug crawled into his lap and whined until Tom scratched her ears; then she stood on her hind paws and tried to bat at Tom's mask until she was set down on the floor and given a little nudge with Tom's foot. "Get on with you, doggie – do." To his mother, "No, indeed. I will be here – and I have as much need of Fanny as you do."

Fanny, glancing up right then, could not at all account for her scarlet face at this statement. Thankfully, only Mrs. Norris, whose mouth was a grim-set line, and who glanced at her from the corner of her own eye judgementally, seemed even to notice.

"Oh, but this is strange! What can I make of it? I had thought your intimate friend – you must know who I mean, the handsome gentleman with the startling shock of red hair sticking up and the beautiful wife with the soft, bell-like voice – the one you were play-acting with, kept a house in that county and he would want you to stay."

"Ah, you speak of Netherfield Park – I comprehend your meaning at last, Mother. Yes, Bingley would have us all to stay" – and, more than any other friend he could name, perhaps be willing to make, if not suitable, than at least workable, accommodations for hiding Tom away half the time, when he must be a bear – "and with a jolly good will, too, but alas he is in London at present and the house is shut up. They cannot air it quickly enough to suit guests."

"Well, shut up houses are neither here nor there – for, I think you ought to go, Maria," said Sir Thomas. "Edmund expects it, and unlike some persons in this room I shan't name, for I know I need not, he would feel badly about marrying to disoblige us, and I did harangue him dreadfully about it when I was in a fit of bad temper–"

"I'm sure you were perfectly right to do so, Sir Thomas," put in Mrs. Norris, sniffling. "Young people never think about their elders and their feelings as they ought when it comes to their love affairs."

"Right or wrong," Sir Thomas said, speaking more loudly, as if to prevent his wife's sister beginning upon a tangent with no discernable ending, "I am greatly of the mind that it would smooth matters over entirely if he saw both his parents attend the ceremony."

Disoblige, thought Fanny, with her pounding heart in her mouth – oh, and Miss Crawford with twenty thousand pounds! No trifling amount, that, to be scoffed at. But this was unaccountable. Such baffling disdain from those who had always seemingly adored the Crawfords! There was no making sense of it on her own. If she only dared ask, dared speak despite Aunt Norris and her sharp eyes always drifting back upon herself, she might be spared no small amount of pain, little though she imagined it to be so, but she didn't dare.

"But can I travel six hours at present?" mulled Lady Bertram, eyes widening, showing just the slightest tinge of alarm. "My sister Norris says it is a bad time for travel this year – so many delicate people are catching cold upon the road and at the draughty rooms in the inns, you know." She looked to Mrs. Norris. "Did you not say so to me the other day? I am sure you did – or something very like."

But Mrs. Norris, eager as always to place herself in Sir Thomas' good graces, all but recanted whatever it was she'd said formerly, quite confusing her sister, who could only blink and insist in a series of murmurs she did not understand how she could have mistaken the meaning of what they'd spoken of – oh, she did not know how at all! – still, it was thusly decided all three of them would be going to Hertfordshire.

As it was only to be Fanny and Tom left at home, and Tom was wont to be absent during the day (Mrs. Norris said this as if it were Fanny's fault – as if she alone were the culprit behind Mansfield's heir desiring to avoid home and their company while the sun was up; Tom did not do much to defend his wife here, against the unfairness of the statement, but he did laugh into his wineglass at the absurdity), it was suggested the staff would be reduced for a few weeks to economize.

"Aye," said Tom, smacking his lips together and raising his glass. "Let the servants have their holiday – the devil take them, and Smith also, if he wants to go, I say! We don't need them, do we, Fanny?"

She did not answer, though she would be glad enough to be without Smith for a while if Tom could bear it, and he – and everyone else, apparently – did not notice her silence.

It was late in the morning when they departed for Hertfordshire, well after breakfast, and Fanny watched them leave from the window.

She was a little despondent, feeling abandoned, for they were fleeing from her to see Miss Crawford as Edmund's bride, and if Mary were in disgrace at present, her disgrace would not linger as Fanny's had after marrying Tom – the Crawfords were only too good at making people forgive them and, moreover, making them delighted to do it.

Her jealousy faded, though, as her good humour increased throughout the day.

She had never properly realised before how much a want of other persons at Mansfield could account for a lack in oppression for herself. Now she could walk or ride whenever she liked best, unhindered, and what remained of the servants were only too willing to give her luncheon or tea at whichever hour she wanted it, never a moment sooner or later; they had never been so amiable to her before. She thought the maid-servants must have really forgiven her – both for offending them with her shabby dresses and manners as a child when she first came to Mansfield and then for breaking Mr. Crawford's heart by all accounts – at last and was greatly rallied in spirits at the thought of it being so.

Tom – when he was returned in the evenings – felt the change, the lack of oppression, keenly, too, and his way of indulging in it was entirely different from Fanny's.

If she became quiet and grateful, he was loud and boyish at every turn. He was tasting the contents of every decanter in the house, sliding about marble hallways in his stocking feet while crying at the top of his voice, riding down the bannisters and halloing (either at Fanny or at one of the maids or Baddeley); he was singing and dancing and reciting and making very merry indeed.

While these facts may sound vaguely condemning, even Fanny had to admit he behaved objectively well – he contained his merrymaking to what amused himself and did not involve the neighbourhood by inviting Charles Maddox or Mr. Oliver (Tom's especial friends, his rising and falling affection for them stemming from Mr. Oliver's sharing his Christian name and extending to Maddox occasionally simply because he lived close by, when his actual particular friends were not to be had) to come over and make themselves comfortable. Perhaps he would have done, if he didn't have to worry about the curse, and it would have turned into one long party which might have distressed Fanny, but as matters stood, he kept it between just the pair of them and was gracious enough to act as if he sincerely desired no further company.

At first, Fanny could do just as well without Tom – as she did during the day – as with him, but gradually the sort of loneliness which preys eventually upon even the richest inner lives seeped in, and she was then very glad to wait for his return every evening and greet him most prettily.

Only once was their mutual peace cut up.

They were in the drawing-room by the fire, talking, because Tom still had yet to learn to be in silence when he had a viable, noteworthy audience, even an audience of only one, and now Fanny mattered to him, she was hard-pressed to escape his stream of chatter.

He'd remembered she liked Madeira – a fact he usually forgot, pouring her something else instead, thinking more of himself and his own tastes.

When she thanked him for his kind remembrance, his thought to her preference, even though he had forgotten – as usual – to water it down for her, and she hadn't quite mettle enough to ask him if he didn't do it on his own as Edmund did, he'd only said, "You're welcome – and it doesn't matter much, if I forget, because you can always tell me again."

The conversation became very one-sided, all about little adventures Tom had had in his Oxford days, and Fanny listened with polite attentiveness, sighing and nodding and smiling where such reactions were required but perhaps not giving the stories as much full attention as he assumed, when somehow or other it got around to a long-winded recollection of one of Tom's first youthful infatuations.

Apparently, his feelings had not burned half so brightly, or gone even a quarter so deep, as most passionate boys of his age tend to, because he had long forgotten the lady in question as anything more than a pretty face he had once liked looking at.

After he succeeded in getting the young lady to notice him (hardly difficult, he was an heir to a baronetcy and handsome, so he'd had to do little more than sort of hover around her waggling his eyebrows until she turned her head and looked) and come dangerously close to inadvertently making her think his attentions were serious, he gradually – by and by – started to feel less and less of anything for her.

Fanny thought this was too bad of him; it reminded her, though evidently a less extreme case, too much of Mr. Crawford's treatment of Maria and Julia.

"Really! That is unfair! I wasn't trying to put my hand up her skirts behind a length of green baize," snorted Tom, when she made the mistake of expressing her opinion, more attentive now to this part of his story than to those which had proceeded it. "It was a single, passing kiss under a tree during an outing, which she – I might add – initiated, not I, and no more."

But Fanny was still of the mind it was unlucky for the girl – if anyone had seen Tom kiss her, regardless of whose idea the kiss was, the young lady would have had a very rough time indeed regaining her reputation. "And you pursued her, then forgot her. It was unkindly done."

"I wasn't even one and twenty at the time," he protested. "How could I have been serious about her?" Poor Tom, he had no idea Fanny had been constant to her first love since she was ten and could never understand such reasoning. "I thought I was going to marry a princess or something."

Fanny had to bite her lip to prevent a smile – even a chortle – before she apologised for not being a princess.

He shrugged good-naturedly and remarked that she had golden curls and a soft voice and could do needlepoint, and that was close enough.

"Whatever happened to her?"

"Who?" Behind the slits of his mask, Tom blinked as if he genuinely hadn't a clue who she could be talking about.

"The young woman in your story."

His mouth turned into a downward pout. Fanny would miss the point! He was the hero of the story, to be sure, but it did not necessarily follow that the leading girl of his tale was the heroine by default! It did no good for listeners to get attached to throwaway characters. He quite loathed how sensible people were always doing just that! "How the deuce should I know?"

Fanny dropped his gaze and took a sip of her Madeira.

He sensed her displeasure and was piqued, eager to defend himself. "Really, I didn't do anything wrong."

"If you feel it was so, then I am sure you did not," she said, meaning exactly the opposite.

Sucking his teeth, he sighed, "Well, whatever became of your first illicit love affair?"

Her cheeks heated, but she said, very truthfully, she had had none at all.

"Oh," Tom laughed, shaking his head, "I forget how exact a creature you are sometimes, you know, and I exaggerate to tease you – I know, of course, you've not seen so much of the world, nor met anybody you could be in real danger from – I only meant by my 'love affairs' to ask about your first kiss."

She did not answer, unsure how.

"Come, come, oh virtuous wifey, I told you mine and exposed myself to your displeasure."

"B-but," stammered Fanny, distressed at the warm turn in the talking, "I have never kissed anyone at all – not in that way." Brotherly kisses from Tom himself, from Edmund, and from William or her other brother John did not count.

His expression was hidden, yet Tom did seem intrigued by this, a little. "What, no one? Crawford tried to kiss you, though, I'm sure he must have done."

Fanny shuddered – she was grateful beyond measure his wooing of her, or what he'd thought was wooing, had not got so far as that. She did not think she could have stood it. "No. No, indeed." Then, "And nobody ever shall kiss me."

"What makes you say that?"

"Why, because I'm married to you," she said, almost laughing at the simplicity of his question. "It would be inappropriate, and I'd never allow it." She was quite safe, she thought. "No one can ever kiss me."

Perhaps incorrectly, Tom discerned a sort of wistfulness in her last statement of the fact, and thought, well, there was one person yet, after all, who could still – very rightly – kiss her without upsetting her dearly-held scruples – and he tilted his head, leaned forward, and kissed her full upon the mouth as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Fanny pulled back and gasped, almost at once, but not before involuntarily beginning to return the gesture out of some instinct which briefly overtook her in the sparest of seconds between her being kissed and breaking away from it.

Tom still thought little of it – he'd only done it because he felt sorry she should live her whole life without a single kiss, one so pretty and pleasant as her, and because he'd been drinking a bit too much, not out of any great love or passion. When Fanny said nothing, following his cheery remark to the effect of, "And let that teach you to say you never shall have a certain thing," it was – on his end – practically forgotten the moment he got up to refill his drink.

If he noticed the mortified way she sat, rigid and tense, staring into the fire, he didn't comment on it.

While she knew she should put it from her mind, and tried to do so, Fanny's mind – livelier perhaps than she was ever given credit for – harped upon it dreadfully – she was crosser with herself than with Tom, because even though it was his doing, she felt unendingly certain he'd noticed her reaction – however brief it had been – and was afraid he was privately making rather a joke of her in his own mind thanks to it.

He had noticed, she was not wrong there, but if anything, Tom only thought it was proof of how sweet Fanny truly was – part of him had always thought Fanny, while a very good girl, was something of a prude, very voluntarily warding off what affection others might choose to passingly lavish upon her from time to time, while her reaction to his kissing her told another story entirely. The poor creepmouse was starved for genuine affection – the deficiency was severe enough her body craved it, almost from any viable source – and he saw just how difficult it must have been, in retrospect, to have grown up in this house the lowest and the last, repressing such feelings. She did not want him, he was not quite conceited enough to fancy such a thing, but she was alone and wanted – without understanding it, perhaps – consolation, reassurance from another being that loneliness, good or bad, always had its end like the turning of the seasons.

For other girls, there had been a time for everything, but it seemed this had not entirely been the case for Tom Bertram's wife.

He liked her better after that night and that kiss, but she seemed to like him a good deal less.

Finally concluding her resulting near-apathy towards him could only be because of what passed between them in the drawing-room and nothing else, Tom grew fed up and told her, as they were taking supper alone in his sitting room, and she was pale and scarcely responding to a word he said despite insisting her head did not hurt her tonight when he asked after her headaches, enough was enough.

"It was only a kiss, for pity's sake," he snapped; "it meant nothing – there's no need to be a dungeon about it. Your low spirits oppress mine, you know. I think it's frightfully selfish of you to behave so."

Fanny was meek, though he had been bordering on downright harsh, and his conscience pricked him so that he took pains to go back to how he had been before, to his old way of assuring her all was well and right between them.

When they'd put their plates on the tray to be cleared away when some remaining servant or other bothered to check for them – perhaps not until the morning – he took out a rather elegant chess set which the Bingleys had sent them as a belated wedding present, set it up by their favourite chairs, and was very agreeable and brotherly towards her until she came round to being almost as she'd been before any trace of awkwardness was formed between them.

They also began the putting together of a puzzle in the drawing-room in the nights which followed, and he persuaded her to play billiards with him, and, one especially chill eve where nothing was wanted but to be excessively cosy by the nearest fire, taught her to draw – and then to colour – what, under her less than skilled hand, was still an approximation of a rather handsome hollyhock; he praised her, very nicely, for having come such a long way since the days when his sisters used to mock her for not knowing the difference between crayons and water-colours until her face was gone scarlet with pleasure instead of with any kind of mortification.

So, overall, if Fanny's days grew a trifle monotonous, despite her felicity in the thoughts of her own head – so long as they did not turn to Edmund and his bride – her nights proved invariably happy.

Tom had, when he discovered it himself during an evening perusal while he sat languidly sipping his chocolate, placed the paper with the announcement of Edmund's marriage beside Fanny's seat for her to read, but – perhaps not so greatly to her credit – she only pretended to glance at it; she did not think she could bear to see, not just yet, while she still struggled to adjust to the idea as she knew she must, Edmund and Miss Crawford's names together, to see her referred to in print as the new Mrs. Bertram.

If only she had looked – what a remarkable surprise would have awaited her there!

But as she didn't, by the time word was sent back that – a day after the absent staff was to be returning – Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, and Mrs. Norris would be coming back to Mansfield and bringing Edmund and his wife with them, Fanny still was in ignorance about the real identity of her new sister and cousin.

Her spirits were low again as she stood outside the big house, waiting to greet them.

As they arrived in the evening, rather than during the day, Tom was beside her and watching her gloominess with rather a good deal of confusion, wondering what could be oppressing his little mouse of a wife.

He thought she was, perhaps, afraid of the new Mrs. Bertram wishing to make changes at Mansfield – although not as sensitive to her moods as Edmund, Tom had noticed, in his vague way, how anytime something changed in the household, even something relatively small, Fanny seemed to cringe from the new addition regardless of whether it was good or bad objectively – so, reaching over and squeezing her hand, he reminded her how little time and authority Mary would have to change anything in the house that would one day be his, and not Edmund's, while she – as his wife – was sure to hold the reins.

"You must make yourself easy about that," he told her. "She will only ever be Mrs. Bertram, after all." He added, "Besides, what can she care to change here, when Edmund will be ordained as soon as next year and will have to move to Thornton Lacey?"

There was no point, Fanny supposed, in explaining to him Edmund would never move to Thornton Lacey if his wife had her way, nor that she cared little what household changes Mary would bring, for they weighed so little in the balance of Edmund's soul.

She knew Tom meant to be kind, so there was nothing for it but to squeeze his hand in return and try to force a smile. She was a little surprised when – after she did so – he interlaced his fingers with hers and remained holding her hand as the carriages pulled up before them; she'd not expected him to do that, and wondered, a trifle taken aback, if he was doing it because he believed it would show a distinctive unity between himself and her to Edmund's new bride.

He let go of her hand very quickly, however, when the first carriage opened, and Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram emerged. There were kisses from his mother to accept and enquiries about his arm and how it was healing from his father to be attended to, and his wife was all but forgotten until Mrs. Norris stepped out of the second carriage and, not finding it possible with both his parents blocking her way, to greet Tom first, coldly gave Fanny her left cheek to kiss.

Behind her, Edmund leaped out, cheerful as anything, and rushed to embrace Fanny with all the warmth their aunt lacked. His happiness made him, if not actually forgetful of the recent coolness between them, willing at least to pretend it never happened, or simply didn't matter.

Oh! He's so glad, Fanny thought miserably, submitting to kiss him with the solemn gravity of one being led to the gallows.

Edmund was merry with Tom as well, drawing him into an embrace by the arm which had not been injured and clapping him on the back. Pulling away, he suddenly drew in his breath, laughed, and declared, "Dear me, but I'm forgetting." This, because the carriage shook awkwardly as if someone were trying to get out of it and fumbling about in the attempt. "Mary."

And any moment Fanny was expecting to see the former Miss Crawford's beautiful hand, those long fingers that caressed the strings of the harp Edmund loved so much, surprisingly lengthy for such a tiny woman, curling slightly as they reached out to be assisted down – what a marvel, though, when she did not see any such thing!

Two hands, as pretty and delicate as Miss Crawford's but more prone to clenching and sweating, popped out and fumblingly gripped both sides of the carriage and – as Edmund grasped her waist and lifted her to the ground – a raven-haired little woman in a plain grey pelisse with an unevenly trimmed satin hat to match appeared.

Fanny's mouth formed an O and her eyes widened as she realised Mrs. Bertram – Edmund's dear wife he was presenting to them with so much evident joy – was formerly Miss Bennet, not Miss Crawford.

Along the road, though she'd met Fanny before, Mary had been dreading this scene, for Edmund had tried to warn her she might face some difficulty at first in replacing Miss Crawford – or so he imagined, with all his wrong assumptions – in Fanny's heart; it helped not a whit that Mrs. Norris, riding along with them, had had very little of comfort to say to the awkward bride seated across from herself.

But Mary bobbed, managing – struggle though it was – not to trip over her skirts in the process, and blinked uncertainly at her new brother and sister, feeling very small and dark compared to their willowy goldenness.

She had never realised before how striking they looked together, how formidable, like a prince and princess from a storybook Lizzy and Jane would have loved as children...

They should look very fetching indeed at a masque ball, where Fanny could wear a silver mask to match the one Mr. Bertram always had on...

What a change, though! Fanny had seemed so diminutive, rather off to the side like herself, almost a kindred spirit, when last they'd met – had marrying Tom alone brought about such a transformation as this?

Thinking of the ash-coloured feathers she'd dyed and attached to her hat, at Kitty's insistence it would look very fine for her arrival at such a grand house, Mary felt very like a goose meeting a pair of swans.

Fanny, unable to hold herself back now it was all becoming clear, burst into tears and, bowing forward, threw her arms around Mary, struggling against sobs which seemed determined to make her shake from head to toe.

Edmund looked, with clear puzzlement, to Tom, who shrugged. Neither brother had the foggiest notion why Fanny reacted so, but both were pleased she seemed – of a sudden – buoyed in spirits and so happy to welcome her new sister-in-law.

As she pulled back, Mary flushed bright red with pleasure, surprised and relieved. It seemed Edmund was entirely mistaken about his cousin's resenting her coming here to live.

Only Mrs. Norris had anything negative to say, declaring Fanny's displays of affection to be hypocritical and vulgar, but not even Lady Bertram paid much mind to what she was on about, being too distracted by a conversation she soon fell into with her new daughter – she couldn't help asking how Mary liked having the same last initial as a married woman as she'd had in her single youth, remarking how very little she must have had to alter the monogrammed items in her trousseau.

"I must tell you, my dear, of my own bitter experience – a W does not turn into a B with anything like ease."

"Yes," agreed Mary, a little haltingly. "That is, no. It is as you say, I mean. I hadn't really thought of it, not at home, but Jane and I both were lucky there."

"Do you like to embroider?"

"No, not much at all." She preferred sensible stitching, mending and the like; fancy needlepoint had never appealed to her.

Mrs. Norris repeated herself, feeling neglected.

"What's that?" said Lady Bertram, over her shoulder, as she took Mary's arm, only half listening, "Fanny, you say? Oh, yes, Mary, indeed! My sister is quite right – dear Fanny will soon teach you to like your needlework better. You must see her at it – her stitches are so small and neat. And her flowers are almost as pretty as the ones Julia used to embroider for me. Let us go inside and sit in the drawing-room; I'll show you the pillow Fanny helped me sew for Pug."

That was not at all what Mrs. Norris said regarding Fanny, of course, but everyone was content to act as if it were.

Fanny and Mary did not see eye-to-eye in all matters, but their separate morals were far nearer to those each held dearest by the other one than Miss Crawford's would have been, and once misunderstandings had been cleared up, they got on better than tolerably well.

If Fanny thought Mary's unfriendly views on novels and poetry (even her beloved Cowper – and that stung) were backward and bordering upon dangerously archaic, she was relieved to discover how much her new sister valued Edmund's chosen vocation and how she was nearly as eager as herself to see him become a clergyman and gain his respectable living. And if Mary thought Fanny, for all her formality, too prone to strong emotion under the surface and privately believed her brother's favourite cousin and sister wasted far too much time with poetry and vapid prose, time which could have been put to use elsewhere (it was no wonder she could not draw well or play a single note on any instrument, having lost so many precious spare hours poring over empty verse) she could at least concede the future Lady Bertram had taste enough when it came to some of the English morality tales she endorsed – these seemed, if nothing else, rather more appropriate to her than the wild Italian fables Lizzy and Jane preferred.

It was Tom, as it turned out, much more than Fanny, Mary struggled to like.

Mr. Bertram was too much like Lydia had once been with her – his jokes were innocent enough, but she – in all fairness – never took them with the demure humility Fanny displayed. Her reception of his merriment was almost haughty, though both Edmund and Fanny championed her in their joint belief she didn't mean anything by it. There were moments when, if not for the uncomfortable connection to Henry, Tom almost wished his brother had brought home the first Mary he claimed to love after all – Miss Crawford was lively enough to take a jest without overreacting, at least.

But over the course of a few days, then weeks, there seemed to form a sort of natural cease-fire between Tom and Mary – at best, or worst, they might glare at one another, when some thoughtless statement on either side chafed – yet an amiable boundary had been put up and they were only the happier for it.

"She suits Edmund, I'll grant them both that much," he said one night while he and Fanny played draughts in their sitting room. "I've always longed, just a little, to see what would happen if he loved a woman even more strait-laced than himself." Clink, Clink. "King, if you please." He grinned over at the pale figure in her dressing-gown across the board from him with an almost parental sort of affection. "Well, I certainly wouldn't trade places with him, I'm glad enough with what I've got, and that's jolly nearly all I've to say about it." Apparently not quite, however, as he soon added, "D'you know, Fanny, she told me – had the gall to tell me – I was making myself a 'burden upon society', upon educated people who" – he sucked his teeth – "let me see if I can recollect how she phrased it..." Snapping his fingers and pitching his voice into an exaggerated impression of Mary's: "Read for true enlightenment rather than to be entertained for an evening. And she was provoked into sharing this unlooked-for opinion solely because she came upon me in the library reading The Monk?" He blew out his cheeks. "If I ever thought ill of your standards, I repent it now."

A chance walk together in the shrubbery was enough, at last, to convince Edmund that Fanny had never wanted Miss Crawford for a sister and had, in turn, never disliked – for any reason – the current Mrs. Bertram.

"Indeed, Edmund" – and she took his offered arm with a very good will – "to see you with her – to see how happy you are with a woman who wants to live the same kind of life you do – is comfort beyond expression."

"I should have – we both should have – had this comfort a great deal sooner if we'd been less warm and bitter towards one another and said the things we meant all along!" Edmund shook his head. "I blame myself, truly. It was I who was so cross over your decision to marry Tom that..." He sighed. "Oh, Fanny, can you forgive me for being such a fool?"

"There is nothing to forgive."

"You are too good." Then, "D'you know, neither Maria nor Julia has expressed any wish to meet Mary again, now she is my wife. I had thought Mrs. Rushworth at least would have her to stay a night, or for a simple dinner. But the Bennets were not grand enough for the mistress of Sotherton. They did not come to the wedding, or even remember to wish me – their brother who loves them better than they love themselves – joy." He turned his head at the neck to look at her tenderly. "You may as well be my only sister now. You are the only one I think should have a good influence on Mary, at any rate, and that is what I most desire."

"But I think Mary is already as good a girl as ever lived," said Fanny, all loyalty toward her new friend, that much the stronger for having been delayed by miscommunication. "Her worst fault is to be self-defending and a little prideful, but that is nothing but understandable if her father was as neglectful as you suggest and she has been left to thrift for herself morally – she did not have a gentle, encouraging cousin to teach her all you taught me. She does her best. I hope you do not make her feel badly about it, Edmund."

"I, too, hope I do not," he agreed. "I should be very sorry to think I did." Then, "But, alas, I wish she did not view novels so meanly as she – in that case rightly, I'll allow – viewed Lover's Vows when we first met. She ought to see more of a distinction, in style and authorial intent, rather than simply judge all fiction as frivolous. I did not, before, consider she might feel that way, and I am far from being always easy about it.

"Her affability then, from the time of the play, made me think she could not be too rigid in her beliefs.

"There are moments she makes me so doubtful of my favourite books being really useful to the mind of a clergyman, I am half convinced I shall leave them all behind here for you and Tom to peruse as you like and have only approved religious texts on our shelves at Thornton Lacey – that would please her, I think."

"Oh, no! Indeed! That is too bad. But it is not incurable – far from it! – you must teach her to love the books you love as you taught me! She will soon love them for your sake if not for their own contents."

"I confess, I despair of it more than otherwise." He quoted, "Bewarre, my sonne, that aboue these thou make the not many and innumerable bokes, nor take dyuerse doctrynes in hande, to weery thy body withall."

"You might tell her," said Fanny, goaded at last into being just a little piqued, "even King Solomon loved verse – he wrote poetry."

Edmund cracked a smile, a faint twinkle starting in his eye despite himself. "I think Solomon's opinion will matter very little to Mary if weighed against that of Fordyce, and I can't entirely fault her for holding such a view – after all, as she likes to remind me, look how Solomon turned out."

And, here, at the last, Fanny could offer nothing, she had no waiting rebuttal; unwittingly he had taken the wind from her sails. Solomon, after all, had been led astray by his silly wives, much the same way Fanny once feared Miss Crawford (when she had believed he meant to marry that Mary) would have done for Edmund.

Touché, Mary, touché.

Only Mary Bertram, mused Fanny, taking her free hand and absently running the tips of her winter gloves against a crackling, brittle length of as yet berry-less bramble, could be so unwaveringly sensible she could very nearly win an argument without even being present for it.

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