Snowbear

A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction

Chapter Thirty-Two:

Fanny knew it was dangerous – that she had no surer way of getting herself caught than – to go to the saddler's.

It was the first place Mr. Crawford would look for her when he discovered her gone from his room. It was madness – pure, absolute madness – to risk all and go there.

Yet, in spite of her sureness of this fact, her heart and her feet would refuse to direct her anywhere else.

Obsession over regaining her daughters was, in a way, what had lost Tom to her a second time – the walls of the Admiral's house were not so thick as to keep all sound from her ears; if she had been thinking of him, listening for him, would she have–?

But to think of that would only break her heart.

Still, there really was nobody else she knew for anything like a certainty to be nearby – to be 'quite close' – whose help she might possibly rely on.

This saddler, Nanny's cousin, had never met her before – though Aunt Norris had, to Fanny's recollection of overhearing a conversation once – suggested she and Nanny be imposed upon him in order to save Sir Thomas some trifling expense, but he might know of the family from Nanny; he might recognise the resemblance and believe she was the mother of his charges. He might agree to shelter her, if only for one day or one hour, and in so doing let her see them. He might even agree, and her heart soared with hope at this thought, to keep her from Henry Crawford, if he came there looking for her.

Had she anything about herself at present with which to prove her identity if the saddler asked, not unreasonably, for evidence?

What few things she'd brought to town with her were either lost or, she supposed, with Sir Thomas, wherever he'd gone; she had only her Aunt Bertram's opal ring given her by Tom.

Some days before (she could not guess exactly how many or how few) she had had an alarming dream someone tried to slip it off her finger while she slept – now she was uncertain she could call it this, a dream, uncertain it was not real after all, crossly suspecting Mr. Crawford – and had clenched her fist, curling her fingers protectively, and moaned loudly to prevent its theft before rolling over into such a position her left hand was pinned under herself.

If she presented this ring to the saddler, claimed it to be her token to prove she was a Bertram by marriage, would it mean anything to him? Or would he leave her out on the streets to be discovered and returned to the Admiral's house?

Alas, Fanny did not see how she had much choice, risk though it was; she must try.

To her dismay, despite the short distance, it had gotten dark by the time she reached what she hoped was the address she'd memorised. Frightened and still very weak, she scarcely knew what she'd do – if she wouldn't simply sink to the ground and sob helpless, angry tears – if he turned her away.

The man who opened the door to her light but insistent knock, holding a candle up to see who stood there, Fanny at first supposed to be a servant, rather than the saddler himself, and – through trembling lips – she tried to get him to fetch his master, for she had a very urgent matter she must put to him.

"No master here," he said, looking her up and down and bringing the candle a little nearer her face as he squinted. "S'my house. What're after, miss?"

"I-I've come to see your charges – the little girls put into your care by Mr. Bertram – if you please." She added, "I promise you I've a right to them."

"Right or not, miss, this door's as far as you'll go," he declared, in a voice decidedly less friendly. "I've got word – just today – from one of the trusted Bertram servants I should send them off to Highbury as early as tomorrow – they travel post, first thing in the morning, in the care of the driver, who's said to be a respectable chap – all the arrangements for the sudden change have been made, no concern of mine beyond making sure they're not late – and I've been told, miss, and no mistake, I'm not to let anyone but Tom Bertram himself, and I'm told also it's none too likely he'll appear, come in to see them."

"Oh!" cried Fanny, and she reached to pull the shawl from her head and let her curls fall over her shoulders and down the back of her pelisse. "I'm his wife." She let the shawl drop to the stoop and held out her left hand for him to examine the ring, also, if he would. "I am Fanny Bertram."

His mouth formed an O in the winking candlelight and he – eyes darting both ways to be certain she was alone – hurried her inside. "Forgive me, ma'am – I do see as that's a different tale entirely."

Fanny would have liked to refuse the bit of supper the saddler would insist upon offering her – she wanted to see her daughters without any further delay – but she was light-headed and knew she had better accept his offer of buns and tea and a morsel of cheese if she didn't wish to fall into a swoon before she made it up the narrow, dark staircase he told her led to the room the girls slept in together.

She shook her head and coloured when the saddler offered to take away her pelisse; with nothing under it but her nightdress, she wasn't keen on shedding the pelisse before a near-stranger.

While she sat by a low fire eating as slowly as she could make herself under the circumstances, she was grimly informed Mr. Crawford had been trying to claim legal rights over her daughters, to make them his wards.

"As he could give no better reason than his word he was an acquaintance of yours, Mrs. Bertram," explained the saddler, "I made it right clear he weren't taking t'girls anywhere unless he proved to me who'd sent him after 'em. I can't be handing charges put in my care off to simply anyone who asks, you see. Your husband could make his connection to 'em as dubious as he liked, that's his affair, even if any nit can see the resemblance, but I dun't see, not for a minute, that Mr. Crawford 'as a better claim just for his knowing you."

For a dreadful moment, Fanny felt sure she would take sick and the newly-acquired contents of her stomach – those buns and cheese and such – were bound to come right back up. She understood more fully now what Mr. Crawford had been about, how he would have – without a thought to its being a great evil – entrapped her into a relationship with him using her own children as bait.

At last, she seemed to have satisfied the saddler's notion of what hospitality was due her, and he took her plate away and gave her a candle to light her way up the stairs.

"They'll be asleep by this time, o' course, on account of the early start tomorrow," he said, jabbing a poker into the fire in an attempt to stoke it into more cheerfulness. "But you can wake them as you see fit."

Her legs were like jellies as she struggled to make them ascend those steep steps and her hands refused to halt in their shaking as she lifted the crooked, rather heavy latch and slipped inside.

It was a small room with a broadly slanted ceiling and a single, barred-off half-window which did not appear to open, one whose bare walls were neat and papered but in spite of this gave off a shoddy, unfinished air.

Such a difference was here not only to the fine nursery at Mansfield Park the girls ought to have grown up in, if they'd been allowed to keep their real names and positions in life, but even to Fanny's little white attic from prior to her marriage.

There was nothing to stimulate here, though it was neat and serviceable and that was something to be grateful enough for.

When she reached the bed, she saw – gazing down into a cast puddle of yellow candlelight – two tiny girls – both very alike with pert, slack mouths and bright curls (she was slightly alarmed when she could not immediately discern which one it was she had held in her arms as a baby, and which had been in the basket) sharing a single long pillow, sleeping with their tiny hands joined and their small foreheads pressed together, wrinkled noses nearly touching.

Overcome, Fanny glanced away a moment, tears in her eyes, then stifled a sharp gasp when she heard – faintly – a twittering, indecipherable little voice.

She fancied at least one of them was awake and trying to talk to her, and whirled back around in an agitated hurry, nearly spilling a few drops of loose wax from the base of the candleholder onto their plain, unadorned little coverlet by mistake in the process, before she realised the truth: one of the twins – Tom's own daughter in every sense, apparently – already talked in her sleep.

"Darling," whispered Fanny, and bent down to kiss her talkative daughter's temple.

She couldn't bring herself to deliberately wake either of them, and instead pulled up a chair to sit and watch them (she could watch the precious dears all night, she felt, and still not have had her fill of doing so), only for one – not the one who spoke in her sleep – to crack open an eye and regard her with blanched surprise.

Letting go of her still slumbering and chittering sister and turning over, still lying down, she stared at Fanny in baffled wonderment. "Hullo."

"Hello, my love." She gulped, trying to keep from sobbing. "I hope you had pleasant dreams."

"Are you a princess?"

Feeling oddly shy under the child's apparent awe, Fanny shook her head.

"Does Mr. Saddler know you're in here?"

"Yes, sweetling."

"I wouldn't tell on you if he didn't know," she said, having no wish for their guardian to make this lady go away. "We're t'go to school tomorrow. D'you know that?"

A hot, steady stream of tears rolled down Fanny's face and slid in a hurry down past her chin. "Yes."

"Why're you crying, miss?" The tears must have looked a bit alarming to the child, shining in the weak candlelight. "Are you ill?"

"I have been, my love, but believe I'm greatly recovered now."

"You don't look re– Recowed... Re... What-you-call-it. Better, I mean. When I'm ill," explained the girl, sounding proud, "Mr. Saddler lets me stay in bed all day with a wet cloth on my head – and I'm allowed more jam on my toast – I bet you'd feel better and wouldn't cry so much if you had a wet cloth and extra jam."

"Perhaps not," laughed Fanny.

"You could come to school with us, and we'd" – she looked down at her sleeping sister – "take care of you there."

The tears fell faster as Fanny brokenly told her she could not accompany them to school.

"Don't you like school? Is it a very bad place?" There was sudden doubt – an audible waver – in her previously brave voice.

"It isn't that – I'm sure it's very good place, with lots of other little girls and fresh air (it is in the country, after all) – there's somebody I need to find." How to explain? She held up her left hand to the candle's tiny flame. "The gentleman who gave me this opal ring." Your father. "He will not be at your school in Highbury; he's somewhere here in town, I think."

"Can't you write him a letter?"

She shook her head.

"We can't write yet, either." The plump little hand placed itself over hers in a childish attempt at consolation. "They do teach you how at school, I think," she added hopefully.

Fanny couldn't help but smile indulgently at the infantile notion that if one but knew how to write, one could write to anyone, despite lack of paper or address or money for sending it.

Although she could have talked her daughter forever, and part of her was wishing her other daughter would wake and speak to her, too, so she might carry away with her the memory of both their voices, she knew children who haven't slept well the night before do not travel in good spirits in the morning and – thinking of her own journey to Mansfield when she was much older, at ten, than these poor little mites – attempted to soothe the girl back to sleep.

Fanny was not musical – she could play nothing, had never been possessed of a desire to learn, only to listen – but her voice wasn't bad in and of itself; she had a better voice, objectively, than Edmund's wife, and one equal in its sweetness of tone if not in its trained skill to those of Maria and Julia.

Besides, nearly any genteel mother can manage a mangled version of a lullaby and a hymn, and this she did, softly, until the girl – nestling back down beside her sister – closed her eyes and was slumbering afresh.

In the morning, after seeing the girls off – they both conspired to make the pretty, sickly lady, who they'd taken an instant liking to, accompany them if not all the way to school than at least on their journey, now they were conscious of her unexpected presence together, and nearly broke Fanny's heart in so contriving, for she needed to refuse them again and again through increasing tears, never letting them know who she was, unwilling they should yet learn they were being separated from their own mother for a second time – the saddler told her Roger Smith had left a parcel in his care.

"I weren't sure what he meant me to do with it, but now you're here, I can suppose it was meant for you."

Unwrapping layers of brown paper, Fanny discovered a fat purse – swelled and puffed out as if it were full to bursting – she thought must contain money from how it jangled, but to her surprise there was only a length of fine white cloth – a table-runner – and the jangling she'd heard had been a pattern of sewn-in glass beads about the edges.

It was a very pretty table-runner, to be sure, though she could not understand why her husband's former valet would leave her such a thing. "Perhaps it was meant for you, after all?"

"Not me – table frills're a lady's domain – I never bothered with such things in this house."

"Well, I am grateful," said Fanny next, lest he assume she wasn't thankful she'd been left anything at all. "I only wish I knew why–" Thinking of the scissors, she shook the runner out, to see if anything magical appeared atop it as cloth for her pelisse had appeared between the scissors' blades; she blushed when nothing happened, feeling rather foolish. Nonetheless, she thought it might, once stuffed back into the purse, though it would be bulky, fit in the pocket beside the magic scissors, and she wedged it into the lavender lining as best she could.

He couldn't spare much, not being a wealthy man by any means, but still the saddler was good-hearted enough to be unwilling for Fanny to go out into the world without a farthing, and he gave her a little money for travel, telling her to use it wisely and not let pick-pockets at it, and she – after much debate about where she might go – explained she was resolved to go her cousin Maria; she didn't know for a certainty the Rushworths were in town, but she didn't think it was time yet for them to remove to Sotherton, and she at least recollected the house was on Wimpole Street.

There was the chance, if Maria asked how she had lived in London thus far, and learned she'd been staying with the Crawfords, in Henry's own room, she would become jealous and refuse to help her; only Fanny felt certain once she explained she was run away from that house and seeking Tom, her cousin couldn't hold too much resentment towards her.

She was not, however, to discover what Maria would have thought, whether or not Maria would have helped her, for when she had at last found a way – via parting with some of the saddler's precious farthings – of being conveyed to Wimpole Street, and unfortunately mistook the address and bothered the very brusque butler of another prominent family in the neighbourhood, who – convinced the girl in the bulging grey pelisse with the shawl over her hair must be up to some mischief – threatened to have her forcibly removed if she didn't go of her own accord (the unnerving confrontation was only resolved when she convinced the butler, with a great deal of spluttering and trembling, she was a relation of sorts to the Rushworths, and was reluctantly directed to the correct house), she was told by the maid of Mr. Rushworth's mother her cousin was not at home.

She was away visiting friends in Twickenham.

When was she expected back?

Not anytime soon.

Fanny was again at a loss.

Even if the maid would give her the address of her cousin's Twickenham friends, and this was doubtful of itself, she had little desire to venture into that part of town; she had heard Mr. Crawford frequented there – indeed, according to Julia and Tom, Twickenham was a regular meeting place for Maria and Henry.

It was entirely possible her cousin had gone there in hopes of Henry's turning up.

But who else in town could Fanny possibly go to for assistance?

The cousins Julia had run away from with Yates wouldn't want anything to do with her – though she thought she might just have a chance of finding Sir Thomas there; they were his relations, after all.

Then she thought of the Bingleys.

With Yates running amok with Julia, it was doubtful Tom was spending his time in town with the Honourable, yet he must be living locally if he was so recently at the Admiral's looking for her, and who else did her husband have any serious attachment to here apart from Mr. Bingley?

Yes, she decided, this must be her best chance – disappointed by Maria's absence, she would go there before she tried any place else.

Alas, getting herself to Mr. Bingley's London residence again, without Tom or Wilcox, proved difficult. Although she recollected the address, she kept getting herself turned around and lost. She couldn't hire anyone to convey her, either, as a vagabond accosted her as she wandered about and took what little was left of her money from the saddler.

Grateful as she was he hadn't physically harmed her, being only after coin and not – Lord be praised – anything else, or taken the magic scissors, she still felt quite desolate as she curled in an alleyway, frightened out of her wits and set to crying into her pelisse sleeve for the sake of her sore feet – they hurt so! – and for missing her Highbury-bound daughters and for her bitter anger at Mr. Crawford for sending Tom away to begin with and putting her in this wretched position.

Crying was all very well and good, while it lasted, but after a couple hours her tears were spent and even her shivering was reduced to an involuntary twitch caused only by the chill of the night.

Thinking to use the table-runner as a sort of makeshift lap-blanket (she'd tried, first, to make a blanket with the magic scissors, but it kept giving her a length of cream-coloured lacy material no use at all for the purpose), Fanny took the curious gift out and set it over her legs. She clapped her numb, red hands – by chance held over the spread-open runner as she did so – together, hoping to smart them back to life, at least so she could feel them again, and started in amazement as a great quantity of food, exactly what should have been served at a simple but elegant tea – complete with dainty little cakes and a delightful-smelling boiled egg with salt – appeared.

So, the table-runner was magic as well!

She might have no shelter or money, at least until she could find Bingley's house, but with the scissors and the table-runner she should be clothed and fed without having to resort to throwing herself back upon Admiral Crawford's charity.

Eating her fill and then curling up behind a low brick structure she thought might screen her from passersby, Fanny slept for a couple of hours, more than a little comforted in the knowledge she was far from being entirely without aid.

Reaching Bingley's front door – her heart leaping as she recognised it – Fanny hoped her adventure might be ended; sleeping outside and wandering in the bad air had given her a nasty cough and she wanted nothing more than to be welcomed inside to a parlour, given leave to lie down on a sofa, and told her husband would meet her there soon.

But the place turned out to be quite shut up – sheets draped over all the furnishings and no one but a smattering of servants living there at the moment – and she could learn only that they – the Bingleys and their guests, that was – were gone away to Netherfield Park.

"Please," croaked Fanny, uncomfortably aware of her red, dripping nose and how dreadful she must look, "was Mr. Bertram with them?"

Here, at least, was some good news – yes, the servants had indeed seen Mr. Bertram into the carriage with their master, even helped him with what limited luggage he'd brought along for himself; they believed he meant to stay in Netherfield as long as his hosts did.

Was he well?

It wasn't their place to say – they couldn't judge – but there was a flicker of discomfiture in their eyes which made Fanny think her husband must have looked very poorly indeed when last they'd seen him.

Netherfield Park was in Hertfordshire.

How was Fanny to get there?

She dismissed a number of wild plans, each one less viable than the last, before – as she happened to trudge past a dressmaker's shop – inspiration struck.

The fine lacy material provided by the scissors last night!

Of course!

It was so simple! She must sell it to the dressmaker and use the acquired funds from this exchange to travel by the mail to Hertfordshire!

She now wished, rather desperately, she had been there for Edmund and Mary's wedding – perhaps, then, she would have known where to find Netherfield Park once she arrived.

But, at least, she knew about Meryton – Mary and others had spoken of it – and someone there would surely be able to give her directions.

Mary had relations thereabouts by the name of Phillips. Edmund told her about them once in passing. Fanny had no wish to impose upon them, upon these innocent strangers who doubtless would no more want her on their hands than did Sir Thomas' London relations, yet she hoped they – if no one else – would trust her and be amiable about helping her to locate Netherfield.

But first things first – she must sell that lacy material.

Fanny realised, of course, if she appeared in just her pelisse under which might still show some small glimpse of her nightdress if she chanced to move incorrectly, she might well be turned away before she could even offer the fine material for sale; therefore, finding a private nook behind the shop and squatting awkwardly there, she did her best with the scissors, hoping if she concentrated she might somehow control what sort of fabric came from them.

No such luck.

She couldn't get their magic to give her any undergarments – apparently they did not do corsets any more than they did bonnets, and if they were, as she suspected they just might be, capable of providing the material for suitable stockings they hadn't done so as yet – and she blanched to see the pretty, low-necked evening dress of pink-and-purple (which, while lovely, was grossly over-trimmed to her simple taste and in such a garish hue as would never match the pelisse, obliging her to wear either the one or the other).

Fanny was most grateful for the length of pink ruffles and the elegant train which completely hid her feet (the scissors couldn't manage new boots or slippers, either), but she couldn't shake the feeling it was exactly the sort of absurd, over-fine garment Henry Crawford would have clothed her in if she had consented to be his mistress she could not help longing to tear it from her skin even as she was glad to shed the much perspired in nightdress and put on something fresh.

Further, she was certain – sans anything underneath – the silhouette, despite the mercies of the high-waisted fashion, was all wrong. Coupling the painfully incorrect hour to be wearing such a thing with her knowledge of this, and the keen awareness of her bare head (for she didn't think the shawl should at all suit), her face was coloured a bright, unflattering, deeply ashamed scarlet as she entered, ringing the bell above the door and alerting the pert shopgirl to her presence.

There was only hostility and mistrust at first, and the girl called her superior from the back, who had nothing at all kind to say to Fanny for disturbing her; but when they saw the splendid lacy material, and heard her timid, faltering offer that she would gladly sell them the dress she presently had on, too, if they would let her buy something else – something more appropriate to travel in – from their shop once the exchange had been agreed upon, they began to see the situation might be more advantageous for their business than otherwise.

They changed and became friendlier towards her, though they did not like how she refused to say a word about where she'd gotten the lacy material or the dress (not for the world would she have told them about the magical scissors, which they undoubtedly would have wanted for themselves), and all was arranged agreeably so that Fanny was soon decked out in sensible garments (under-things as well) which were comfortable for travel and matched her grey pelisse.

Although she had no notion of the fact, even so, they technically cheated her (the lacy material alone was worth more than they paid or traded), Fanny was astonished to find she had enough money left not only to convey her to Hertfordshire (she knew now, of course, she needn't worry about food), but also to do a kind thing for her daughters before she quit London.

She went with her new-gotten fortune into a nearby toy-maker's shop and ordered two dolls with chestnut tresses and painted, ivory faces – different as the moon is from a block of weak cheese to the single wooden, faceless doll Fanny herself had had, as a present from her sister Mary's godparents, before coming to Mansfield Park, which she had nonetheless doted upon and left behind in her younger sisters' hands only in the spirit of great sacrifice to those she loved – to be sent to an address in Highbury she'd long since memorised.

"Please," said she, tears swimming in her light eyes, "will you include, With love from your Mama, who has never yet and never will forget either of you, upon the accompanying card?"

"Certainly, Madam," said the fellow packing up the boxes at the storefront, seeing her only as he would any other respectable customer, "just as you like."

Thus, Fanny felt, at last, her entire business in town (all but learning of what had happened to Sir Thomas) was completed and she might leave London for the countryside to seek Tom in reasonably good conscience.

Her travelling companions – seated upon either side of her – were not such as Fanny would have liked – there were only two of them, also going in the general direction of Hertfordshire by the mail, a man and a woman, but neither were strictly what one could call a lady or a gentleman.

The man, bulbous of nose and wide of girth, was constantly scratching himself and muttering oaths under his breath, and a smell of rancid garlic and spoilt onion seemed to waft around him like a continuous perfume.

The woman, despite an unfriendly something or other about her visage Fanny took inexplicable umbrage to almost from the first – who she assumed to be the man's wife, if the tarnished rings they wore were any indication of such a union, both despite and because of their deliberate choice to sit apart with her in the middle – was less outwardly alarming.

She was small, in a way that must have been delicate once, and looked as if she – very recently, to be sure – must have been quite pretty; she had the air of one who has lost her bloom only in the past couple of years and knows it and is embittered by this knowledge. Her eyes were the sort of darker blue Fanny secretly used to wish her own were, back when she was of the age to first realise light eyes were not in fashion and were certainly not admired by Edmund. Her hair, a tangle of dishevelled, rather lank, waves pinned in a slovenly fashion atop her head, which must surely have been real curls in their past lives, was a handsome shade of burnished red – Fanny thought Tom, being an artist, would have described the colour as russet, if asked.

Perhaps Fanny would not have had to engage much with the pair, content as they initially seemed to use her as a silent buffer between themselves, if only the driver, when they stopped to change the horses, hadn't stuck his head in and loudly hissed, "Bertram?"

Raising her head, she tried to ask what was amiss, and only received a sour lecture demanding where the devil she had learnt to count; she had given over the wrong fare at the start of their journey and they must make it right before going on, and if she should not do better in future, he did not know how she would get on because a less honest driver should have – well within right, mind, for it was not part of the driver's occupation to chase after an addled, idiot passenger – cheated her and left her to find herself with a great deficit when she stopped at an inn for rest.

No sooner had she recovered from being thus chastised, her face bright and her hands shaking, than the man declared he had heard the name Bertram before and – leaning over her so she could scarcely breathe for the scent of bad garlic mixed with strong spirits – demanded of his wife where he – indeed, they – had heard it. "Where, my little Molly?" There was almost affection in his voice, just the smallest bit like in tone to how Tom might have sounded when he called Fanny mousy or wifey. "Bertram – Mighty familiar, what."

"I tell you," she huffed, leaning over Fanny and consequently crushing her between them, "we don't know nuffin 'bout any Bertram, or if we do you owe him money and had best not bring up the connection, now do be a lamb and–"

"Blast it all, I've recollected it now!" roared the man, his eyes flashing and fists flailing so that Fanny thought he would – whether or purpose or not – wind up striking her if she did not manage to avoid his wild blows. "Bertram – he were that preening baronet's son who took advantage of you on your father's ship so long ago!"

Because, of course, this was none other than Molly – the sea-captain's daughter who had tried to seduce Tom on the journey home from Antigua and got a bit more than she bargained for, being the first, perhaps, to see him transform – and the cook who had liked her so well; she had married him, in the end, because everybody else saw her as quite a sullied little strumpet, only the cook – blinded by admiration – thought she was pure as rainwater, calling what others said only ugly rumours, and that the only man who'd ever touched her besides himself – quite without her consent – was a certain baronet's son.

Luckily, they all had to get out while the horses were changed and a wobbling wheel checked upon, and Fanny was able to move a little ways apart from them while they exclaimed and looked at her.

Molly, whose looks were askance, seemed a little mortified, as well she might be, but her husband stared at Fanny directly and kept remarking she was very like that other Bertram and must surely be a relation.

The whole story came out – Molly's version, of course, so nothing at all like to the truth – and Fanny only listened with a grave, slightly judgemental stare which further unnerved Molly at once and even got to her husband by and by so that he gradually quieted somewhat.

She didn't utter a word to either of them about it until they parted at a stop the carriage took within walking distance of Meryton – almost at dawn the following day – when she, taking her small hand-luggage from the driver with a gentle grace which made him feel guilty for speaking harshly to her the day before, only said, to Molly, "Between ourselves, ma'am, I don't believe Tom Bertram ever touched you – good day."

Molly turned very pale, either with shame or with rage, but it is to be assumed she stuck to her story – after so many years, repeating it and hearing it repeated, she might even have begun to believe it, in her way.

Although she did not wish to trouble Mary's Aunt Phillips, Meryton did not prove quite large – nor populous, on that particular day – enough to avoid running into her before she got her directions (directions which she understood, at any rate) to Netherfield from someone else, and as soon as the good woman realised who Fanny was, she was most eager to bring her to her sister at Longbourn, who she said had spoken of her with extreme fondness.

In truth, Fanny hadn't even thought of going to her friend Mrs. Bennet; during all her days of illness at Admiral Crawford's, she had somehow quite forgotten about her, though she recollected when Mrs. Phillips said so, Longbourn was supposedly only about three miles from Netherfield.

The walk from Meryton to Longbourn, undertaken upon Mrs. Phillips' very willing arm, was a good deal more fatiguing to Fanny – already wearied by making her way that far from London – than it would have been to any of the Bennet sisters in the old days; to them, it should have done no more than bring something like roses to their cheeks, a healthy flush only heightened by the natural excitement of the younger two, of Lydia and Kitty.

For Fanny it was an ordeal – a great ordeal, to be sure, yet one she would not have complained of for the world, even as she panted for breath and struggled to listen to Mrs. Phillips' good-natured (and also seemingly endless) stream of conversation as they went along; she was quite fagged, near done for, by the time she was in view of Longbourn.

Perhaps it isn't too surprising that, at the first sight of her from the window, Mr. Bennet only raised his brow and coolly remarked, "Is this your 'pretty Mrs. Bertram' you compared so favourably to Jane, Mrs. Bennet? Well, well – her figure is good, but I can't see she's such an exceptional beauty as you raved – she looks sickly and cross to my eyes." He added, "She'll do well – very well – for what Mr. Bertram has become, though, I daresay, if she can regain him. They certainly are a matched set."

Mrs. Bennet declared he delighted in contradicting her, that was all, and she didn't see it was Mrs. Bertram's fault if she was sickly. She herself had had a wretched cold for two weeks she'd only just got over, not that anybody in this house cared too figs what she suffered.

And as to cross, anyone in Mrs. Bertram's predicament would be cross; how could she help being cross?

Although Mr. Bennet was civil enough within her hearing, Fanny found – when they met – she did not much like him.

At least, she did not like him so well as she wanted to; her opinion of the gentleman, after only an hour, was similar to Edmund's, which is, when thought over, not too surprising.

Fanny's mind, after all, still naturally turned – and reasoned – in a way very similar to the initial direction Edmund had pointed it in during her early youth.

Still, her sweet manners and his discovery she was not so silly as he feared she must be, made him warm to her, and he was sorry – afterwards – he did not strive to make a better impression upon their guest, sorry he did not strive, at least, to guard his tongue and curb his natural tendency towards the sardonic a little better.

Fanny, of course, wanted to go to Netherfield straightaway, but Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Bennet would both have her stay just where she was and go tomorrow.

"But it is so early," protested Fanny, even as she was dragged into the drawing-room and made to take some tea. "I think I had better present myself there as soon as I can and ask after To–" She stopped short, inhaling raggedly. "After Mr. Bertram."

"Nonsense," argued Mrs. Bennet. "You had much better spend the day resting here with us – I haven't seen you since my grandson was born, you know, we ought to catch one another up – and appear at Netherfield refreshed and restored tomorrow."

"I expect she'll want the loan of our carriage?" sighed Mr. Bennet, cutting his eyes.

Fanny herself was about to protest this – she had hoped for the carriage's being offered her, if she were being honest, her sore legs rather troubling her at the moment, but would not think of taking it now he had spoken of the favour in such a tone as he'd employed – when Mrs. Bennet said she would go on horseback.

"Oh," cried Mrs. Phillips, brightening. "I see what you are about, sister! You mean to smooth over any niggling troubles there may be by necessity of them keeping her there – if only we were lucky, and it would rain – and forcing wayward Mr. Bertram to talk to her."

"Good lord," said Mr. Bennet, taking up a newspaper. "Well, I suppose you would like to repeat your old much-favoured experiment again, given half the chance; heaven knows this scheme served you well in the past."

Mrs. Bennet pressed her lips together, eyes narrowing. "Well, it did, did it not? Jane got Mr. Bingley in the end, didn't she?" She began to clang her spoon in her teacup. "And I should like to see my dear Fanny uproot that shameless little weed Caroline Bingley – what can she mean, setting her cap at Mr. Bertram and getting a stranglehold on him as if he were her own property? And him already married! Would serve her right, his wife turning up and separating them."

Fanny's right hand shook: her teacup was nearly upset, and she would have spilled its scalding contents into her lap if Mrs. Hill – who had just come in – was not quicker than herself and happened to steady her at the elbow.

"Miss Bingley?" she spluttered, raising her widened eyes and peering anxiously into all three faces. Caroline Bingley and Tom? It was too incredible. There must be some mistake. "What can you mean?"

"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Phillips, lips parted, "didn't you know about them? Isn't that why you've come all this way?"

Here, Fanny's courage failed her; as soon as her hands were free, her teacup taken away by Mrs. Hill, she covered her face with them and, heedless of six pairs of eyes watching her with growing pity (even Mr. Bennet looked rather sorry for her then), wept and wept, as if her heart were breaking.

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