Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Nineteen:
Impropriety, Such As It Can Be
"Right this way, through those doors."
"Ah, yes, thank you; I'm sure I can manage." Tom nodded and curled his fingers around the brass handle, pulling down and flinging the doors open with a cheerful flourish.
He was just thinking how very nice and airy – if a little devoid of modern furnishings – he was finding his commissioner's modest holiday house, pondering what a spot of good fortune he was having, wondering if he ought to go into the portrait business full-time (regardless of how his father would doubtless react to such a shocking career choice) if things always ran so smoothly as all this, when a series of breathy gasps and giggles reached his ears and he realised, with a start, he was in the presence of half a dozen unclothed women.
"Oh, eh, dreadfully sorry..." He would have tipped his hat, if he'd been wearing one. "I hadn't been informed anyone was in here already. I've walked in on you lot dressing, it would seem." He turned halfway and averted his eyes, feeling behind himself for the door-handle. "Please forgive the intrusion. I'll come back once you're all changed into whatever it is you intend to wear for the portrait."
The giggling got louder, the tittering girls now whispering amongst one another.
Why, Tom wondered, slightly annoyed, weren't these blasted models behaving as he imagined normal females would? What was wrong with these women? Why weren't they shrieking and scattering and fumbling to cover themselves the way he knew his sisters would in a similar situation? Maria, bless her, would probably threaten to have the portrait artist sacked if one ever walked in on her undressed – he didn't want that, of course, but some sense of decorum and normality might have been nice. It would have made him feel less awkward, at any rate. But there wasn't a single rustling garment to be heard, only that ceaseless giggling.
"That is what they're wearing for the portrait." His commissioner suddenly stood behind him, holding up a decanter and two glasses, one of which he motioned to hand Tom. "Nothing."
"Oh, God, yes." Tom accepted the glass and had the man fill it to the brim, taking a long swallow before considering what was just said. "Oh." He smacked his lips together and – putting a fist to his abdomen and coughing – belched. "Right..." he wheezed out. "So... They're... You're..." He whirled and pointed at one of the women, a handsome wench of perhaps seventeen, whose skin was roughly the same colour as the one house-servant he'd associated with in Antigua. "I'm going to be presumptuous here and assume you're definitely not his daughter."
She giggled and said something to another of the women under her breath.
Tom grimaced. He remembered, then, what was said to him when he – with too much haste, evidently – accepted this commission, the advice he'd been so quick to dismiss as coming from an addled crackpot: you are mistaken, he does not have daughters.
Mercy.
"None of you are. Oh dear."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"Erm..." Tom cleared his throat and glanced – with faint sheepishness – from his commissioner, to the ready supplies set by an easel a few feet away, to the unclothed women. "Could I possibly get some more of whatever this was before I answer that question? It's bloody fantastic." He shook his near-empty glass emphatically.
"Certainly."
Tom downed the refilled glass, thought of the money, reassured himself it was only a job, nothing more, a means of getting home to the one woman he actually wouldn't mind sketching unclothed, and – inhaling deeply – finally said, "I'll do it, but I will, of course, insist upon being paid half the agreed amount upfront."
One of the women – a girl, really – probably the youngest in the room, perhaps Susan's age (which Tom still very much considered a child), seemed to find this funny and – rather than the grating giggling and tittering she and the others had previously been doing up until now – let out a real laugh, complete with a riotous snort.
Wanting to make her laugh for real again, if he could, Tom decided to keep going, in a tone with exaggerated pompousness, watching her reaction out of the corner of his eye. "And, naturally, in addition to upfront payment, I will require the windows to be opened – I want to feel like I'm standing on the damn sun when I walk into this room every morning to paint – and those plants over there must be moved, because I don't fancy looking at them."
It worked – the girl had to put her hand over her mouth to keep in another round of snorts; her bare shoulders shook wildly. Tom felt rather proud of himself.
His commissioner agreed to give him a quarter of the agreed upon amount up front, and not a 'bloody farthing' more. "And the plants stay exactly where they are, and you'll learn to love looking at them or else you're back in the tavern clearing tables."
Tom brought it down a smidgeon. "Hem. Yes, sir. As you like."
"Now, I would prefer it if you started any preliminary sketching you need to do before you begin the portrait at once – there's no need to wait for the last of my girls to arrive. She's coming all the way from London, you see, as a special favour to me."
"Oh, there's another, is there?" asked Tom, picking up a charcoal stick and twirling it between his fingers. "Makes seven – bit uneven, from an artistic standpoint, if you ask me."
"She can go in the middle – three on either side of her – she's the eldest."
Tom considered. "Yes, I imagine that would work right enough." He blinked pensively. "It should look very well."
The commissioner gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Good – get to work." To the women, with a snap of his fingers, he said, "You lot, places."
Most of them fell into place and stayed still, though one kept arching her back and finding excuses to move and stretch, trying to get Tom's attention, eventually deciding it to be a lost cause and settling in rather morosely.
Hell, they do say, hath no fury like a woman scorned.
The youngest – the one who'd laughed – disappeared after a quarter of an hour, and Tom was about to ask where the devil she'd gone, when she reappeared with a plate of food for him – some cheese, a bunch of grapes, and a chicken leg – setting it down beside his art supplies and scampering back to her place with the others.
"Oh, thank you," he said, without glancing up from his sketching, "that's very thoughtful." He wondered, a mere second after speaking, if she had gone undressed into the kitchen – wherever in this house it happened to be located – to fetch it, or if she'd had the sense to put a dressing-gown of some kind over herself first and avoid draughts. "Don't catch a chill on my behalf." Heaven help him, he sounded not unlike his grandfather, when he said that, he realised – a fussy old man (also called Thomas, like himself and his father) he just barely remembered from when he was very, very small.
"Well, upon my word, what have we here?"
Tom tensed. He knew that voice – he knew it – but from where?
"Mr. Bertram?"
He hunched up, slumping forward on his stool, and avoided eye-contact, even as the figure – a woman clad in only a thin dressing-gown which concealed very little – moved around him.
"It is!" she exclaimed. "My, my. Tom Bertram. After all this time! Papa's boy himself!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Tom said quickly, still avoiding looking directly at her. He knew exactly what she was talking about; he'd worked out, by this point, where it was he'd heard her voice before. A woman of ill-repute, come from London. Of course it would be her. However against the odds it was, it would be her. Of bloody course. "You mistake me for someone else."
"You're taller, I think," was all she said in reply, her tone coy and jesting. "Your legs look longer, at any rate. I shall be more certain when I see you standing up."
Groaning, Tom tossed his sketch-work onto the floor with a clattering thud and motioned at the doors behind them. "A word, madam. In private."
"Ooh, madam," she teased, as he lightly gripped the sheer sleeve of her ridiculous and pointless dressing-gown and pulled her towards the doors.
As soon as he had – with more angry emphasis than was perhaps originally intended – banged the doors shut behind them, Tom snarled, "However very little you think of me, madam, do be so good as to understand this – I am here for one reason only."
"I cannot imagine it is to enjoy the company, for fear news of it might return to your precious father."
Tom's nostrils flared. He was quite offended. But he only said, "No, you're right about that – it is not the company." He exhaled. "I need the money from this job, badly."
"Gambling debts, I imagine."
"Of a sort, yes, but I always have those hanging over my head to some degree – we all have our vices, though I imagine, madam, you're used to far less benign measures of addiction in men of your acquaintance – my chief concern is to return home. My letter to a companion I placed all my hopes upon has – it seems – gone astray or been unheeded; I need money, considerably more than can be picked up from the gutters as loose change, in hand to make it back to Mansfield Park."
"To your father," she simpered, pursing her lips. "Poor papa's lad cannot bear to be away from home so long."
"To my wife," said he, through gritted teeth.
Her eyes widened. "My, my, Tom Bertram – you are all surprises today. I am quite astonished. You, married? Truly?"
He nodded.
"Someone Sir Thomas Bertram picked out?"
"The very last person he would have," he admitted, with a slight cutting of the eyes. "A poor relation."
"You are the last gentleman alive I'd have suspected of an under-handed love-match."
"Perhaps I'm also the last gentleman alive you'd suspect of pining for want of having his own dear wife in his bed at night."
Her gaze dropped. "I fear I've been a bit cruel to you, Mr. Bertram."
"Well," said he, amiably but with some pompousness, "none of us are perfect, my dear – just don't allow it to happen again."
"I teased you over your actions from when you were little more than a boy and I did not take into account what your current feelings or circumstances might be."
"No, no. I wasn't so young as that when we met – younger than I am now, yes, but..." He shook his head. "Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter."
"Do you even really remember me?" she asked.
"More or less." By which he meant hardly at all.
"D'you know my name?"
He shook his head.
"It's Anne."
"I think the other gentlemen from that embarrassingly uneventful night in London called you something else" – he brought a hand to his forehead – "something more exotic, though what precisely evades my memory."
"Nonetheless, sir, my name is Anne – it is what my parents called me, more years ago than I'd like to admit."
He held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Miss Anne, though I think I preferred it when you were madam. Left something to the imagination, what. Truce?"
She accepted the outstretched hand and shook it. "Truce."
"As soon as the damn portrait is done, you won't have to deal with me a moment longer – I give you my word."
"That's too bad," she said; "I think we might get on better than once we would. I find you much changed, greatly altered."
"If only I were," Tom sighed, leaning back against the door-frame. "I sometimes suspect being trapped in myself – within my own never-changing head – is the cruellest jest God ever played on me."
The days began to melt together after that.
In Anne, though she had arrived initially as an unwelcome ghost from his past, Tom found an unlooked-for champion. Knowing his purpose in being there, she proved always the first to speak up in his behalf and to halt the other women's teasing if it became too much.
In addition to this, Tom was amazed to learn he and Anne had something in common besides an embarrassing story about his youth – a shared love and thorough knowledge of horses – and it greatly endeared them to one another.
He never would have suspected, not in a thousand years, a common London whore of liking horses, much less of knowing such a great deal about them.
More than once, Tom felt a slight twinge of disappointment that this woman was not of his social class and he thus could not, given how it would look, invite her to come riding with him or show her about his stables; he would have valued her opinion on his favourite hunter.
Although he learned the jovial, snorting girl whose youth put him in mind of Susan Price was called Sophie, he did not discover – or ask – the names of the other five women of ill repute, and gradually knew them only by sight and colouring and on account of their possessing certain physical characteristics he was in a unique position to see on a daily basis.
He jested with them, at a distance, and allowed them, also, to see the progress on his portrait if they so wished, provided whoever it was didn't break her pose while he was still working to come over and see – he'd been cross with the only woman of the group to try it, quite lost his temper, and it did not happen twice.
One bright morning, while he painted, the woman who'd arched her back at him on the first day was giving him a difficult time, constantly moving when she wasn't supposed to simply to make him look up at her in exasperation before smirking pointedly the very moment they made eye-contact.
Anne, from her place in the middle, turned her head at the neck and told her companion to stop picking on their gentleman painter friend. "Have some mercy on the poor young man, Sally – he's separated from his true love."
At that moment, the doors behind Tom were flung open – while somebody in the hall shouted whoever was barging in did not have permission to be here – and none other than John Yates and his valet came striding in.
"Bertram!" cried Mr. Yates, breathlessly, hands outreaching.
Whirling so that his stool fell out from beneath him and tossing aside his paintbrush, Tom leaped up and ran to his friend, pulling him gratefully into his arms in a tight embrace.
"Yates!" he murmured into the Honourable's shoulder, clinging to him. "What the devil kept you?"
Watching this display of clear affection, Sophie began to clap uncertainly.
Anne sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. "No," she hissed, "not that one."
"My best carriage-horse threw a shoe, and–" Mr. Yates stopped, pulling away from Tom, noticing the unclothed women for the first time. "I say! Steady on, old bean. Merciful lord in Heaven!"
"D'you need a moment?" Tom asked, patting his friend's back understandingly. "I shan't judge."
"I might." He stared, pressing a hand to his heart. "I'm quite taken by surprise. Most, most unexpected..."
"It gets old remarkably fast," Tom assured him. "You wouldn't think so, but it does."
The poor mortified valet excused himself and backed into the hallway, only to crash into something and then come running back in a moment later, see the posed women again, and – blushing furiously – direct his gaze to the wall behind them.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Mr. Yates. "And here you led me to believe you were languishing away in some tavern like a slave!" He motioned at the nearest woman of ill-repute. "Quite generously endowed, isn't she? Just sort of jumps out at one and shouts a greeting to the heavens, don't they?"
Tom shrugged nonchalantly. "I've seen better." To the woman, "Erm, no offence."
She narrowed her eyes at him, wholly unforgiving.
"No time like the present, then," Yates crooned, waving an arm at the door. "Come, Bertram. We'd best be on our way if you wish to be anywhere near Mansfield by tomorrow morning."
Alas, they could not leave at once – despite Tom's raised hopes – because his commissioner blocked them and declared, in a tone which might have passed for jesting if the man's eyes had not darkened considerably as he spoke, that if he left Weymouth without first completing the portrait he would have Tom's legs broken in five places.
When Yates, with a sharp intake of offended breath, protested against this most unfair threat, the commissioner remarked that he'd already paid Tom an advance.
"That is easily rectified," said Mr. Yates, cheerfully, turning to Tom with a grin. "Give back the money, make your apologies, and we can–"
"Uhhh..." Tom gnawed on his lower lip so intently he almost drew blood. If only it were so easy.
Yates moaned, "Don't tell me you haven't got it!"
"I might," Tom confessed, wringing his hands, "have lost some of it – just a few guineas, mind you – at a card-table last night."
Over his shoulder, to his valet, Yates called, "Fetch my money-pouch, my dear fellow – it seems there is some payment required to leave this place." In a lower voice, to Tom, he said, "You mustn't think anything of it, you know – what's a few guineas between friends?"
"This," said the commissioner, dryly, handing Mr. Yates a folded scrap of torn paper, "is what your friend owes me if he leaves this appointment prematurely."
Yates read the number written down, coloured vividly, and – looking nearly apoplectic – coughed out, "A few guineas, you said!"
Tom made a face which might have been a sheepish grin but more likely was a grimace. "I suppose you'd better unpack – my employer's servants will show you to the guest chambers. We shall be here some days more."
To his credit, Tom did not – for once in his life – shirk his work; the portrait took exactly as long as it needed to, was not rushed or ruined, no corner was noticeably cut in the process of its creation despite his eagerness to be back home, to see Fanny again.
If the eagerness he endured gave him pain, he dulled it considerably with drink and with finding pleasure in the company of Mr. Yates and the least silly of the women who were the subject of his portrait. Two of them, in addition to Sophie and Anne, were acceptable conversationalists and proved amiable. His commissioner, though friendly in passing, no longer threatening to break his legs now that he showed no signs of running away, was generally more standoffish, especially with Mr. Yates in the house.
When the daily light changed to a point where the work needed to be postponed until it returned to what it had been during the morning hours, and Tom's dominant hand was cramped and sore, the women sometimes suggested surprisingly benign actives one did not generally imagine whores doing – playing cricket on the beach, in one instance.
Tom won several of their friendly games and, despite the fact that even Mr. Yates was painfully aware the makeshift set up in the sand was of the simplest sort, designed, more or less, so that anyone with the slightest skill with a cricket bat could not lose, was simply delighted every time.
A few evenings following the cricket games, an outdoor ball was held, practically at the same location, by some Weymouth locals and holiday-goers, and the women – with the commissioner's permission – all contrived to go and to bring Tom and Mr. Yates along with them.
Mr. Yates danced a few measures (though not with any of the women they'd arrived in the company of), but Tom had come resolved not to stand up himself. He sat, instead, drinking and watching the stars come out and occasionally gauging the dancers curiously, wondering if they were – any of them – in love, if that could be what kept them at it for so long.
Then he heard a sniffling at his side, and turned in considerable surprise to find Sophie Friday-faced and openly weeping.
At first, he could not persuade her to tell him what the matter was, suspecting she might have been hurt, finally getting out of her that she'd merely been snubbed by a gentleman she'd expected to dance with her.
"Oh," said Tom, not with quite so much sensitivity as he might have employed if he had not been drinking, "because you're a–?"
"Uh-huh."
"Rotten luck." He brought his wineglass to his lips and drank, long and deeply. "Condolences, I'm sure, are in order."
Her tears coursed harder, streaming down her face.
Tom could hardly fail to notice every other woman in attendance – lady or otherwise – had managed to find a partner for this blasted dance, even Anne, despite her clearly being the most mature-looking female present, and how this weighed on poor, snubbed Sophie.
It did not help his nagging conscience that she somehow, with a mix of her young age and her soft countenance, put him in mind of both Susan and Fanny at the same time.
So, with a sigh and a light groan, he rose from his place and stepped in front of the crying girl, holding out a hand. "I'll stand up with you, Sophie, if you like – if you don't mind being led in the dance by an old married man who's been drinking all evening."
Her tears slowed and she blinked, slowly wiping them away as she gazed up at him. "You don't have to..."
"Nonsense, I know I don't have to, of course! No one has to do anything they don't want. There's no use talking about it. Come on – don't dawdle or the dance will be over."
While they danced, Tom happened to spy someone on the other side of the beach, not one of the local party, staring at him sombrely with especial attention.
Sophie asked, joining hands, nearly all merriment now, if something was wrong.
"Nothing – I just..." He squinted over her shoulder. "I think I've seen that man somewhere before, and he's been watching me." He smiled, then, and turned, switching places – for a beat – with the dancer on his left, before finding himself in front of Sophie once again. "I'm not actually worried. He's probably taken me for someone else in the dark. I'm sure that's all it is."
The dance ended and Anne – excusing herself from her own partner – privately congratulated Tom on what he'd done for Sophie. She had witnessed the girl's disappointment, seen the whole occurrence, and hoped – though she imagined it was in vain – someone would be willing to set aside their pride for the evening and indulge the poor thing before any real harm to her spirits could be done.
"Well" – he gave an exaggerated shrug – "I could hardly sit there while she was blue as megrim because some mutton-headed gentleman thought himself too good for her."
"You could have, though," she said quietly. "You didn't. Whatever made you do it, Mr. Bertram? You must have known you would look a bit silly dancing with her in public – she being what she is, and you – even if you're not generally known here by name – a proper-bred gentleman of six-and-twenty."
"She put me in mind of my little sister-in-law," Tom admitted. "And I found myself thinking what..." He dropped her gaze. "That is, I thought what my brother would have done, in my place." Not that he imagined Edmund would ever have let himself be in such a situation. "I thought... I thought he would have danced with her. Because it was the kind thing to do." And everybody always did seem to love him best, even Fanny – his younger brother must, in his life, be doing something right.
Anne stared, as if seeing him clearly for the first time. "You're not what you act like, not a bit like it."
"I do not understand you."
"Tom Bertram," she sighed, "even when you're at your best, you seem to care for nothing, as if life is one big game you want to try your hand at, win or lose, as if you were merely living for yourself... But when it comes down to it – truly – I think all you really want is to be useful somehow."
"I'm not altogether sure I know how to be useful," he said in what was nearly a murmur.
"Perhaps," suggested Anne, pityingly, "that is why you nearly always hold yourself back."
"Perhaps."
"Or is it because," she wondered aloud, "you're afraid someone else already does it so much better than yourself, that you fear you aren't needed?"
Tom could not bring himself to answer.
He decided he was very glad, after all, that the stark class difference should keep them from ever being real friends with one another – her directness made him nervous and, worse even than that, melancholic.
Her words made the mercifully fast world slow down, made him want to think.
And there was danger and, worse even than that, pain in such thinking.
Fanny stood at the window. She was watching the tailor who was to make up her new wardrobe and had just been in to measure her and ask what fabrics she liked best (and she'd hardly known, really, apart from Mary Crawford's suggestions) depart, and heard – behind her – Mrs. Norris say, "You ought to be very obliged to your uncle, Fanny, for footing the bill as he did."
Bile burned the back of her throat; bitter tears held in too long stung her eyes. She tried not to think too hard about how Aunt Norris put so heavy an emphasis on the word uncle, as if Sir Thomas were not also her father-in-law.
"I thank you both," said Fanny, at last, with forced airiness. "For your consideration, that is. I-I'm sure Tom will pay him back." She was not, really, sure of any such thing – indeed was rather doubtful of it – but it felt the right thing to say, the expected thing.
"Poor Tom," said Mrs. Norris, with a despairing tsk in Fanny's direction, and walked away.
Fanny buried her face in her hands and breathed very slowly, inhaling and exhaling with effort, struggling not to burst into tears.
When she lowered her hands and glanced out the window again, she saw a small, wholly unfamiliar carriage pulling up. Stepping away from the window, she called, over her shoulder, "Edmund?"
Edmund was near enough to hear her call. He'd seen Aunt Norris in passing and – realising she must have been talking to Fanny at the window, doubtless none too nicely – had been on his way to see if she was all right.
"Fanny, whatever–" he began, before glimpsing the arriving carriage for himself, seeing a thin young man step out. "Why, it's Mr. Owen!"
Fanny looked at him with a furrowed brow.
"A friend of mine," he explained quickly. "We were ordained together." He peered out and frowned. "Strange. He looks unusually grave – I do hope his family are all well. Come along, Fanny" – taking her hand – "we'll go out to meet him and hear his news."
Mr. Owen took off his hat and nodded to them staidly, gripping the wide, black brim so tightly his knuckles glowed white against the dark backdrop clutched by his tense fingers.
Edmund introduced Fanny as Mrs. Bertram, and Mr. Owen – a more approachable, conversational countenance peeking through his lingering solemnity – declared it was a pleasure, to be sure, though a tremendous surprise all the same.
"But, Edmund, my friend," he added, shaking his head. "How could you, of all persons, forget the banns? Ought the thing not to have been more generally known? Why the secrecy?"
"I'm afraid that was all my brother's doing," he said. "He insisted upon it. I was obliged to do my best with the time available."
"Yes, your brother, Tom – that is the very subject I came to speak to you on."
Edmund's eyes widened. "You've had word of him?"
Mr. Owen hesitated. "Have you? Has he written home?"
Fanny shook her head as Edmund confessed they were not even aware of where he was at the moment.
Wincing, Mr. Owen suggested they speak privately, and Edmund – with a sigh – invited him inside and made as if to bring him into the drawing room where Lady Bertram and Susan were, then – thinking better of it – waved him discreetly into an adjoining vestibule.
Still, Mr. Owen was hesitant to speak his news of Tom in front of Fanny, murmuring that it was not 'good' and certainly nothing a proper young Christian wife ought to hear.
"No," insisted Edmund, at the suggestion of her leaving them alone, for which Fanny was grateful; "this concerns her as much as myself."
"I have seen Tom – though I'm not altogether certain he recognised me – in Weymouth," said Mr. Owen, haltingly.
Edmund bit back an oath.
Fanny merely looked grim, waiting for him to continue.
"He was in the company of a very shady lot, I'm afraid."
"Gamblers," Edmund murmured. "That is just like him – what our father always fears."
"Women of ill-repute," corrected Mr. Owen. "Indeed, I was aware of Tom's gambling years ago – I should not have come all this way, in such great haste, to inform you of further developments in what is already generally known. By you, his brother, more than anyone, no doubt."
Edmund was visibly puzzled. "That isn't Tom's nature – could you have been mistaken?"
"I thought I might have been – it was he I saw, but I suspected there might be some explanation – so I asked about." Mr. Owens appeared pained. "At first, I'd hoped this was merely a case of Tom's typical indiscretion. I had learned one of the women he associated with was an avid horsewoman; and that Tom might have been speaking to her of one of his own horses, asking advice, in all innocence, occurred to me straight away. Only, the further my enquiry went, the more readily I discovered he has been living with these women for several days – shamelessly, Edmund. He is seen coming and leaving their employer's house, and has even invited friends – Mr. Yates was visiting with him, brought a valet and a carriage, and I'm told they both readily participate in the daily activities of the women Tom has been living with."
Edmund swallowed.
"It may not be true," said Fanny, faintly, her voice little more than a hoarse trickle.
"I'm afraid it is, my dear," Mr. Owen told her. "God have mercy on you and yours, but it is the honest truth."
"Thank you for telling us, Owen," Edmund said after a long, broken pause during which the world had felt silent and cold. "I know this was not an easy thing for you to report to us."
"I have one more caution – I would advise your father, Edmund, if you do not think it presumptuous, to send for Tom and to urge him home before he can do something stupid which cannot be undone – before he proposes marriage to one of these disreputable women. You know, as a future baronet, he shouldn't marry someone who is not a maid, let alone a woman of that sort. I saw him dancing with one, a very young creature, and suspect him of having a favourite."
"Owen," laughed Edmund, incredulously, "you are mistaken – Tom is already married."
Mr. Owen appeared shocked. "What, married? Tom? When?"
"To Fanny!" The words echoed – Edmund having spoken louder than he strictly meant to – and he resolved to bring his voice down, lest Aunt Norris overhear and eavesdrop.
"Fanny?"
Edmund pointed. "Fanny – right here."
"Oh, goodness!" exclaimed Mr. Owen, the blood quite drained from his face. "Edmund, I have been mistaken – though not about what I saw in Weymouth. When you introduced her at the door as Mrs. Bertram, seeing how near to you she stood and how you held her hand, I thought she was your wife! I thought she was Mary, formerly Crawford! The one you spoke so highly of when you stayed with myself and my sisters – who, I might add, were all three of them breaking their hearts over you. I thought she must have changed her mind and accepted your offer of marriage."
"I was speaking of performing Tom's wedding – as the ordained minster!" said Edmund, snorting with derision. "I would not have conducted my own wedding in secrecy."
"That is why I was so greatly surprised at you, my fine fellow!" Then, "And to think, I... I blush to recall the things I've only just said of Tom in front of..." His eyes darted to Fanny. "If I'd known who you were, I should have spoken less plain, broken the news more gently – I thought I spoke only of a foolhardy brother-in-law who had grieved you, not a wayward husband."
But Fanny was too deeply wounded, to hear of Tom thusly after so long of not hearing of or from him at all, to care in which tone the news was delivered. Mr. Owen could have been crass, could have blurted his news the moment he got out of the carriage, and the blow – for her – would not have been worsened even to the smallest degree.
She did not believe, necessarily, Tom had betrayed her – she thought she knew the nature of her own husband well enough to rule that out, and so could not doubt him – but, still, the fact of the matter was, inexcusably, he preferred such company – regardless of its manner – over being here, at what was supposed to be their home, with her.
This from the man who had once said if there were problems in Mansfield Park they could not face, if his parents did not love her, he'd take her away to Derbyshire to look at cows.
Clearly, he'd meant nothing at all by it.
Nor by anything else he'd ever said to her.
Edmund was almost too angry to be of use in comforting Fanny – and too intelligent, as well. He knew, at once, there was nothing he could say which would make this better; if she'd moved towards him, for a show of affection or solidarity, he would have given it with good will, but as she stood apart, hands trembling, he said and did nothing for her.
Mr. Owen, not knowing Fanny and feeling he had slighted her, was more eager to make immediate amends. He asked if she was all right, then if she should like – for doubtless Tom was not seeing to looking after her spiritually, such as he was – to attend church more regularly, if there was any assistance in that regard he might provide.
"No," whispered Fanny, staring down at her unsteady hands and holding back her tears.
No. No, indeed – she had Edmund already, and as he oversaw her scripture reading as much as her secular lessons, and made certain she and Susan attended church with the rest of the family whenever possible, she did not need anything from Mr. Owen, though it was good – or at least coming from a good place, no doubt – of him to offer.
Edmund walked Mr. Owen out – after his friend assured him he would not be able to stay for tea and would prefer, under the circumstances, not to meet Lady Bertram and give her his greetings just now – and Fanny ran upstairs to the school-room.
She made certain the door was closed securely behind her before collapsing in front of the empty, cold grate of the fireplace and sobbing as if her heart would break, sobbing with an abandon which would have mollified any number of more hysterically-inclined women who'd have thought her cold to the news, who'd have believed her perhaps to have taken it too well and shamed her sex in so doing.
The door opened behind her. "Fanny?"
Mercifully, it was Susan, for even if it had been Aunt Norris or Edmund, Fanny could not have made herself stop by then.
"Oh, Fanny, what is it? Has something happened?"
She couldn't answer; she could only put her hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to muffle her crying until the door was shut again.
Sinking down, Susan put her arms around her sister and held her until her shaking lessened and her sobs were only hiccups.
"Can you talk about it?" she whispered. "Will it help?"
Fanny blinked her bloodshot eyes at the changing shadows in the school-room. "No."
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.
