A/N: Wentworth and Anne encounter each other.

Tides of Bath

Chapter Six: Close-Quartered Estrangement

I have known a spirit calmer
Than the calmest lake, and clear
As the heaven that gazed upon it,
With no wave of hope or fear;
But a storm had swept across it,
And it deepest depths were stirred,
Never, never more to slumber,
Only by a word.
— Adelaide A. Proctor

Anne.

Wentworth beheld Anne before Anne was aware of him. She was speaking to Lady Russell, and it was Lady Russell's sudden, slack expression that caused Anne to turn.

Wentworth saw the unconscious frown form of Lady Russell's face. Anne stared at him with her mouth slightly open, her eyes blinking rapidly. She was surprised to see him but not shocked. He wondered at that; it caused a stir of resentment in him. Lady Russell had been and still was shocked, although she had achieved enough self-command to iron away her frown.

Anne stared but did not speak. Wentworth looked at her and bowed, or thought he did. He had lost all sense of his posture, actions. The world had been absorbed into her: there was naught else.

She had changed — the stir of resentment in him added: and not for the better. Yet as those words echoed in his mind, his heart did not respond to them. It pumped as wildly in his chest as it had the day he proposed to her five years earlier, the day he thought his future assured. The day before she blighted his future, refused him.

But he was still hers to refuse, he realized, and his resentment increased. The man may have the advantage of choice but the woman had the power of refusal — and it was an awful power. He knew its full force. He had faced brutal death at sea, a wet, cold grave, with more equanimity than he had faced the prospect of leaving Kellynch behind, the wreck of all his hopes with Anne.

He straightened — he did bow, he must have — and he saw her curtsy. She then seemed to lean on Lady Russell's arm. Her face was flushed, undoubtedly embarrassed to see the man she had jilted. She glanced at Lady Russell before she spoke, but then she did speak, not much above a whisper. Wentworth heard her nonetheless.

"Captain Wentworth."

Captain. She knew. Anne knew his rank. Resentment possessed him, grew hot, overpowering his other responses to her, so numerous, so complex, soft, and tender.

"Miss Elliot."

He managed to respond without betraying himself, but he could not prevent an edge in his tone when he shifted slightly and addressed Lady Russell.

"Lady Russell."

Lady Russell tried to sound pleased. "Captain Wentworth? Well, congratulations, sir."

Wentworth bowed again to obscure a sneer. At least he could revel in this small triumph, Lady Rusell speaking his rank, she who had doubted him and his ability in the past.

When Wentworth stood again. Anne's face was down, partially hidden by her bonnet. Lady Russell, glancing at Anne, put her hand on Anne's, the one on Lady Russell's arm, and led Anne past Wentworth and out into the sunlight. Anne did not look up at him as she passed. He saw only the side of her bonnet. Lady Russell looked back once after they had passed, and then they melted into the bright-lit crowd.

She was gone. The girl who had refused him had matured into a woman who would not look at him, whose eyes could not meet his own. His heart was still pumping; he could feel his pulse everywhere in his body. Anne was now a beautiful woman. Acknowledging that kindled his flammable resentment into full flame. He had to give her up, stop cherishing hope, deep inside himself, in a twilight region of his heart, dumb and brute, where he still wanted her and only her, hoped for her and only her. Only her. Her passing-by was a trumpet crash, not signaling victory but defeat.

He made himself turn by the force of will to continue into the Pump Room, to find Sophia and the Admiral. He was angry with Anne. He was angry with Lady Russell. But he was perhaps most angry with himself, angry that he was still so angry.

He glanced behind himself, out the door again, sought her face, but he found only the faceless crowd.

Anne's tears fell slow as she walked along. Her bonnet shielded her from Lady Russell's gaze, but not from Lady Russell's hearing, not from Lady Russell's awareness of the tremors shaking Anne's body.

Lady Russell patted Anne's hand as the drew away from the Pump Room. "Anne, dear, I...see...the Captain retains his power to discompose you."

Anne nodded her head, keeping her face turned from Lady Russell. The tears, Anne hoped, would soon cease. She did not want to be a spectacle, did not want to let Lady Russell see the weight of the pain she carried. Lady Russell suspected it, suspected it was what had robbed Anne of so much of her bloom, but Anne did not want, for her own sake, or for Lady Russell's, to confirm that suspicion. Nothing good would come of it. It would increase Anne's pain to give pain to Lady Russell, and confirming it would seem too much like implying that Anne blamed Lady Russell. She did not. Regret could earn a place even where it did not follow blame.

Anne gathered herself enough to speak although she did not respond directly to Lady Russell's words. "He seems much the same, does not he?"

Lady Russell made small a noise in her throat. "Hmmm. Much, yes, but I never denied that his was a pleasing person or that he possessed...brilliancy."

"No, Lady Russell, you did not," Anne admitted quietly. They walked on a few steps and then Anne added another, quiet admission. "He was not...pleased to see me, I think." She made herself say the words to help herself submit to the fact.

Lady Russell was silent for long enough to induce Anne to face her at last, and Lady Russell gave Anne a sympathetic look "No, his countenance...hardened; I am sorry, Anne, but so it did. He made an effort at gallantry but it was not wholly successful."

Anne understood. "He has not forgiven me. He seems no closer to forgiving me than he did...on that day. That day...was the only day until today when I have seen him...less than complaisant."

"I will say in his defense, Anne, that had he met you with perfect indifference, I would have felt more sure about my counsel to you five years ago."

Anne started to respond but dropped her head again. Lady Russell went on: "No man who had once had a real feeling for you could have met you again with perfect indifference."

Anne nodded but for her part, she would have almost preferred perfect indifference to the perfunctory military precision of Captain Wentworth's bows, the anger present in his entire manner, if absent from his voice when he addressed her.

Lady Russell spoke again. "He has not forgiven me, either, although he made little effort at gallantry in my case. He was barely civil. Did you not explain to him...that day...what your reasons were, Anne? We had discussed them; you were to tell him."

Anne kept her head down. "I could not, Lady Russell. I begged him to forgive me and told him it was for the best, but I pressed no explanations upon him."

Lady Russell stopped. "But, why, Anne? You were of my persuasion, that it was too rash, that the difficulties of a perhaps long engagement under such uncertainty were not to be undertaken. You were inexperienced, Anne, and he was unproven. You had seen too little of the world, and the world too little of you. He had spent too much time at sea, too little time on land." Lady Russell started walking again, quickly. "He saw with a sailor's overeager eye for time and distance. The realities and difficulties of life on dry land, among genteel folk, he...underestimated. I suppose he thought they would yield as quickly to his force of character as distances do at sea to his canvas and helm and the force of a strong wind."

They were nearing Camden Place and Lady Russell slowed. When she stopped, Lady Russell turned Anne toward her.

"Do not let regrets for the past cause you to abide in it, my precious girl. And do not hold the Captain's anger too close to your heart. He is a proud man, and, evidently, a success. There's no reason to think that his anger has been with him since that day. It was today probably as much the product of his surprise at seeing you, the provocation of it, as anything else. It likely passed from him as you passed by him." Lady Russell's tone was dismissive — of Captain Wentworth, not of Anne.

Anne stood straight, looking into Lady Russell's eyes. "No, he is not so changeable, Lady Russell, not so unworthy. He may — he surely no longer cares for me as he once did, but that has been the work of time, not of his temper. His temper, I am sure, is firm, as ever."

Lady Russell gave Anne a dubious glance but she added no words on the subject. "I will see you tomorrow, Anne. Yesterday's journey and today's walking has taxed me; I will return to Rivers Street. I am minded to read some Dr. Johnson. — You are of course welcome at any time, Anne, should you find that your father and Elizabeth can spare you."

They parted and Anne went inside. She closed the door and gestured for the approaching servant to leave her alone, giving him a nod of thanks at the same time. When he turned away, she allowed herself to lean against the door for a moment. The perturbations of the day were too much for her. She needed time alone, to allow herself to feel until she could manage herself and think.

She went up to her room and sat down on the foot of her bed. She revisited all the details of the day — seeing Captain Wentworth when he did not see her, then seeing him face-to-face. She had passed close enough to him to touch him, and she imagined her hand again in his hand.

The worst was over. She had survived seeing him again, being seen by him, spoken to by him. Perhaps it was the last time they would see each other, speak to each other. She had no idea of his plans. All she knew was that he was he and she was she — there was no longer any hope that they would be a they. — That was the end, the true and final end of the matter. She knew her affection for Captain Wentworth would, that it had, outlasted the loss of that hope. It was her burden to carry. Only hers.

The rest of the day passed quietly. Anne fretfully shifted positions from sitting on the bed, to sitting in her chair, to sitting beside her window. It was a weary rotation of unsatisfactory seats. Early in the afternoon, one of the servants told Anne that Elizabeth was resting in her room. It seemed Elizabeth's complaints in the Pump Room had not been prompted merely by her dissatisfaction with Mr. Ustus' compliments to Anne.

Anne did not see either her father or Elizabeth until dinner. Elizabeth was unusually quiet, shifting her food about her plate instead of eating any of it. Anne's stomach would only allow her to eat a few bites. Sir Walter, however, was full of talk as he ate. He had been most favorably impressed with the beauty of Miss Ustus, and so the meal was an oppressive affair of clinking silver on china, Elizabeth's low sighs, and her father's eager effusions of 'grey eyes' 'lustrous hair', and 'most deliberate, pleasing manners'.

Anne was still puzzled by the exact history of her father's acquaintance with Mr. Ustus but she was too jittery and frayed to start that conversation with him, especially since he seemed unable to exhaust the praises of Miss Ustus. Dinner ended and Elizabeth retired to her room. Anne tried to read in the drawing-room while she half-listened to her father as he talked. She kept her head close to her book, her eyes focused, trying hard not to see herself in the mirrors. She did not want to face herself at the close of that day.

Wentworth was drinking wine and smoking cigars the Admiral. The Admiral's gouty leg was propped up on a low, cushioned stool.

They had walked more that day than the Admiral's leg would stand. Still, despite the leg's painfulness, the Admiral was in good spirits, as was his wife. Once more, as happened often enough when Wentworth was with them, he was struck by how much joy they found in one another, in one another's company. Wentworth was glad of it since he was, he knew, poor company.

He had done his best to talk and to listen and to see as they walked around the city, but his encounter with Anne and with Lady Russell reclaimed his mind during each lull in the conversation. Anne had been intertwined with his thoughts all through dinner and was still there, lingering in his mind as he smoked, like a sweet perfume interlaced with the pungent tobacco.

He needed to redirect his thoughts. He asked Sophia, seated with them, if it might be possible to invite Mr. and Mrs. Collins, and their friends, Mr. and Miss Ustus, to dinner. Sophia was delighted by Wentworth's suggestion, his willingness. She enjoyed entertaining — and he knew that she had recognized how distracted and withdrawn he had been throughout the day.

"I shall write to them tomorrow morning, Frederick, and invite them for tomorrow evening. Plans are often impromptu here in Bath; they are sure to accept if they do not have a prior engagement."

Wentworth nodded and made himself smile. The natural flights of the human mind were not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope. It was past time for him to discard his old hope and obtain a new one.

Look-Ahoy! I decided to break chapter material into two parts. As a result, look for another chapter sooner rather than later — tomorrow or the next day. If you are enjoying this, let me know, please; responses feed the process.

I'm trying to do a tricky thing: to capture something of the verbal cast and complexity of Austen's prose, of the typically disinterested, ironic tone of her narration, and of her preoccupation with nice but crucial moral distinctions.