It was not long after Anne met Commander Frederick Wentworth in June of 1806, that she finally felt all the foolishness of her previous declaration to her journal that she would never be happy again. Such a youthful pronouncement seemed silly indeed when she commanded his attention and he, hers.
In everything but fortune and breeding, Anne believed Commander Wentworth to be her superior. She found him a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy.
He determined quickly in their acquaintance that such an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling was well worth courting and marrying. His determination rapidly overshadowed any hesitancy Anne might have felt, for she had been a young woman without anyone to love, or at least one without anyone to love who seemed to both need and appreciate it.
Her father's vanity was such that he loved no one who did not reflect the supposed magnificence of his appearance and consequence, and his daughter Elizabeth was the only one who fit that description because she was the only one who took after him and of the most consequence by being his eldest. Although Anne was equally lovely and had the decided improvement upon her eldest sister of having a lovely character as well, Sir Walter was not one to value inner beauty. Additionally, he was vaguely disquieted by Anne as she resembled her dearly departed mother overmuch and Sir Walter had an amorphous disappointment with the woman who had loved him but failed to provide him with a heir or companionship in his later years.
Her older sister Elizabeth, basking in the reflected glory of Sir Walter, and enjoying only her flower garden, had no feelings of depth to bestow on her sister Anne as Anne would not heap undeserved praise upon her.
Her younger sister Mary absorbed attention and love rather than sharing it. Instead of earning sisterly affection through seeking to understand and relate to Anne, Mary demanded it through constantly feigned or unreasonably magnified illnesses. Anne strove to understand her sister and believed that it stemmed from a lack of suitable affection in her formative years following their mother's death.
Anne knew without having observed it herself, as she was sent away to school the year following her mother's death, that Mary would have been left quite alone at around the age of ten. Their governess was not one to do anything beyond what was required and Anne knew that it was unlikely that Mary received anything approaching affection from Sir Walter or Elizabeth. Additionally, Mary was not a favorite of Lady Russell's. Therefore, she would have only received from Lady Russell whatever she considered required out of the affection Lady Russell bore for her departed mother.
Anne also felt guilty that in her grief following her mother's death, she had turned inward and not sought to give her younger sister the affection she craved. Early on in this period Mary was indeed ill, and it was only this that moved Anne and Lady Russell to spend time specifically tending to her, thus setting up a constant pattern in her life.
While Anne did have Lady Russell's affection, that lady had no particular need of her and Anne could not help but think that her friend would be happy to be freed of any perceived responsibility toward her and to have the freedom of quitting Kellynch Lodge permanently.
Anne's affection for Fredrick was of an entirely different character than to these others. With Fredrick (for quite early in their interactions before it was proper for her to do so aloud Anne called him Fredrick in her most secret of thoughts) she found herself (and he likewise) rapidly and deeply in love, an equal partner in affection they both needed and craved.
Thus outside a ball one evening, after just having completed a set with him, Anne found herself pulled outside and running with him through a flower garden and to the other side of a sheltering oak, with no care for propriety, her dress or her slippers. Within the relative privacy of its mighty trunk, she was embraced by him and had no hesitation in accepting and responding to his kisses. She knew him to be a man of honor and her future husband.
Her lips, which had never kissed another, delighted in meeting his own and such was the roar of passion flooding through all of her being that she would have given everything she could to him then and there without any thought or hesitation.
Fortunately for Anne, while Frederick showed no restraint in exiting with her and taking her to a place of privacy, he knew better than to try to take what she might later regret giving. Accordingly he did no more than kiss her passionately for a few minutes before separating from her enough that he might tell her of his plans for the future.
All of Anne's carefully tended rationality and general good sense was swept away by her emotions which placed her in his visions for the future buoyed by his unshakable confidence in himself and in her. Who could fault her for living in the dream that she could in fact be forever valued for herself alone?
Who could doubt then what her answer would be when he proposed as she had known he would, declaring with a powerful warmth his affections, intentions and certainty that they would marry in the years to come? Though having never been aboard a ship or any sort of boat in her life, his confidence imbued in her the certainty that when he had a suitable vessel under his command that she might happily live aboard the ship with him. She knew that people unaccustomed to the pitch and roll of the seas might become ill indeed, but believed Fredrick's assurance that she would soon grow accustomed to it. He gave as an example and model for her the happiness his own sister had aboard the ship of her husband, a Captain Croft.
He also wove a story of their future felicity where she would be valued not just by him for her companionship but others for her usefulness. He believed she could acquire the ability to tend any wounded on board after they received the ministrations of the ship's surgeon, which was something that although she had never tried (beside soothing Mary's mostly imaginary ills and tending her mother to provide mild relief as she prepared to depart this world), he was certain would be a vocation suited to her gentleness and feeling for her fellow man, which would gain her the approbation of his whole crew.
When Anne, having regained a bit of sense, asked what would occur in such a position if she should become with child, he spoke most passionately about how it was possible to rear children upon the ship, for especially boys might from an early age begin to gain an occupation. While he allowed that perhaps girl children could not be raised in such a way, he was certain that if needed he could settle her in a suitable home or perhaps they could arrange for others to rear such children until they were old enough for school, with protracted visits between postings.
All that would delay their promised upcoming felicity was gaining the approbation of her father and the deferral of the ceremony occasioned by an engagement until he might gain sufficient fortune and position.
Anne was in agreement with all his plans and how could she not be? He was certain enough for the both of them.
Furtively they snuck back into the ball separately and no one seemed to notice anything, though that night when her maid helped Anne undress, the maid noticed her slippers were no longer fit to be used again and wondered to herself which clumsy lout had marred them by treading upon dear Anne's feet. Her maid could never have conceived that Anne might have gained the dark stains from running outside at night.
By candlelight, before Anne sought her bed that evening, Anne thought her happiness and newest countdown needed to be memorialized in her journal. She simply wrote the date and then, "Frederick is to be my husband, must await fortune and a suitable posting before we wed." She did not write months or years to mark off; she would wait for more clarification before she did so.