This chapter is dedicated to ronaleem, whose review encouraged me to make further progress on this story. As this chapter contains Anne's response to Frederick's letter, you may want to review it in Chapter 19. Mr. Robinson's letter (which first gave Frederick notice of Anne's continued devotion is in Chapter 14).


34.

Not more than 100 nautical miles from reaching their port in Antigua, the Laconia and its accompanying ships hit a horrible gale. The sky darkened like it was night, the wind roared, and the sailors had to hurry aloft to take down the sails lest the masts be torn asunder. It was a rough few hours. One of the boys was lost overboard and another had been knocked out and was in the care of Mr. Dash (along with men who had received more minor wounds), but the damage to the ships was not too serious considering how bad it might have been and that they were not too far away from the shipyard where such repairs could be remedied.

One of the smaller ships was listing with a leak. As the damaged ship, the Juniper (which was affectionately called the Junker) was an old sloop that was hardly fit for an Atlantic crossing, not in much more fit condition than the Asp had been, Frederick had some doubt as to whether it was worth fixing once they reached port, but he was bound and determined that it should take the men to land the same as the others and he lent its captain, Captain Jones, all the aid he could, providing crew from the Laconia to help with manning the pumps, and permitting exhausted men from there took a turn on the Laconia's hammocks (for the lower levels of the Junker were not then fit for men with the hammocks soaked from sea water), with nary a complaint even when they had a near hammock mate against them. While the fourteen inches allowed for each hammock was not nearly enough when more than half of the hammocks were occupied, at least they were dry and decently provisioned with hard tack and rum, and their daily allotment of lime juice.

An unpleasant ten days followed when the Laconia could not be allowed to run with the wind as she wanted, not without leaving the Junker behind, something that no naval company would ever do, with the worst day being when Antigua was in sight but could not yet be reached. Frederick had been to Antigua before when he had first taken command of the Asp and thus was familiar with its harbor at its southeastern corner which contained its naval dockyard, and condoled Captain Jones that the shipwrights and caulkers would soon put the Juniper right. Still, Frederick was ever so grateful that his ship needed so much less work.

After the immediate needs to his ship were seen to, those first couple of days in port Frederick did what he always did when reaching port, allowed his men the typical liberties. This did not include shore leave for most, due to the danger that they might not return although there was less risk of that at this port than some others, given it was an island and the planters' estates were turned to sugar production and it was not nearly so easy to disappear. Giving them liberty meant for many that the women who always plied such trade had been ferried to the ship, willing to take on any who would pay for their company in the space between the guns. This also meant that in a few weeks' time Mr. Dash would be well occupied in seeing who might need his remedies for the docking they had enjoyed.

Life had settled into the routine for their time in port after that. The first week had been taken up in making needed repairs and taking on provisions, and Frederick had taken advantage of the reduction in his responsibilities to visit the church at St. James. Frederick was not a man who put much stock in God, but it was certainly necessary to visit the church where he hoped to marry Anne if she deigned to come to him. With nothing more than the optimistic hope that perhaps it might be so at some unspecified time in the future, the first afternoon he left the ship, even before he had regained his land legs, he hired a cart to take him to that city and made his way over to the entrance of the church and ventured inside. He asked a praying petitioner if he knew where he could find the priest. But for good or for bad, the priest was not within on that occasion and when Frederick returned to the Laconia he wondered at himself for visiting the church when he yet did not know if or when he might have a bride.

Two weeks later, while Frederick was talking with a midshipman in the wardroom, who was in the process of requesting whether his captain might be willing to sponsor his nephew as a cabin boy, when next they returned to England's shores, a servant ducked his head inside calling "mail, mail." The midshipman left mid-sentence, and if Frederick did not have a reputation to maintain, he might have followed directly after. But he forced himself to wait for a servant to seek him out with any missives addressed to him.

Mail call was a precious, precious time, for its very infrequency, and men who had not heard from their families in some months might be rewarded with several letters at once. Frederick of course enjoyed receiving letters very much as well, but this time it was different. He expected, of course, to receive perhaps updated commands from the Admiralty, and the usual letters which would include letters from his brother and sister, Captain Croft, and his friends. But this time, this time there might be a chance of something more.

He knew, of course, that Sophy must have reached Anne long ago, but had tried his best to fool himself into thinking it had taken longer than it could have, to avoid counting down the soonest that he might hear from Sophy about the success or failure of her attempt. But now, now, he could fool himself no longer. In the stack of letters he would momentarily receive (for someone would seek to curry his favor by ensuring he was among the first to get his as was his due or simply act to get him his post as it was the right thing to do), the truth would soon be known.

Not three minutes later Lieutenant Benwick sought him out, a stack of letters in his hand. "Captain, the post," he announced, dropping the letters into Frederick's extended hands. Although Frederick's hands were eager to examine his letters, as he was fond of Benwick and knew of his desire to wed one Miss Harville, he took a moment to ask "Have you heard from Captain Harville?"

"Yes," Benwick waved a letter about. "And I have two others besides. But I have yet to read them, for I wanted to make sure you had yours."

"Many thanks," Frederick replied. "Be off with you to read them, then." He shooed Benwick away, more for his own sake than for Benwick's for Frederick was certainly eager to see what his own stack contained. Technically Lieutenant Dowdy was currently in charge while Frederick was at leisure for the next hour, but as Frederick did not especially trust his first lieutenant, he typically made sure he was frequently about. But mail day had its own rules and there was little danger in port, so he retreated to his cabin to see what the letters would tell.

With fingers that he tried to deceive himself were not trembling just slightly (with fear or excitement or perhaps both), Frederick thumbed through the pile of letters that had been delivered to him moments earlier. He both hoped and feared that there might be a letter from Sophia telling him how things had gone on her visit with Anne, but more than that, he longed to hold a piece of paper that she had held, to see her writing, to read whatever she might wish to tell him. If Anne would but write, that would mean there was some hope, some chance, no matter what her words might say.

Although Frederick knew from Mr. Robinson's letter, all that Anne had done to plan for a future with him, he reasoned that this minor rebellion against her status as daughter of a baronet might be more in the way of a fantasy, a dream, that would fade away in the withering light of what following through on it might mean. Frederick had barely dared to hope that his beloved Anne could have such a violent affection for him that she would be willing to leave her family, her friends, England and all she knew, to travel the vast ocean with the companionship of his sister (a woman previously wholly unknown to her) to be with him. It seemed impossible.

Frederick prided himself on his masculinity, on his strength of character that kept him upright and bold during the most harrowing of cannon exchange, his ability to command. to see the best way to deal with any situation so that his cogent reasoning and instincts might lead his men to victory. He also depended on his luck, which had not failed him yet. But Frederick's command of himself, of his emotions, was much more tenuous when it came to the concerns of his heart. Sometimes when he was triumphing in yet another victory over enemy ships, this joy was tempered with the certainty felt in the clenching of his stomach, that his luck on the seas was counterbalanced by being unlucky in love.

In the sanctity of his own cabin, tears blurred Frederick's vision as he tried to make out who had sent him letters. He mumbled to himself, "Not now, not yet, time enough for that later if the news is bad." He swiped at his eyes, focused his vision and on the fourth folded letter saw a feminine script that might just belong to Anne.

Frederick broke the seal and unfolded the sheet. His eyes sought the bottom of the closely written script, and he saw the signature line at the bottom of the page: "Yours always, Anne." Then after blowing his nose, he sat down and began to read at the beginning in earnest. This is what he read:

(Letter 1)

Dearest Frederick,

I shall not leave you in suspense. There is no need for agony; your hope has borne fruit. My feelings and devotion to you have only grown stronger over the years. I am writing to you while on my way to join you. I accept and shall be your wife as soon as it can be arranged, for I have never stopped loving you.

Frederick, I once thought I would never have the opportunity to ever address you again by your given name. You ask for my forgiveness, and I freely give it, but I wish you to know that I do not blame you for leaving. I could never think you a coward. Instead, I believe you did not want to cause either of us further pain, to say things that would result in increased bitterness between us, that could not be taken back. It was an act of valor to act decisively and leave when there was no other path open to you, for I had taken the other away.

It is I that must beg your forgiveness, my one-time fiancé, for not having the faith in you, in us, that I should have. For in my whole life, I think you were the first person to truly see me as I am, or rather to see the potential of who I could be, to not see me merely through my family.

To my father I have long been a disappointment because I cannot care about our heritage as he does and our place in it as memorialized in the (as he recounts with great pride) "two handsome pages" of the Baronetage; I do not understand how he cannot temper this knowledge with our relative insignificance given all the august personages contained therein and that these two pages are relatively small, duodecimo likely. I cannot simply desire physical beauty for its own sake (although I am glad whatever beauty I had was enough to attract your interest); I do not reflect my father's glory as I never looked like his side of the family. Instead, I only see vanity and idleness in him, and I cannot desire this for myself. I was never needed by him as he had my older sister Elizabeth who is a match for his personality and is the feminine version of him. I think my father's pursuits silly, and he likely would think the very same of my own, should he take the time to discover what they are. I cannot wile away a restless hour by flipping through the Baronetage or peering at myself in the many mirrors on the walls of Kellynch Hall.

I was always more like my mother, and I think this no bad thing, but she did not cling as tenaciously to life as she should have, accepted a marriage based on (as I have gathered from her maid who was with her from before her come out, when she lived as Miss Stevenson of South Park) a relatively short-lived infatuation and my father's status satisfying her own father's requirements for who her husband should be. I could never forget, as my father would not let me, that my mother was the daughter of an Esquire, and in the end was a disappointment to my father.

My sister Elizabeth sees me as superfluous, for she is the eldest daughter and the apple of my father's eye, and I am always less. If he favored me more, it might in some way diminish her importance, so she prefers to ignore me unless she may denigrate me to him. As for my sister Mary, I am just a source of comfort, loved for my ability to coddle and soothe her, to focus my efforts on her and in such manner to raise her importance and splendor. To Lady Russell I think I was always a stand-in for my mother, loved for her sake more than just my own (although she does love me, of this I am certain).

I hope it does not pain you to read of Lady Russell, knowing what I did based on her interference. I trusted my Godmother who has been like a mother to me since I was aged fourteen and her wisdom when I should have trusted you. Yes, full young and impetuous I must have seemed to her, foolish and rebellious at age nineteen to wish to marry a no-account sailor on account of not just an infatuation but a violent love, and to trust my life and well-being to the vagaries of luck, to roll the dice and expect to win, but it was my choice to make.

Do you know, Lady Russell has a cleverness about her for her most powerful argument for giving you up (rather than awaiting you gaining sufficient fortune that we could marry) was that me being tied to you through our engagement would hinder your rise in the navy? I would not have thought of this on my own. I shall never forget how she pronounced that having a loyalty to me could cost you the very thing that you desired most, to rise in rank and fortune, for you could not act single-mindedly in doing all you ought if distracted by thinking of me. In doing so, she used our very love against us both. As I result, I felt obligated to give you up for your own good.

Undoubtedly, she was doing what she thought best, and I, too, did what I thought best as these words struck me as being genuine. But what a terrible thing it was, to give up my dearest hope in exchange for what could prove to be a lifetime of personal unhappiness. Know that I never doubted the strength of your love or the strength of my own, but simply doubted the practicality of our dreams. Giving you up, Frederick, tore my own heart in two, but in truth I never fully gave you up, for a tiny spark of hope for the future was never extinguished. If not for it, I do not know how I could have persisted in living at all. After you were gone, I addressed you through the wind, hoping it would somehow whisper in your ear my deepest desire: "When you have made your fortune, come back to me please!" I never wanted you to give up on me.

Know that my desire to be with you, my devotion must be at least equal to your own. For a chance to be with you, to have the life you could see for me, on the slimmest of hope of our future happiness I plotted and planned. I did what I could to ready myself, and in this way gave myself the strength to go on.

I understand I have the interference of Mr. Robinson, your brother and your sister to thank for our current understanding. I never expected Mr. Robinson, or your brother who I had only a passing acquaintance with a few years ago, or your sister who I did not know from Eve, to act on my behalf. But I suspect that the latter two were trying to serve you as well.

Mr. Robinson is a good and godly man, and if you could but see his devotion to his wife and the love that is between them, you would perhaps not be so surprised that he might have a romantic streak. Through my training he and his wife have come to be like family to me, and yet such is his caring that he was willing to give me up for my own benefit; such selflessness is beyond compare.

I should have preferred, however, if he had not told your brother of the marriage proposal I received and refused. Such recitation seems to have provided more importance to the event than it deserves. It is true that Lady Russell would have liked to see me married to our near neighbor Mr. Musgrove when he asked, but while life with him might have been an improvement to my humble place within my father's household, there was nothing else desirable in his suit. For while if my heart had been free, I might have thought him a prudent, sensible choice, I could not, would not give up on you, on us. I could not bear to lose you forever and be shackled to someone else. It was impossible to imagine marrying him and submitting to his husbandly rights. Even knowing an ocean and my own rejection of you stood between us and I would likely never see you again, I gave his offer no consideration. Far better to die an ape leader than to marry anyone but you, Frederick.

I do not blame you for not seeking me out when you had made some fortune, for I never told you to do so. One who loved less might have more easily risked my rejection, one with a thinner sort of inclination might have the strength to enter the lion's den and find the dead and mangled carcass of our love was all that remained. Perhaps you could keep your own love alive by not facing me and learning that what we were to each other was lost forever.

Do not berate yourself that you could not come to me personally. I well understand that duty to your king, your country, your ship, and the sailors who serve with you, how all your myriad responsibilities must limit your actions, that devotion to your role as captain of a mighty ship needs to come first. You have no cause to regret sending your sister to me in your stead. Mrs. Croft loves you dearly and I know she is glad to do it, and in knowing her I am coming to know you better, have learned of the boy you were and the man you have lately become. Too, she has been teaching me much of what I am to expect as your wife on board and who could be more suitable to serve in such a role? She and our other bosom companion, the sadly widowed Mrs. Holmes, have in only days become my true sisters, for they seem to value me in a way that my own sisters never could.

My dear Frederick, I gladly offer you my heart once more. Know that I am wholly devoted to you, and the delay in our happiness shall yet only make our future happiness all the greater. I could not love another, could not even conceive of the possibility even when it seemed that all hope was gone. I only hope you are not disappointed when you see me now several years older than you remember, a woman past the bloom of youth. But Sophy has reassured me that your devotion cannot be gainsaid and that I look well enough, perhaps even better than the young woman she never knew, for happiness graces my face (sometimes my face even aches from smiling too much).

As the years of being away from you passed by at the speed of a snail, I was ever so tired of waiting for you. Now that I know you desire me with you, I almost feel I can fly, but as I cannot I feel such impatience to begin my journey in earnest, to reach you as soon as may be so that we may begin our life together which has been so long delayed. Know that no one and nothing can keep me from becoming your wife, not well-meaning friends or family (who incidentally have not a notion of the reason for my holiday with friends for it seemed better not to risk their opposition), not highway men or hurricanes, not seasickness or shipwrecks, for if I had to swim the ocean to reach you (though I have never learned to swim) it would be done.

I shall write again soon, my love, numbering my missives in the event you receive them out of sequence. I have been assured that this is what all shore wives do. I can only hope that when we are united in holy matrimony that we shall never be separated again and letters shall be unnecessary, for our words shall be exchanged from each of our lips to the other's ears. I could write on and on, but I must close this letter so that it may be sent off, hopeful that my words will find you in the not-so-distant future. I send all my love to you.

Yours always,

Anne


A/N: Your reviews are very important as they encourage me to keep on writing this story. I hope you enjoyed Anne's letter. Did I hit everything you wanted to see in it? What do you want to see happen next?

Now for the nerdy ones among you that are curious about all things Persuasion: Early on in Anne's letter, she references her father's love of the Baronetage, which as we all know is discussed on the very first page of Persuasion, which states that the entry of "Elliot of Kellynch Hall" in the Baronetage formed "two handsome duodecimo pages." I wanted to know what "duodecimo pages" meant to see if Sir Walter would refer to his entry that way. Therefore, I had to look up what duodecimo meant in regard to pages in the Baronetage. It is the size of the pages in that it means twelve leaves per sheet were printed on each side of a sheet facing whichever way was needed so as to then form twenty-four pages by means of folding the paper into a "gathering" which would then be sewn together with other gatherings to make up the book. Either the publisher would then cut apart the pages so they could be read, or someone else would have to do it. So basically "two handsome duodecimo pages" are very small, one third the size of the quarto format. While various sizes of sheets could be used to print books and I would expect that anyone printing the Baronetage would have started out with larger sheets, there are only two small pages devoted to his family with only a paragraph devoted to him which I believe is a comment on Sir Walter's own relative insignificance and thinking higher of himself than he ought. Therefore, Anne puts in this detail of her letter here as she would know, and she can use it to comment on her father's puffed-up importance.