Frances knew that neither the Knight estate nor the cottage’s rental income yielded sufficient funds to keep up the cottage in the way that it deserved. And with her sense of failure over being the end of the Knight family line, a sale seemed a possible chance to redeem herself, if sold to the right person.
Yardley had assured her that the buyer was indeed the right person—more specifically, that the woman affianced to the buyer was such a serious and successful Austen fan that he could vouch for the care and expense that she would put into the place.
Frances now sat alternately watching the front drive and the clock above the fireplace mantel in the larger second-floor room behind her. At three P.M. Mr. Jack Leonard and his fiancée were due to arrive, and at exactly on the hour, a man and a woman could indeed be seen turning in from old Gosport Road and approaching the Great House along the gravel drive. They stopped at one point as the woman gestured towards the graveyard and church sheltered by a grove of beech trees, then the man unlatched the front gate to the house. They were a well-dressed couple who looked to be in their thirties, the man with a map in his hand and the woman nervously twisting at something about her throat. The man looked straight at the house as he approached, but the woman’s eyes were everywhere, and even from a distance she looked a little pale and shaken.
Frances made her way down the hanging oak staircase, with its imposing Jacobean balustrade, so that she could be in the Great Hall when they arrived. Afternoon tea had been set out on the sideboard near the row of large mullioned windows, with two different types of cake on display: coffee and walnut, and Victoria sponge filled with preserves made with strawberries from the walled garden and honey from the estate’s own apiary.
Placing a tea tray on the ottoman before her, Frances sat down on the faded chintz sofa and looked about the room. She did not sit here often, finding it the largest and coldest room in the house. It was also full of memories from when she was young, the parties and the family gatherings and the welcoming of new neighbours. Now it was reserved mostly for the Christmas Eve gathering, when the villagers joined her after Mass for a warming by the huge fire. She wondered if this past Christmas had been the last of that, as well.
Josephine answered the door, and she led the two strangers into the room as Frances stood to greet them.
“Mr. Leonard, welcome.” She smiled as she took a step forward. “And this must be your lovely fiancée. Mr. Sinclair speaks so highly of you,” Frances said to the beautiful woman at his side.
Mimi and Jack were both waiting for the inevitable sinking in of recognition—the unabashed stare, usually followed by a gasp or even a shriek—but Frances just stood there smiling as if Mimi were merely the future wife of Jack Leonard.
“Mimi,” she said, putting out her hand.
“Mimi? What an unusual name.”
“It’s short for Mary Anne.”
Jack looked at Mimi with interest. “I didn’t know that.”
Frances smiled. “It’s best to have some secrets when entering marriage.”
“‘It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life,’” quoted Mimi with an endearing and very white smile back.
“So that’s what you’re doing,” laughed Jack.
Frances motioned for them both to take a seat on the matching chintz sofa across from hers. She immediately poured them each a cup of tea from the tray before her.
“I understand from Mr. Sinclair that you are a fan of Jane Austen,” she said to Mimi, while trying hard not to look at Jack. His efficiency and energy unnerved her. She feared that, left alone with him for too long, she might agree to the sale of the antique Indian carpet underfoot, or even a lock of her own hair.
Mimi nodded vigorously. “I can’t tell you how much—I came here once before, you know—on my own, long before the war, before I moved to California—and I saw the little cottage, and the church here, and the graves. I would have given anything back then to be here, in this very room.” She paused. “I hope—I haven’t had much time to process any of this, Jack just told me about the cottage—but I hope you are okay meeting with us. I know this must be an extremely difficult decision. I could never make it myself.”
Jack shot her a recriminating look. Mimi had absolutely no head for business.
“Thank you, it certainly is.” Frances shifted about on the sofa nervously. She was now finding it hard to look straight at Mimi, too. The woman was gorgeous in an almost alien way, with a strong heart-shaped jawline, a slight dimple in her chin, and eyes the most startling colour of violet.
“Let’s not look backwards, hmm?” interjected Jack. He knew that in business there was no point—and he believed pretty much the same in life, too. If Frances got to talking too much about giving up any part of the family legacy, he could see himself having to prop up two emotional females, and he’d had enough of that for one day.
“We’ve got exciting plans as you know,” he continued. “The cottage would be restored and beautified to do your family proud. No expense would be spared.”
As the words left his mouth, he looked about himself a bit more and saw that everything in the Great House, antique or otherwise, seemed to live under layers of memories thick as dust. There were extremely old photographs along the mantel of relatives in Edwardian dress, and ancient oil paintings of others in the Knight family’s past, and not a sign of any modern convenience at all except for the electric lights and a single radiator along the internal wall. Frances, too, looked much older than her years—Jack with his discerning eye would have put her well into her fifties, due to the parchment-like skin on her neck and the deeply etched crow’s-feet, except that he had been told she was only a decade or so older than himself.
“The way I see it,” he was continuing, “it’s a win-win. Everybody would get something they need. Yardley said you were a very sensible woman, and I like doing business with sensible people.”
“And why do you need the cottage, Mr. Leonard?”
“For my lovely fiancée here. She is the world’s biggest Austen fan—no, seriously, show her the ring honey.”
Mimi shook her head in embarrassment, but Jack took her left hand and held it out towards Frances so that she could see the turquoise-and-gold ring on Mimi’s finger.
“Oh, my, that looks—that seems—familiar,” the older woman said haltingly as she slowly realized that this was her famous ancestor’s ring recently featured in the Sotheby’s catalogue, now on the finger of some American stranger whose crass fiancé seemed to only see dollar signs on every object about him.
“It sure is,” replied Jack. “Mimi’s such a fan, we’re even making a movie based on one of Jane’s books.”
Mimi had been watching Frances closely as Jack tried to keep her onside. Something was a little off about the woman, as if she was going through the motions of life and this small interchange, but was not completely present. She looked as if she belonged to another time, with her high-collared white blouse and heavy long skirt and greying blond hair pulled up high on the back of her head. But as Jack mentioned the movies, the woman’s expression finally seemed to relax a bit.
“A movie? Are you a director?”
“Producer,” he corrected.
“Oh.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Well, actually, more than that, if I say so myself. You see, I heard about Sense and Sensibility and I got this writer—you may have heard of him, J. D. Bateman—anyway, I got him to write a script based on the book. What a story.” Jack practically whistled through his teeth.
Frances looked over at Mimi, who was smiling almost apologetically for her fiancé. “Are you involved with the movie as well?”
Mimi nodded and took a sip of her tea.
“Involved with it?” exclaimed Jack. “Why, she’s the star! She’s Elinor!”
Frances looked at the woman with even more interest. “Are you an actress?”
Mimi nodded again. “You could call i
t that.”
“An actress!” exclaimed Jack again. “Why, she’s a movie star—she’s Mimi Harrison! Of Home & Glory?”
Frances shook her head politely. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t get out to the movies very often. I am sure you are most successful,” she added to Mimi with an apologetic look.
Jack was starting to look a little flushed with annoyance under the crisp ironed collar of his starched white Savile Row shirt. Although not wanting to be recognized everywhere he and Mimi went, Jack did want to be recognized when it could work in his favour. But he was also intuiting that the sale of the cottage might be purely financially driven on Miss Knight’s part, and he wondered just how much of a predicament she was in—and how much he might stand to benefit from at least that.
“So,” Jack declared, deciding to go for the advantage of abruptness, “what do you say, Miss Knight? Shall we make this happen?”
Frances looked at Jack, with his sharp whitened teeth and narrowed hazel eyes, leaning forward in his seat as if about to pounce on his prey.
“Please,” said Mimi, reaching across to lay her right hand gently on the older woman’s forearm, “please don’t feel pressured. We’re just very excited. There is no need to make a decision on the spot.”
Jack felt that old, irritating migraine starting up. Nothing would get done if it was left to these two.
“How long are you here for, in Chawton?” Frances asked hesitatingly.
Mimi quickly looked over at Jack before replying, “Well, we’re staying in London while we look for a summer place, so we’re not far, and we can always come back. In fact, I’d love to.”
“Then come back.” Frances smiled at Mimi. “And we’ll see.”
The words we’ll see were, for Jack Leonard, the deal equivalent of tracing Scotch along a woman’s collarbone, and he stood up confidently to shake Frances’s hand just a little too vigorously.
Mimi stood up, too. “Jack, do you mind if I just have a second alone here with Miss Knight? Girl talk,” she added with a wink.
He looked from one woman to the other. “Alright, honey. Just don’t go giving the farm away. Oh, and Miss Knight, for all my fiancée’s movie stardom, let’s keep her identity just between us for now, hmm? The last thing I’m sure you Knights want is a bunch of news photographers showing up, hiding in the bushes.”
When he had left, Mimi sat back down again. “I just have to tell you, whatever happens, how much of an honour this has been. To be welcomed into this house by you, and to have this time with you. I know Jack can be a little, ah, overwhelming at the best of times.”
“Not at all. He reminds me quite a bit of my father, but with much more energy and passion.”
“I understand your father is not well. I am so sorry.”
Frances nodded. “It could be any day now.”
“Oh, I really am so very sorry.”
“It’s alright. He has had a long and healthy life. He’s nearly eighty-six, you know, in a family also famed for its longevity.”
“But still, the last thing you need right now are two Americans breathing down your neck to make a decision about something so incredibly personal.”
“I have nothing if not time to think, and no one really to consult with over any of this. I am the only one left, you see, of the direct descendants. My father is the great-great-grandson of Jane Austen’s brother Edward Knight, and I feel very much both the privilege and the responsibility of that.”
Mimi shook her head in astonishment as she quickly did some math, knowing that Jane’s older brother Admiral Francis Austen had lived well into the 1860s. “Your father would have known Jane Austen’s brother, as a young boy, then. How amazing!”
Frances nodded as her features finally fully relaxed. “The family would celebrate Christmas here at the house, in the dining room, all sitting about the long table with this very Wedgwood china, and here in this room, by this fire, they would have sung carols and drunk mulled wine and roasted chestnuts.”
“Just like any other family.”
“Exactly. It’s a family, you see. My family. And yet for everyone else, it’s some of the greatest writing the world has ever known.”
“And you? Do you love her books, too?”
“You’re not going to want to hear this”—Frances smiled—“but my favourites are the Brontës.”
Mimi laughed. “That is so perfect.”
“But don’t tell anyone.”
“No, don’t worry, no one. Especially not Jack. He might try and knock down the price as a result.”
Frances saw that Mimi understood her fiancé well enough, and this made her marginally less concerned for the woman than Frances had been at first. For if Jack did remind her of her father, she could imagine enough of the years ahead to have her share of worries for Mimi Harrison.
Mimi stood back up and Frances rose, too.
“Do come again. With or without Jack.”
Mimi smiled gratefully at the woman. “I have so many questions, I hope you won’t regret the very kind offer.”
“I am sure I won’t,” Frances smiled in return.
Watching through the window as Mimi and Jack headed back down the drive together, Frances felt as if she had passed some kind of cosmic test in resisting the charms of these two. In combination, Mimi and Jack had all the power of a high-explosive bomb being dropped in a sneak attack on their small, inconsequential village—a veritable Mary and Henry Crawford twosome run amok. Frances wondered to whom, if anyone, she should mention their visit. Wondered if other people she knew—Evie or Charlotte, Dr. Gray, even Andrew Forrester—would recognize Mimi’s name if Frances shared it.
The January sun was setting fast, and she could hear Josephine walking about the lower level of the house, turning on the electric lights and setting the fire in the other rooms.
Evie suddenly rushed in with duster in hand and stopped short upon seeing the mistress of the house standing by the large drawing-room window.
“I’m sorry, miss, we thought you were back in your bedroom.”
“No apology necessary, Evie—it was a longer visit than anticipated. Please, resume what you were doing.” Frances was always overly polite with her staff—she was terrified of turnover when they were the one constant presence in her life besides the old house and its memories.
Evie gave the smallest curtsy but made no sign of actually resuming her chores. Ever since Christmas Eve she had been desperate to tell the older woman about the society they had formed and their hopes for it. Dr. Gray had asked her not to say anything until they could present a proper offer to Miss Frances for the cottage, but today’s visit arranged by Sotheby’s was concerning Evie, and her gut told her now was the time to speak up.
“Evie”—Frances started, taking her seat on the sofa—“I’ve been meaning to ask, did you finish with that book I recommended?”
“Oh, yes, it was wonderful, just like you said.”
“Some people find it to be too strange and unrelentingly depressing, a little too much of the supernatural at times. But I think Villette is Charlotte Brontë’s real masterpiece.”
“I didn’t find it too otherworldly for me. I was sheer swept away.”
“Please do remember, you and Charlotte both, that you have complete run of the library here, always. Those books are just sitting there. Remember that.”
“Thank you, miss.” Evie still stood there, duster in hand. “Miss?”
“Yes, Evie?”
The young girl came and stood across the sofa from her employer, until Frances motioned for her to take a seat. This was when Evie’s young age showed itself, as all the excitement and plans for the society jumbled out of her in one long rapid-fire sentence.
Frances listened calmly, waiting for a break in Evie’s speech to say something.
“Evie, do you happen to have some sense of who my visitors were just now? Because your timing is impeccable. They want to buy the cottage themselves—apparently the woman is a huge Jane
Austen fan, just like yourself, it seems. No, don’t panic—I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Frankly it’s not my decision, and my father seems quite lost at present to make such a one himself. So nothing’s being decided anytime soon, if that’s any consolation.”
Evie breathed a visible sigh of relief. “But you will join us, Miss Frances? The society is nothing without you.”
Frances was touched by the girl’s enthusiasm. “Evie, I knew you had enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, but I must say it’s quite an undertaking to commit to something like this. Wouldn’t you rather be out and about with people your own age? I know both Benjamin Gray and Andrew Forrester quite well from school—I think their own social heyday is long behind them, and it’s probably best they have a new hobby of this sort to keep them out of trouble.” Frances smiled gently. “I’m teasing of course—they are both very good and honourable men. And poor Mrs. Grover is lovely. But Adam Berwick—I would never have guessed. And to think it was all his idea.”
“Is that a yes, miss?”
Frances nodded in the face of her house girl’s persistence. It must have taken some nerve to ask about something as delicate as the disposition of part of her dying employer’s property.
“But let’s not say anything about the society to Mr. Knight just yet, alright, Evie? As I’m sure you know, he is not the world’s biggest Austen fan. We’ll keep it our little secret for now.”
Evie gave a quick curtsy and hurried off, although Frances suspected not to her chores. She looked over again at the clock on the mantel. It was now a little past four P.M. Although she was feeling quite tired from all the commotion of the afternoon, she was still expected to visit with her father before supper.
They had not had a good visit that morning, and she had been asked to leave the room when Andrew Forrester had arrived to discuss some estate matters. She hoped that after a long nap her father might be a little more even-tempered. But telling him about their American visitors would probably only muddle things. Or at least that was what Frances told herself as she slowly walked up the stairs to see him.
The Jane Austen Society (ARC) Page 15
