Adeline stood up carefully among the books she had been perusing. Evie had everyone on a strict system of accountability, and they all lived in fear of accidentally disturbing her order of books inside the dozens of crates.
“Let me see that.” Adeline reached out for the letter tightly gripped in Miss Frances’s hands. “I don’t understand . . . where are you supposed to live?” Adeline sat back down on one of the crates and looked at Frances glumly.
“What did Mr. Forrester say?” asked Adam.
“He said that my father’s will made it extremely clear that my rent-free accommodation was not legally binding upon any future owners after Colin. Andrew had hoped I might acquire some kind of easement over time instead, but unfortunately my not yet living there precludes any common law entitlement to reside.”
Adam and Adeline stared at Miss Frances, still confused by the complex legalities of her present situation.
“Basically,” she sighed, “if I had been living there long enough, we might have been able to argue that I had a right to stay.” She gave what, to them, seemed the first overt look of displeasure with the whole debacle. “I had wondered why Mr. Knatchbull and his lawyer were so accommodating about my staying in the Great House until after the wedding.”
Adam looked down at the book in his lap, unable to face Frances as he said, “It’s all my fault. I just had to say the word.”
Frances put her hand out and touched his shoulder. “Don’t even think it, Adam, please? I know I’m not, and I’m not the only one—after all, that’s why we held the vote.”
“Still, this is just terrible for you, Frances,” Adeline was saying.
Miss Frances took the letter from Adeline and folded it back into the pocket of her skirt. “It will somehow work out—it always does. But I do feel for everyone in the society. I think Evie in particular will be devastated. She’s worked so hard. And to find all this out on Mimi’s wedding day no less.”
Adam looked at his watch. “Mr. Sinclair’s at the station by half past ten.” He stood up from the upturned crate and swept the dust from the books off his knees.
Frances looked over at Adeline and explained, “I’m lending the Rolls to Adam today, to go get Yardley in style.”
Adam reached down to help Adeline up from her own crate. She stood looking glumly at Frances before reluctantly asking, “So what do we do now? Do we wait, until after the wedding, to say anything about the cottage? I know I had jitters enough on my big day and my groom was a peach.”
Miss Frances sighed. “Mimi is usually so smart. I think she is at an interesting time in her career, and Jack Leonard presented a strange exit plan of sorts.”
“Well, I can certainly relate to that,” replied Adeline. “Still, it would take some nerve to tell anyone this just minutes before their wedding. Besides, outside of all things Jane Austen, we none of us know each other that well.”
“Perhaps,” replied Frances. “But it’s never the wrong time—or too late—to show someone you care.”
They heard a cough from the doorway, and all three turned to see Andrew Forrester standing there. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s best we all get going to the church.”
Frances looked back at the room, filled with the books she had grown up with.
“It must be hard,” Andrew added, “seeing all this here.”
“No, not at all. In fact it’s quite the opposite. They’re so much more appreciated right where they are. The important thing is that they are being loved, and preserved, and taken note of.”
Adam saw Andrew give Frances a curious look, but decided it was best to keep everyone moving. He turned to Adeline to ask, “Do you want a pick-up when I get back from the station, to take you to the church?”
“No,” she said with an annoyed sigh. “I got roped into walking over with Dr. Gray and Liberty, God help me. She’ll talk our heads off.”
“Dr. Gray seems to like that,” Frances said, as the three of them joined Andrew on the upstairs landing and then headed downstairs together. “The high spirits I mean.”
Adeline turned around when she reached the bottom of the staircase to stare back up at her. “What are you saying?”
Frances gave an innocent smile. “Benjamin Gray has been lonely long enough. I think Liberty could be quite a good match for him.”
“Liberty Pascal!” exclaimed Adeline so loudly that Adam, Andrew, and Frances all looked at her in surprise.
“Liberty’s mighty pretty,” added Adam with a wink.
“Don’t you start.” Adeline gave him a playful swat. “You never talk, and then you come out with that?”
Adam held the front door open to let Frances and Andrew pass, then turned back to Adeline, standing arms crossed in the hallway.
“Enjoy your walk,” he teased, as she slammed the door after him.
Dr. Gray and Liberty were heading to the church together, with a quick stop at Adeline Grover’s along the way. Dr. Gray had taken extra care with his bath that morning, tousling up his hair and indulging in some of the eau de cologne that his late wife had bought him in Jermyn Street for what turned out to be their last Christmas together. When he’d dabbed a few drops along his jawline after his shave, he had looked at the bottle, and the memory of that Christmas morning had felt, strangely, at peace with his present life. Not pulling away at it, as his memories had so often done in the past; not draining anything from the moment, but completing it somehow. Reminding him of who he was, and what he wanted, and what he still deserved to have. He accepted that Jennie would have wanted him to keep living, and that doing so would not reflect on his love for her, which he knew to have been infinite and strong. He had no regrets there. And Jennie had loved him just as infinitely. She would want him to be happy and content again.
But he also knew that she would not want him to be with Liberty Pascal.
Liberty talked incessantly while taking his arm as they walked along. As usual, she was prattling on about Adeline Lewis Grover and her beaux. Her preoccupation with Adeline’s love life struck Dr. Gray as both strange and most unfortunate—ever since that night in the garden when he had lost his head, he had been avoiding Adeline, yet Liberty was always right there to remind him of what the young widow was up to.
“Oh, how I love weddings,” Liberty was saying. “There’s nothing like a wedding to stir up some romance, I always like to say, don’t you think, Dr. Gray?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t get to too many around here. It’s a pretty small village.”
“Oh, but you must have gone to Adeline’s, last—what was it—only a year ago last February? How sad that all was. And not so long ago at that. Did you?”
“Did I what?” asked Dr. Gray absentmindedly.
“Why, did you go to Adeline and Samuel’s wedding?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
She gave him a hard look. It was like trying to draw blood from a stone.
“Well, I am sure it was a most romantic day. Childhood sweethearts and all that. Although that Adeline, she’s more complicated than she seems. I mean, away at college, we all wondered about the boy back home. He sounded an angel, to be sure, but—I don’t know—it all seemed a little lopsided. On his side, I mean.”
Dr. Gray was looking about him at the crowds of daffodils still filling the front gardens of the terrace houses along this stretch of the street.
“There was this professor, you see.” Liberty’s tone was managing to sound both hushed and loud at the same time.
“Hmm?”
“Oh, well, perhaps it was just cold feet. But we all wondered whether Samuel was more an obligation of sorts, going off to war—didn’t they get engaged right after he got conscripted?”
Dr. Gray was barely listening, just recalling the image of Adeline standing at the altar in her cream-coloured frock, her hair down in waves about her shoulders, a little crown of cream roses setting off the perfect pink of her cheeks.
“In fact, there wasn’t just the professor,
” Liberty was droning on. “Adeline has apparently always had a weakness for older men, throwing herself at lonely widowers and the like, confessed as much to me at college once. Said she—”
Liberty stopped talking. Dr. Gray had stopped in his tracks, staring at her. Adeline’s words in the garden that night—“push me away all these years”—kept ringing through his head, like a long-suppressed clarion call.
“What did you just say?”
Liberty bit her lip. She was usually two steps ahead of Dr. Gray, but today for once he was catching up, and way too fast at that.
“Well, look at me, talking your head off and we’re already here. Let me go in and get Adeline, and you stay right there and relax, hmm?”
Liberty ran up the garden path to Adeline’s house while Dr. Gray tested the hinges on the front gate, swinging it easily to and fro. Adam Berwick had been by after all.
Just then he heard a honk and looked behind to see Adam himself at the wheel of the Knight family Rolls-Royce, Yardley Sinclair sitting in the front seat next to him.
“Dr. Gray!” exclaimed Yardley, leaning over Adam to get closer to the driver’s side window.
Dr. Gray walked into the road to greet both men as the car slowed down, tipping his hat with a smile. “Pleasant journey?” he called out over the noise of the engine as it sputtered to a stop.
“Adam here’s a great driver,” Yardley called back.
Approaching the car, Dr. Gray heard a strange noise coming from the backseat. Peering inside, he discovered a Border Collie puppy sitting upright and panting. “And who’s this?”
“Dixon.” Yardley looked over at his driver with a smile. “A gift for Adam, to cheer up the old chap.”
Adam, however, was positively beaming today, which was gratifying to Dr. Gray as his doctor and friend, given all the stress the poor man had been through of late. It was wonderful to finally see the man comfortable in his own skin. But Dr. Gray also wondered if the arrival of spring was turning Adam’s thoughts to more than mere fancy, and who in their tiny village could be the object of that.
“Looking forward to the weekend,” Yardley was saying. “I’ve been itching to get my hands on those books all week.”
Dr. Gray cocked his head back at the upstairs windows of Adeline’s house just behind them. “They’re all up there. Two spare bedrooms filled to the rafters with crates and crates of books.”
“We’re convening the society on Monday morning, before I return to town, correct?” Yardley smiled over at Adam behind the wheel. “Hopefully that gives me enough time to make some headway with the physical appraisal. Wedding weekends can be full of distractions.”
“Well, I’m not busy,” said Dr. Gray as Adeline and Liberty emerged down the garden path together.
Yardley gave a loud whistle. “Come now, Benjamin, surely you can find a thing—or two—to get your hands on in between all the celebrations.”
Adam honked the horn again and Yardley gave a laugh as they sped off. Dr. Gray took off his hat to rub at his temples—he was getting a serious migraine from all the doublespeak around him. How he was going to get through the wedding, he had no idea.
A half-hour before her noon wedding, Mimi sat in the guest bedroom wing of the Great House, where Frances had put her and Jack in separate rooms the night before. She was applying her make-up carefully, missing the days when she had just sat back in the chair and relaxed while a studio artist did all the work, and realizing that she wasn’t missing much else. She loved it here in Chawton—loved the talks at night with Evie and Frances by the fire in the Great Hall, loved the wagon rides with Adam Berwick and the long walks through the neighbouring fields towards Upper and Lower Farringdon, loved sitting in the little pub with Yardley on his visits down, laughing with the other villagers at all of her friend’s snappy remarks.
Jack did not seem to love it quite so much. He could not get used to many things: the separate taps in the basin for hot and cold water (“I just want warm!” he would whine, as he scalded his hands), the rationing (Jack needed a certain daily supply of sugar and caffeine to keep him going), the drizzle that masked as rain, the pessimistic malaise that masked as dry wit. Jack could never reconcile himself to that latter aspect of the English character. He was a piston of energy and self-confidence himself, all go-go-go, and he needed a world that responded to what he was selling. Because he was always selling something.
Mimi knew that staying several months a year in England would be hard on Jack and was glad that Chawton was close enough to London to give him his occasional fill of luxury there. They had not yet found a little house to rent, supply and demand being pretty evenly matched in a town of only four hundred (“At this point,” Frances had warned her, “you are literally waiting for someone to die”). But Mimi had not yet given up hope and was willing to be patient until a piece of real estate became available. In the meantime, Jack had started hankering after the south of France instead—he had heard that in a few months over twenty countries would be presenting films at the Casino of Cannes for an inaugural world film festival to rival that of Venice. Jack was convinced that this was the time to buy real estate in Cannes, before it hit the world map, and his commercial instincts, at least, had yet to be proven wrong.
Mimi heard a knock on her bedroom door, and Frances popped her head in. “We just got back from town. Adeline and Adam were knee-deep in books.”
“I can’t wait to get over there after the honeymoon. I call first dibs on any Burney.”
“You can have her.” Frances smiled and came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You know, I was almost married once.”
Mimi whipped around in her chair before the vanity table. “No, I did not know. You never said a word.”
“Well, that’s because it was a secret engagement, of sorts. Only our parents were told. And it lasted only as long as that.”
“Do I know him?” Mimi laughed, thinking the question was absurd.
“Actually, yes—it was Andrew Forrester.”
Mimi put down her Max Factor mascara stick. “You’re joking. No, wait, you’re not joking, are you? Oh my goodness, it all makes so much sense now.”
Frances eyed her curiously. “What does?”
“His solicitude for you. His worry. He’s so risk averse about everything to do with the society, always so concerned we’ll breach a directors’ or fiduciary duty of some kind and all end up in jail, and yet he was out there pleading with you to fight Colin Knatchbull every step of the way on the will.”
“I really don’t think that has anything to do with it.”
“Frances, please, he lives by the letter of the law. Yet I swear he would have burned that second will if he could have gotten away with it. What on earth happened?”
“It was so long ago, I hardly even recall. We got engaged, and my father would not consent, and I was persuaded to break it off.”
“That’s a little ironic, don’t you think?”
“Then he returned from the Great War and continued with his legal studies and became quite successful in town. His ability to spot risk ahead of time became legendary in the greater Hampshire County.”
“This has now moved beyond irony, Frances.”
“Trust me, I know,” she sighed resignedly.
“So, you might have provided an heir after all, if it hadn’t been for your father, and then your father took your only home away from you because you never bore him an heir. It’s the plot to a Bette Davis movie.”
Frances started to take out the letter sitting hidden in her right skirt pocket. “A bad marriage, though, is worse than no marriage at all.”
“Yes, I suppose, although Charlotte Lucas would probably have had something to say about that. . . .” Mimi was pinching the colour into her cheeks and then applying rouge as the make-up artists had taught her, to avoid overapplying for the daylight.
“Mimi, have you ever heard of a company called Alpha Investments Limited?”
“No, why?”
Mimi was now applying the rose-tinted lipstick she had bought at Chanel in Paris a few weekends ago.
“Oh, right, I know he has meetings in Scotland once in a while for some business up there. Golf, I think. I don’t know. I never listen when he starts talking about golf.”
Frances held the letter out to Mimi. “Andrew received this from the chairman of Alpha earlier today. It seems they—well, here, I should let you read this yourself.”
Mimi put the lipstick down and smacked her lips together, then blotted them lightly with a tissue from the sterling-silver Kleenex box on the vanity.
“Frances, really, on my wedding day.” Mimi took the letter and stood up while she read it, then sank down onto the edge of the bed next to her.
“So, wait a minute, you’ve lost everything? Even the cottage?”
Frances nodded.
“But where will you live? And where will we put all those books? What about the museum—and for what? A golf clubhouse?” She practically spat out the last two words as she angrily crunched up the paper in her hands. “My God, he used me—he used us—he used all the information I’d been confiding in him . . .”
“I really debated about whether to tell you before the wedding. I mean, it really is just business, you know, and if you think about that for a moment, Colin could easily have sold to anyone, and Jack has every right—”
But Mimi was gone.
Frances looked about the room with a sigh, then lay back on the bed, her booted feet still on the floor. Something rustled in the heavy folds of her floor-length skirt as it fanned out beneath her. She sat up in surprise and retrieved from the left pocket a folded single sheet of paper with her name marked on the outside in a hurried scrawl. It had been so many years since she had seen that handwriting—decades even—that she first started to read the letter without any notion of its author.
The Jane Austen Society (ARC) Page 26
