Expectations: The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice Continued), Volume 1

by Melinda Wellesley

  ***

  The little company quickly settled into their new home. Anne and Harriet chose the best bedrooms with the view of the city and bay, and Dr. Minton moved with great ease into the role of Anne’s major domo. The servants from home were a little flummoxed working side-by-side with the staff that understood not a single word of English, but a rough sign language system and a willingness to try opened the communication channels.

  As the maids unpacked her things, Anne read the letters from her mother. They recorded her first three weeks in London at her town house. She expressed her concerns about her daughter’s welfare and her hopes that the journey had not been too debilitating. Lady Catherine related how Anne’s winter excursion had become a favorite topic in town, and she reported her pleasure in finding her daughter admired by friends, family, and even strangers during the season’s early social festivities. Word about her bold venture had spread with amazing speed through society. Lady Catherine crowed about her own many good deeds and several noteworthy faux pas involving people Anne did not know. Anne sighed with relief at the tone of the letters. Her mother had recovered from her gloom and could enjoy all the admiration and attention that was her due.

  On the company’s second full day in the villa, the invaluable assistant ambassador paid a visit. As talkative and officious as he had been at their first meeting, the man managed to find the time to introduce his wife and daughter, who had made the valiant gesture of accompanying him up the hill. Both seemed well pleased with themselves and appeared to have traveled to the villa as a matter of form rather than in anticipation of making new friends. Miss Armistead had little patience for the wife and daughter, although she showed more good manners than did the guests. After the visit, Harriet made Anne and Mrs. Jenkinson chuckle with her imitations of the supercilious pair.

  The assistant ambassador presented Anne with a detailed list of what sights to see and which people to visit from the city’s English population. After being trapped on their island for more than a decade, a surprising number of English gentry and even a few of the middling sort had found their way to the Italian kingdom after the peace treaty. It would not rival the season in London, the ambassador admitted, but it would offer a welcome sense of the familiar so far from home. Anne consulted with Dr. Minton about how much she could do on each day without tiring herself.

  Freed from the supervision of her family, Harriet wasted no time in making friends with the soldiers and staff at the ambassador’s headquarters. She traveled down to town nearly every day and reported back each afternoon about the latest news. There were a great many young people in that social circle, and therefore she had a great deal to relate.

  While she recuperated from the exertions of the journey, Anne contented herself by spending mornings writing her daily letters to her mother and afternoons sitting in the sunshine with Mrs. Jenkinson in the villa’s garden. With an impish smile she would wonder aloud how wet and blustery it might be it back home. Even with some cloudy days and rain, Naples seemed to be the embodiment of sunshine. With Dr. Minton or Giuseppe acting as an interpreter, Anne found the housekeeper, Signora Abelli, to be a pleasant and helpful woman. Forced to speak French, Anne surprised herself by how much she remembered from her lessons so many years ago. She did not command enough understanding to get by on her own, but what she did recall gave her courage to try something more. Enchanted with the sound of Italian, Anne asked the Signora if she knew someone who could give her lessons. Pleased by her interest, the housekeeper promised to find her a teacher.

  The household’s only upset came from a rivalry between the Italian and English cooks. The local chef did not want a stranger in her kitchen, and Mrs. Ross, the tough-minded assistant cook from Rosings, saw nothing in the villa’s arrangements that pleased her. Dr. Minton worked out a compromise, wherein Anne would eat English food for breakfast and dinner, and supper would be made by the villa’s kitchen staff.

  The Italian meals gave Anne more challenges than she would have liked. Transporting long, sauce-covered noodles from the plate to her mouth took a skill she had not acquired, and one night she went to bed early with such a fire in her stomach that she regretted the entire excursion. However, by the next morning, after several physics from Dr. Minton, her health and confidence had been restored.

  The indispensable Dr. Minton watched over Anne’s activity, and he helped moderate her impatient plans to avoid exhaustion. Anne wanted to try pianoforte lessons, and she wanted to learn how to sketch. Surely there was no better landscape to inspire great art than this! While she wanted to try something new every day, the physician cautioned against pushing herself past her strength. After all, she had just made a mighty journey across a continent, and she would be here for months.

  Dr. Minton stayed with her from morning to evening, offering comfort, assistance, and companionship. She did not even mind when he sent Mrs. Jenkinson on an occasional errand down into town with one of the house servants to fetch some trinket or other unnecessary item so he could spend some quiet time with Anne.

  On an afternoon bathed in warm sunshine, Anne and Dr. Minton admired the view of the bay from the garden while awaiting the arrival of her art instructor. He said, “It pleases me to see how much you have improved since we arrived. This morning, when you walked all the way to that shrine down the road and back without assistance, I concluded then and there that you are a marvel.”

  She hoped she did not blush. “I am not a marvel. It is just so much easier to get a little exercise here. Walking the long gallery in Rosings offers no motivation to compare with all this beauty.”

  He nodded. “You are very attached to Rosings.”

  She thought his question a little odd. “It is my home, and it will be mine someday.”

  “I have heard you say that if you could, you’d stay here forever.”

  “Yes,” Anne replied, “I wish I could, but I cannot. My life will have many obligations.”

  He nodded. “I understand, all too well. Did your mother tell you about my family?”

  She said that her mother had not.

  He explained, “In recent generations, my family has been on the wrong side of history. First was the Civil War. We were the de Mintons then. My forebear, Sir Roger de Minton, was part of the escort for the Prince of Wales to the continent. All the family’s properties were confiscated. Sir Roger returned to England with the king, proud but penniless.” She nodded with sympathy. “And just as my great-grandparents were about to purchase back the family estate, the South Sea Bubble took everything.”

  Oh, such terrible luck, she thought, especially for someone so very kind.

  He continued, “Each generation has been charged with restoring the family’s fortunes. We were not born to trade, but we gave it our all. My grandfather’s investments returned little, and my father died too young to build up the funds. So, it has been left to me. I have saved almost enough to purchase the estate for my mother and siblings.”

  “How much more do you need?” she asked out of curiosity.

  He shook his head with a shy smile. “How kind of you to ask, but I can accept no charity.”

  She had not been thinking of giving him money to help make up the difference, but now that he mentioned it, she considered it not such a bad idea for so good a gentleman. For now she understood that he was indeed in every sense a gentleman.

  Dr. Minton concluded, “When I have fulfilled my obligation to my family, I would happily stay here in Naples.”

  “But would you not miss your family?” Anne asked.

  “Of course,” he said with alacrity, then evened his tones. “But I have seen so little of them over the years, they’re nearly strangers.”

  “How very sad.”

  He smiled at her. “But all my efforts have been worthwhile when I have patients like you.”

  She smiled in return, flattered. But she feared she communicated too much, and she changed the discussion to indifferent topics.

  That ni
ght, after Anne had retired for the evening, she sat by her bedroom window and listened to two servants sitting on a bench in the orchard. A gardener played the guitar and sang to one of the maids what could only be a love song. The soft lights of the city below curved around the bay in a gentle embrace. She recalled what Dr. Minton told her that afternoon. His family had been landed gentry. It seemed odd that her mother would have known and yet not mentioned it. She was very particular about that kind of thing. Perhaps she mentioned it when Anne had been paying attention to something else.

  This information changed their relationship. Not only was he a doctor, not a mere surgeon or—even worse—an apothecary, but also he was socially nearly her peer. It spoke of his humility that he had never mentioned this before. It also explained how he moved with such grace through the upper levels of society. Still, his being her servant dampened the possibilities. Besides, his attentions, while flattering, seemed to her to be more professional than personal.

  Anne sighed as she listened to the gardener’s song. Having seen so much of the Italian countryside on their journey, Anne understood why in so many minds Italy represented romance. …Could love find her while she resided in the magical city by the sea? The prospect at once tantalized and frightened her. How wonderful would it be! But what would her mother say? What would the others in her party say? How would she proceed with a man who had not been approved first by her mother? She would have no idea what to do or say. She knew she had no beauty, vivacity, or intelligence. Her only assets were her rank and her wealth. Those in turn would attract the wrong kind of suitor. Her mother had always told her that women of her station should be on guard for that. It had never applied to her, since her own marriage had been planned since her infancy, but her mother had driven home the warning in many a cautionary tale. Now that caveat did apply to her. How would she know the right kind of suitor from the wrong one? She would have to keep up her guard and review all men with dispassionate examination, even while part of her yearned for just a free, innocent interlude. Oh, how nervous and enticing and vexing it all was.

  She envied the lovers sitting in the garden below her window. In many respects, life was so much simpler for people who had no money. She wondered which was better—being able to choose one’s partner in life or having enough wealth to distract from an unhappy marriage. Being able to choose one’s partner did not guarantee happiness. Their parish had many a crossed marriage between people who had chosen each other. In turn, arranged marriages were not doomed to unhappiness. Her parents’ negotiated union had worked out well enough.

  Listening to the gardener’s song of love, Anne hoped, if it would not be too much to ask of God’s infinite generosity, to have both a caring husband and all her wealth to take the sting from any worldly disappointments. If, however, God demanded of her to choose between those two blessings, she would select her wealth. Her life had prepared her well enough for being sad, but she had no idea how to be poor, and she was most certainly past the age of acquiring that skill.