Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

  Persuaded

  A Jane Austen Variation

  Alicia J. Chumney

  Copyright © 2018 by Alicia J. Chumney All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Alicia J. Chumney

  Editor: Meri Benson

  1. Young Adult Romance 2. New Adult Romance 3. Contemporary Romance

  First Edition

  Dedication

  For Drunk Austen (check out their social media pages if you love Jane Austen, Star Wars, and more) and one of their posts back in the summer of 2018. That post gave me the idea to modernize Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

  Persuaded

  A Jane Austen Variation

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  A Summer Romance

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Two

  Five Years Later

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Part Three

  After

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also Available by this Author:

  The Secrets Between Us

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part One

  A Summer Romance

  Introduction

  If anybody asked, there were a few key differences between the Elliot sisters.

  Elizabeth “Beth” had refined the polished look that makeup and good hair styling products helped create. She was also lucky in getting curly hair that fell somewhere between her father’s straight blonde locks and her mother’s wild and tight curls. She could straighten or curl her hair without spending hours hogging the mirror. She did anyway.

  She was also blessed with her mother’s tan skin that was a genetic inheritance from some distant relation.

  However, despite a head for finances, she lacked motivation.

  Middle sister Anne had their mother’s dark and crazy curly hair with only, maybe, a few degrees less kinky curly and a bit frizzier whenever she skipped the aid of hair products to help tame the wild mane. It was easier for her to pull it back into a ponytail or a bun in order to maintain some of the polish needed to be respectable. Somebody needed to be respectable and responsible with sisters like hers.

  Even if on the inside she was just as impulsive and unfiltered as her hair, she simply never showed her true nature to that many people. Instead, she hid it behind ponytail holders and a mess of bobby pins.

  The only thing she inherited from her father was his pale skin. If she dared go outside without sunscreen she would turn into a lobster in a matter of minutes. Otherwise, even down to personality, she was a replica of her mother. Even her nurturing nature that often masked her artistic and sarcastic sides was a mixed blessing.

  Often, she would be tending to others while they overlooked her.

  Finally, the third daughter, Mary, was nearly an exact replica of their father, as much as it bothered him. In the youngest girl, his worst traits were amplified. Social climber. Elitist. And worse. Mary used her ‘illnesses’ to garner attention, and it worked for a while. Until it didn’t. And she became worse. Much worse.

  But Walter Elliot didn’t notice that his daughter’s stick straight, thin, dish-water blonde hair was identical to his. In his mind he had Elizabeth’s thicker mane, but with the more golden hue from his youth. Mentally he still had her tan skin instead of the pasty mess that was his youngest daughter’s skin tones.

  Walter Elliot saw himself as Walter Elliot, Attorney at Law, aged thirty-two instead of Walter Elliot, retired Attorney at Law, aged sixty.

  And, as in most cases, seeing yourself differently than you really are is bound to cause some problems.

  Chapter One

  You know those moments where everything is fine one moment and then the next things are utter chaos? For the Elliot Sisters, it was their mother’s cancer diagnosis. It shattered their lives completely.

  For Anne Elliot, it meant that everything changed. There were more things to do around the house while her sisters – almost twenty and fifteen – did relatively nothing to keep things flowing smoothly.

  She barely noticed her mother watching as Anne handled the laundry, cooking, and cleaning up the dishes afterward. Eliza Elliot let out an inner sigh as her middle daughter balanced taking care of everybody and her school work, letting her personal life flounder.

  One afternoon, after hearing Anne on the phone with her best friend, Robin, as yet another excuse for canceling their movie plans slipped through her daughter’s lips, Eliza Elliot began to plan.

  “I don’t want to go to some beach house for the summer,” Anne explained as she picked up the dishes her sisters had left on the counters and in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. “I have too much to do.”

  “This is the summer before your senior year,” her aunt and mother’s sister, Cassandra Russell, had countered. “You need to get some sun; you have been looking entirely too pale lately.”

  “Mama needs me at home,” Anne retorted, ignoring her internal sarcastic rebuttal about always being pale.

  “Beth can drive her to her appointments when your father is working.” She left unsaid, “… or whatever it is your father does in his home office all day.”

  “Mary…”

  “Mary is fifteen years old. She can pick up after herself.”

  Anne looked pointedly around the room at the mess her sisters had l
eft behind.

  “They know you are going to clean up after them so they have no reason to do it themselves,” Aunt Cassie countered. Sadly, even to her own ears, the reassurance sounded hollow.

  Shaking her head, Anne pointed out, “I had to start cleaning up after them because they weren’t doing it to begin with. I can’t let them overwhelm Mama with all of this. She needs to focus on getting better. She doesn’t need to worry if Mary put her cereal bowl in the sink like she was told or if Elizabeth is out looking for a job.”

  Letting out a sigh, her aunt shook her head in frustration. “Anne Katarina Elliot, you are going out of town with me on your mother’s orders. Do you really think I want to be leaving my sister alone right now? No, I don’t. But I have business to attend to and my dear Eliza wants me to take you with me.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Anne protested, again.

  A cleared throat from the doorway interrupted their conversation. “Anne Elliot,” her mother stated in her commanding tone, “you are going to go with your aunt even if I have to pack your bags for you and shove you out the door.”

  Anne paled even further. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

  “Look,” Eliza Elliot maneuvered into the kitchen before sitting on one of the kitchen chairs. “Beth has dropped out of school in order to help out and all she is doing is helping your father. She can take on some of the responsibilities that you have taken it upon yourself to handle. She’s twenty. You are only seventeen…”

  “I’ll be eighteen in August…” Anne interjected.

  “Yes, two months from now.” Shaking her head, Eliza studied her daughter. “You are too young to be taking care of your sisters like this. Mary is fifteen and she can put her own dishes in the dishwasher. Beth can unload the dishwasher. They can cook and clean and do everything else that you have been doing.”

  Soft-spoken Anne said nothing. What could she say? No matter what her mother said, they all knew that Beth and Mary would not do their share of the work. Instead, she whispered, “Why do you want me to go so badly?’

  Drawing a breath deep enough to cause her to start coughing, Eliza took the opportunity to consider her words carefully. “Because,” she started to say when she had gotten her coughing under control, “you are the one this is going to hurt the most and I don’t want you to watch this.”

  “I’m weak,” was all Anne took from her mother’s words.

  “Sensitive,” Eliza corrected.

  “You take things harder than the others,” Aunt Cassandra added.

  “Your father is the same way,” Eliza tried to add.

  Anne snorted. “Father is like Beth. He is all business and only cares about appearances.”

  Once upon a time, Anne had considered working with her father in his law offices until the business relationship he’d had with his former business partner and brother had been dissolved. Elliot and Elliot, Attorneys at Law was no more. Now it was merely W. Elliot, Attorney at Law and A. Elliot, Attorney at Law. Two signs on one building as the brothers divided the building in half – an inheritance from their own lawyer father – and their Uncle Warren had installed a new door on his half of the building. One brother would handle Business Law and the other brother would handle Family Law.

  This also meant that the Elliot Sisters no longer saw their cousin, William Elliot, that much anymore either.

  Anne suspected that Beth had chosen the college she was attending in an attempt to run into Will; her sister had harbored a crush on the guy until the rift in the partnership meant that the two brothers never dined together anymore.

  Once, trying to understand, she had asked Beth about it. “He’s our cousin,” she pointed out.

  Beth, with her habitual eye roll, had retorted, “He’s adopted. We aren’t related by blood.”

  “It’s still gross,” Anne replied.

  It wasn’t until halfway through the second semester of her freshman year that Beth learned that Will had transferred to a school with a better medical program. He had decided against being a lawyer like his father.

  “Your father is many things,” Eliza hedged, regaining her daughter’s distracted train of thought. “He is a good provider as long as he remembers the budget.” She didn’t say that he had become focused on his career over his family after their son had died when he was five. Anne and Cassandra both knew it.

  “So, you want me to go to the beach for the summer…”

  “Just four weeks,” her aunt interrupted. “Or so. Just until my business there is concluded.”

  “… And hope that nothing happens to you, that Beth and Mary learn how to cook and clean, and that Father doesn’t blow the budget too badly.”

  “You are seventeen,” her mother stated, again. “You are too young for all of this to be weighing down so heavily on your shoulders. I will be fine; the doctors even said that I’m reacting positively towards the chemo. I’ll still be here when you come back. I’ll still be here for your Senior year. I will be here to see you go to your prom, graduate, go off to college, get married, and have children of your own.”

  “Okay,” Anne conceded after several long moments. “I’ll go, but only because I can’t win with the two of you teamed up against me.”

  “Great!” Aunt Cassandra moved to hug her. “We leave in three days!”

  “Three days!” Anne exclaimed. “I won’t be ready in three days!”

  “That’s okay, dear,” her aunt purred. “I already took the liberty of packing some of your clothes and buying you a few new bathing suits.”

  Anne closed her eyes, almost missing her mother’s laugh. “I want you to return happy and tanned. No more overworked, tired, and pasty Anne Elliot in my house.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Anne sighed.

  Chapter Two

  When Aunt Cassandra claimed to have already packed Anne’s bags, Anne assumed that her aunt had meant from Anne’s own closet. It wasn’t until she opened the suitcases in her temporary room that she noticed what her aunt had really done.

  Shorts, sundresses, two-piece swimsuits. Everything was modest, but it revealed more than Anne normally showed. The two-pieces were tankinis and halter tops, but she normally went for one-pieces without a low back. Her shorts were normally an inch or two longer. As for sundresses… those were not even in her vocabulary.

  “Aunt Cassie?” she called out. “Where are my pants?”

  “You won’t need pants, my dear,” a voice from the other room called out.

  “What if we go out to eat or something somewhere that I can’t wear shorts.”

  “Then you wear one of the dresses I picked out for you,” Cassandra called back with a no-nonsense tone in her voice.

  “But I don’t wear dresses. Or skirts.” She had just found the small pile of skirts that had been hidden underneath the dresses.

  Entering her niece’s room, Aunt Cassandra shook her head. “We are not at Kellynch Place anymore,” she stated. “You don’t have to be the shy and quiet middle daughter of Walter Elliot. There is no Beth or Mary to overshadow you or leave you with all of the responsibility.”

  “By that reasoning, there is no more Mama,” Anne whispered, a tear escaping and rolling down her face.

  “She will be coming down in the next week or so to visit, to make certain that you are making an effort to be a carefree seventeen-year-old.”

  Releasing a sigh, Anne went back to hanging up the clothes her aunt, and possibly her mother had picked out for her. She was thankful she had the foresight to pack a few of her own essentials: an e-reader and her drawing supplies. She didn’t have enough time to do either of her hobbies lately. Maybe this vacation would be a good thing.

  Watching from three houses down, Derek Worth observed the new summer renters moving in. It looked as if a slightly older lady and her daughter were inhabiting one of his brother’s beach house rentals. The girl looked to be about his age, but it was possible that he could be wrong.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. And
probably not the last.

  “Derek!” his older brother’s wife called from inside their - not rented - house.

  Ava Martin Worth had been married to Derek’s older brother for three years and frequently had her little brother, as she called him, over to give her widowed father-in-law a break. Truthfully, she knew how overwhelming the Worth’s military - Navy - minded father could be. Admiral Worth was one in a long line of Navy men and he’d hoped at least one of his children would carry on the tradition.

  Edward Worth owned rental property to supplement his real estate business income. Even though he was outside of his usual area, he had figured out early on the value of vacation rental property and had invested in five houses either on or near the beach. A few needed some renovations, but Ava’s brother was a licensed contractor and that helped to make things a little easier in the long run.

  As for Derek… he was fascinated by history.

  He appreciated what his sister-in-law did for him. Getting him out of the Worth household for several weeks during these past three summers meant time away from their father and the Naval Academy Preparatory School.

  Yay for boarding school in Rhode Island when your father was in Washington, D.C. and your siblings were in North Carolina! Derek rather wished he was in a public school, although he did have to admit that his education was better at NAPS than it would have been in a public school.

  “Derek!” Ava called again, this time while standing in the doorway. “Where are you?” His tendency to daydream was concerning. Even she knew the life her father-in-law had planned for his third child.

  “Did Ed tell you who moved in the blue house?”

  “Oh,” Ava said, nodding her head slowly. “You were distracted by a girl.”

  “Well?”

  “Cassandra Russell and one of her nieces, Anne, I think,” Ava answered her brother. “We’ll go welcome them in a few hours since Ed had to go into Jacksonville.”