Margaret Dashwood's Diary

by Elliott, Anna

  I remain yours—always yours,

  John Willoughby.

  I finished reading and looked up from the letter. “He loves you still.”

  Marianne shrugged again. “Perhaps. Perhaps he only thinks to flatter me—to soften me into persuading Christopher not to prosecute. It does not matter.” She smiled, resting her hand on her slightly swollen middle. “I have the love of a good man,” she said. “That is infinitely better than the love of a weak and venal one.” She looked down at me. “And now I ought to go and let you rest—you look tired.”

  I was tired. I could feel my eyelids trying to slide closed. But the question could no longer be postponed. “Jamie?” I asked. “Where is he, now?”

  Again that look of pity crossed Marianne’s gaze. “He is gone. As soon as the surgeon proclaimed you definitely past all danger of dying he rode out—to Weymouth, I think. He said he would assist Christopher’s men in searching for Mr. Chalmers. And he wishes to see whether any trace can be found of his brother, as well.”

  Of course—of course now that he knew his brother was still alive, Jamie’s first task would be to find him.

  Marianne seemed to debate a moment, then made up her mind. “He left something for you, though. I had thought to wait, to give it to you when you were feeling stronger. But perhaps you would like to have it now.”

  She got up and went to a side table, returning with a pair of worn leather-bound books. The same ones I had seen in Jamie’s travelling pack: the plays of Shakespeare, and the poems.

  I had known before, really. I do not know how, but some part of me had known all the time—from the moment I had woken, I had had a feeling, as though a great pair of scissors had severed an invisible cord tied to my heart. But seeing the books, I knew of a certainty that Jamie had left me, meaning never to return.

  Marianne was watching me. She said, a little awkwardly, “Margaret, I have the greatest respect for Corporal Cooper. Of course I do. But you must know that any kind of an … an official connection between the two of you … it would present the greatest difficulties on both sides, for him and for you. In the eyes of the majority of polite society, he will never be other than a gypsy—an outsider, to be shunned and scorned. You are not even of age yet—you cannot marry without our mother’s approval. And Mother—of course she was fond of Jamie when he was a child. We all were. But you must see—”

  Marianne trailed off.

  She did not need to finish. Although Mother has always wished that her daughters should marry for love, it was not especially likely that she should give her consent to my marrying the gypsy boy who had camped on our lands.

  “I see that Jamie must agree with you about the difficulties, at least.” He must have, or he would not have left in this way. I looked up at Marianne, struck by sudden remembrance. “Does Mother know anything of what has happened?” I asked.

  Marianne shook her head. “No. We did think to send for her—when you were first brought in, unconscious. But then the surgeon said that you would make a good recovery, and it seemed better not to frighten her unnecessarily.”

  “And that the fewer people who knew of my outrageous behaviour the better?” I finished for her, feeling my mouth twist a bit.

  “Well, Mother would probably be happier not knowing,” Marianne allowed. She smiled just a bit and touched my hair. “But I think you were very brave.”

  I was vaguely aware of Marianne setting Jamie’s books down beside me on the bed, kissing my cheek and telling me to rest, now. I suppose I must have murmured something in response, because she went out and closed the door behind her, leaving me alone. My fingers shook as I picked up the first volume—the plays—which was just as it had been before. The spine cracked, the pages well-thumbed, with Colonel Forsythe’s name inscribed on the flyleaf in faded ink.

  The book of sonnets, though, had a new inscription on the first page. For a moment as I stared at it, my eyes were too blurred to read the words, though I recognised Jamie’s spiky hand—which somehow, though I had seen it only twice, had become as familiar to me as my own.

  I blinked savagely and read what he had written:

  I did not tell you before, but I bought this book because of you. Years ago, at Norland, I overheard your sister—I think it was Marianne—reading aloud from a book of Shakespeare’s poems. I did not understand more than half of the words at the time. But one verse—the one about ‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ struck me, because it made me think of you. I bought this book with my first quarter’s army pay because I wanted to learn to read it for myself one day. More, because I wanted something to carry with me that would remind me of you, wherever I might go. But I do not need it anymore. Every breath I take—every time my heart beats—I will be thinking of you.

  Monday 5 July 1802

  I was allowed to come downstairs for the first time today. Which was a relief. I was unutterably weary of lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Though sitting propped up with cushions on the sofa downstairs was not actually very much better. Elinor came up from the parsonage to see me, and she and Marianne kept trying to wrap me in shawls and ply me with cups of tea and plates of biscuits.

  Physically, I feel almost completely well; my head does not even ache anymore. I just feel … grey.

  Unfortunately, I do not even need another try at filling out the catalogue of symptoms with which I began this diary to know why I feel this way. I suppose it is in a way of value to know that a broken heart is not, after all, a sharp, agonising pain—it is more a dull, gnawing ache that subtly seems to bleed all the colour from life. As though my vision, my spirit, my whole being have all been tinged the colour of a dull, overcast sky.

  Joanna and Eliza came to visit during the afternoon—which was one bright spot in the endless day. It is impossible to be in Joanna’s company for long without smiling. She had brought me a little grass snake, ‘to cheer me up’, she announced. Just before—much to her mother and Marianne and Elinor’s general horror—she pulled the squirming snake out of her pocket and deposited it in my lap.

  The combined screams of my sisters and Eliza (I may have drawn in a sharp breathe, but at least I did not scream) drove the poor snake wriggling frantically underneath a Chippendale secretary. I had to lie flat on the floor to fish it out again—by which time I was laughing, for the first time in days.

  For the sake of my sisters’ nerves, we sent Joanna and her snake outside to play. I said that I would be glad of some fresh air, too—so we all went out to take a turn about the lawn.

  “Joanna?” I asked.

  Joanna abandoned her efforts to coax the snake to eat a blade of grass and skipped back to me. “Yes?”

  “The … the ghost you saw out your window a few weeks ago. Did he look like my friend? The one who helped me bring you home when you were lost?”

  Joanna screwed up her face in recollection, nodding “A little like him. I think so. That was why I asked him whether he was a ghost—I was afraid he was the same one I’d seen.”

  “I see.” I moistened my lips. “And have … have you seen him again.”

  “No.” Joanna shook her head, setting her curls bouncing. “Why?”

  “No reason.” I suppressed a sigh. It had occurred to me—belatedly—that Joanna’s ‘ghost’ might have been Jamie’s brother Sam, injured and fleeing from Mr. Chalmers. But knowing that Sam had passed somewhere nearby Eliza’s cottage two weeks ago scarcely helped in locating him now. Certainly it gave me no valid excuse for contacting Jamie to give him the information. Which, if I am honest, is what I had really wanted in questioning Joanna.

  “Is something wrong?” I looked up to see that Eliza had come to stand beside me, her brow furrowed in concern. “Are you feeling ill again? Or has Joanna been plaguing you?”

  “No—nothing.” I rubbed my forehead. “I’m better—much better. And Joanna is fine. How are the two of you? It seems an age since last I saw you. Though I suppose it has only been since the night of the ball
.”

  Glancing sideways, I was surprised to see Eliza’s lips quivering, as though with incipient tears. “What is the matter?” I asked. It felt strange—like recalling a chapter of a half-forgotten book—to remember the night of the ball. But the last time I had seen Eliza, she had been dancing with Pierre de Courtenay. “Has M. de Courtenay—,” I began. I wondered whether my fears had been well-founded after all; perhaps M. de Courtenay had made improper advances, or offered her an irregular arrangement rather than marriage.

  Eliza raised a hand and brushed at her cheek. “I—” She seemed to hesitate. But then: “Pierre—he has asked me to marry him.” She turned to face me. “I am sorry—I did not mean to burden you with this. But I haven’t told anyone. And if I do not speak of it, I think I shall go mad.”

  “It is no burden,” I said. “Of course if you want to tell me, I want to hear. But I do not understand. If he has asked you to be his wife … do you not wish to be wedded to him, then?”

  “Of course I do.” Eliza’s voice was low. Her fingers knotted in her plain wool shawl. “I want it more than anything. But … do you not see?” She turned to look at me again. “I have not exactly a sterling record of results from following my heart and choosing the course I most wish.” Her eyes focused on Joanna, who was racing up ahead, laughing and turning cartwheels in the grass—and accumulating a wealth of green smears all over her dress. “I have Joanna, and I would never regret that, nor trade her for anything, but—”

  “But you fear that if you trust your heart again, as you did in eloping with Willoughby, you will find similar heartbreak all over again?”

  “I … I suppose I do.” Eliza let out her breath. “And then there is the question of gossip—scandal. Not that I care for myself—I have faced all that before, these last five years. But Pierre—he would almost certainly be subject to all sorts of unpleasant censures from society if he married me.”

  “That is his risk, though—and if he is ready to take it, I do not see that you should object.” I hesitated. I did understand Eliza’s fear—how could I not? And yet … what would I do, what would I feel at that moment if Jamie were to miraculously appear, striding towards me across the lawn. “Do you love him? M. de Courtenay?”

  “I—” Eliza’s fingers twisted through the fringe on her shawl again and then she said, simply, “Yes. I do.”

  “Then choosing to be with him … whatever the risks, whatever the opinion of the rest of the world … none of that can be more painful than being without him, can it?”

  Eliza’s head came up with a start and she stared at me. And Marianne turned around from where she was standing with Elinor to look at me, a strange expression on her face. I had not realised she was listening to what Eliza and I said.

  Then, slowly, Eliza smiled. “Do you know,” she said, “I believe you are right.”

  Tuesday 6 July 1802

  My hands are shaking—but that is not the reason that the handwriting of this entry is such a disaster. I am writing in a carriage—Colonel Brandon’s carriage, to be precise—with this book propped on my knee in a vain effort to brace against the bumps and constant rattle of travelling quickly over open road.

  Marianne came into my room this morning—at barely the crack of dawn—and flung my curtains wide. “Wake up! I have asked for some breakfast to be brought up to you on a tray. But you had better hurry and dress, because I have ordered the carriage to be brought round at seven o’clock.”

  I blinked at her—wondering blearily whether this was some strange, delayed manifestation of the blow I had taken to the head. “Carriage?” I managed to say. I struggled to sit up and push the tangled hair out of my eyes. “Why? Where are we going?”

  “I am not going anywhere. You are going to Weymouth.” Marianne turned away from the window to beam at me. She was already dressed in a simple round gown of pale lemon-coloured muslin, and above it her face fairly glowed. “Well, for strict propriety’s sake—and just so that I can tell Mother that I did not allow you to run entirely wild while you were in my care—I will ride along. But I promise to remain in the carriage when you go in to see Corporal Cooper. I imagine that you will wish to speak to him alone.”

  That brought me upright and out of bed, staring at her in disbelief. “When I go in to see— Marianne, have you gone quite out of your mind?”

  “No,” Marianne said. “I merely thought it was high time you took your own advice—you and I both. What you said yesterday to Eliza: You said that where there is love, being together—whatever the difficulties—cannot be harder than being apart.”

  “But our mother—,” I began.

  “I will speak with Mother. Besides,” Marianne added cryptically, “I believe that if everything works according to plan, she may not have so very many grounds for withholding her consent to your marriage after all. So hurry and get dressed,” she added in a brisker tone before I could ask what she meant. She glanced at the clock. “I have from Christopher the address of the inn where Corporal Cooper has been staying in order to make his enquiries. We leave in an hour.”

  We left Delaford about two hours ago, now, heading for the coast. And if I try to write any more on this bumpy and rutted road, I shall probably end by stabbing myself with the pencil. Not that I have anything further to write, really. I suppose at the very least I shall know by this evening whether I wish to keep this journal—or whether it is doomed to be ripped to shreds and burned like its predecessor.

  Later

  I could never really have burned this book. I suppose I knew, even as I wrote the words, that I would not be able to do it—whatever the day’s outcome might be.

  It was a little past noon when we arrived in Weymouth and found the inn—the King’s Head—where Colonel Brandon had directed Marianne. As promised, Marianne remained in the carriage while I went in. Though at that moment, I would almost have been glad of her company. My stomach was churning and my legs felt unsteady—and I had what amounted to a death-grip on the parcel I carried in my arms.

  I had to clear my throat three times before I could ask the proprietress—a thin, sour-looking woman with a frizz of hair the colour of dirty dishwater—whether Corporal Cooper had a room here?

  She looked me up and down with pursed lips—probably assessing whether I was a woman of easy virtue who might blacken the respectable name of her inn—but then said, grudgingly, that he was indeed renting a room.

  “Is he here now? Might I—might I see him?” I asked.

  That earned me another sour look. But at last she nodded and said that she supposed I might wait in the back parlour. It wouldn’t be proper, of course, for me to go straight up to Jamie’s room. But no one was in the parlour at this hour of the day, and she would go upstairs and tell Jamie to come down.

  I felt as though I waited an eternity—perched on the edge of a hard-backed chair in the exceedingly ugly and ill-furnished parlour, and listening to the hectic drumming of my own heart. But at last the door opened. And Jamie came into the room.

  He wore his army uniform, red coat and tan breeches, and he was freshly shaved. He looked as though he might have been writing and had hastily set the pen aside to come downstairs; his fingers had a smudge of ink across the tips. And his black hair looked untidy—as though he had unconsciously been running his hands through it as he wrote.

  He did not say anything at first, only stood, staring at me.

  The sight of him—looking more handsome even than I remembered—momentarily drove everything I had planned to say from my mind. “Where is Pilot?” I asked; they were the first words that happened to spring to my lips.

  Jamie looked startled by the question. “Upstairs—sleeping on the hearthrug.” And then he frowned. “You came all this way to ask me about that great lummox of a dog?”

  I drew in my breath. The truth was that however much Marianne had astonished me by arranging this trip today … it was a journey I had intended all along. For days I had known what I would have to do; known that
I would never be able to live with myself otherwise, if I did not at least try to see Jamie one last time. So I swallowed and said, “No. I came to return these to you.”

  I unfolded the cloth I had wrapped round the books I carried—Jamie’s Shakespeare books—and held them out to him.

  At that, a look of confusion—and perhaps hurt—crossed Jamie’s dark gaze. “Did you not want …” He stopped, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. He seemed to force himself to meet my gaze, then, drawing himself straight and speaking more formally than he usually did. “I am sorry. I wanted … I wished for you to have something to remember me by. But if you do not want—”

  I exploded, cutting him off before he could go on. “Jamie Cooper, you are an idiot!”

  Jamie’s eyes flared wide with shock, but I was too angry not to continue. “Do you really think that I need a book to help me remember you?” I drew a breath and managed to lower my voice. “In the sonnets book, you wrote that you would be thinking of me with every heartbeat, with every breath. It is the same for me—the very same. More.” I felt an unwanted rush of tears prickle behind my eyes and dug my nails hard into the palms of my hands, trying not to cry. “My whole life, I have felt as though … as though wherever I go, I do not quite belong. No matter how I tried, I could never be as accomplished as Elinor or as pretty as Marianne. No matter how I try, I am not at all what a proper young lady ought to be. And when I do try, it usually ends in a complete fiasco—like my getting engaged to Aubrey. But when I am with you—” I blinked hard. “None of that matters. When I am with you, I feel as though I do not have to act or hide or pretend to be other than I am. Because you are like me. In all the ways that matter most, we are the same.”