A Different Kind of Woman (Mansfield Trilogy Book 3)

by Lona Manning

  Your most obedient and humble servant,

  Sir William A’Court,

  Envoy to the Kingdom of Naples

  “Oh, Mr. Bertram,” breathed Portia when she could speak. “Richard and I will take care of the school, pray, do not…”

  Edmund nodded his thanks. Portia very much wanted to sit down beside him and put her arms around him. Instead, she handed the letter back, and said, “would you like me to send for Miss Price?”

  * * * * * * *

  London, Summer, 1819

  The press of his engagements in town and his business with his publisher prevented Mr. Gibson from immediately responding to Mr. Orme’s invitation to visit his friend’s wine warehouse. With the help of Prudence, he had already made arrangements for a more extensive tour of the locomotive workshops of Newcastle and Leeds, and the industrial centres of the north.

  But Mr. Orme received a note from one “P.A. Imlay, assistant to Mr. Gibson,” enquiring “if the coming Thursday would be suitable for a visit to the wine warehouse,” and Mr. Orme responded that Mr. Meriwether and Captain Duchesne would be honoured to receive Mr. Gibson on Thursday and begged to acquaint Mr. Gibson with the fact that he and Mr. Meriwether had met before at a dinner party in London.

  Mr. Gibson was punctual to his time and was received in Cheapside. Mr. Meriwether begged leave to introduce Captain Duchesne who had selected some of their finest bottles of claret for their honoured guest to sample. In this fashion, the men fell into easy and then rather more animated conversation, and soon Captain Duchesne felt at liberty to jest with Mr. Gibson on the coincidence of their both having been guests of His Majesty. To the amusement of the others, Mr. Gibson and the captain went on to compare the accommodations, victuals, et cetera, of their respective prisons.

  “In France, sir,” said the captain, “I trust that you dined better than whilst in prison.”

  “I think none of us,” replied Mr. Gibson affably, gesturing to Mr. Meriwether and Mr. Orme, “would deny that even out of prison, a Parisian sits down to a better dinner than an Englishman,” and he added, “and doubly so in my case, for I leave for the North within a few days, and must resume dining on coach-house fare.

  “We are told there is a great deal of trouble brewing in the North,” observed Mr. Orme. “Is that the purpose of your journey, sir—to enquire into the unrest there?”

  “Indeed, sir, I wish to ascertain the degree of unrest, or ‘disaffection,’ as the Prince Regent calls it, as though his feelings are wounded when labourers ask to be paid enough to feed their children. As is always the case, any efforts for reform are equated with treasonous intentions. But—let us leave all talk of politics and reform aside for another day.”

  Mr. Meriwether poured out another sampling of claret. “Let us consider, rather, the auguries for future prosperity. Here we are sirs, representatives of two nations which have been at one another’s throats for centuries, enjoying some good wine together and by heaven, I hope our governments will never have cause to quarrel again.”

  “Indeed, sir, let the claret flow,” Mr. Gibson nodded, “because trade is the answer. Trade between our nations is the best preventative against future war.”

  “My wife must be a true patriot then,” said Mr. Orme, “for she does her part in buying as much French fashion as ever she can.”

  “As does mine,” added Mr. Meriwether.

  “And I shall boast that my wife makes most of her own garments, and all my shirts,” said Captain Duchesne, raising his glass. “And, if I may invite you upstairs to my humble apartment, Mr. Gibson, she very much wishes to be re-acquainted with you. She is an old friend of yours from Bristol.”

  There was only one lady he could think of, only one, who was skilled at dress-making and whom he had known in Bristol. A cold sweat broke out on Mr. Gibson’s brow.

  “By all means,” he heard himself say. “I should be delighted.”

  The thought raced through his brain: How could it possibly be that William and John would neglect to tell me that their sister was married?

  “Duchesne must tell you someday, about how he met his wife,” said Mr. Meriwether, following Mr. Gibson up the staircase. “It is a charming tale. She used to come to the prison, carrying baskets of food for the prisoners.”

  Mr. Gibson nodded. Before her death, Mrs. Butters used to write to him of Fanny’s benevolence toward the prisoners at Stapleton.

  “And in fact, as I recall,” added Mr. Meriwether, “you were acquainted with the lady with whom she lived. When I was first in the wine trade, her husband built my ships.”

  “You refer to Mrs. Butters?” said Mr. Gibson.

  “Indeed yes, Mrs. Butters, rest her soul,” said Mr. Meriwether, and they had reached the landing at the top, Captain Duchesne stepped ahead to alert his wife.

  The intelligence came so unexpectedly upon Mr. Gibson, the news was so surprising—so unwelcome—so destructive of his peace— that he struggled to maintain his composure. Mr. Gibson heard the captain call out: “my dear— my dear— your visitor has arrived,” and with many awkward and painful sensations flooding his breast, he had only an instant to fortify himself to greet the wife of Captain Duchesne.

  In a moment Madame Duchesne appeared before him.

  “Why—it is—it is Madame Orly!” he exclaimed.

  Madame Duchesne’s pleasure in welcoming Mr. Gibson was most sincere, but Mr. Gibson’s ardent delight was almost peculiar. He looked excessively happy, congratulated her warmly, almost fervently, on her marriage, and wished her great joy. She had to wait for his effusions and compliments to subside, before she could turn to the other men and say, that it was her boast to have been acquainted with the famous writer when he was but an obscure and hungry poet in Bristol, living on bread and stale cheese, and a visitor at her late mistress’s house.

  “And now his works are read and enjoyed all over the civilised world,” said Mr. Meriwether.

  “But he was the friend of Mrs. Butters first, she was the first to appreciate him,” said Madame Duchesne. “She was so very fond of you, Mr. Gibson, and no doubt you were sorry to be far away on the Continent when she died.”

  Mr. Gibson entered readily into an encomium on their late friend’s many virtues.

  “Dear Mrs. Butters. She did so much good in the world. A very great lady, madame, the world will not see her like again.” After due tribute was paid to the late philanthropist, Madame Duchesne waited expectantly for Mr. Gibson to enquire after their other mutual acquaintance, but he did not. She saw no reason, though he were reticent, to refrain from asking. “Why is it, Monsieur Gibson, that you do you not ask after our friend Miss Price?”

  Mr. Gibson bowed slightly and said, “Of course. I trust she is very well? I am sure I would have heard otherwise, if she were not.”

  Madame Duchesne rolled her eyes, “Very well, since you are so eager to know, I shall tell you. She is well, yes, and presently at Mansfield.”

  “Where her cousin Edmund Bertram now resides, I believe.”

  “Yes, the same. He has turned their fine house into a school for boys! I have never been to Mansfield Park, but I saw an engraving once, in a book of gentleman’s houses. It is very grand, really I had no idea that Fanny grew up in such a place. My husband’s family, you know, had a very handsome old chateau in Bordeaux.”

  “It was, however, exceedingly uncomfortable,” smiled the Captain. “Especially in winter. Bats in the tower, mice in the cellar, that sort of thing.”

  “But magnificent!” declared his wife, loyally. “The chateau, I mean. Ah, my noble husband, to be reduced to living above a warehouse in Cheapside! He bears it so well!”

  “His happiness must derive from other causes than his residence,” Mr. Gibson returned. “perhaps his excellent wife may be the reason. But pardon me—a school—you say? Has Fanny been residing with her cousin since Mrs. Butters’ unhappy demise?”

  “No, no, she is only visiting there. She will settle in—oh I forget where—up
there, in Northamptonshire, and she will take care of her mother. Why do you not write to her?” Madame Duchesne flashed a look at the other men and draw Mr. Gibson a little apart. “You will say I am impudent,” she murmured to Mr. Gibson, “but you know, the old baker is dead now, is he not? So at least, you could show her that you do not resent the past.”

  “I do not understand you, madame. The old baker?”

  “Yes, for the reason why she refused to marry you! The baker.”

  “My impetuosity, my unguarded writing, the disgrace of my imprisonment, was the reason. She did not want to share in such a life.”

  Madame Duchesne waved her hand impatiently, “Perhaps not. Perhaps yes. She was always a timid sort of girl. But the reason, the cause, was for the old baker, I do not know his name, would not allow his son to marry Fanny’s sister—what was her name—”

  “Susan?”

  “Oui, oui. Yes, Susan. The old baker would not consent for his son to marry Susan because he would not allow his family to be related to an enemy of the country—that is to say,” she dimpled, “you, monsieur.”

  Mr. Gibson stood, absolutely stupefied, for a moment. Finally he said, “Are you certain, Madame Duchesne? How came you to learn this?”

  Madame Duchesne bristled slightly. “First, I am a woman, and I can hear and see and understand what is before my face. And secondly, yes, Fanny told me herself. She could not tell anyone in her family, poor little soul! So she must confide in someone. And I know that Fanny gave away her dowry to Susan, but she kept it all a great secret, for she did not want for her sister to feel obliged.”

  The conviction of the truth of this assertion struck Mr. Gibson most forcibly. He actually had to walk away, and look out the window, oblivious to the passing scene around him, and to marvel at his own blindness.

  Up until then, he had accepted Fanny’s decision, but not without a tinge of resentment of her character, which was, he felt, a perverse mixture of inflexibility and timidity. It was true that she had warned him that he might go where she could not follow—he had gone regardless. He had hoped that she loved him well enough to keep faith with him—but she did not.

  Now this—it all fit, it was entirely consistent with the character of Fanny that he knew, and further, had always admired. Of course she had unhesitatingly put Susan’s welfare ahead of her own. Perhaps her qualms about him also played a part in her decision—what of it—the sacrifice was all Fanny’s.

  And he had, over the years, wished Fanny well, and said generous things such as, “I hope she will find someone to make her happy,” and thought to himself, “I imagine she is married by now,” but in that brief interval of walking up the stairs, when he had been preparing himself to meet Fanny as a married woman, he understood his own feelings better.

  “If I did not know that your friend Mr. Gibson was a writer, I would have guessed it,” said Captain Duchesne to his wife after their guests had left.

  “What do you mean, my dear? Because of his spectacles?”

  “No, because he had the appearance of a man living in another world. His body was here, but suddenly his mind was elsewhere. All writers and philosophers are notoriously distrait, is that not so?”

  * * * * * * *

  Fanny and Mrs. Price extended their visit in Mansfield for another fortnight, for it would have been barbarous to leave Edmund and his family in such a condition as the news from Italy had plunged them.

  Portia lodged in Mansfield Park to watch over the school and Anna Imogen clung to Miss Owen’s skirts whenever she was at liberty to attend to the little girl. Thomas and Cyrus soon chose to resume their lessons, for the companionship of their new friends and the distraction of activity were the best remedies for them.

  Miss Owen saw little of either of them—When he was not with his children, Edmund was always with Fanny. They went horseback riding, and walked in the shrubbery in the evening, or sat upon the lawn under the trees, or shut themselves up in the study while Edmund wrote to Everingham, to his father.

  They were always deep in conversation. Edmund wanted to talk of Mary, and who, in all of Mansfield, was better fitted to listen kindly and candidly? Fanny could best attend to Edmund as he retraced the past, spoke of how they had first met, how she had attached him, how delightful nature had made her, and how excellent she would have been, had she fallen into good hands.

  Edmund’s reliance on Fanny, whose compassion was blended with composure and steady judgement, enlarged day by day. He even took up her suggestion and wrote a long and sympathetic letter to Mrs. Bellingham in Liverpool, offering a place of refuge from the tragedy which blighted her life, and a good education for her sons.

  But Mrs. Price began to grow restless; she had had enough of her sister’s company and enough of Fanny’s being entirely preoccupied with the concerns of the Bertrams, and she began to urge Fanny to resume their journey to Huntingdon and the new home she was anxious to see.

  On a wet Monday afternoon, Fanny finished packing their trunks and she arranged for their departure on the morrow. She promised to give Edmund all her time until then and walked up to the parsonage one last time.

  “It is a pity that it is raining, Fanny, or else we might take a final turn in the shrubbery at the great house,” Edmund remarked.

  “Let us take our umbrellas and go,” Fanny replied. “It will not be so wet if we keep upon the gravel, and I should like to take some exercise, as I shall spend most of tomorrow in a carriage with my mother.”

  They set out together, and Fanny feared some new worry must be weighing upon Edmund’s mind, for she did not feel that perfect ease and sympathy, that unspoken connection, which usually arose between them. He was sorry to be parting from her, she knew, but he spoke only of indifferent matters. They exchanged the usual remarks about the summer weather, and compared it to previous summers, and concluded that there was nothing to be done. They discussed the renovations Christopher Jackson had completed for the school, and the necessity of replacing the roof on the stables, and the continual and unexpected expenses which establishing a new school involved.

  The conviction grew upon Fanny that Edmund was wishing to speak on some very significant matter indeed. He appeared distracted, abstract, he looked all about but at her, and he had nothing to say above the merest common-place remarks. She grew conscious, and her quickened breathing had nothing to do with keeping up with Edmund’s long legs as he strode restlessly ahead.

  As their walk took them within the observation of the East Room, Edmund looked up through the streaming rain and remarked, “the boys are taking their drawing lesson indoors today. It is too bad. Miss Owen intended to take them down to the trout stream to do some sketching there, but it is too wet for such an outing.”

  Fanny agreed that it was indeed too wet to sit on the banks of the stream. This remark revived the subject of the weather, and the possibility of a poor hay crop, and the prognostications of the local farmers, but still Fanny sensed that Edmund had something much more particular he wished to say.

  She finally ventured to ask him, ‘how did he do?’ Her tone was kind and confiding, that he might understand her to mean she enquired not as an everyday question, but truthfully and sincerely, how was he?

  “I think I am as well as can be expected,” answered Edmund after a brief pause. He began to speak, he paused, and the suspense to Fanny was most alarming.

  Suddenly, Edmund stopped and turned to look at her earnestly. “Fanny, I have been wondering whether I may say something to you, before you go away.”

  “Of course you may, Edmund,” she answered instantly, as she felt her cheeks grow warm, despite the chill weather.

  “In the next instant, you may regret giving me leave, and so may I, but I will say it. My dear Fanny, I only learned a fortnight ago, that I have been a widower for five months. We know I ought not to think of marrying again, not at present, not yet. Custom, to say nothing of what I might owe to the memory of my late wife, prohibits it. But have I not suffer
ed long enough? Am I not entitled to look forward to the simple pleasure of living with someone whom I can love and esteem, and who loves and esteems me?”

  “No, no, of course you deserve happiness,” exclaimed Fanny. She heard herself speaking tolerably calmly and rationally, but within, her mind was in a whirl of confusion and surprise. “That is, in the eyes of the world, as you say, you must be circumspect, but your friends would rejoice for you if they knew you intended to marry again some day.”

  “It is too soon,” he went on hurriedly, “far too soon, to speak or even think of, but Fanny, you are going away tomorrow and I am impelled speak to you now. I must give you something to think about, before you go. I pray I do not alarm or repel you with my precipitancy.”

  Fanny wondered if Edmund could hear her heart pounding in her chest. “What I think is not important,” she said. “You must think of securing your own happiness.”

  “But your thoughts, your wishes, your feelings on the matter, are exceedingly important to me. Can you not guess why?”

  Fanny could not mistake the question in Edmund’s eyes.

  She had just received the assurance of that affection of which, in her girlhood days, she had scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope. If her younger self could have chosen the place of his declaration, she would have chosen this very spot, amidst the shrubbery of Mansfield Park.

  She felt exceedingly agitated, so discomposed by his appeal that she instinctively turned away, to consult her own feelings. What, indeed, were her feelings? She knew exactly how she would have felt, had this declaration come ten or eight years earlier. She would have been in a delirium of joy, in a transporting state of happiness. Now, after her initial surprise, she could name her feelings as gratitude, obligation, surprise, tenderness—everything but what she once felt, what she ought to feel.

  Edmund was watching her intently, searching her face. Evading his gaze, she looked up at the house, up to the windows of the East Room. Someone stood at the window, watching the two of them, watching as they paused in their walk, as they stood sheltered together under their umbrellas.