Dearest Anne, began the letter that waited for me when I arrived back in Kent, in a hand so familiar and dear that it brought me, shamefully, to tears. The rest of the letter was nothing exceptional—anyone reading it would see only correspondence from one friend to another, a series of busy, flippant sentences about bonnets purchased and books read, with very little information offered about the sender’s new married state. But then, at the very end, she wrote, I hope you meant it, darling Frank, when you invited me to write you; for you see, I have missed our correspondence greatly, almost as much as I have missed your company.
And so began four years of letters.
“It’s absurd,” Mamma said. Mrs. Jenkinson held her arm, and today, for the first time, I realized that my mother, somehow without my noticing, had grown quite old. I recoiled from the understanding, my teacup halfway to my mouth, my mind, which had been only half-attending to whatever complaints Mamma was about to voice, stopping in place like a horse whose reins were tugged too hard. Even from this distance, several feet between our two chairs—Mrs. Jenkinson lowered my mother into hers, then scurried to the teapot to pour her a cup—I could see the new yellow cast to the whites of her eyes and the flaccid skin of her lower cheeks and jaw.
Mamma took her cup and glared at me, and I realized I was meant to respond to something. “I am sorry, what was that, Mamma?”
“I said, it is absurd for a woman of your age to have engaged a dancing master. Particularly a woman who has chosen to forgo the joys of courtship and marriage! I hope this rumor is not true.”
“Oh, but it is true.” I smiled. “My friend Mrs. Andrews was good enough to recommend a dancing master who is very much in demand by the best families in London. He arrived yesterday, and I am confident that with his tutelage I shall be able to open the harvest ball this year.”
There was a deep, tender ache under my breastbone whenever I referred to Eliza by her married name, like prodding a bruise that is still new enough that it keeps changing shape, the purple spreading. I wondered whether enough time would ever have passed for it to start yellowing about the edges.
“You have entirely lost your senses,” Mamma said; but then, delightfully surprising me, moved on to other matters.
When George was three years old, Darcy brought him for the first time to Rosings Park.
I spent the days leading up to their arrival in a panic. Everything had to be perfect, from the menu planned for their visit to my own wardrobe, which felt suddenly inadequate. I snapped at Spinner as she dressed my hair on the morning they were expected, my paper curls coming out limp and drooping in the summer’s unaccustomed humidity. And then I had to bite the side of my finger to keep from crying.
When their carriage had been sighted down the lane, I stood to wait for them on Rosings’s front steps, which had been swept and scrubbed so vigorously it was a wonder the maids had not worn right through the stone. My hands locked together before me; all I could think as the carriage rolled to a stop was that this was lunacy. I knew nothing of children; my cousin would regret our agreement before the first day of their visit was over.
But: “Anne!” he said as he alighted, and came all tall and stately up the steps to kiss my hand. “You look very well.”
“Thank you,” I said, and then, before I could think of anything else to say, he turned back to the carriage and reached inside to lift a small, sturdy little person down from it. He set George on his feet and took him by the hand.
“Bow to Cousin Anne,” he murmured in the boy’s ear, and George, after giving me one rather terrified look, bobbed a bow, awkward as a trained bear.
I licked my lips. Fitzwilliam had stepped back and was watching us. Stooping so my face was in line with his, I said, “It is so good to see you, George. You must—be very hungry after your journey. Cook has made her best seedcake, just for you—shall we go inside and have some?”
To my ears, my words were terribly stilted; but George’s long, homely face changed. He smiled, showing impossibly small, square teeth with funny little gaps between them, and let me take his hand. I felt again that odd lurching behind my breastbone when I felt how soft and round his hand was, still; with dimples like divots at the root of each knuckle.
They stayed for three weeks. There were, of course, the required calls paid at the dower house, and dinners at Rosings with Mamma and Mrs. Jenkinson in attendance. But most of our time was spent exploring. On fine days, we went marching out over the estate, George running through the fields, dragging a stick behind him, while Fitzwilliam and I trailed in his wake. When it rained, George and I explored the house, every hidden cranny of it, while my cousin wrote letters to his wife and steward. George taught me how to make a diver-call, and we stood in the shut-up ballroom letting loose those trilling, ghostly bird sounds, which echoed off the tall ceilings until Mrs. Barrister came running with two footmen to investigate.
When the rain had mostly stopped, we walked in the sopping gardens, the air still gently misting. George discovered a toad among the hedgerows, and we crouched to admire it; and then a dragonfly, with its long brown body and flickering wings of lace.
“I have a book inside,” I said as the dragonfly flew away, “that teaches about all sorts of insects. Would you like to see it?”
George looked up at me doubtfully.
“There are pictures,” I said, wheedling. “Lovely illustrations, almost as good as seeing the real thing. And it shall be your book someday, you know, just like the rest of Rosings Park.”
On this point, George had seemed puzzled throughout our visit. But now he looked after the dragonfly, which disappeared behind a cluster of flowers, and then down at the toad, still fat and bumpy and happily damp on the path beside us. “This is my toad, then,” he said, and seemed so pleased by the notion that I could do nothing but smile in agreement.
My letters to Eliza were not nearly as frequent as they were when we both resided in London. Indeed, sometimes I had the miserly thought that I should ration my attention to her, as punishment for her desertion. And yet, whenever a letter from her arrived, I found myself reaching for a pen almost instantly so that I might answer it. Inside me existed a depthless well of things to say—little daily happenings, amusing passages from books, worries I could not voice to anyone else—filling and filling to an almost unbearable level over the weeks between our letters; and then, in the action of putting pen to paper, a little of the well was drained.
I foresaw, with an odd brew of gratitude and dread, a lifetime of such meager pleasures, scratched out in lines of ink, replacing what I had once imagined would be a lifetime of talking and touching and working and resting together. Eliza mentioned her husband only peripherally, in the sense of, We are considering a trip to the Lake District or Our housekeeper has grown terribly forgetful of late. She never spoke of him as a distinct person, never gave any hint as to whether she had any affection for him, or he for her. I was by turns thankful for her discretion, and seared by the sort of curiosity that would likely only burn me further were it satisfied. I waited miserably for the day when a letter would arrive bearing news that she carried his child inside her belly; but it did not come.
Sometimes I noticed other women—at church, in the village. But Hunsford was so very small, and I could never be sure that my body’s response to a pressed hand or tilted head would be reciprocated. And my heart was entangled in lines of ink and strands of bright hair; I could not seem to free it, however I sometimes wished to.
In her letters, Eliza never spoke of love for me, though her words tumbled across the page as messily as my own, as if her thoughts came too quickly for her pen.
I never thought I could find such joy in work, I wrote. But I have—I have! There is nothing so satisfying as greeting a tenant by name, and his wife, and his children, too; in being part of something that enriches us all. I used to be so frightened of the world, and now I am a part of it.
Mamma’s school is doing well; there are eighteen children in attendance this year. Fewer than I would like, but too many farms cannot spare any hands, even small ones, that might help in the fields. There is more emphasis on sermonizing than I would prefer, but for now I am content that the children are at least learning their letters and sums. Educational reform will wait for another day; today I am merely glad that they have any education at all.
She wrote back: You write of your satisfaction, and I am so very happy to hear it. I have found my own, as well: Lady Godwin complimented me in the most generous terms on the cushion I embroidered for our parlor. I cannot think of anything more satisfying than having so noble a lady approve of my work.
I read these lines over and over, and could not decide whether they were meant in earnest or in jest. The chance that it was the former, somehow, felt sadder even than the latter. I traced her signature with my finger as I once traced the curve of her cheek.