Margaret Dashwood's Diary

by Elliott, Anna

  A dark, shaggy shape bounded towards us out of the trees, leapt over the crumbling remains of the fallen wall, and came to thrust a wet, cold nose against my palm.

  “Hello, Pilot!” The big dog whined an ecstatic greeting and wagged his tail so hard it smacked painfully against my legs.

  Jamie looked resigned as he ruffled Pilot’s ears. “You’re useless as a watchdog, you know. You wouldn’t scare off a rabbit, much less an intruder.”

  “He’s not useless.” I scratched the dog’s back. “He remembers me, that’s all. He knows I’m a friend.”

  Pilot flopped onto his back, waving all four paws in the air in invitation to scratch his belly, and Jamie shook his head. “The entire world is a friend to this great lummox.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Pilot.” Obligingly, I knelt to rub his belly—which earned me another happy whine. “There’s nothing wrong with having a friendly disposition.” And then I took a breath, raising my gaze to Jamie’s. “I went to the camp two days ago. You were gone.”

  Jamie straightened. His dark gaze was closed, sober—and I could see him about to make some excuse and leave again. Before he could speak, I drew another breath and said, “It’s because of your brother, isn’t it. It’s because of Sam that you’ve come to this neighbourhood. It’s because of him that you’re involved in … whatever it was that got you shot at and wounded.”

  I’ve spent the last three days thinking almost unceasingly of Jamie—of everything I know about him. I could not believe—I still cannot—that he would be involved with smuggling, much less turn traitor. Especially having served in the army for years. But I have kept thinking, too, of the way Jamie muttered his brother’s name when he was lost in the depths of his fever.

  It was always the same between Jamie and Sam, all the time we were growing up, for all Jamie was the younger brother and Sam the elder.

  It was Jamie who had always to pay for the apples Sam stole and convince the local magistrate not to send Sam to the workhouse. Or to smooth things over with whomever’s daughter had been meddled with.

  I could easily believe that Sam had fallen in with a smuggling gang—and that Jamie might have come here after Sam, hoping to keep Sam from getting hurt.

  There was a moment when even Jamie’s breathing seemed suspended. Then a quick spasm crossed his face, leaving it grim and hard. “My brother is dead,” he said. He looked down at the big, shaggy dog—now drooling on my boots—and said, with an exhalation of breath, “Pilot was Sam’s dog. Sam had him from the time he was a puppy—since before I left the tribe. That’s why I knew his name. That’s why he knew—”

  He might have said more—I would have asked more. But at that moment, a peal of feminine laughter and the sound of approaching voices—a man’s and a woman’s—carried to us through the trees. Jamie stiffened again—and even Pilot got to his feet, his hackles raised. “I have to go.” Jamie spoke in a low, urgent voice. “Margaret, I—” His eyes were on mine, and I saw his hands clench, as though he were trying to keep himself from reaching to touch me. “I wish I could explain—I wish there were time for me to say more.” He spoke rapidly, as the approaching voices drew nearer. “I know that I have no right at all to ask this of you. But please. Don’t tell anyone—anyone at all—that you saw me here today.”

  I had barely time to nod before he cleared the broken wall in a single stride and disappeared into the surrounding trees, Pilot bounding after him. He had not lost his old knack of walking silently through a forest. I heard the occasional snuffle from Pilot—but nothing at all from Jamie as he walked away.

  At least it was not Marianne and Willoughby who were wandering alone together amongst the trees, but Eliza and M. de Courtenay. I was sorry to intrude on their conversation—when they were plainly enjoying each other’s company a good deal. But they greeted me very civilly and we all walked back to the abbey together.

  Later

  I could not sleep again tonight, thinking over and over of meeting Jamie on the Rosford Abbey grounds. I felt as though my mind were stuck on some eternally repeating pattern, like a clockwork toy—doomed to recall again and again every word that Jamie had spoken to me and I to him.

  Finally, just after I had watched the hour hand of my clock inch its way past two, I gave up and decided to go downstairs to see if I could find a book to read. I caught up my dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs, carrying my bedside candle for light. I was just moving through the morning room and towards the door to the library, when I heard the French windows rattle and then swing open—letting in a gust of breeze that instantly put out the flame of my candle. Without it, the room was almost completely dark. There was moonlight outside, but only enough penetrated into the room to allow me to make out vague shapes of sofas and chairs.

  My first thought was of an intruder. I thought of screaming—but with the servants all asleep in their own wing, I could not imagine anyone would come quickly enough. I happened to be standing near the hearth; I groped in the dark until my hand closed around the iron fireplace poker, leaning against its stand. Then my second thought, immediately following, was that perhaps Mr. Palmer had taken it into his head to go for another night walk—and that if he had, I would be sorely tempted to hit him with the poker anyway, for frightening me in this way.

  But it was a woman who stumbled in through the French windows; I could just make out the figure, outlined in the moonlight from behind her. She seemed to be crying. I could hear her harsh, sobbing breaths as she turned back, fumbling to close the windows behind her. In the same moment, I recognised her, dark as it was. I gasped, “Marianne?”

  Marianne let out a cry and whirled around, her hands pressed to her throat. “What—who—,” she stammered, peering wildly into the darkness. And then, as I came closer, I heard her let out a shuddering breath and say, attempting a normal tone, “Margaret—what on earth are you doing down here? You nearly frightened me out of my wits! And”—she peered at me more closely as I stepped into the patch of moonlight—“what do you think you are doing with a poker, of all things?”

  I ignored the question—both of the questions. Marianne might have made an effort at a normal tone, but she would not have deceived a child of half Joanna’s age. Her shoulders were still shaking, and her voice sounded thick, clogged with tears. “Marianne, what is wrong?” I asked. “Has something happened? Wait a moment; let me get a light.”

  Marianne made a small sound, as of protest, but I crossed the darkened room—managing not to cry out or even swear when I stubbed my toe hard against the leg of a work table—and fumbled about the mantel until I found a striker to re-light my candle. I set it in an empty holder, then lighted two more of the mantelpiece tapers, as well. Turning back, I nearly gasped out loud at the picture Marianne made in the light.

  Her hair was loosened, tumbling down about her shoulders, her pale muslin gown was crumpled and smudged with dirt—and she had been crying. She was trying to hastily dab at her eyes with a handkerchief, but her face was still wet with tears.

  “Marianne, what has happened?” I asked again. “Are you hurt?”

  “I— No. I mean, yes.” Marianne finished wiping her eyes and stuffed the handkerchief back into her pocket. “I … was out for a walk, and I tripped and fell, that’s all. I turned my ankle. It was very painful—but it is much better now.”

  I stared at her—alarm mingling with annoyance that she thought I might be slow-witted enough to believe such a story. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that anyone who could not come up with a better fabrication ought to give up telling lies altogether. But that would have been unkind. And besides, the alarm was beginning to win out.

  I crossed back to her and said, drawing her with me to sit down on the sofa, “Marianne, the other day, you said that if there was anything worrying me, that you hoped I would confide in you. The same goes for me. If there is anything the matter—if you are in trouble of some kind—”

  “There’s nothing!” Marianne’s voice was
uneven, but firm—harsh, even. “There is nothing, Margaret. And I beg you will not go making mysteries where none exist. I went for a walk and had the bad luck to stumble—that is all.”

  I had no chance to reply—or to try again to make her tell me the truth about wherever she had been. Behind us, the latch on the French windows rattled again, and turning, we saw a man’s shape on the other side of the glass. Marianne recognised him first. “Oh good heavens, it is Mr. Palmer. Is it not enough that he and his blasted wife infest the house all day, without him barging about at night?” She pressed her hands to her tear-stained cheeks. “I cannot face him—not like this, not right now.”

  I started to speak, but Marianne cut me off. “Margaret, if you have any sisterly affection for me at all, please let me go. Tell Mr. Palmer something—I do not care what—but let me go before I am forced to stand here and make polite conversation with him.”

  I could have pointed out that the words ‘polite’ and ‘conversation’ do not in general have a great deal to do with any exchange with Mr. Palmer. And I would have been correct, too. Marianne had only just gone out of the room when Mr. Palmer entered—wearing his habitual scowl.

  “I saw the light in the window and was afraid something might have caught on fire,” he said without preamble—contriving to make the words sound like an accusation, as though I had deliberately lighted the candles to make him think that the house was in danger of catching ablaze. “Was that Mrs. Brandon I saw just going out? What are the two of you doing awake at such an hour?”

  Perhaps like M. de Courtenay, Mr. Palmer is not really so disagreeable as he at first seems. But sleeplessness combined with worry for Marianne were not making me feel inclined to be particularly charitable. I raised my eyebrows and said, “One might reasonably ask you the same question, Mr. Palmer.”

  The expression that crossed Mr. Palmer’s thin, petulant face was so unaccustomed for him that it took me a moment to identify. Tight lips … a slight flush mantling his cheekbones …

  He was embarrassed—though he strove to hide it as he drew himself up and looked at me down the length of his nose. “Then,” he said, “you would be very ill bred.”

  Saturday 26 June 1802

  After I finished writing last night, I lay in bed, debating over and over with myself what I ought to do. Marianne is my sister, but does that make it my business to interfere if she chooses to see John Willoughby in secret? If that really is what she was doing last night. I suppose that I still have no actual proof.

  This morning, Marianne was perfectly calm and cheerful—busy with the final preparations for Colonel Brandon’s arrival, as though she had never stumbled home in tears at two o’clock in the morning.

  I decided, though, that I had to do something—had to tell someone. I cannot see any happy conclusion in sight if she really has taken up with Willoughby again, and it did not seem right to keep the responsibility of what I had learned entirely to myself. So this morning, instead of visiting Star, I walked down to the parsonage to see Elinor.

  I intended to recount to her the whole of my meeting with Marianne last night, and to ask what she thought was best to be done. But instead I found Elinor miserably ill—lying down on the sofa in the parlour with a damp cloth over her eyes, which is sufficiently unlike her to make me feel thoroughly alarmed.

  “I’m sure it is nothing,” Elinor said, trying to brush aside my exclamation of concern.

  “Nothing?” I repeated. “Your face is positively green.”

  Elinor made a face at me. “I must have eaten something that disagreed with me, that is all. I’m sure I shall be … perfectly well in an hour or two.”

  Though she rather spoiled the credibility of the words by needing to make sudden and violent use of the washbasin that sat beside her on the floor.

  I hesitated. Strictly speaking, as an unmarried girl, I ought not to know—much less talk—of such things. But Elinor is my sister, after all. “Elinor,” I finally said. “If it is not something that you ate, do you think …”

  Elinor sank back onto the cushions, shutting her eyes. “Of course I have thought!” Her voice sounded almost violent. “Every single month—every time I have the slightest touch of illness, I have thought that perhaps, at last …” She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. “I do not know. It is too early … too early for me to think anything for certain. After four years of being disappointed, I do not even want to think … anything.”

  “Elinor, I am so sorry,” I said.

  Elinor shook her head. “No. Do not be.” She sounded weary, but a little more herself. “I have so much—so much in my life to be thankful for. Edward loves me, and I love him—now more than ever, more even than when we were first married. How many married couples have even mutual affection or regard?” She opened her eyes. “It would be ungrateful—criminal—of me to whinge and moan about the one thing in my life I do not have.”

  Her voice was firm—as though she were trying to convince herself as much as me. But then she struggled to raise herself into a sitting position and said in a different tone, “And now—since you will not lie and say that I look perfectly healthy to you, you can at least distract me. Tell me about this M. de Courtenay. Marianne says that he is very handsome.”

  “Oh, heavens—not you, too,” I said. “Marianne is already convinced that I must be in love with him—and now she has persuaded you to accept the same delusion?”

  Elinor managed a weak smile. “We are your older sisters. We have a duty to interfere and meddle in all your private affairs of the heart. So are you claiming that you are not in love with M. de Courtenay?”

  “Of course I am not!” I said instantly.

  And then I felt the blood abruptly drain away from my face, as I was struck by a sudden realisation.

  Elinor looked at me searchingly—and then she touched my hand. “Margaret, I am sorry,” she began. “Perhaps it is too soon. After Mr. Neville—”

  If I had been in a mood for laughter, I might have laughed at the idea of Elinor believing my sudden distress was on account of Aubrey.

  “It’s all right.” I forced a smile. “And if I am not ‘in love’ with Pierre de Courtenay—nor he with me—I can tell you whom I think he does admire.”

  “Really? Who is it?”

  “Eliza—they were together during the whole of the expedition to Rosford Abbey yesterday. All the time you were staying with Joanna.”

  “And you truly think that he admires her? You do not think”—Elinor hesitated, biting her lip—“that he merely considers that she must be of easy … virtue, given her past history?”

  I had not actually considered that. “There is always that danger,” I admitted. “But I do not think M. de Courtenay is so dishonourable as that—to interest himself in Eliza only because he thinks she might be easily seduced. I like him, I truly do. And he was quite good with Joanna the other day. I believe—cautiously—that we may consider his admiration sincere.”

  Elinor sat up, looking a little brighter with interest. “Then in that case, tell me everything that Eliza said to him, and he to her. Dear Eliza, I shall be so glad for her if what you say really is true.”

  Obligingly, I repeated as much as I could recall from my observations of Eliza and M. de Courtenay. I will be as glad for Eliza as Elinor if their acquaintance deepens. But for all that, I had trouble giving the conversation with Elinor more than half my attention.

  I could not, of course, worry Elinor by speaking to her of Marianne. Not with her feeling so ill. And then there was the truth of my own feelings—which had somehow slowly dawned on me as Elinor and I spoke.

  Sunday 27 June 1802

  I woke this morning feeling irritable and foggy-headed. And still without the least idea of what I ought to do.

  Colonel Brandon and his men are to arrive the day after tomorrow, though. Marianne and Mrs. Quimby, the housekeeper, have been busy all day with airing bed-linens and making arrangements for where the officers are to stay. So I attemp
ted to clear away the haze of sleep by splashing water on my face. I dressed in my oldest round gown—the one I wear for visiting Star—and then I determined that if I could rely on neither my own good judgement nor my own instinctive feelings, I would have to rely on something else to decide. Though what that something else might be, I could not entirely say.

  It was still very early. I could hear the servants just beginning to stir and rattle crockery in the kitchen. I slipped out through the French windows in the morning room, crossed the orchards, and turned in the direction of the north pasture.

  But even before I realised that any conscious decision had been made, I found myself turning instead in the direction of Eliza’s cottage—and feeling as though I were able to draw the first full breaths I had taken since listening to Edward’s account of Tom Harmon’s dying words.

  Instead of knocking on the front door of the cottage, I went around to the back and tapped at the kitchen door. The knock was met with only silence, and I was afraid that I had come too early to find even Maggie awake and about. But then I heard a thump and a rustle from inside, and a moment later the bolt was drawn back and the door opened a crack.

  Maggie Harmon peered out at me, her broad face creased in suspicion—though the look cleared as she recognised me. “Oh, it’s you, Miss Dashwood.” She looked confused at finding me at the back door, but shuffled backwards to allow me to enter, saying, “I’m afraid if you’ve come to see Miss Eliza or Miss Joanna, they’re still abed, the both of them.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s all right, Maggie. Actually”—I felt my heart tighten inside my ribs—“it was you I came to see.”

  Maggie looked more bewildered than ever. “Me, miss?”

  “Yes.” Studying Maggie’s face more closely, I could see that her eyelids looked puffed and reddened as though with recent tears, and that her nose was red, as well. She was wearing mourning colours—a rusty black dress in an old-fashioned long-waisted style that strained at the seams beneath her kitchen apron.