Bespelling Jane Austen

by Mary Balogh

It was Lady Percy who concerned him. She was sensible and well-bred. She had been Lady Everett’s friend and had promised that she would always watch over Jane as she would her own daughter. She had advised and would continue to advise Jane to refuse his offer. Sir Horace would take her to London next spring, and she, Lady Percy, would go, too, and Jane would find a husband suited to her temperament and station in life.

  Robert did not like Lady Percy, and it was clear to him that she did not like him. He worried about her influence.

  It was a relief to see as he walked down the sloping lawn to the lily pond that someone with a yellow dress was sitting beneath the willow tree. At least she had come.

  She did not lift her head as he approached, though. She looked down at her hands, which were tightly clasped in her lap. She was not wearing a shawl or anything warmer. He could see goose bumps on her arms.

  “Jane?” he said.

  She looked up then with calm, opaque eyes, and he knew that all was lost.

  “At first,” she said, “I thought that if I told them everything, they would understand and gladly give their blessing. But I did not tell them. They would have thought I was mad. And perhaps they would have been right.”

  “Perhaps?” He made no move to join her on the seat.

  She spread her hands across her lap and looked down at them again.

  “They would be right,” she said. “Lady Percy says I have not met enough gentlemen, and she does have a point. I have not met any except the neighbors with whom I grew up. It is understandable that I fell in love with you, and that I justified the intensity of my emotions by convincing myself that we have always loved. Through eternity. I am only sorry that in allowing myself to be so deluded I led you astray. I hope I have not hurt you too deeply. But perhaps it is conceited to think I might.”

  How right he had been to fear Lady Percy’s influence.

  “Jane,” he said, “you know it is not delusion. And even if it were… Well, socially we are not so very far apart. And if it is my nomadic existence as an army officer that is the chief impediment, I will sell out and settle down in one place and make a home for you and our children. We will never be destitute or even poor. And we will always have something of infinitely greater value than any fortune. We love each other.”

  “I must listen to those who are older and wiser than I,” she said. “And I am convinced my mother would have counseled me to refuse you. She was the most important person in my life.”

  “More important than I am?” he said.

  She looked at him again, her eyes troubled.

  “My mind is clouded by emotion,” she said. “I must listen to those who can think clearly. Perhaps at some time in the future…”

  “I will come back?” he said when she did not complete the thought. He could not keep the bitterness from his voice. “Perhaps I will capture a fortune in spoils at some battle. Perhaps my grandmother will turn out to be far wealthier than I suppose. Perhaps my father—”

  “Please,” she said, lifting a staying hand. “Please don’t be angry, Robert.”

  “Perhaps I will come back,” he said. “My brother lives here, after all. Perhaps my circumstances will have changed by then. Perhaps your mind will have changed. Perhaps we will find that we still love each other. Perhaps we will marry and live happily after a few wasted years. But there are too many perhapses there, Jane, to provide any sort of comfort. Life is too full of uncertainties for us to be sure that there will be a second chance to do what we ought to do now.”

  She lowered her arm.

  “I need time to think,” she said.

  “It seems to me,” he said, “that it is when you have time to think, Jane, that you allow doubts to cloud your judgment. Your heart is clear on what you feel, what you want, what you know will bring you fulfillment and happiness for a lifetime and beyond. Your head, your thoughts, bring doubt because what you have experienced during the past few days does not appear to make rational sense.”

  “It does not,” she agreed.

  “Jane,” he said, “look at me and tell me you are prepared to give up everything I represent for you just because your father and your mother’s friend are opposed. Tell me that you truly believe your heart should be subordinate to your head—or rather to the heads of others.”

  She did look at him, and frowned.

  “I need time,” she said again.

  But something had snapped in him. He could feel panic bunch like a cold, iron fist low in his abdomen, and he understood again the main frustration of the human condition with all its dualities. They were one soul, he and Jane, but here in this human form they were two, and it took two to restore the unity he craved. In the last lifetime he had forsaken her. In this lifetime it was the other way around.

  “This is all the time you have,” he said, and he could hear the change in his voice. Instead of being warm and pleading as it had been thus far, it had fallen flat. “This moment. I cannot promise the future. Neither can you. The future does not exist. You must decide now.”

  He could see an answering flash of anger in her eyes before she lowered them to her lap again.

  “Then I have decided,” she said. “The answer is no. Good bye, Captain Mitford.”

  He did not even say goodbye. He turned on his heel and strode away in the direction of the driveway. He did not realize for a while that he was carrying his cane at his side, not using it.

  JANE SAT WHERE SHE WAS for a long time, oblivious to the chill of the air and the passing of time.

  She stared sightlessly at the water until at last she realized she could no longer see it clearly. She wiped away her tears with the heels of her hands, but she was sobbing too now, and the tears were coursing down her cheeks too fast to be dried with her bare hands.

  She wept helplessly and painfully for several minutes before fumbling for a handkerchief in a side pocket of her dress. There was none there. She got to her feet and stumbled the few steps to the edge of the pond. She would wash off her face and dry it with the hem of her dress. Her complexion must be all red and blotched. It would not do to be seen thus when she went back to the house.

  She almost lost her balance at the edge of the pond and tumbled in headfirst. She took a hasty step back to safety.

  And something shifted inside her.

  That had happened before. Then, too, she had been half-blinded by tears and distraught with grief. Except that then she had not been able to regain her balance but had fallen in. And the water had been swollen by heavy rains and was cold and fast-moving. She had drowned.

  But before that, before she fell in, there had been a tree.

  Jane turned sharply to look at the willow. But it had not been a willow tree. It had been something far more monumental. An oak. A great spreading tree with hidden clefts and hollows. And one in particular. It was why she had come there. She had had to see it again. And it had deepened her grief to such a wretched degree that she had cried until there were no more tears but only an unbearable pain in her chest as she continued to sob. She had wanted her mother. She had wanted to pour everything out to her at last. She had yearned for her mother’s arms. But she must not go back looking like this. She must wash her face, smooth back her hair…

  What was it in the tree?

  Jane frowned in concentration.

  And then remembered…

  “Oh, God,” she said aloud. “Oh, dear God.”

  And what was more, she knew which tree. There was only one oak like that one. It stood alone on the riverbank just outside the village, not far from the smithy.

  She picked up the sides of her skirts and ran, forgetting all about her appearance and the chill breeze and the darkening clouds overhead.

  Oh, why had she defied memory all these years?

  And when memory had begun to return this week, and she might have redeemed herself, she had lost faith again. She had taken fright.

  When she had been sent Robert, the completion of her own soul, she had recogn
ized him, gloried in the recognition and loved him passionately and recklessly—and then denied the knowledge and sent him away.

  She had made reason and common sense her gods.

  She had allowed people who did not know what she knew or understand what she understood to be her mentors.

  SHE CONTINUED TO RUN even when her breath came in labored gasps.

  But when she reached the river and the ancient oak tree, she almost lost courage again. How absurd to believe that it might still be here. She was twenty-one years old. She had been born fourteen or fifteen years after Mary Mitford’s death. That had happened thirty-five years ago or more.

  Could one box survive that long hidden in a tree? Assuming no one had found it and tossed it on a rubbish heap in the meanwhile, of course.

  She stood beneath the tree, catching her breath and closing her eyes and trying to concentrate. Trying to remember.

  She lifted her right arm. Waist level? Above her head? Stretched upward as she stood on her toes? Perhaps she had had to climb up into the branches.

  And then she held her arm at shoulder level and knew it felt right.

  The great trunk divided into several huge branches at that point. There were clefts galore into which one might push something reasonably small to hide it. And, over there was an actual hollow, a hole that might stretch down all the way to the ground. It would be too deep to reach into.

  Jane reached across the branches anyway and set her hand into the hollow and felt about. At first she thought there was nothing there, but then she felt it—the edge of a metal object wedged underneath the branch, where it would be hidden from view and sheltered from the weather.

  She was breathless again by the time she had pulled it out. It was rusty and half-corroded, but it was unmistakably a metal box. She could still see traces of the remembered roses painted on its lid.

  It was locked. But even if she had had the key she would surely not have been able to open it.

  Besides, it was not hers to open.

  She clutched the box to her bosom and hurried off in the direction of the vicarage.

  CHAPTER 6

  JANE WAS FORCED TO PAUSE A MOMENT AFTER SHE had passed the smithy. She had a stitch in her side and pressed a hand to it as she half doubled over and tried desperately to suck air into her lungs. The box was heavy.

  She was hatless and breathless and doubtless red-faced and disheveled. Miss Jane Everett never stepped outdoors looking less than immaculate, even when she intended to remain in the park and did not expect that anyone would see her.

  She hurried onward, past the gates that would have taken her back into the privacy of the park, and looked ahead to the church and the vicarage beyond it. There was a flurry of activity outside the latter, just as there had been a few days ago when she had approached it in the gig with her sisters. Except that this time there was only one horse and one horseman—who had just swung himself up into the saddle and was riding away. Three people stood in the gateway, their hands raised in farewell, though he did not turn back to see them or return the gesture.

  The vicar and his wife and elderly Mrs. Mitford were the people in the gateway.

  The rider was Robert. And he was leaving.

  “Stop!” Jane cried and broke into a run.

  Her voice was breathless and not nearly as loud as she could have wished. But the three people at the gate turned their heads, as did Mrs. Pickering on the opposite side of the street as she pegged wet clothes on her line.

  Horse and rider proceeded on their way.

  “Stop!” Jane cried again, standing still and pressing one hand to her side. “Robert!”

  And somehow—it seemed impossible that he could have heard her—he turned in the saddle, and then the horse turned about and stood still in the middle of the road.

  Jane started running again, heedless of how she must look. She paused for a moment outside the vicarage to set the box down by the gate. Then she ran on.

  Robert dismounted and stood watching her for a moment before abandoning his mount and striding and then running toward her. His arms opened as the gap between them lessened, and she ran into them, raising her own to clasp about his neck. He hugged her tightly as though to fold her right into himself.

  She breathed in the warm comfort of him.

  “Jane,” he was murmuring against her ear, and there was a world of pain in his voice. “My love, my love.”

  She tipped back her head to look into his eyes.

  “You did not abandon me,” she said. “You did not leave me. You were coming back. You were. You did not leave me.”

  She had already told both him and Mrs. Mitford that. But she could see from the deepening light of his eyes that he knew she could offer more proof than just the words this time.

  He was the only one in her whole life who had ever fully understood her. How could she have doubted even for a single moment? How could she have allowed herself to be almost persuaded to give him up?

  To give up her whole happiness, her very reason for being?

  To give up love, the mightiest of all forces?

  And in exchange for what? Duty to her elders? Cold logic? Common sense that really was not sensible at all?

  “I did not abandon you?” he said, and he smiled at her before he looked beyond her, aware of his brother and sister-in-law and great-aunt still at the vicarage gate.

  Jane turned to look at them, too, and he set an arm about her shoulders.

  Elderly Mrs. Mitford was bent over the box, wailing.

  “It is Mary’s,” she cried. “Oh, it is Mary’s. I searched everywhere for it and never found it. The key was about her neck, and it has been about mine ever since they found her.”

  She touched the chain about her neck and looked up at Jane as she approached with Robert.

  “You found it, Miss Jane?” she asked. “You found it?”

  “It was in a hollow of the oak tree down by the river,” Jane explained.

  “But what made you look there, Miss Jane?” young Mrs. Mitford asked. “And—” She looked from Jane to Robert in some bewilderment.

  “I believe, Amelia,” the vicar said, “Robert may be staying here after all. I doubt that key will turn in the lock, Aunt Dinah. We will have to break it open.”

  “Let me try,” Robert said, and he took the key from his aunt’s trembling hand and worked it into the rusty lock.

  It seemed very unlikely that it would turn, but with some persuasion it did. Robert pried open the lid and held the box out to his aunt.

  She peered half fearfully inside and took out a browned and curled piece of parchment from the top. She looked beneath it.

  “Her journal,” she said. “And a handkerchief. His. You see? You can still make out the W embroidered on one corner.”

  “And the parchment?” Jane asked. She was almost holding her breath. She knew what it was, but even now she was not quite sure she could trust her memory not to have deceived her. This was no ordinary memory, after all. This was memory stretching back into another lifetime.

  Mrs. Mitford looked at it. Her lips moved but no sound came out. She handed it to Robert and he read it.

  “It is a marriage certificate,” he said quietly. “They were married, Mary and the Marquess of Wigham. By special license.”

  “Two weeks before his death,” Mrs. Mitford said. “Less than three before hers.”

  “Mary Mitford was the Marchioness of Wigham?” Amelia Mitford said. “Oh! Wait until I tell Miss Louisa.”

  “I am glad for your sake, Aunt Dinah,” the vicar said. “At least they were married.”

  She was smiling—with tears in her eyes. She raised both gnarled hands and cupped Jane’s face with them and gazed into her eyes.

  “My dear,” she said. “Oh, my dear. Thank you. For everything. Now I can die in peace when my time comes.”

  “This,” the vicar said, “is all very public. We should step inside the house. Will you join us, Miss Jane? I am afraid I understand v
ery little of what had gone on today.”

  “Miss Jane and Robert,” Mrs. Mitford said, “need to talk in private, Gerald. They must go around to the flower garden, where they may be private together. But you must take my shawl, Miss Jane. It is not as warm today as it has been.”

  They did as they were told. Robert wrapped the shawl about Jane’s shoulders as they went. They sat down on adjacent chairs in the back garden, and he took both her hands in his.

  “You remembered?” he asked her.

  “When I was standing by the lily pond after you left, I was about to wash my face because I had been weeping,” she said, “and I almost fell in. I would have got uncomfortably wet if I had, but nothing worse. Unlike the last time, when I drowned. But I remembered that before falling in that time I had been looking through my box of treasures that I kept in the hollow of the oak tree. I had been looking at our marriage papers, which you had left with me.”

  “Why did I go?” he asked her.

  “After we married,” she said, “I think we both took fright. I did not know how to tell my mother and father, and you were quite sure your father would be furious and would cast you off even though he could not disinherit you. We must have decided—I cannot really remember—that it would be better for you to go alone to explain to him and then come back for me. We had probably decided, too, that in the meanwhile I would break the news to my mother and father. My father would not have been pleased with our marriage by special license when he was the vicar here. I think you must have got killed when you were hastening back to me.”

  “Jane.” He kissed her hand. “We almost made it through, then, in our last lifetime. But a little cowardice sent me off without you and I was never able to come back.”

  “Yes.” She clung to his hands. “It will not happen again, Robert. I will not wait on the chance that you will come back in a few years’ time and circumstances will be more conducive to our marrying. I will not wait a day longer. I want to marry you now—if you will still have me.”

  “If I will still have you.” He carried both her hands to his lips and his eyes glowed with the intensity of love. “Gerald is going to make us wait a whole month while the banns are read, though.”