Persuasion (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (23 page)

His every thought, his every sense, was Anne.

He closed his eyes; his head fell back. The smooth, cool fabric of Anne’s shawl moved from his face to his neck. He rubbed it against the column of his throat with one hand while the other began to jerk recklessly at the fall of his breeches.

The feeling of the night’s cool air caressing his erection was enough to pull him from the haze of his thoughts — but only long enough for his mind to ponder if he was truly depraved enough to do what he was about to do. In the next moment, he was swept back into the past, and the shawl made its final journey from his chest down to his lap.

Without another thought, Frederick wrapt Anne’s shawl around his throbbing cock, and squeezed his fist. His hiss of pleasure was loud and primal, and he did not pause even a moment before moving his fist up the length of his erection, passing the cool satin over the angry, aching head.

His hips surged up from the seat, thrusting into his grip and starting a series of uncontrollable movements. His left hand belted out to the side, and his palm squeaked against the frosty, cold glass of the carriage window while his right hand kicked up the pace, working his cock at an unforgiving, brutal speed. His hips continued to surge and retreat, and he had to raise one leg, bending it at the knee, to brace his foot on the opposing carriage wall.

The cool fabric had quickly warmed to skin temperature from Frederick’s handling of it, and his addled mind recognised it as almost —
almost
— as good as Anne’s actual touch had been. His neck bent back at an awkward angle as his head thumped against the seat behind him, and he realized in that moment that he was breathing so sporadically that stars were dancing behind his eyes. He forced himself to close the mouth that was gasping at air and breath through his nose, but that action only brought more of her scent, which was wafting from the shawl even more now from friction and heat, to his senses.

A brilliant flash of light erupted behind Frederick’s closed eyes, and with a hoarse shout, he ejaculated into the warm fabric of Anne’s shawl. His hips continued to jerk from the seat, wringing more from his body than he had ever had to give before. What felt like hours later, his body finally stilled; his breathing began to slow. And with his body’s return to calm, Frederick’s mind returned to clarity.

He looked down at his lap in horror: his hand still fisted Anne’s shawl around his faltering arousal. A spread of his spent passion marred the delicate fabric obscenely.

Good God, what had he done? He wrenched his body upright and unceremoniously dropped the offending shawl to the floor of the carriage to shove his semi-erect penis back into his breeches brutally.

To-day of all days, the day he had caused physical harm to the lady he had been — well,
courting
was a bit of a stretch — he had sunk so low as to defile poor Anne with such horrible actions.

Some dim region of his mind sought to bring to his attention that his concern in this moment was not for what Louisa would have thought had she known of his actions, but what Anne — the woman he should be forgetting — would have thought.

Frederick refused to acknowledge that voice. Instead, he focused all of his mental faculties on trying to find the motive behind his unforgiveable behaviour.

Stress — that had to be it. To-day had not been an easy day. And lately, Frederick had needed to seek release more frequently than he had in the past. The idea of finally seeking a wife, of finally breaking his period of self-imposed celibacy — had excited his system to the extreme.

With a sigh of relief, he realized that all of those things could have contributed to the actions Frederick had just taken. He was merely a man, after all. His body needed certain things, and that he had used Anne’s shawl and Anne’s memory to achieve them meant nothing — certainly not that he was still in love with her.

No. Certainly not.

(End of volume one.)

The remainder of Anne’s time at Uppercross, comprehending only two days, was spent entirely at the Mansion House; and she had the satisfaction of knowing herself extremely useful there, both as an immediate companion, and as assisting in all those arrangements for the future, which, in Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove’s distressed state of spirits, would have been difficulties.

They had an early account from Lyme the next morning. Louisa was much the same. No symptoms worse than before had appeared. Charles came a few hours afterwards, to bring a later and more particular account. He was tolerably cheerful. A speedy cure must not be hoped, but everything was going on as well as the nature of the case admitted. In speaking of the Harvilles, he seemed unable to satisfy his own sense of their kindness, especially of Mrs. Harville’s exertions as a nurse. “She really left nothing for Mary to do. He and Mary had been persuaded to go early to their inn last night. Mary had been hysterical again this morning. When he came away, she was going to walk out with Captain Benwick, which, he hoped, would do her good. He almost wished she had been prevailed on to come home the day before; but the truth was, that Mrs. Harville left nothing for anybody to do.”

Charles was to return to Lyme the same afternoon, and his father had at first half a mind to go with him, but the ladies could not consent. It would be going only to multiply trouble to the others, and increase his own distress; and a much better scheme followed and was acted upon. A chaise was sent for from Crewkherne, and Charles conveyed back a far more useful person in the old nursery-maid of the family, one who having brought up all the children, and seen the very last, the lingering and long-petted Master Harry, sent to school after his brothers, was now living in her deserted nursery to mend stockings and dress all the blains and bruises she could get near her, and who, consequently, was only too happy in being allowed to go and help nurse dear Miss Louisa. Vague wishes of getting Sarah thither, had occurred before to Mrs. Musgrove and Henrietta; but without Anne, it would hardly have been resolved on, and found practicable so soon.

They were indebted, the next day, to Charles Hayter, for all the minute knowledge of Louisa, which it was so essential to obtain every twenty-four hours. He made it his business to go to Lyme, and his account was still encouraging. The intervals of sense and consciousness were believed to be stronger. Every report agreed in Captain Wentworth’s appearing fixed in Lyme.

Anne was to leave them on the morrow, an event which they all dreaded. “What should they do without her? They were wretched comforters for one another.” And so much was said in this way, that Anne thought she could not do better than impart among them the general inclination to which she was privy, and persuaded them all to go to Lyme at once. She had little difficulty; it was soon determined that they would go; go to-morrow, fix themselves at the inn, or get into lodgings, as it suited, and there remain till dear Louisa could be moved. They must be taking off some trouble from the good people she was with; they might at least relieve Mrs. Harville from the care of her own children; and in short, they were so happy in the decision, that Anne was delighted with what she had done, and felt that she could not spend her last morning at Uppercross better than in assisting their preparations, and sending them off at an early hour, though her being left to the solitary range of the house with all of her conflicting thoughts of Frederick — Captain Wentworth — as her only companions was the consequence.

She was the last, excepting the little boys at the cottage, she was the very last, the only remaining one of all that had filled and animated both houses, of all that had given Uppercross its cheerful character. A few days had made a change indeed!

If Louisa recovered, it would all be well again. More than former happiness would be restored. There could not be a doubt, to her mind there was none, of what would follow her recovery. A few months hence, and the room now so deserted, occupied but by her silent, pensive self, might be filled again with all that was happy and gay, all that was glowing and bright in prosperous love, all that was most unlike Anne Elliot!

An hour’s complete leisure for such reflections as these, on a dark November day, a small thick rain almost blotting out the very few objects ever to be discerned from the windows, was enough to make the sound of Lady Russell’s carriage exceedingly welcome; and yet, though desirous to be gone, she could not quit the Mansion House, or look an adieu to the Cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda, or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of the village, without a saddened heart. Scenes had passed in Uppercross which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. She left it all behind her, all but the recollection that such things had been.

Anne had never entered Kellynch since her quitting Lady Russell’s house in September. It had not been necessary, and the few occasions of its being possible for her to go to the Hall she had contrived to evade and escape from. Her first return was to resume her place in the modern and elegant apartments of the Lodge, and to gladden the eyes of its mistress.

There was some anxiety mixed with Lady Russell’s joy in meeting her. She knew who had been frequenting Uppercross. But happily, either Anne was improved in plumpness and looks, or Lady Russell fancied her so; and Anne, in receiving her compliments on the occasion, had the amusement of connecting them with the silent admiration of her cousin, and of hoping that she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty.

When they came to converse, she was soon sensible of some mental change. The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to smother among the Musgroves, were now become but of secondary interest. She had lately lost sight even of her father and sister and Bath. Their concerns had been sunk under those of Uppercross; and when Lady Russell reverted to their former hopes and fears, and spoke her satisfaction in the house in Camden Place, which had been taken, and her regret that Mrs. Clay should still be with them, Anne would have been ashamed to have it known how much more she was thinking of Lyme and Louisa Musgrove, and all her acquaintance there; how much more interesting to her was the home and the friendship of the Harvilles and Captain Benwick, than her own father’s house in Camden Place, or her own sister’s intimacy with Mrs. Clay. She was actually forced to exert herself to meet Lady Russell with anything like the appearance of equal solicitude, on topics which had by nature the first claim on her.

There was a little awkwardness at first in their discourse on another subject. They must speak of the accident at Lyme. Lady Russell had not been arrived five minutes the day before, when a full account of the whole had burst on her; but still it must be talked of, she must make enquiries, she must regret the imprudence, lament the result, and Captain Wentworth’s name must be mentioned by both. Anne was conscious of not doing it so well as Lady Russell. She could not speak the name, and look straight forward to Lady Russell’s eye, till she had adopted the expedient of telling her briefly what she thought of the attachment between him and Louisa. When this was told, his name distressed her no longer.

Lady Russell had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy, but internally her heart revelled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove.

The first three or four days passed most quietly, with no circumstance to mark them excepting the receipt of a note or two from Lyme, which found their way to Anne, she could not tell how, and brought a rather improving account of Louisa. At the end of that period, Lady Russell’s politeness could repose no longer, and the fainter self-threatenings of the past became in a decided tone, “I must call on Mrs. Croft; I really must call upon her soon. Anne, have you courage to go with me, and pay a visit in that house? It will be some trial to us both.”

Anne did not shrink from it; on the contrary, she truly felt as she said, in observing —

“I think you are very likely to suffer the most of the two; your feelings are less reconciled to the change than mine. By remaining in the neighbourhood, I am become inured to it.”

She could have said more on the subject; for she had in fact so high an opinion of the Crofts, and considered her father so very fortunate in his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and ashamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch Hall had passed into better hands than its owners’. These convictions must unquestionably have their own pain, and severe was its kind; but they precluded that pain which Lady Russell would suffer in entering the house again, and returning through the well-known apartments.

In such moments Anne had no power of saying to herself, “These rooms ought to belong only to us. Oh, how fallen in their destination! How unworthily occupied! An ancient family to be so driven away! Strangers filling their place!” No, except when she thought of her mother, and remembered where she had been used to sit and preside, she had no sigh of that description to heave.

Mrs. Croft always met her with a kindness which gave her the pleasure of fancying herself a favourite, and on the present occasion, receiving her in that house, there was particular attention.

The sad accident at Lyme was soon the prevailing topic, and on comparing their latest accounts of the invalid, it appeared that each lady dated her intelligence from the same hour of yestermorn; that Captain Wentworth had been in Kellynch yesterday (the first time since the accident), had brought Anne the last note, which she had not been able to trace the exact steps of; had staid a few hours and then returned again to Lyme, and without any present intention of quitting it any more. He had enquired after her, she found, particularly; had expressed his hope of Miss Elliot’s not being the worse for her exertions, and had spoken of those exertions as great. This was handsome, and gave her more pleasure than almost anything else could have done.