Persuasion (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (26 page)

Anne mentioned the glimpses she had had of him at Lyme, but without being much attended to. “Oh! yes, perhaps, it had been Mr. Elliot. They did not know. It might be him, perhaps.” They could not listen to her description of him. They were describing him themselves; Sir Walter especially. He did justice to his very gentlemanlike appearance, his air of elegance and fashion, his good shaped face, his sensible eye; but, at the same time, “must lament his being very much under-hung, a defect which time seemed to have increased; nor could he pretend to say that ten years had not altered almost every feature for the worse. Mr. Elliot appeared to think that he (Sir Walter) was looking exactly as he had done when they last parted;” but Sir Walter had “not been able to return the compliment entirely, which had embarrassed him. He did not mean to complain, however. Mr. Elliot was better to look at than most men, and he had no objection to being seen with him anywhere.”

Anne remembered him similarly. He
was
better to look at than most men, though not as handsome as some. In fact, Anne could think of only one man who surpassed him in looks, and she had to acknowledge that she may be biased in that comparison.

Mr. Elliot, and his friends in Marlborough Buildings, were talked of the whole evening. “Colonel Wallis had been so impatient to be introduced to them! and Mr. Elliot so anxious that he should!” and there was a Mrs. Wallis, at present known only to them by description, as she was in daily expectation of her confinement; but Mr. Elliot spoke of her as “a most charming woman, quite worthy of being known in Camden Place,” and as soon as she recovered they were to be acquainted. Sir Walter thought much of Mrs. Wallis; she was said to be an excessively pretty woman, beautiful. He longed to see her. He hoped she might make some amends for the many very plain faces he was continually passing in the streets. The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them. It had been a frosty morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of. But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men! they were infinitely worse. Such scarecrows as the streets were full of! It was evident how little the women were used to the sight of anything tolerable, by the effect which a man of decent appearance produced. He had never walked anywhere arm-in-arm with Colonel Wallis (who was a fine military figure, though sandy-haired) without observing that every woman’s eye was upon him; every woman’s eye was sure to be upon Colonel Wallis. Modest Sir Walter! He was not allowed to escape, however. His daughter and Mrs. Clay united in hinting that Colonel Wallis’s companion might have as good a figure as Colonel Wallis, and certainly was not sandy-haired.

“How is Mary looking?” said Sir Walter, in the height of his good humour. “The last time I saw her she had a red nose, but I hope that may not happen every day.”

“Oh! no, that must have been quite accidental. In general she has been in very good health and very good looks since Michaelmas.”

“If I thought it would not tempt her to go out in sharp winds, and grow coarse, I would send her a new hat and pelisse.”

Anne was considering whether she should venture to suggest that a gown, or a cap, would not be liable to any such misuse, when a knock at the door suspended everything. A knock at the door! and so late! It was ten o’clock. Could it be Mr. Elliot? They knew he was to dine in Lansdown Crescent. It was possible that he might stop in his way home to ask them how they did. They could think of no one else. Mrs. Clay decidedly thought it Mr. Elliot’s knock. Mrs. Clay was right. With all the state which a butler and foot-boy could give, Mr. Elliot was ushered into the room.

His broad form filled the doorway, and he seemed to pose before walking toward them all. The muscles of his thighs flexed beneath the tight fabric of his breeches, and he strolled through the room with languid, sensual grace. His dark, decadent eyes were nearly hidden by his lowered lids and lush lashes, and his black hair, cut to the height of fashion, curled around his collar. He spotted Anne first, and a slow smile spread his lips with an almost teazing expression; in a moment, his eyes had devoured Anne from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Then, just as quickly, his eyes darted away and looked upon Sir Walter and Elizabeth. Anne wondered if she had imagined his hungry perusal of her body, but foreboding swept her body in the wake of his gaze, and she knew that her mind had not imagined it.

It was the same, the very same man, with no difference but of dress. Anne drew a little back, utterly ashamed that she had once entertained the notion that he found her desirable. He was nearly perfection, and his every movement was cultivated to be suggestive. She looked at her lap, trying desperately to displace the misbegotten notion that he had wanted her while the others received his compliments, and her sister his apologies for calling at so unusual an hour, but “he could not be so near without wishing to know that neither she nor her friend had taken cold the day before,” etcetera etcetera; which was all as politely done, and as politely taken, as possible, but her part must follow then. Sir Walter talked of his youngest daughter; “Mr. Elliot must give him leave to present him to his youngest daughter” (there was no occasion for remembering Mary); and Anne, smiling and blushing, very becomingly shewed to Mr. Elliot the pretty features which he had by no means forgotten, and instantly saw, with amusement at his little start of surprise, that he had not been at all aware of who she was. He looked completely astonished, but not more astonished than pleased; his eyes brightened! and with the most perfect alacrity he welcomed the relationship, alluded to the past, and entreated to be received as an acquaintance already. He was quite as good-looking as he had appeared at Lyme, his countenance improved by speaking, and his manners were so exactly what they ought to be, so polished, so easy, so particularly agreeable, that she could compare them in excellence to only one person’s manners. They were not the same, but they were, perhaps, equally good.

He sat down with them, and improved their conversation very much. There could be no doubt of his being a sensible man. Ten minutes were enough to certify that. His tone, his expressions, his choice of subject, his knowing where to stop; it was all the operation of a sensible, discerning mind.

As soon as he could, he moved from the chair where he sat solitarily and took a seat beside Anne. As the others looked on in shock, he began to talk to her of Lyme, wanting to compare opinions respecting the place, but especially wanting to speak of the circumstance of their happening to be guests in the same inn at the same time; to give his own route, understand something of hers, and regret that he should have lost such an opportunity of paying his respects to her. She gave him a short account of her party and business at Lyme.

At this point, they lost the attention of Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Clay, who could not be bothered with Anne’s dreary recounting of her experience in Lyme. They turned to each other in conversation, and Mr. Elliot shifted in his seat, landing closer to Anne, seemingly for the purpose of better being able to hear her. His regret increased as he listened. He had spent his whole solitary evening in the room adjoining theirs; had heard voices, mirth continually; thought they must be a most delightful set of people, longed to be with them, but certainly without the smallest suspicion of his possessing the shadow of a right to introduce himself. If he had but asked who the party were! The name of Musgrove would have told him enough.

They were innocent enough comments, but Anne found herself quite short of breath. There was something in Mr. Elliot’s delivery. He talked of being in the room adjacent to hers as though he had spent the entire night listening for her every move in bed. As though he had taken great pleasure in being next to a room full of young women. Anne was startled to find that he seemed to be playing some sort of
game
. Her heart raced. Was she mistaken, or had he leaned closer and closer to her as he talked? His voice was certainly pitched lower. It neared a purr, and Anne feared she would react.

From the corner of her eye, she saw her father and sister turn toward them, and their conversation petered out completely until their silence penetrated the cocoon surrounding Anne and Mr. Elliot. With a sharp laugh, Mr. Elliot tossed his head back jovially, and when he again looked at her, he was an appropriate distance away from her. He smiled broadly and continued the conversation. “Well, it would serve to cure him of an absurd practice of never asking a question at an inn, which he had adopted, when quite a young man, on the principal of its being very ungenteel to be curious.

“The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty,” said he, “as to what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing, are more absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings in the world. The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the folly of what they have in view.”

But he must not be addressing his reflections to Anne alone: he knew it; he was soon diffused again among the others, and it was only at intervals that he could return to Lyme.

His enquiries, however, produced at length an account of the scene she had been engaged in there, soon after his leaving the place. Having alluded to “an accident,” he must hear the whole. When he questioned, Sir Walter and Elizabeth began to question also, but the difference in their manner of doing it could not be unfelt. She could only compare Mr. Elliot to Lady Russell, in the wish of really comprehending what had passed, and in the degree of concern for what she must have suffered in witnessing it.

He staid an hour with them. The elegant little clock on the mantel-piece had struck “eleven with its silver sounds,” and the watchman was beginning to be heard at a distance telling the same tale, before Mr. Elliot or any of them seemed to feel that he had been there long.

Mr. Elliot rose to his feet quite abruptly. “Oh, forgive me,” he said, bowing slightly to all of them as a whole. “I fear I have overstaid my welcome.” Amid a cacophony of protest to such a statement, he smiled charmingly and turned to Anne. “Cousin, would you escort me to the door? I have just one more question about Lyme.”

The cacophony in the room settled just as suddenly as it had started. Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Clay all turned their heads as one to look at Anne with wide, blinking eyes. They brought to mind a trio of owls, and, hiding a smile, Anne rose to her feet. “Of course,” she said, mirth finding its way unbidden into her words.

The clutch of night fowl continued to watch them as Mr. Elliot and Anne left the drawing room and walked to the front door. Anne turned her face toward Mr. Elliot, assuming he would ask his question right away, only to find she was staring at his well-formed profile. They walked in silence to the front door, and Anne could not help but feel the weight of awkwardness. She had imagined this handsome man halfway in love with her, and she was no fool: her father and sister would certainly interpret Mr. Elliot’s request to speak to Anne alone as an indicant of his favour.

She stifled a sigh. That would be difficult to demystify, but demystify she must. It would not do for them to imagine her paired with Mr. Elliot; she was certainly not who he would have in mind when considering a bride.

They arrived at the door, and Anne knew she must speak. “Your question, Mr. Elliot?”

Rather than ask a question, Mr. Elliot turned to the dutiful butler who stood poised to open the door. “That will be all, thank you,” Mr. Elliot said to the poor man who looked back and forth between Anne and the guest who had dared dismiss him before bowing curtly and leaving them alone.

Anne fought the desire to swallow loudly, knowing that would not be ladylike.

“I fear I had no question, Miss Elliot,” Mr. Elliot said taking a step toward her. “I merely wanted to speak to you without the gawking of your father and sister.” Anne took a step back as he advanced, and he continued to follow. “Forgive me for being dishonest?” he asked with a sly wink.

Now, Anne
did
swallow, and it echoed in her head like a gong. What, exactly, was he about? It was behaviour like this that led others to believe he fancied her. In fact, it was hard for Anne to remember why she had thought such a notion absurd herself mere moments ago when he leaned in close.

“I wished to tell you how happy I am to see you again,” he whispered.

He was close enough that his breath, scented with mint, fanned across her face. Anne watched in fascination as his dark eyes grew even darker as his pupil expanded to eat up the rich, chocolate colour. His gaze fell to her lips, and Anne felt them part traitorously.

If any space remained between them, he quickly closed it, taking a small step forward so that the lapels of his jacket brushed against her breasts. The mint of his breath was overshadowed by the male scent of him.

She saw his arm rise out of the corner of her eye, and every muscle in her body tensed as she anticipated being touched.

But the touch never came. His arm fell back to his side at the same time that he took a step back from her, and Anne noticed with astonishment that the hand he had raised now clutched his cane and hat.

Mortification stung her cheeks. She had imagined him ready to kiss her, and he had merely been reaching for his personal items from the stand to her right.

She darted out of the way as Mr. Elliot reached forward to grasp the doorknob, not willing to let herself imagine any more untoward slant to his innocent actions.

She was staring at the floor when he spoke. “Thank you for seeing me out, Miss Elliot.”

“T-the pleasure was all mine,” Anne managed to stutter.