The Jane Austen Society(86)

Mimi heard a knock on her bedroom door, and Frances popped her head in. “We just got back from town. Adeline and Adam were knee-deep in books.”

“I can’t wait to get over there after the honeymoon. I call first dibs on any Burney.”

“You can have her.” Frances smiled and came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You know, I was almost married once.”

Mimi whipped around in her chair before the vanity table. “No, I did not know. You never said a word.”

“Well, that’s because it was a secret engagement, of sorts. Only our parents were told. And it lasted only as long as that.”

“Do I know him?” Mimi laughed, thinking the question was absurd.

“Actually, yes—it was Andrew Forrester.”

Mimi put down her Max Factor mascara stick. “You’re joking. No, wait, you’re not joking, are you? Oh my goodness, it all makes so much sense now.”

Frances eyed her curiously. “What does?”

“His solicitude for you. His worry. He’s so risk averse about everything to do with the society, always so concerned we’ll breach a directors’ or fiduciary duty of some kind and all end up in jail, and yet he was out there pleading with you to fight Colin Knatchbull every step of the way on the will.”

“I really don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

“Frances, please, he lives by the letter of the law. Yet I swear he would have burned that second will if he could have gotten away with it. What on earth happened?”

“It was so long ago, I hardly even recall. We got engaged, and my father would not consent, and I was persuaded to break it off.”

“That’s a little ironic, don’t you think?”

“Then he returned from the Great War and continued with his legal studies and became quite successful in town. His ability to spot risk ahead of time became legendary in the greater Hampshire County.”

“This has now moved beyond irony, Frances.”

“Trust me, I know,” she sighed resignedly.

“So, you might have provided an heir after all, if it hadn’t been for your father, and then your father took your only home away from you because you never bore him an heir. It’s the plot to a Bette Davis movie.”

Frances started to take out the letter sitting hidden in her right skirt pocket. “A bad marriage, though, is worse than no marriage at all.”

“Yes, I suppose, although Charlotte Lucas would probably have had something to say about that. . . .” Mimi was pinching the colour into her cheeks and then applying rouge as the make-up artists had taught her, to avoid overapplying for the daylight.

“Mimi, have you ever heard of a company called Alpha Investments Limited?”

“No, why?”

“Andrew was looking at their annual filings for some work matter. Jack is on the board.”

Mimi was now applying the rose-tinted lipstick she had bought at Chanel in Paris a few weekends ago.

“Oh, right, I know he has meetings in Scotland once in a while for some business up there. Golf, I think. I don’t know. I never listen when he starts talking about golf.”

Frances held the letter out to Mimi. “Andrew received this from the chairman of Alpha earlier today. It seems they—well, here, I should let you read this yourself.”

Mimi put the lipstick down and smacked her lips together, then blotted them lightly with a tissue from the sterling-silver Kleenex box on the vanity.

“Frances, really, on my wedding day.” Mimi took the letter and stood up while she read it, then sank down onto the edge of the bed next to her.

“So, wait a minute, you’ve lost everything? Even the cottage?”

Frances nodded.

“But where will you live? And where will we put all those books? What about the museum—and for what? A golf clubhouse?” She practically spat out the last two words as she angrily crunched up the paper in her hands. “My God, he used me—he used us—he used all the information I’d been confiding in him . . .”

“I really debated about whether to tell you before the wedding. I mean, it really is just business, you know, and if you think about that for a moment, Colin could easily have sold to anyone, and Jack has every right—”

But Mimi was gone.

Frances looked about the room with a sigh, then lay back on the bed, her booted feet still on the floor. Something rustled in the heavy folds of her floor-length skirt as it fanned out beneath her. She sat up in surprise and retrieved from the left pocket a folded single sheet of paper with her name marked on the outside in a hurried scrawl. It had been so many years since she had seen that handwriting—decades even—that she first started to read the letter without any notion of its author.

Dear Frances,

This letter is so long overdue, that a wiser man would probably consider it ill-advised to ever send. But I find myself unable to leave the past alone. You must allow me to tell you how sorry I am for all the years that we did not speak, and for my misbegotten pride, and—more than anything—for not truly comprehending your unique and inimitable spirit. If I owed you anything, it surely was that.

Patience in love has not been my virtue, and yet in hurrying on, I ended up running a race with no destination, and with bitterness and hurt my sole companions. I can only hope that you have been wiser and kinder to yourself than I, in my neglect, have sadly failed to be.