The Jane Austen Society(87)

I am writing this letter in the parlour of Chawton Cottage, where you have just left me, and I put it in your hands on this, Mimi’s wedding day, in the spirit of the friendship I fervently hope we now and forever share.

Yours most admiringly,

Andrew

Frances folded the letter and slipped it back into her skirt pocket. She was most confused. The letter addressed the past, but asked for nothing more. This made it just one more tense occurrence to add to an already bewildering list: the recent discovery that she had a brother, the surreptitious sale of the library out from under Colin, today’s letter terminating her tenancy of Chawton Cottage, and the consequent unburdening to Mimi of her own fiancé’s role in that. It suddenly seemed to Frances that the more she inched forward, the more she grasped for connection, the muckier everything got.

It made a case for staying inside, if nothing else.

But Frances knew that she would have to get up off this bed in a matter of minutes, enter the church alone, advise all the guests that the wedding was off, and then face Andrew in particular with as much equanimity as she could muster.

She lay back on the bed with a final sigh and let her memories drift even further, to her childhood, and to all the famous people that had visited the Great House over the centuries and, just like Mimi Harrison, slept in this very bed. Even the Prince of Wales, when she was just a girl of four. He had pinched her little cheeks at dinner and asked to sit next to her, and she had never forgotten it. Many of the men who had visited seemed to have seen in her the lack of a father, a loving and affectionate one at least—one who truly comprehended her in that affection—and had often singled her out for innocent attention. In this she could have seen the entire arc of her life if she could have been handed a crystal ball—the very thing she hoped, just now, despite the sounds of yelling and vase-throwing from the bedroom next door, she had given Mimi.





CHAPTER THIRTY

Chawton, Hampshire

April 20, 1946

The Wedding

The wedding had been called off.

Frances had come into the parish church just before noon, knocked on the front wooden doors held open in the warm spring air, and announced that Mimi Harrison had just received some difficult news from abroad and would not be getting married that day. The guests had all unwillingly dispersed, and the crowd that had gathered outside the church, including several London news photographers, had let out a collective groan for all their efforts.

The eight members of the society were now the only ones left behind. They sat together as a group in the front pew of the church, Reverend Powell busying himself in the sanctuary out of earshot.

Evie and Dr. Gray were reviewing the letter from the chairman of Alpha Investments, having been ignorant of the whole debacle until Frances’s ominous appearance in the doorway of the church. Mimi sat with her head on Yardley’s shoulder, her eyes stained black by mascara. Across the aisle Adeline was holding Mimi’s bouquet of blush-pink peonies, roses, and ranunculuses. Adam was sitting next to her; Frances and Andrew stood a little to the side of them all.

“I should thank you, Frances,” Mimi finally spoke, “for being so honest with me. A lot of people would not have dared.”

“Well, Andrew,” Dr. Gray spoke up, “I suppose you’ll tell us there’s no hope now for even a roof over Miss Frances’s head.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He gave Frances at his side a quick, indecipherable look.

“Can we counterbid, for the cottage?” asked Yardley. “Make them an offer they can’t refuse?”

“Even if a majority of the trustees agree,” Andrew replied, “we could still run into trouble as a charity if we bid significantly above fair market value. We may think the cottage is worth whatever cost, and probably one day it will indeed be priceless, but right now it’s worth about three thousand pounds and that’s peanuts to a company like Alpha.”

“But surely we can try?” asked Evie.

“Forgive me, Mimi, but Jack’s on the board, right?” Dr. Gray asked.

She sat up a bit from her slumped position in the pew and nodded. “I suspect my powers of persuasion over him are minimal, though, right now.”

“Mimi”—Andrew stepped forward—“you said just now that Jack must have used the info you were sharing with him to make the deal with Colin, correct?”

She nodded again.

“Forgive me, too, my dear, but is there anything, anything at all, that you know about Jack and his dealings—business or otherwise—that could be used in turn? Seems only fair, under the circumstances.”

The entire row pivoted their heads to look at Andrew Forrester.

“Andrew Henry Forrester!” exclaimed Frances. “Are you suggesting—”

He held up his hand. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m not suggesting the Austen Society do anything. Only Mimi knows in her heart what to do.” He looked about at all the faces staring at him and decided for the first time in his life to abandon restraint and go for broke.

“Frances, I think we do, too. Let me put that roof over your head, and my heart in your hands. No one ever deserved it more.”

And right then and there, before all seven other members of the Jane Austen Society, Frances Elizabeth Knight began to sob uncontrollably.

“Frances, please, don’t cry,” Andrew was whispering to her gently, patting his jacket pockets to find a handkerchief to console her.