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CHAPTER XIX

The Chawton visit was over, and Fanny felt a little bereft. Even after four years, she still found it unsettling to leave her dear family and return to the Knatchbulls and Hatch. And to make matters worse, Lady Banks had demanded Sir Edward’s presence elsewhere. Fortunately, Fanny’s favourite sister was kind enough to come and keep her company for those few, difficult days.

The first evening, they had dined out at the Finch-Hattons, and even taken the younger girls, Mary and Cassy, with them. On the second, though, they were home and alone and able to coze in the drawing room – which came as a relief to Fanny, who for some reason felt uncommonly tired.

‘Your little Mary was a wild success last evening.’ Lizzie stretched out her long legs, placed her feet on the footstool, turned her elegant slippers this way and that and studied all angles with complete satisfaction. ‘Do you have plans for her yet?’

‘She did seem to go down rather well.’ Fanny spoke into her sewing. ‘No doubt we can put it down to the girl being a novelty …’ She selected a new thread. ‘We are such a small world here in Kent that the milieu is grateful for anyone new. I shall be launching her shortly.’ She looked up then and added, in confidence: ‘I must say I do rather dread it, but perhaps it will not, after all, be as quiet as one fears .’

With one eyebrow arched, Lizzie studied her sister in silence – opened her mouth, closed it, wriggled deeper into her armchair – and then spoke up again. ‘Dearest, I do sometimes wonder if you have eyes in your head.’

Fanny dropped her embroidery into her lap and looked up in astonishment. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘For a start, are you the only person in all of Christendom not to have noticed that George is wild for the creature?’

‘George …’ Fanny repeated. ‘George Knight? Our brother ?’ Her head felt strangely muddled. ‘But this is getting ridiculous! Aunt Cassandra , of all people, was saying the same only last week.’ She had that left-out feeling again. What was it they all knew which she did not? ‘It is as if you have all created some myth in your heads. I mean, have you all asked yourselves what he might see in her?’

Lizzie just laughed. ‘The age-old story, my darling. The girl is uncommonly pretty.’

This was getting too much. ‘ Surely you cannot mean Mary ?’

But instead of arguing her case, Lizzie just stared and stared until Fanny was forced to defend herself.

‘But she has that unfortunate sallow complexion,’ she began, and then conceded: ‘Although I suppose it has become a little more pink since I found her a pony. And her figure is—’ Well, that was rather graceful. She would give the girl that. ‘But anyway,’ she concluded with triumph, ‘her hair is as straight as a plumb line!’

Lizzie smirked. ‘And how would yours be if Hall didn’t visit you weekly? You are her mother. If her hair is not good enough, it is up to you to do something about it. Not that anything is needed for, as I say, the child is a beauty. And it is high time that someone brought it to your attention, as any minute now your Sir Edward is in for a visit – if not from George, then some other poor swain.’

‘You cannot be serious.’ Fanny picked up her sewing again, while knowing full well that a stitch done in rage always needed unpicking. ‘Apart from all the obvious problems’ – to take just one example, Sir Edward would shoot any suitor on sight – ‘George is nowhere near being established. There is no money and that is that.’

‘Oh, money !’ Lizzie scoffed. ‘It’s not everything , darling. You cannot keep putting an end to perfectly good matches just because of that . First, poor Marianne – I do fear she may never recover – then Will and the dear little teacher person … Darling, we are a family of eleven! None is in danger of starving, but not every one of us is going to die rich . It’s simply not possible. And not everyone —’

Fanny’s head was bent over her work, but she could still feel Lizzie’s eyes, almost boring a hole in her head.

‘Not everyone – if they just marry for money – is going to die happy .’

Fanny’s whole being contracted as if she had been scorched. Was Lizzie referring to her? And if so, then how dare she? It was such an injustice that her siblings saw her own marriage as unhappy, when in fact she was completely content. But before Fanny could collect her riposte, Lizzie rose to her feet, gave a little stretch and then a yawn.

‘Forgive me, dearest, if I have been a little harsh this evening, but I just felt it all there, on my tongue’s end, as it were, and needed to say it.

‘Besides which, I fear I have started yet another baby already. Dear me – how many is it now? I can hardly count the number of little darlings.’

Fanny, forced to surrender all hope of even one child, felt her heart drop in her breast.

‘But you do know how I get with it in the beginning. Cross as a cat .’ She bent and kissed Fanny’s cheek. ‘Do sleep well, dearest. I certainly shall.’

The Mary Problem, as Fanny privately referred to it, occupied her thoughts for the remainder of the week. The idea that the girl might be considered a beauty she would like to discount. The plain, thin little child whom she had first taken on had not markedly altered, as far as Fanny had noticed, but she was forced to concede that fashions did change and perhaps that rather ordinary, average look was now comme il faut . And anyway, if the public had somehow got it into its head that she was, in some vague way, attractive, then that was – most annoyingly – that.

On the other hand, looks were not everything and, surely, any suitor would, in the end, be quickly repelled by the girl’s personality – or absence thereof. Put simply, Mary had nothing about her! No conversation, beyond the odd ‘yes’ or ‘no’, added to which was an unfortunate tendency to be rather sullen. And that was hardly a quality that any sensible man would desire in a wife.

However, if the girl should take it upon herself to pursue some unfortunate match – and, sadly, one could not put it past her – then that would greatly upset poor Sir Edward. And, more to the point, it would reflect badly on Fanny – unfairly, of course. But then, when did natural justice ever concern itself with the defence of the stepmother? Hers was a sorry position, indeed.

The only thing for it was for Fanny to concoct some strategy of preventive action. And, after long hours of plotting, she had it all clear in her mind just in time for her husband’s return.

To the right of the fireplace, in a high, wing-backed chair of plum damask, Sir Edward sat behind the large, open pages of the Kentish Gazette ; to the left, his wife was busy with an embroidered pillow she was working on for Lady Banks. Though it still should be the summer, the evening was cool and an early fire crackled between them; the clock ticked on the mantel above, and the vast acreage of the gilded drawing room hummed that near sonorous hum of domestic contentment.

Fanny pulled the silk through, reached for her scissors, stopped, thought, braced herself and then spoke: ‘Dearest?’

The Kentish Gazette did not move.

‘My dear?’ Fanny put down her scissors and raised her voice. ‘Sir Edward!’

‘I am listening,’ he said, while remaining invisible.

‘Thank you. There’s something on my mind, and I would just like to share it.’ She selected a dark green, and paused while threading the needle.

‘Share away, my dear.’ He licked at a finger and turned a new page. ‘Share away.’

‘It is on the matter of Mary.’ The silence seemed to suggest that further clarification would be welcome. ‘Mary Dorothea,’ she said, before adding, for good measure, ‘your daughter.’

‘Indeed?’ He slapped the pages together and folded the paper on to his lap. If there was one subject with which Fanny could always get his attention, it was his precious only daughter.

‘There has been the most astonishing development.’ She put her embroidery back in its bag and leaned forward towards him. ‘I cannot tell you how long it has been in the brewing , so to speak. The first I noticed was on – let me see – Monday, I believe?’ She looked up at the ceiling while counting on her fingers. ‘Yes, definitely last Monday. I had just come in from relieving the poor …’

Sir Edward stifled a yawn. Fanny had strayed from the subject. She sped up her delivery. ‘Or could it have been the Indigent Blind?’ She had invented all this for effect, of course, and was rather pleased by how well it was going. ‘Anyway, I was just taking my bonnet off, when Mary came running down the stairs …’ After such careful rehearsal, she could not edit it now or she might lose her thread, but she did need to get it all out before he was asleep altogether. ‘And perhaps it was the way the light caught? Or just that I turned around at speed and caught myself unawares, so to speak … but, anyway. There it was! Clear as day!’

‘What exactly was where, my dear?’

‘The fact! The fact was there and irrefutable .’ She clapped her hands as if the idea actually pleased her: ‘Mary Dorothea has become … rather a beauty !’

‘Become?’ Sir Edward stretched out his legs and shuffled deeper into his chair. ‘Was she not always ?’

‘Oh! Well, no.’ Fanny now worried that she had misjudged it. ‘I mean, of course, sweet .’ Though Mary had never been sweet, in Fanny’s opinion. ‘But, as for beauty , I would say that is … quite new?’

‘Good Lord!’ He jolted back upright, suddenly some distance from sleep. ‘Hmph.’ Sir Edward, when discomfited, could become a little brusque. ‘To my eyes, she was always the epitome of all that is good and pure … Perhaps, when one is father to a daughter, one simply rather presumes the presence of beauty …’

‘Ah, yes.’ Fanny had the horrible feeling she had rather spoiled things for him. ‘I am sure it is so. But now,’ she said brightly, ‘you can do more than presume. Your daughter is suddenly thought to be lovely. Without wishing to blow one’s own trumpet, I do like to think that the riding has rather helped. I hope you remember that I arranged the pony and lessons and so on? It has definitely had the desired effect on both complexion and posture.’

‘I see.’ He looked into the flames, pondered and then asked: ‘And do we want her to be’ – he circled his right hand as if it were rolling down a never-ending hill – ‘ lovely , et cetera, et cetera? Is that altogether a good thing?’

Fanny spent much of her married life asking for Sir Edward’s opinion, awaiting his divine judgement on any number of matters, so that, on the rare occasions that things coincided with her own areas of expertise, she did rather enjoy it. She could even become – and did have to check this, for Sir Edward would disapprove – a little professorial in her pronouncements.

‘Funnily enough, I did wonder myself. It can sometimes present problems to keep under one’s roof the local honey pot, and have to bear all the consequential buzzing about.’ Fanny had learned that the summer Lizzie came out. Young men seemed to pick up her scent from several counties away. ‘But I think with dear Mary that issue need not apply. The fact that she has always been rather – well – others might use the word plain , will have given her a good, sure foundation, I’m sure. She has built up great reserves of common sense and character.’ If only Fanny could be sure that was true. ‘Far too late now for her dear head to turn.’

‘Indeed.’ Sir Edward’s brow started to furrow, and his teeth chewed at his lip – the signs, Fanny now knew, that her husband was on the brink of supplying an opinion. ‘I have often worried that the marriage market has the potential to be an uncomfortable experience for the innocent young girl. And for Mary, in particular … Such a sensitive creature … I would not like to think of her becoming attached to some stranger …’

Fanny chose not to mention the yet greater threat posed by her own dear family. It was not only George, but all the Knight boys now came to Hatch rather often. The bad feeling occasioned by Miss Atkinson’s dismissal was completely forgotten, Fanny was forgiven and they all flocked once again. She did not wish to ban them from visiting now, but she must protect Mary and at all costs.

‘Perhaps it might help her if we were to narrow the choice, so to speak …’ He looked up and across to his wife with a keen sort of gaze. ‘My dear. Might you be so kind as to invite Dr Knatchbull to dine with us at his earliest convenience?’

‘Oh, Sir Edward!’ Fanny replied, touched. ‘How clever you are!’ The permission for a bit of controlled match-making was exactly her plan. ‘Dr Knatchbull, I take it, has a suitable friend …’

‘A friend ?’ Sir Edward looked utterly baffled. ‘Wyndham?’ His jowls shook along with his head. ‘I would very much doubt it. We Knatchbulls tend not to go in for friends , as a rule.’

Fanny had that feeling one gets, when missing the last step on one’s descent down the stairs. ‘We are talking of the Dr Wyndham Knatchbull who is also your brother ?’

‘Only half-brother, my dear. We are not from the same mother.’

‘Yes, yet—’ Fanny stopped, before breaking her own iron rule of arguing with her husband. But surely he could not be serious?

‘All well above board.’ Sir Edward’s patience was starting to fray. ‘Intelligent sort of fellow. Can’t stay at Oxford studying Persians and what-have-you for ever. Soon to take up the living at Smeeth – not too close, not too far, and a handsome house, too. Yes, good old Wyndham. Come the autumn, invite him to dine and I will explain the position. He’ll see the wisdom of marrying in – an arrangement to suit the whole family. Can’t have her yet, mind. He will have to wait a few years, but I doubt—’

And then he stopped, wincing with pain – screwed up his eyes and clutched at his jaw.

‘My dear?’ Fanny felt instant alarm. ‘You are not well?’

Sir Edward suddenly wailed.

Fanny ran to the bell – rang for a servant – and back to his side. ‘Sir Edward! What is it? Do say!’

‘Mouth,’ he spluttered. ‘Tooth.’ He rocked to and fro, and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘ All over agony. ’

Graves came in then, called other servants – summoned Dr Whitfield – and whisked his master to his bed.

‘I shall follow you up shortly,’ Fanny called after them and then sank into her chair as hope rose up within her and flooded her being. ‘Ague of the face!’ she whispered to herself. A warm feeling of happiness began in her toes. ‘That is what ails him.’ That feeling crept up and up, and sought out her heart. ‘It is ague of the face.’ Tooth, temperature, a shooting neuralgia: were these not the very symptoms from which he had suffered at Lady Banks’s house, back in the year ’21?

And if so, was that not extraordinary! For now Fanny examined it, she had, of late, felt unusually tired. She was definitely a bit plumper. Certainly, her hair was thicker and of a particular shine – Sayce had commented on it only this evening as she was dressing for dinner. She stretched out her fingers and started to count … And – oh! Praise be to the Lord who is kind, and our God who is merciful. Fanny was having a baby and felt perfectly well.