The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,60
types of cake on display: coffee and walnut, and Victoria sponge filled with preserves made with strawberries from the walled garden and honey from the estate’s own apiary.
Placing a tea tray on the ottoman before her, Frances sat down on the faded chintz sofa and looked about the room. She did not sit here often, finding it the largest and coldest room in the house. It was also full of memories from when she was young, the parties and the family gatherings and the welcoming of new neighbours. Now it was reserved mostly for the Christmas Eve gathering, when the villagers joined her after Mass for a warming by the huge fire. She wondered if this past Christmas had been the last of that, as well.
Josephine answered the door, and she led the two strangers into the room as Frances stood to greet them.
“Mr. Leonard, welcome.” She smiled as she took a step forward. “And this must be your lovely fiancée. Mr. Sinclair speaks so highly of you,” Frances said to the beautiful woman at his side.
Mimi and Jack were both waiting for the inevitable sinking in of recognition—the unabashed stare, usually followed by a gasp or even a shriek—but Frances just stood there smiling as if Mimi were merely the future wife of Jack Leonard.
“Mimi,” she said, putting out her hand.
“Mimi? What an unusual name.”
“It’s short for Mary Anne.”
Jack looked at Mimi with interest. “I didn’t know that.”
Frances smiled. “It’s best to have some secrets when entering marriage.”
“‘It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life,’” quoted Mimi with an endearing and very white smile back.
“So that’s what you’re doing,” laughed Jack.
Frances motioned for them both to take a seat on the matching chintz sofa across from hers. She immediately poured them each a cup of tea from the tray before her.
“I understand from Mr. Sinclair that you are a fan of Jane Austen,” she said to Mimi, while trying hard not to look at Jack. His efficiency and energy unnerved her. She feared that, left alone with him for too long, she might agree to the sale of the antique Indian carpet underfoot, or even a lock of her own hair.
Mimi nodded vigorously. “I can’t tell you how much—I came here once before, you know—on my own, long before the war, before I moved to California—and I saw the little cottage, and the church here, and the graves. I would have given anything back then to be here, in this very room.” She paused. “I hope—I haven’t had much time to process any of this, Jack just told me about the cottage—but I hope you are okay meeting with us. I know this must be an extremely difficult decision. I could never make it myself.”
Jack shot her a recriminating look. Mimi had absolutely no head for business.
“Thank you, it certainly is.” Frances shifted about on the sofa nervously. She was now finding it hard to look straight at Mimi, too. The woman was gorgeous in an almost alien way, with a strong heart-shaped jawline, a slight dimple in her chin, and eyes the most startling colour of violet.
“Let’s not look backwards, hmm?” interjected Jack. He knew that in business there was no point—and he believed pretty much the same in life, too. If Frances got to talking too much about giving up any part of the family legacy, he could see himself having to prop up two emotional females, and he’d had enough of that for one day.
“We’ve got exciting plans, as you know,” he continued. “The cottage would be restored and beautified to do your family proud. No expense would be spared.”
As the words left his mouth, he looked about himself a bit more and saw that everything in the Great House, antique or otherwise, seemed to live under layers of memories thick as dust. There were extremely old photographs along the mantel of relatives in Edwardian dress, and ancient oil paintings of others in the Knight family’s past, and not a sign of any modern convenience at all except for the electric lights and a single radiator along the internal wall. Frances, too, looked much older than her years—Jack with his discerning eye would have put her well into her fifties, due to the parchment-like skin on her neck and the deeply etched crow’s-feet, except that he had been told she was only a decade or so older than himself.