Miss Austen - Gill Hornby Page 0,21

in person again—their relationship would have to be conducted through letters from then on. Instead Cassy would have only Tom. And, in the place of all that feminine prettiness, she must look upon a shaving rag, an indifferent hunting print …

Her heart tightened. At home in Steventon there was always talking and laughing. And so many jokes! She herself did not make many; though Cassy might be one of the cleverer Austens—her mother was often kind enough to say so—she was not one of the wittiest. But she laughed with them. Oh, how she loved to laugh with them! And Tom had laughed, too, there. Of course he did: Who could not? But just them, alone? She tried to imagine, but her mind could not conjure it. What would they talk about? Would they play games, enjoy music? Whom would they laugh with? At what?

She was homesick already, and her marriage not yet even begun.

“My dear, you seem deep in thought.” Cassy turned to find Eliza—eyes warm with kindness, resplendent in pregnancy, a child at each hand—and felt some reassurance. Her friend had appeared just at the right moment, as if in a vision, an angel come to tell her that here was the essence of it: the construction of a family; the building of a life together. That was the point of us all.

She picked up Mary-Jane, who squirmed and protested, and laughing together the women and children went down to breakfast.

* * *

THE VISIT FLEW BY, AS VISITS must do. In Kintbury the young couple enjoyed few intimate moments; no consideration was given to their privacy. The parsonage bustled as a parsonage was wont to, and it was hard for them to find a quiet corner. The climate, too, was against them: It was no sort of weather for walks. And Mrs. Fowle—poor Mrs. Fowle, one could not but feel for her—got more distraught with every day that brought the departure nearer. She was loath to leave her boy’s side.

But in the last light hour of Tom’s final afternoon, they were, finally, alone together. Cassy was trying to capture a likeness of Tom with her colors. It was not as easy as she had found it before. She did not want to include the grim set of his jaw, the dark circles around his eyes, or that fear deep within them, but already could barely remember what he looked like without.

One of life’s dreamers—though who knew what, exactly, he dreamed about?—Tom was always content to sit in an armchair and do nothing, so she was surprised when he suddenly stirred.

“There. You have had long enough to work on my indifferent appearance.” He rose and came round to look. “Oh, yes. So clever. It quite defeats me, my love, how you can be so excessively good at everything to which you turn your hand.” The thought did not seem to make him anything like cheerful. “I do wonder that such an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished young lady would even think of marrying a hopeless case like myself.”

“Oh, Tom!” Cassy started to pack up her brushes. “This really is not one of my better efforts. It is not very clever at all.” She swung round to face him. Their eyes locked for a long moment. Her response—poor, ill judged, inadequate—seemed to echo around them.

With a grim smile, he reached down and took her hand. “Let us walk. We have spent long enough sitting. I have a small piece of last business to attend to. Please. Come with me.”

They dressed up well—Mrs. Fowle fussing around them, insisting they not be too long—and set out into the gloaming. It was a short walk, up a walled path that was glassy with cold, to the church. Tom looked neither left nor right—he could not feel quite comfortable in a graveyard at twilight—and tightened his grip on Cassy’s arm.

“It turns out I made a slight hash of things when I was helping my father. The new curate spotted it. Odd little chap. Eyes like a hawk.” He stepped into the church porch and opened the heavy oak door for her. “Got rather excited about it. Is that all that there is to God’s work? I was minded to ask him. Do a few little dates matter, in the great divine scheme?”

Cassy half listened, but her mind was still in the drawing room: She was consumed with her own reproach. Why had she behaved so, to this man she loved so deeply, whom she had