Expectations: The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice Continued), Volume 3

Expectations:

The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh

(Pride and Prejudice Continued)

In Three Volumes

By Melinda Wellesley

Fiction For Real

Madison, Wisconsin

Copyright © 2017 Melinda Wellesley.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Fiction For Real

Post Office Box 46025

Madison, Wisconsin 53744-6025 U.S.A.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes, and references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the address above.

Distributed through Smashwords.

Expectations: The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice Continued), Volume 3 / Melinda Wellesley. -- 1st ed.

ISBN for mobi version: 978-1-68023-034-5.

ISBN for epub version: 978-1-68023-037-6.

ISBN for PDB version: 978-1-68023-040-6.

ISBN for PDF version: 978-1-68023-043-7.

ISBN for LRF version: 978-1-68023-046-8.

ISBN for plain text version: 978-1-68023-049-9.

ISBN for HRML SmashReader version: 978-1-68023-052-9.

This work is dedicated to the memory of my friend the gifted writer Sara Campbell, who believed that if you can’t fit pirates into your novel, you’re probably writing the wrong book.

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

―JANE AUSTEN

Expectations:

The Transformation of Miss Anne de Bourgh

(Pride and Prejudice Continued)

Volume Three

Chapter Forty

Relieved of the greater part of her cargo and two of her passengers, the Lady Helen maintained a somewhat faster pace for the rest of the journey home. The defection of the two duplicitous seamen made extra work for the remaining crew, but no one lamented their loss.

The ship made one minor side trip, a stop at Gibraltar to share the details of their recent adventure with the British naval authorities. After their superiors heard Captain Hawkins’s account, two earnest midshipmen came aboard the Lady Helen to interview the passengers and crew. At the completion of their task, Miss de Bourgh asked the fledgling officers if the navy would be able to retrieve the missing passengers. The midshipmen offered little hope for success, but they promised to keep a watch for both brigantines. On shore, the captain and crew learned the latest news about the military situation, which indicated that while the peace had ended, open hostilities had not yet begun. After restocking the ship’s stores, they set off on the final leg of the journey home.

The voyage could not be fast enough for Anne. She spent her nights fretting over the fate of Major Allenden and her days suffering as the center of unwanted admiration. The passengers and crew afforded her all the respect due the widow of a hero, augmented with the approbation of a heroine in her own right. Mr. and Mrs. Fleming honored her with daily retellings of all their interactions with Major Allenden and Dr. Minton, and even many of the ship’s crew doffed their caps to her with doleful respect whenever she came out onto the quarterdeck. Mr. Arbuthnot told her on several occasions that he would add her actions to his collection of tales. He assured her that this would be the first he would tell, and it would surely be the most requested to be retold.

She humored Captain Hawkins by allowing him to give her lessons in chess. She felt no great enthusiasm for the exercise, even as he assured her that she had an aptitude for the game and would master it with practice. She indulged in the lessons to honor the captain’s kindness, as well as to sit in the chair that had been occupied by his previous opponent, Major Allenden. With kind solicitude, Captain Hawkins expressed his hopes that she would soon be able to renew her acquaintance with the major after his safe return from captivity.

Every day she sat on the bench she had occupied during her last conversation with the lost army officer, where Dr. Minton had tried too hard to sway her heart, and where she had heard the remarkable story of a remarkable man and refused to believe it.

Every evening she took out her sketchbook to study the incomplete portrait of John Allenden. Even half-done, it contained enough of his likeness to bring up sighs and regrets. She tried to make a copy that she could fill in from memory, but her too-earnest efforts spoiled each attempt. This would have to do. She would give it to his mother when they met.

Anne’s contingent settled into a new rhythm for the rest of the voyage. The maids healed the squabbles that had marred their first week at sea, and the girls clung to each other and wept over their ordeal and the loss of Dr. Minton. Separated from her beloved Neapolitan food, Mrs. Jenkinson slowly slimmed down again. Harriet attended to Anne, doing her best to fill the void left by her missing companions, but she too had to grapple with her remorse over her ill treatment of the lost physician. Her own ebullience began to resurface, slowly, as the days and the miles of the journey distanced them from the nightmarish interlude.

Anne felt proud of how her servants gathered the now-masterless Mr. Harrison into their fold, and his friendship with Mrs. Jenkinson grew deeper. Anne could not imagine his loss. She quizzed the valet about his time with Mr. Allenden. She learned that Harrison had worked for the family for more than twenty years, and he had been proud to be the major’s valet since young master John’s sixteenth birthday. He told her the entire story of how the major’s parents had met, about his mother’s noble lineage, and how their reception upon their return to England had been darkened by unkind rumors. The valet mentioned no particular gossipmongers, but Anne feared that somehow her mother might have played a role. He related that when his master received his orders to travel to Italy, he had not intended to take his servant along for the dangerous mission, but the valet had insisted. From the way he talked about Major Allenden, she understood the great friendship they shared. It surprised her not at all when the valet told her of his master’s frequent teasing that he could not continue to employ a friend. How very like him. She wondered what he would have found to tease her about, had things gone another way.

For, unlike the others, who said they had confidence that he would be successfully ransomed, Anne feared that she would never see Major Allenden again. It would be too easy for the privateers to collect the ransom from his family and then renege and turn the major over to the French. She suspected that if Bonetti stayed with the crew, the scoundrel would find a way to regain their loyalty and turn them to his original plan. She also believed the Terror of the Straits to be the type of man to blame everyone else for his own misjudgments, and Mr. Allenden would face his wrath. She had complete faith in Bonetti’s faithlessness. She could only hope that somehow the major would keep the French authorities from finding whatever information he had gathered and that they would not kill him but only keep him as a prisoner of war. Cold comfort, indeed.

She recalled with shame her judgments of how Major Allenden must have gleaned information about her and her party, most likely through his servant. As Mrs. Jenkinson had observed, Mr. Harrison was indeed an engaging conversationalist, and more than once Anne caught herself sharing stories with him that she would never mention to a relative stranger and another man’s servant. If the major had charged his valet to investigate the members of her group, he must be forgiven in light of his mission and the danger he had experienced just before coming aboard the Lady Helen. He would be a fool to trust anyone he had just met. She, in fact, was the fool for having held his caution against him.

When Anne was not revisiting her regrets over the major, her thoughts also dwelled on her mother. Lady Catherine would grieve over losing Dr. Minton, and Anne knew she would have to bear her mother’s disapprobation—more likely anger—over his fate. At first her mother would express gratitude that she had survived, but then comments would linger for years about the lost doctor and her medical gem stolen away. Anne knew she deserved whatever her mother heaped on her, so she accepted her fate.

In addition to all this, Anne had a new dread for her return. How would she conduct herself when she met Major Allenden’s family? She knew that at some point she would have to confess that she had not believed him when he told her his identity. What was her excuse? Only the thin and vile realization that someone else had made me angry. She wanted so much to become friends with his relations, but her disrespectful treatment of him would not allow that. She would satisfy the major’s request that she meet his relatives, and then when they knew the truth they would send her away, as they should, and she would have no further contact with them. In the greatest irony of all, she would be dead to the family of the man who had helped her become alive.

Now, too late, Anne understood that while she might have existed before she met John Allenden, she had never truly been alive. She had been, for a few, wonderful days, but now it had ended. She would continue, of course. She would attend her mother, meet with visitors to Rosings, and drive around Hunsford in her phaeton. Everyone who saw her would be well pleased at how she had triumphed over adversity. No one would know how she had ruined every hope of happiness by her unwillingness to believe a valiant man who had told her the truth. If only she had opened her heart, just a little!

At least Anne had the support of her friends. Harriet could see how she suffered, but Anne knew she believed the cause to be merely her separation from Major Allenden. Harriet’s solution was to quiz Anne as much as possible about him and the events leading up to his departure from the ship. She had no notebook of her own, so she begged a few pages from Anne’s sketchbook and scribbled down notes to save for the novel she promised to write about Anne’s adventure. How ludicrous, Anne thought. She was the least suitable novel heroine in the world. Fictional characters were more alive than she was. Harriet had commented that they only needed a ghost to make this narrative worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe. But they did have one. The ghost’s name was Anne de Bourgh.

Chapter Forty-One

Being a cargo ship, the Lady Helen would bypass Ramsgate and come into the port of London. Many British navy ships were anchored near the mouth of the Thames, raising concerns that military action would soon be in the offing. But Mr. Arbuthnot noted the ships’ crews were at ease, and he quelled the passengers’ fears by saying that danger did not appear to be imminent.

After weeks on the open ocean with only distant visual markers to indicate their progress, their trip up the Thames seemed to fly by. The passengers stood on the quarterdeck, eager eyes turned to the river banks as they found comfort in mundane familiarities that all vowed they would never take for granted again. Even Mrs. Fleming, who could complain about anything, had nothing to say that was not filled with love and gratitude, although she did once say she would not miss the hard benches on board the ship.

Debarking at the London wharf shortly before noon, the passengers said many heartfelt and tearful farewells, with promises to write to one another and remain friends. An especially painful farewell came when Mr. Harrison bid adieu to his companions to make the sad, solo journey to Wiltshire. Mrs. Jenkinson wept more than she wanted, to no one’s surprise.

Holcombe, the company’s steward, arranged for carriages to convey the staff back to Rosings while Anne, Mrs. Jenkinson, and Harriet would stay in town for a few days. Mrs. Jenkinson asked Anne twice if she did not think it wise to visit her mother first and then return to London to attend to her obligations. Both times Anne assured her that her duties here would take no more than a day or two. She did not tell Mrs. Jenkinson her fear that her mother would talk her out of returning to town, and as