Page 103 of Threads that Remain

“What was the subject?” he asked.

“A moth,” said Anne, with perfect gravity. “It had got in at the window and would not keep still, and I was very cross with it, until it finally consented to land somewhere convenient, which happened to be under the desk.”

“I begin to think,” said Lieutenant Wycliffe, “that I have never in my life met anybody so entirely serious about so many things that other people consider entirely unserious, and I find I like it better than I can properly account for.”

And yet … he continued to call on her only once each week, when after this amount of time, he might be calling two or even three times a week. When he did call, his company was favoured, he easily engaged her father, and everyone in her family pronounced him a good sort. But he never asked to take her for a walk or drive in Hyde Park, and he never came close to confessing his feelings.

Anne could not live in the same house and miss the difference between her situation and her brother’s. No one could miss it. Henry and Sarah were together every chance they could be together; often inventing excuses.

Anne always remembered her mother’s words some years ago about not showing your feelings too soon or too plainly. But waiting was proving harder than she had expected, and she began to worry that perhaps she had misunderstood his interest altogether.

The following Thursday a ball was given by Lady Sefton, in a room a great deal less splendid than Ardleigh House but a great deal more crowded, on account of its being smaller. Anne danced the first two sets with Mr. Ashby and found him, upon closer acquaintance, to possess a great deal of correctness and very little else to recommend him, especially when compared to another suitor. She danced with Mr. St. John, Mr. Rowley, and Mr. Wilmington, in succession. She loved dancing and enjoyed the evening. But between sets, she found herself searching for someone else than the partner by her side.

Anne had withdrawn to the edge of the room with her fan and a private, entirely unspoken wish that the evening might produce Matthew. She got her wish within the quarter-hour.

He had entered the room and looked around as if trying to find someone. He was stopped short by a couple who he was obviously acquainted with. He was soon ushered off to another group and engaged in animated conversation. From her vantage point, Anne could clearly see him. It was a quarter of an hour before he looked around again and found her; he quickly excused himself and made his way over to her. They exchanged greetings, then he apologised for not seeing her earlier.

“I noticed you when you walked in,” Anne admitted. “I took the opportunity to draw you. In my head I mean. I do it with everybody, I am afraid; it is a bad habit, and my mother despairs of curing me of it. I have discovered you have a face that wants drawing. I do not mean that as the sort of compliment one says at a ball. I mean that your face does something interesting at the corner of the mouth when you are about to laugh, a full second before you actually do it, and I have been trying to work out how I should put that down on paper, and I had very nearly succeeded when you arrived and interrupted the study.”

A lesser man might have been alarmed by this. Lieutenant Wycliffe was not in the least alarmed; he laughed outright, the very laugh she had been attempting to anticipate, and said that he could not conceive of a more flattering interruption to have caused, and that he should like, above all things, to see the drawing when it was finished, if she would permit him the honour.

They danced the next set and when it ended, they talked instead, at the edge of the room, for the better part of an hour, about everything and nothing, in the particular headlong, overlapping, entirely unguarded manner of two people who have discovered, quite without warning, that they have a great deal to say to one another and no very clear idea of where to begin, and so begin everywhere at once.

It was observed, across the room, by a gentleman who had not danced that evening and had instead spent a very great deal of it watching his daughter with the particular fixed, unsmiling attention that had already become something of a family joke, that the Lieutenant’s attentions were of a decidedly more particular character than Mr. Ashby’s had been; and the Colonel had very nearly begun to cross the room toward them when Marianne’s hand closed firmly upon his arm.

“You will not,” said Marianne.

“I was only going to inquire after his family.”

“You were going to stand over him in exactly the manner you stood over poor Mr. Ashby, and frighten him into forgetting his own name, and I will not have it, Christopher, not this time. Look at her face. I have not seen her look like that in the whole of this Season, nor, if I am honest, in a very great while before it.”

The Colonel looked. Whatever he saw there arrested him more thoroughly than his wife’s hand upon his arm; for Anne’s face, turned up to the Lieutenant’s in the candlelight, wore an expression her father had not, in point of fact, seen upon it before, which he recognised, with a small private jolt, as very like the look he had once seen on another face, a great many years before, in a cottage parlour, over a wooden horse.

The Lieutenant called the next day, with a propriety that left nothing whatever for even the Colonel’s exacting standards to object to, and asked, before he had been five minutes in the house, whether he might be permitted to see the drawing Miss Brandon had promised him; and Anne, blushing, produced a small sheet of paper upon which a laughing, weathered, entirely recognisable face looked back at him with an accuracy that made him sit quite still for a long moment before he could trust himself to speak.

“You have caught me exactly,” said he, at last, low. “I did not think you had ever troubled to notice it, let alone set it down.”

“I notice everything,” said Anne, with the particular frank simplicity that was, as her mother could have told him, entirely characteristic. “It is rather a curse, as a general rule. I am glad, for once, that it has been of some use.”

Matthew studied the drawing for some time before saying quietly, “You are very talented, Miss Brandon.”

Soon after, he was preparing to take his leave, when Henry informed him that he, Sarah, and Anne, along with one or both of their mothers, were planning to walk in Kensington Gardens at one o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, followed by a light lunch, and Matthew was welcome to join them if he would like.

Matthew said he could not say for certain that he could make it, but that he would try.

They had just entered Kensington Gardens when Anne caught sight of him. Lieutenant Wycliffe was sitting on a bench near the entrance and had been waiting for their arrival. Anne’s heart quickened. She had hoped he would come but had told herself not to let her hopes rise.

The group soon dispersed into three pairs; Henry and Sarah took the lead and were soon ahead of the rest, with Matthew and Anne following at a little distance, and leisurely strolling behind them all were Elinor and Marianne.

After exchanging some pleasantries and talking about some little events of the day, Matthew cleared his voice and said, “Miss Brandon, I am glad to have this opportunity to speak privately with you today. I feel an explanation is in order. I have enjoyed your company above anyone else’s these last few weeks. But I hesitate to act as I would like.”

Anne kept her eyes on the ground in front of her as they walked. His words were filling her with worry. She braced herself for what was coming next.

He continued, “As I mentioned on our first meeting, I am awaiting my orders. There is a high probability that I will be sent somewhere of a significant distance. It may not be, but it certainly could be.”

“Such as the West Indies,” Anne offered.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Of late there has been talk of various locations. I will not know where or for how long until I receive my orders. Therein lies the problem at hand. I cannot in good conscience begin a courtship without the lady understanding my situation. I believe I must say it at the beginning before either party has begun to feel … too much. Not everyone is willing to move away from their family, much less far away.”