This is my contribution to an annual Christmas Celebrations anthology of Jane Austen Fan Fiction organized by Cristina Huelsz. (Available in English and Spanish.) This story is a sequel to Persuasion, imagining Christmas in 1815, the war against Bonaparte finally ended and Captain Wentworth happily ashore for good. (I wrote a stand-alone sequel focusing on the eldest Elliot daughter, Elizabeth.)
“I hope he’s happy now.”
Frederick Wentworth had just confirmed what he already knew from the sounds that were battering the side of the inn for an hour or more. The rain, nearly sleet, was heavy, angry and on a par with some of the worst storms he’d experienced in the North Atlantic as the captain of one or another of His Majesty’s ships.
He’d flung open the curtains, and it sufficed to let just enough of the encroaching dawn’s light into the chamber so his wife could see his angry silhouette against the window.
It was cold and the fire had gone out at some point in the night, and it was too early for a boy to come up and relight it.
“Please, Frederick, come back where it is warm.”
She could see his head drop and his shoulders droop as he stared out.
The movement had a cleansing effect on him. He did not want her to see this side of him, the anger for having agreed to the stupidity that he thought he, as a man of some, if slight, means, would enjoy now that he was retired from the Navy.
It was not for himself that he was angry. Harsh weather was barely worth a mention in the diary he kept. It was her. Anne. She was a hardy soul and if he still had a ship she would have happily boarded her with him as his sister sailed with the Admiral on several crossings.
It was not just Anne, though. It was her belly. It had been a miracle of sorts. Their one night of intimacy as husband and wife before he was forced to abandon her in Plymouth to join the fight against Bonaparte. Neither he nor his fellow sailors ended up having much to do during this particular war with the French, and the Royal Navy’s dominance deterred all but the most negligent smugglers from trying to run the blockade.
With no French Navy to send ships to be captured and sold off as prizes, his last duty as an officer turned into his most boring, boredom only broken with lavish dinners served aboard the squadron’s flagship and the occasional letters from England.
It was only after the war was over and the ships sailed into port to await their fates and he saw Anne awaiting his arrival from a Portsmouth quay that he learned her great secret. How proud he was.
After a last night of reverie with his fellow officers, it was off early the next morning to Kellynch Hall. While it had long been Anne’s home, financial difficulties had forced her father, Sir Walter Elliot, Baronet, to abandon it for cheaper quarters in Bath and what turned into an extraordinary coincidence of the type one normally only sees in a novel, that is, that Sir Walter’s estate was leased to an Admiral Croft and that Admiral Croft was married to the aforementioned sister of Captain Frederick Wentworth, Sophia.
The coincidence is very little time turned into reconciliation and from there to marriage between the sailor and the Baronet’s daughter Anne.
Therein lay the great difficulty.
Sir Walter was a proud and some would say disagreeable and pompous fellow. And he did not like his son-in-law.
* * *
Yes, the Captain could handle the weather. Anne normally could too. But she was heavy with their child and Wentworth would curse his father-in-law for all eternity if something happened to that baby because they were foolhardy enough to agree to go to him when he refused to come to them.
“Them.” It was the most natural thing for the Christmas season. Wentworth and Anne were living at Kellynch Hall with Admiral and Mrs. Croft. Lady Russell was just down the road at Kellynch Lodge. Anne’s sister Mary and her husband and their children were less than three miles distant as were Mary’s father- and mother-in-law the Musgroves, who lived in a grand if overly traditional house at Uppercross.
Plus the Musgroves’ daughters, both married and nearby. Including Louisa Musgrove, now married to Captain Benwick, a great friend of Wentworth’s. And it was near enough that other fellow officers who’d settled in Lyme Regis could journey for a day or two, the Hall having more than enough room for a flotilla of visitors.
Against this stood Sir Walter and Anne’s eldest sister, Elizabeth. They were exiled to Camden Place in Bath after Sir Walter’s financial malpractice, he being of the view that a Baronet must live the life of a Baronet without regard to whether he had the funds to do so.
Wentworth had long before learned to shield his true emotions from his crew. Now, he took a breath and after closing the curtains inched his way back to the bed and soon his anger slipped away as he drifted into a deep sleep with his right arm wrapped around his wife’s side and resting comfortably on her belly.
Wentworth did not know for how long his resumed sleep lasted, but it was bright when he reopened the curtains. The storm had passed and there were only a few lingering clouds drifting above the town from west to east.
It will be a fine day, he knew from his long experience on the bridge of one of His Majesty’s war machines. He looked at the bed. Anne was still dozing, lying on her back emitting a slight snore and covered by a blanket.
He stepped to the bed, off to her side of it. He’d always found her subtle beauty far more enchanting than what her sister Elizabeth displayed but each time he looked at her he surprised himself by feeling, indeed knowing that she was more beautiful and more enchanting with each passing day, even when, on this morning in the harsh morning light streaming in, her hair was splayed hither and thither and her lips were quivering and she was giving a bit of a snort with each breath.
And he realized that the early dawn anger that had bristled through him was misplaced. She was strong. Had she been a man, she’d have been able to race up the mast as quickly and adeptly as any of his sailors. But she was no man, as she’d proved to him again and again and, he knew, would prove to him forever.
Still, he remained concerned about their child. As they were nearly to Bath, it being only two or three hours away, assuming that the roads were not washed out by the storm, and there would be more than adequate medical care for her when they arrived, he understood why she insisted they make the journey. He bridled at his own selfishness.
Yes, she was never properly appreciated by her father or her sister. Either of her sisters for that matter. And they never understood why he would have any interest in her, particularly in contrast to that cousin of hers who turned out to be a true libertine with his lover encamped not so discreetly in London—which could not be blamed on him per se since few such lovers were secretly maintained in town, which would in part defeat the purpose of having a mistress in the first place—who would inherit the Baronetcy.
The carriage rolled to a stop in front of 32 Camden Place in the early afternoon. The sun still had an hour or so of life for the day and the rain of the morning had been replaced by a deep chill of the afternoon. Captain and Mrs. Wentworth were quickly tended to by the small staff that Sir Walter was able to maintain, and they were warming themselves by the fire in the sitting room shortly after they were through the doors.
They’d scarcely had time to settle themselves when Elizabeth flowed into the room. Her hair was up and her cheeks were rouged as she came to them, attired as if visiting persons of some significance instead of her near relations.
“I am so glad you have come,” she said, holding both of Anne’s hands and directing a nod in the Captain’s direction. “I will say, sister, that it is deadly quiet here now that everyone has left. I should very much prefer the presence of my family to the scraps that are here at this time of year.”
Elizabeth asked that refreshments be brought in while she directed the other two to a group of chairs set up close enough to the fire to have its heat reach them.
“Father will be down shortly,” she said. “He is so busy with his correspondence, you know,” although neither of the Wentworths could have any idea with whom Sir Walter would correspond, or at least any idea of who would have the slightest interest in whatever it was that Sir Walter had to say. But they nodded their appreciation and the reason for the delay as a footman accompanied the butler in bringing trays with drinks and food into the room and setting it up for the visitors.
When the three were again alone, Elizabeth could not refrain herself from standing and reaching towards Anne, hesitating as she asked, “May I?” before Anne took her sister’s hand and lowered it to her belly.
Elizabeth’s fingers drifted up and down and made a slight circle at the peak before pulling her hand away.
“It is so real now, don’t you think?”
Anne adjusted herself in the chair with a slight side-to-side motion and said, “I will say it has been very, very real to me for some time.”
As she said this, the doors opened and in walked Sir Walter.
“I do not understand why I must repeat and repeat what I have told them a thousand times,” he began, though to no one in particular in the room. With a shake, he appeared to restore his mind to his body in the rented sitting room and stood, watching the others stand as appropriate.
He and Captain Wentworth exchanged slight bows.
“Sir Walter.”
“Captain Wentworth.”
After a similar exchange with Anne, the Baronet asked her how she was feeling and how the trip was and how Mary was when she left her at Uppercross and…
Elizabeth had to interrupt him to suggest that they all sit down, a suggestion for which Anne was most grateful, but one that Sir Walter ignored in the interest of lifting a biscuit from a plate on a side table and savoring his first bite of it before joining the others in their chairs closer to the fire.
“Have you had one of these biscuits, Wentworth? They are quite fine, and they are delivered each morning from the finest bakery in Bath. They do not come cheap, I can assure you, but as with so much else one cannot scrimp on the necessities of life, can one?”
He took a bite of the final morsel of the biscuit and pulled a kerchief from his sleeve to clean his fingers, all while the others remained silent in the presence of this performance.
Elizabeth was sitting in the chair to her father’s left. She leaned closer to him and said in a low voice that could not help but be heard by the others, “Father.”
The word broke his reverie.
“Oh, yes. Dear Anne, please tell me how you are progressing with your…with your…situation.”
“I am quite well, father. We, especially my dear husband, were concerned about the rigors of the travel here but I assured him that there was little to fear and in the event I have been proved correct.”
“I am pleased to hear it. Very pleased. I am glad that your journey was not unpleasant and that you will be able to spend time with your father and dear sister.”
He suddenly stood up and returned to the side table and lifted the last of the remaining biscuits.
He said, though addressing the now empty plate itself, “You cannot scrimp on the necessities of life.”
The cold air that had followed the storm and arrived in Bath hours before Captain and Mrs. Wentworth did decided that it would remain in Bath for as long as Captain and Mrs. Wentworth did. This meant that Anne was deprived of the opportunity to stroll through the town and even go to the Pump Room as she had when she’d moved in with her father and sister at Camden Place nearly a year earlier.
Ignoring her protests, Frederick would not allow it, and her awareness of his anxiety on the point restrained her from objecting to this. So she spent much of the day reading or doing needlepoint in the drawing room with her father, her sister, and her husband lounging about nearby.
When Christmas morning dawned, the Captain relented and agreed that he and his wife would accompany Sir Walter and Elizabeth to services at the fine church that catered to residents of their caliber in Bath. It was too far to walk in the weather and with Anne in her condition, so they’d arranged for a carriage to convey them.
The church itself was not as crowded as it was in season and, it must be said, the bulk of those in attendance, including the titled parishioners, were in Bath because of financial difficulties of the sort visited upon Sir Walter Elliot, Baronet.
The Christmas service in the chilled air of the church was mercifully brief and it was not long before the residents of Camden Place were returning home, after exchanges of pleasantries with the vicar and the other parishioners on the steps of church.
“I know how much you would prefer to be with your sister and all the others in Kellynch,” Anne said when she and Wentworth were back in their room.
“You must admit, my dear, that there is hardly a hint of Christmas let alone the spirit of Christmas in this desolate place.”
Anne shook her head at her husband, as they were sitting on either side of their bed to prepare for such festivities as Sir Walter and Elizabeth had arranged. They’d returned from the church fifteen minutes earlier and were glad to again be alone. They were both creatures of being alone, he as the necessarily aloof Navy captain and she as the subtly rebellious second daughter in a baronet’s family.
In part, though, it was independence that allowed them to be happiest when they were, as a couple, alone. As they now were.
“Christmas should be with all of one’s family.” His stubbornness was seeping in again. “I sometimes do not understand why we could not all be together with Sophia and the Admiral and all the rest. Even Lady Russell, lounging in the vastness of the great house.”
“Yet in the end you have come to understand it, have you not?”
“I have. I know how keenly he would feel it a humiliation to be a guest at the Hall. I know it is wrong of me to continue with these feelings, or at least to continue speaking of these feelings now that we are your father’s guests, and I will promise to refrain from doing so any further.”
At this Anne rose from her side and walked around to his. He leaned back so that his lap would be available to her, and she sat on it, spreading her arms around her husband’s neck so they could stare into one another’s eyes. She felt his arms tightening around her waist before he pulled his left one away so his hand could run across her belly.
“It can’t be much longer.”
“God willing,” she said, “it will not be.”
He leaned his head to hers and she lifted hers to his and their lips met in a slight but significant kiss which ended when she lifted herself from him with some effort and a slight bit of assistance from her husband and his arm and again stood.
“We must make ourselves presentable.”
“Aye, my dear. Aye,” he answered with a formal, Royal Navy salute and in a moment the pair of them were in disarray as they changed into what was appropriate for the Christmas dinner.
* * *
My Dear Sophia,
I trust this finds you well. I write with the most wonderful of news. I am a father! I am a father of the sweetest of God’s creature, a small but, we believe healthy, girl who is very pink and very round. Her mother, thank the Lord, is well and relieved and even more excited about this wonder than even your brother.
I cannot adequately describe matters as much of it is in the realm of womanhood. I can, however, describe the event, now that it, and the danger, appear to have passed.
We left our chamber to join Sir Walter and Elizabeth for a Christmas dinner. We had attended services with them at the church you will recall attending when you and the Admiral were in Bath. It was cold, but my dearest Anne was well bundled, and we took a hired carriage to and from the Church.
Afterwards, as Anne and I prepared for the dinner her father and sister had arranged for the holiday, I felt the tug of my heart as I have long felt it about her and I verily believe that she has felt about your humble brother.
We were in final preparations and about to leave the room to join her family for Christmas when she suddenly became distressed. I was near enough to her to grab hold of her and gently restore her to the bed.
I will not describe it but even for a naval man accustomed to the chaos of battle I was taken aback. I pulled the cord and a footman was almost immediately with us and he raised the alarm and before I fully was aware of what was occurring a physician was being summoned, no mean thing given it was early afternoon on Christmas day.
Blessedly one was located and agreed to tend to Anne. When he arrived, I was exiled from our bedchamber and cloistered with Sir Walter. Elizabeth was there briefly before taking my place with Anne. I will say that she comported herself with the utmost care and affection for her sister in the trying hours while I was left to pace and pace, much as I so often did on the quarterdeck of my ship before an engagement with the French.
It was a long battle that I could not participate in. Thankfully, Elizabeth and the doctor came to me with reports of how Anne fared and that she was doing well. She, like you, Sophia, is a strong woman but my knowledge of that fact could not prevent me from being anxious for her and our child.
I have already revealed the outcome! You are an aunt. Aunt Sophia. Now it is for you and the Admiral to come to us here as we cannot go to you. Sir Walter has generously set aside our rooms though I fear there is not enough space on Camden Place for anyone else.
Anne is writing separately to Lady Russell and to her sister to invite them to come. She tells me how pleased she will be should you and the Admiral join her great friend Lady Russell in coming to her and especially in coming to your new niece. Aunt Sophia!
I will confess that this result is vastly superior to any success I have had in the service of the King, to all the prize money I have accumulated and all the battles I have won. My thoughts of pride for being a Captain in service of his country pale in comparison to being a father in service to the slightest and pinkest girl in the world.
Yours most affectionately,
Frederick
Dermody House 