Chapter Text
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, wedged between a bill from the butcher and a note from Mrs Kimball that Margaret Gardiner did not intend to read until after supper, when she had fortified herself sufficiently with wine. She recognized Elizabeth's hand immediately — the slightly impatient script, as though the pen could not keep pace with the mind behind it.
She read it standing at the writing desk, holding the page toward the window where the afternoon light was better.
Dear Aunt, I find I must appeal to you, as the person whose judgment I trust above all others, and whose affection for Mary I know to be genuine rather than merely dutiful.
Margaret's mouth curved slightly. Elizabeth had always known how to open a letter.
She read on, the contents familiar - though Elizabeth rendered them with more candor than her sisters would dare. Mary was unhappy. Unhappy in the deeper way that had everything to do with what life with her Mother had done to a girl of unappreciated intelligence.
She diminishes here. I watch her do it and I cannot stop it. Mama means no harm, but Mama's version of comfort is non-existent. I am asking you to save her from it, if you can, even temporarily.
Margaret lowered the letter.
Through the wall, she could hear the household in its ordinary motion — the cook arguing cheerfully with the kitchen maid, the sound of Edward's boots on the stairs. The trip to the Lakes that had been already forming in her mind, before Elizabeth's letter had arrived, was now taking shape now into something with a more deliberate edge.
She had always seen Mary - a mind that worked carefully and honestly, a character who had been told so consistently that she was the plain one, the difficult one, the least of the Bennet sisters, that she had very nearly believed it. Margaret had watched her resist it whilst in London and had loved her more for the resistance.
The Lakes, she thought. Fresh air. Distance from her family. The mountains and the water. Wordsworth's own country spread out before a young woman who had recently discovered her passion for poetry... for feeling.
She picked up the letter again and read to the end. Elizabeth closed with her love, her thanks, and a postscript: She will not come if she thinks it is charity. You will need a reason she can accept.
Margaret set the letter down and began to think.
------
Mr Hayward arrived the following afternoon without warning. He had the comfortable presumption of a man who had been welcomed so many times that formality had quietly dissolved. Margaret had long since stopped minding the lack of notice. He was shown to the sitting room, where she was engaged in all the activities that accompanied planning travel.
"You look pleased with yourself," she said, looking up.
"Both cases. Settled this morning." He dropped into the chair opposite with none of the ceremony he'd have employed elsewhere.
"Both of them?"
"Yes." There was satisfaction in his tone and she felt a genuine pleasure for him. He had worked monstrously hard — she knew this from Edward, who knew it from the circles in which both men moved. Tom was not a man who wore effort visibly. It tended to surface only afterward, in the loosening of tension around the eyes.
"Then you deserve considerably more than the refreshment I am about to offer you," she said, "and I hope you will accept my congratulations without deflection, because I intend them seriously."
He smiled at that. "Accepted, seriously."
She set her lists aside and rang for tea.
He was quiet for a moment and she let it sit. It was an easy quiet of two people who were so comfortable with one another, they did not feel the need to fill a room. Outside, a carriage passed in the street below. She watched him notice it without seeing it, his gaze somewhere near the window but not through it.
"Is there something else?" she asked.
He turned back. "Yes. I suppose there is. Miss Baxter and I — our understanding is at an end." he shifted his weight in his chair then continued, "She ended it. She is — there is a Mr Powell, I believe. She is in love with him."
"Oh Tom. I am sorry to hear it," Margaret exclaimed quietly. She watched his face for signs of sadness but what she saw was not grief. There was a residue of appropriate emotion that ought to accompany such news, but beneath it seemed to only be relief.
"It is— She deserves to be with someone who—" He looked faintly frustrated with himself. "I find I cannot be as sorry as I ought to be."
"Perhaps," Margaret said carefully, pouring the tea that had arrived, "that tells you something about yourself."
He accepted the cup, his eyes dropping. "Yes," he said after a moment. "I think it does."
She thought of Elizabeth's letter, of Mary at Pemberley, and Mr Hayward, who could clearly not suppress his relief at being free.
"We leave for the Lakes on Friday next," she said cautiously, in the tone one might use when mentioning the weather. "Edward and I. We are to fetch Mary and bring her along with us."
Tom looked up, interest crossing his face before he schooled his features.
"She has had a difficult time at Pemberley with her Mother," Margaret continued, with complete equanimity. "The fresh air will do her good, and Edward has been wanting to walk the fells again since before we were married. It is long overdue."
"That sounds — " Something had shifted in him, subtly. "She will love it, I think."
"I believe she will." Margaret regarded him over her teacup. "You have never been to the Lakes, have you?"
"No." A slight, rueful note. "I have read Wordsworth until the pages are soft and never managed to visit there."
"Then you should come."
He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"You have just won two cases after weeks of thankless work, you have had an emotional blow — however well you are bearing it — and you have been reading about the Lakes for years without going. The logic seems entirely straightforward to me." She set down her teacup. "I imagine your practice requires some winding-down before you can escape — but join us when you are able. We shall be at Grasmere for at least a fortnight."
"I couldn't impose—"
"You are not being invited out of charity, Mr Hayward. You are being invited because I shall want someone to guide our adventures. And who better than a Wordsworth expert?" She permitted herself a mild smile. "You see, it is entirely selfish."
Tom laughed and she watched the last of his hesitation dissolve in it.
"There would be arrangements to make," he said. "A few outstanding matters—"
"Naturally. Come when you can. A week after us, two weeks — it doesn't signify. Grasmere is not difficult to find, and Wordsworth himself found it worth the trouble."
He was quiet for a moment, but it was not a heavy moment, something lighter. "Yes," he said finally. "All right. Let me consult —."
The door opened, interrupting him. Edward Gardiner appeared, looking a tad bit disheveled but excited to see Tom as the latter rose to greet him.
"Hayward! Good timing — I've just been thinking about you." Edward shook his hand with obvious pleasure. "You'll stay for supper, surely."
"I've just invited him to the Lakes," Margaret said pleasantly.
Edward turned to her. "Have you?"
"He works too hard and has no one looking after him."
"Good Lord, man." Edward regarded Tom with an air of scrutiny. "You must come. The fells are — well. There's nothing like it. "
"He carries Wordsworth everywhere and has never had the sense to follow him home." Madeline joked.
"Then it's settled." Edward sat down heavily in the remaining chair and began talking about mountains and Thomas Hayward found himself committed to a fortnight in the Lake District.
Margaret refilled the teacups, very pleased with herself indeed.
------
Tom left in better spirits than he had arrived in. Margaret stood at the window and watched him cross the street, the sound of his footsteps fading toward the main road. Behind her, Edward was already in his after dinner chair with his book opened, the house tuned to the domestic coziness that she had spent years constructing with care.
"Kind of you," Edward said, turning his page. "Asking Hayward along."
"Mmm" she agreed.
"And the thing with Miss Baxter. Powell's a decent man, from what I understand. Better suited."
"Much better suited," Margaret said, still looking at the street.
"Good that he's free to join us then," Edward declared.
Margaret smiled, though there was no one to see it through the window.
Free, yes. That was precisely the word. Tom Hayward was a man recently liberated and Mary Bennet was in Pemberley with a mind and a heart that deserved better than the life currently on offer.
She moved away from the window and picked up Elizabeth's letter from the writing desk, where she had left it.
I am asking you to save her from it, if you can, even temporarily.
Margaret folded the letter and set it in the drawer. Temporarily, Elizabeth had written - which was well-intentioned but, in Margaret's opinion, too modest an ambition.
She returned to her chair, took up her own book, and said nothing further on the subject.