Joanna Trollope: Sense & Sensibility

‘Perhaps she didn’t care?’

He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about her or Robert or my family or anybody. I can’t tell you how much I don’t care about them. All I care about, lovely Elinor with my ring on your finger, is you.’

‘What?’ Mrs Ferrars said. She held the telephone a little distance from her ear, as if it might scorch her.

Fanny Dashwood, ringing her mother from her new sitting room cum office at Norland Park, raised her voice even further.

‘It’s not good news, Mother. Are you sitting down?’

‘I hear better if I’m standing up,’ Mrs Ferrars said, as if explaining something to someone extremely stupid. ‘You know that.’

‘Mother,’ Fanny said, ‘it’s about Robert.’

‘What?’ Mrs Ferrars demanded, suddenly alert. ‘Is he ill?’

‘No, Mother,’ Fanny said. ‘No. He’s perfectly fine. But – but he’s got married, would you believe …’

There was a pause. Mrs Ferrars adjusted something in her mind. Then she said, ‘Nonsense.’

‘It’s not nonsense, Mother.’

‘If Robert were married,’ Mrs Ferrars said firmly, ‘he or the Mortons would have told me. He tells me everything.’

‘Mother,’ Fanny said, raising her voice again, ‘he hasn’t married Tassy Morton.’

‘He must have.’

‘He hasn’t, he hasn’t, he’s married – oh God, Mother – Robert has married Lucy Steele.’

There was a further pause. Then Mrs Ferrars said, ‘Who?’

‘Lucy Steele. The girl with the teeth and the sister. You know, Mother. She was going to marry Edward.’

Mrs Ferrars gave a little scream. ‘You’re making it up!’

‘I’m not, Mother. I’m not. They got married in Devon or something, from Lucy’s home, on an impulse.’

‘Why?’ Mrs Ferrars wailed. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, Mother, who knows? He’s always been a law unto himself.’

‘How could he do this to me?’ Mrs Ferrars cried. ‘How could he treat his own mother like this?’

‘It’s not about you, Mother,’ Fanny said crossly. ‘It’s about the family. And Father’s money.’

Mrs Ferrars seemed to pull herself together. ‘Well,’ she said in a much more decided tone, ‘they won’t get a penny of that.’

Fanny said wearily, ‘You don’t mean that, Mother.’

‘I do, I certainly do!’

‘No, you don’t. You adore Robert. You always forgive Robert.’

Mrs Ferrars said, unexpectedly, ‘Why isn’t that girl marrying Edward? After all the fuss?’

Fanny said sharply, ‘Because she knows which side her bread is buttered, Mother. And she knows Robert is your favourite.’

‘She’s right,’ Mrs Ferrars said, her voice somewhat softened, ‘I have always found Robert much easier to deal with. A sweeter nature, you know.’

‘So you’ll forgive him—’

‘I didn’t say that, Fanny.’

‘But you will. You’ll let Lucy worm her way in, with Robert’s help, and before you know it, she’ll have carte blanche to do up the house in Norfolk—’

‘Don’t be so jealous, Fanny,’ Mrs Ferrars said. ‘I’ve never liked sibling rivalry: you knew that. And you’ve had your fair share, and more. I don’t care for someone with a house like Norland begrudging her brother having a mere farmhouse in Norfolk.’

‘Mother, I never said, I never meant—’

‘In any case,’ Mrs Ferrars said, interrupting, ‘that house needs renovating. I would say, actually, that renovation is long overdue.’

Fanny gave a little shriek, and threw her phone across the room. Mrs Ferrars took her own phone away from her ear and shook it a little, as if in puzzlement, and then, with determined precision, began to dial Robert’s number.

Sir John Middleton was in his element. The weather was better, the house was full – both Bill Brandon and Abigail Jennings had returned to occupy their old bedrooms for at least a long weekend – that poor girl up at the cottage was on the mend, and there was also a full-blown romance going on up there between her sister and the F-word boy. Add to that the news that his son and heir had gained a place at his father’s old school – Mary was making an immense fuss about the boy boarding, at his age, but he had yet to silence her with reminders of pipes and tunes – and the signing of a satisfactory new contract with a clothing distributor in northern India, and Sir John could feel that all was pretty well in his good-natured if not over-sensitive world.

He was especially pleased to see old Bill back at Barton Park. It seemed months since he had been there, months in which Bill had been preoccupied with all the halfwits he seemed so devoted to, never mind that mad bad daughter of the girl he’d once been so keen on. Sir John shook his head. He had a shocking propensity to try and sort the wrecks, poor old Bill, and seemed never happier than when knee deep in other people’s problems and trouble. And it had had an effect, of course it had, ageing the poor fellow before his time, stiffening his morals, fossilising his sense of fun. But he seemed different this visit, very different, improved even. In fact, Sir John would go as far as to say that Bill was very nearly relaxed.

Last night, when they were all at dinner – nine of them round the table, and Sir John would ideally have liked double that number – and those girls were telling Bill what had happened to Robert Ferrars and Lucy Steele, Bill was laughing with the best of them. Mind you, Marianne was a brilliant mimic, and by the time she’d taken off Lucy Steele and old Mrs Ferrars, and Fanny Dashwood having the vapours, they were all of them sobbing with laughter. It had been a riot, an absolute riot. With many more riots to come, Sir John sincerely hoped. Not only was fun right up his street, but it livened Mary up nicely. She’d been, well, quite amenable later that night, even – dare he say it – a bit frisky. He beamed to himself and leaned forward to read something that had just popped up on his screen.

There was a knock on his office door.

‘Come!’ he called.

The door opened on to a familiar billow of scarves.

‘Jonno?’

‘Abi, my dear.’

‘Am I interrupting?’

‘Yes, Abi. You always are. I am a busy man.’

‘Two minutes, Jonno.’

He waved a hand towards a chair the other side of the desk.

‘Sit, you. No coffee, because I don’t want you staying.’

Abigail subsided into the chair. ‘I must have a little sound-off.’

‘Go ahead.’

Mrs Jennings settled her scarves. Then she leaned forward slightly.

‘Last night, dear. Huge fun. Enormous fun. And those girls are a joy, aren’t they? Bill looked a decade younger, even though there is no point in him gazing at Marianne. She could have her pick, the form she’s in right now, she has no need—’

‘Abi,’ Sir John said warningly.

Abigail collected herself. ‘Sorry, dear. Sorry. Well, what I wanted to say was that I’m afraid I just don’t care how rude they are about that little minx, Lucy Steele. I tell you, Jonno, she was in my sitting room, pleading poverty and true love for Edward, ten minutes before she runs off with his brother! And then, no sooner has she gone, than her sister tips up, having lent Lucy whatever she could spare, in a panic that Mrs Ferrars would have their guts for garters, and also distraught because she now couldn’t afford the plane fare to join her plastic surgeon at a villa party he’s having in Ibiza, or somewhere. So, me being as silly as I’m soft-hearted—’

‘Abi,’ Sir John said, ‘you could tell me all this any time. I may look as if I’m hardly ever working—’

Mrs Jennings shook her head. ‘I’m hopeless, dear. Really I am. But I’ll get to the point. And the point is – is that Ferrars boy really in love with Elinor?’