Page 21 of The Vanished Bennet Sister

She was wrong. The housemaid brought up a letter for her and Mary recognised the handwriting at once, that distinctive, forward-slanting script that she had come to know across several months of exchange.

My dearest Mary,

I write from London, which I did not anticipate doing so soon. A relation of mine, a cousin on my late husband's side, with whom I have remained on cordial terms, has taken ill. The illness is of a nature that requires someone to come to Town quickly. I am here now, settled in a comfortable townhouse on Jermyn Street. The cousin is improving, which is the most important thing, although the circumstance that brought me here has been rather anxious.

But I will not dwell on that, because I have something far more interesting to discuss, which is this: I am in London, and so are you, and the distance between us is now measured in streets rather than extended distance.

I have thought of you a great deal during the journey, and during the days since my arrival. I have been here a couple of days and have not written because the situation with the cousin has occupied most of my attention. Now I am writing to tell you I should like very much to meet you.

There is a flower garden in St James's Park that is often quiet in the mornings. I have walked there several times since my arrival and found it entirely free of the kinds of interruptions that make some locations in Town unsuitable for conversation. I suggest we meet there on a morning of your choosing. I will present myself accordingly.

I have thought often, in the past months, about what it will be like to meet the person whose opinions I have come to know so well through these pages. I find I am not apprehensive, which surprises me as I am not typically easy with new encounters, but I believe that reflects the unusual nature of what we have built here.

I look forward to that meeting, good friend. I am eager, at last, to see your face.

Write to me at the enclosed address and tell me when you will come.

Your friend, Elena

The pleasure Mary felt was immediate. It was strengthened by the unexpected knowledge that her friend was near and the distance between them had collapsed.

She had imagined meeting Elena at various points over the course of their correspondence and the activity had always produced a feeling of anticipation rather than dread. She was not afraid of the meeting.

The prospect of meeting a person whose thoughts she had come to know, who had asked her questions no one else except Mr Thwaite thought to ask and received her answers with complete understanding was a great deal.

However, the other part of her thoughts was overcome by a healthy sense of caution. Elena was a stranger. She knew Elena's mind, or at the very least what parts Elena had committed to paper, as a result of months of dedicated exchange on subjects that mattered. That stirred the development of a trust she did not consider illusory. The letters were what Elena composed, a meeting would illuminate Elena physically, and Mary’s hope was for those two details to reconcile into the woman she thought of as her friend.

She had not told anyone about the correspondence. This had seemed a decision with reasonable justifications, such as her mother's tendency towards excessive enquiry, Lydia and Kitty's capacity for mockery and the preference for a friendship that was wholly her own, unmediated by her family's various opinions of it. These justifications remained available to her, and she utilised them now, with somewhat less ease than before.

What gave her most pause was Mr Thwaite.

He was a careful man, especially because he had cause to be. She knew, without specific detail, that his first wife had died in circumstances involving misadventure of some kind. A robbery gone badly wrong and the loss had produced in him a vigilance about the people he admitted to his trust. He did not speak of it, but she had felt it in the deliberateness of his relationship with her family, in the thoroughness with which he satisfied himself about a person's character before he offered his own. She respected this in him.

She was less certain he would respect an extended correspondence with a woman she had never met, conducted in private, based on a missive circulated through a parish network.

Mary tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She reminded herself that she had simply not yet found the right moment to tell him about Elena.

She put the letter in the writing box with the others, and sat for a moment looking at the box.

She wanted to meet Elena. This was true. She felt a strong connection to her friend, one she did not often find easily and did not take lightly. Rather, she valued it because it had been built on the kind of exchange that most of her existing relationships did not accommodate. Elena asked questions that aligned with her interests and responded patiently to Mary’s own questions, which was, in Mary's experience of friendship, not common.

But she was not ready. Not yet. The proposition wanted more thought before she committed to it, particularly because it involved a meeting.

She would write back, Mary decided, and ask for more time. And she would be honest about the fact that her doing so was not due to mere reluctance. It was because she was a person who took matters seriously and with matching caution, a trait she hoped Elena would recognise and respect.

She adjusted in her seat and began to draft a response.

Sweet Elena,

I received your letter this afternoon and set about offering a reply with great haste and excitement. I am glad you are in London, and gladder still that your cousin is improving. I hope the improvement continues steadily, and that the anxiety of these past days has not been too great a tax on your own health.

Your proposal fills me with a joy I will not attempt to disguise. The prospect of meeting you properly, in person, with a face to attach to the voice I have been reading for so long, is one I have thought about since your first mention of the possibility. I want you to know that.

But I find I must ask, with all the honesty our correspondence has always permitted between us, for a little more time before I give you a firm answer about the meeting. This is not due to reluctance or unwillingness. I am merely someone who knows that the passage from written acquaintance to personal meeting deserves to be managed as well as can be, and who wishes to do so such that I can feel settled about afterwards. There are considerations I have not yet fully thought through, and I would rather do so and meet you properly than act irrationally.

I hope you will understand this and not take offence. You said you feel you know me already. I believe you, and I believe the same of you, and I think the foundation of our friendship is strong enough to permit me the time I am asking for without diminishing what we have built.

I am glad, at the very least, that the distance between us is now measured in streets. Your replies will arrive within a day, which is a considerable improvement on what we have been accustomed to, and a comfort in itself.