Page 111

He called on Friday, five days after they had talked in the park.

And when they took a turn in the small garden, she told him that she could not say she was altogether unafraid of the future he offered; but that she had decided he was worth it all the same.

For several moments Matthew could only look at her. The anxious restraint that had governed his manner throughout their conversations of late slowly disappeared, and in its place came a smile of such warmth and evident relief that Anne felt she had never truly understood the extent of his hopes until she saw them so suddenly fulfilled. He took her hand with a tenderness that seemed at variance with the strength of his emotions.

“You have made me happier than I know how to tell you,” said he.

From that moment on their courtship began in earnest. Matthew and Anne walked together in the gardens when the weather permitted, rode with Marianne and Colonel Brandon through the park, and occasionally found themselves seated beside one another during the long summer evenings when the family gathered around the pianoforte. He had a standing invitation to join them for dinner when the family did not have a prior engagement. They danced at every ball, and joined Henry and Sarah on their daily walks, with Marianne and Elinor as chaperones.

They attended the opera, in a party that included, by careful design, both families; and it was there, in the dim gold light between the acts, that the Lieutenant, finding himself for one unguarded moment entirely alone with her at the back of the box, took her hand, without any great ceremony, and said, in a voice not perfectly steady, that he did not know how a man of four hundred a year was meant to go about telling a young lady that he had fallen in love with her, but that he had decided the honest way was generally the best, and so there it was, said plainly, and she might do with it whatever she thought proper.

Anne did not answer him in words at all, for the moment; she drew out, instead, from the small calf-bound book her father had given her, a folded sheet, and put it into his hand. It was a drawing of the two of them, done from memory, in the attitude of that very first evening at Lady Stewart’s — his face caught in the exact instant before the laugh arrived, and her own beside it, turned up to his.

“I believe that answers the question rather more honestly than I could manage in words.”

It was some considerable time before either of them troubled to return to the box in front, where Marianne, glancing back once, with perfect understanding, declined to hurry them, and the Colonel, beside her, having been thoroughly and separately informed by his wife that the Lieutenant’s family was every bit as respectable as his own inquiries had already confirmed, found that he had, for the first time that Season, nothing whatever left to object to, and contented himself with watching the second act with an expression of grudging and entirely genuine contentment.

Matthew had asked Anne to meet him in the small morning room after breakfast.

When she entered, he stood beside the fireplace with a folded letter in his hand.

“Matthew?”

“I have received my orders.”

“Your regiment?”

“We are to sail for Upper Canada, Kingston, the first of September. We shall be stationed at Fort Henry.”

Anne tried to smile. “Is that very far?”

“Farther than you would like.”

He took her hands.

“The Atlantic passage may take five or six weeks, perhaps longer. From Quebec, we must continue by steamer through the St Lawrence and the lakes toward Kingston. We shall not simply step ashore at the fort.”

“And how long will you be there?”

“That is the difficulty. The posting is expected to last several years. Seven would not be unusual. It may be longer.”

“How much longer?”

“Perhaps ten.”

“Ten years?”

“Possibly. I may be granted leave or transferred, but Canada will be my home for much of the next decade.”

Anne lowered her eyes.

“Fort Henry is a substantial fortress, and Kingston an established town, but our quarters may be small and military. We should have to arrange our own household, perhaps employing a local woman for cooking and cleaning. Society would consist chiefly of the garrison and a few Kingston families.”

“And winter,” he added.

Anne knew from his expression that this troubled him most.

“Kingston’s winters are severe by English standards. Snow may make travel difficult, the harbour may freeze, and provisions must be stored. Letters from England may take weeks or months.”