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  MARGARET DASHWOOD’S

  DIARY

  Sense and Sensibility Mysteries, Book 1

  ANNA ELLIOTT

  a WILTON PRESS book

  Smashwords Edition

  MARGARET DASHWOOD’S DIARY

  Sense and Sensibility Mysteries, Book 1

  Copyright © 2014 Anna Elliott

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s (or Jane Austen’s) imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, please visit www.AnnaElliottBooks.com.

  Anna Elliott can be contacted at [email protected].

  WILTON PRESS

  About

  Margaret Dashwood learned from her older sisters—sensible Elinor and romantic Marianne—that the path of true love is rarely easy or smooth. And yet Margaret grew up dreaming of one day finding love and romance of her own. Now, smarting from the pain of a broken engagement, Margaret has travelled to stay with her now-married sisters in order to heal.

  But life is still far from smooth: John Willoughby, Marianne’s first love, has unexpectedly returned to once again complicate the Dashwood sisters’ lives. Colonel Brandon, Marianne’s husband, has been commissioned to apprehend a ruthless ring of smugglers operating in the neighbourhood. And when a mysterious figure from Margaret’s past returns, Margaret realises that she herself may hold the key to uncovering the smuggling gang. Worse, she comes to suspect that she faces an impossible choice of her own: not between sense and sensibility, but between duty and her own heart.

  Foreword

  A few preliminary words are in order on:

  -Jane Austen’s Dashwood sisters vs. movie versions

  -Col. Brandon’s name

  -Choice of language

  -The term ‘Gypsy’

  -Family trees

  Jane Austen’s Dashwood sisters vs. movie versions

  As a young teenager, I fell in love with the Ang Lee–directed film version of Sense and Sensibility before ever reading—and falling even more deeply in love with—the book. (Forgive me—I was only somewhere about 16!). The movie, starring Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, and Emilie François as Marianne, Elinor, and Margaret Dashwood, was quite lodged in my consciousness, though, such that the image of the Dashwood sisters as three blond-haired girls was fixed in my mind. I was quite surprised, actually, when I looked more closely at the descriptions that Jane Austen gives of her heroines.

  Of the three Dashwood sisters, Marianne’s physical description is the longest; she is described with the lines:

  Her form, though not so correct as her sister’s, in having the advantage of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardily be seen without delight.

  Although Marianne’s hair colour is not specified, the combination of brown skin and very dark eyes seemed to me to make dark hair the most likely.

  Elinor’s appearance is described only in more general terms. Austen says that she has a “delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure.”

  Although Margaret Dashwood’s character has been brilliantly expanded in the modern-day movie versions of Sense and Sensibility, in the original text her character is scarcely discussed at all. Most Austen scholars theorise that she is a vestigial character, so to speak, left over from an earlier draft which Austen ultimately discarded. Her part in the novel’s final version is decidedly small. Her spoken dialogue is written out (rather than merely paraphrased by the narrator) in only two scenes of the novel, and the book devotes only a single paragraph to her description, both introducing and more or less dismissing her with:

  Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humoured, well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne’s romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

  Without (of course) in any way wishing to criticise the immortal Jane Austen, I confess that that paragraph has always made me feel a bit indignant on Margaret’s behalf. Would any of us want to have our future determined based solely on a judgement of our 13-year-old self? (In Jane’s defence, she was likely very young herself when she created Margaret’s character; though not published until years later, she wrote the first draft of the book that would become Sense and Sensibility when she was just nineteen.) In imagining what might have happened to the cast of characters after the close of the book, I wondered especially about Margaret. How might she have grown up? How would her older sisters’ romantic trials and eventual marriages have affected her? Would she in time have outgrown the romance-without-much-sense which Jane Austen describes? I hope Jane Austen—and the reader—will forgive me for wanting to give Margaret her own story, and give her character a bit of a second chance.

  Col. Brandon’s name

  Jane Austen never reveals Col. Bradon’s first name in Sense and Sensibility. I decided to call him ‘Christopher’ to be consistent with the Ang Lee movie and with as much of recent Austenesque popular culture as possible.

  Choice of language

  Margaret Dashwood’s Diary primarily uses British conventions for spelling and punctuation (e.g., travelling rather than the American traveling, realise rather than realize, practice as a noun but practise as a verb, etc.). British convention also differs from American in terms of when it is appropriate to include punctuation within quotation marks, and the appropriate usage for single and double quotation marks. However, the earliest copies of Sense and Sensibility followed the current American convention for single/double quotes, so that is what I have used for Margaret’s diary.

  The term ‘Gypsy’

  One final note on language: Today, the term ‘Gypsy’ is considered by some to be a pejorative term, at least in some uses. In Margaret’s day, the term would not have had the same negative connotation and would have been the most probable term for someone of Margaret’s social standing to use. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English term gipsy or gypsy originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. (Although the Roma really came from India, it was once believed that they originated in Egypt.) During the 16th and 17th centuries the name was written in various ways: Egipcian, Egypcian, ’gypcian. The word gipsy/gypsy comes from the spellings which had lost the initial capital E, and this is one reason why it is often spelled with the initial g in lowercase. (Read more on Wikipedia.) In Margaret Dashwood’s day, Gypsy was usually not capitalised; however, I have chosen to capitalise it out of respect for the ethnic group.

  Family trees

  I have included family trees in an appendix to clarify the relationships in Margaret Dashwood’s Diary.

  And now, without further ado, here’s Margaret. Happy reading!

  MARGARET DASHWOOD’S

  DIARY

  Sunday 30 May 1802

  I had not intended to begin a new diary book, so soon after tearing my last one into shreds. But there is something I am of a mind to try—a little along the lines of the nature journals I kept as a child. I abandoned them all when I was thirteen and we had to leave Norland Park. But I know that at one point I had three entire notebooks filled with methodical observations on the squirrels that lived in the trees just outside my bedro
om window. So, then:

  Symptoms of Broken Heart

  Lack of appetite:

  None.

  Pale, listless demeanour:

  None. If anything, my face is a little more tan than usual from spending so much of the last week out of doors. I can never remember to keep my bonnet on all of the time.

  Weeping:

  None whatsoever. I hate to cry—I have ever since I was a child.

  Desire to see Aubrey Neville again:

  None, unless it is to hit him or push him into a lake.

  (Depressing) Conclusion:

  I cannot have been in love with Aubrey after all.

  Monday 31 May 1802

  It has just occurred to me that if I mean to be scientific about yesterday’s observations in this journal, I had better set down a better description of myself.

  My full name is Margaret Mary Dashwood, and I am eighteen years of age. I—

  I have just realised the depressing fact that I have no idea of how best to describe myself.

  Ever since I was thirteen—ever since my father died—I have been trying to force myself into the role of the perfect society girl. I may have missed going for long walks and lying on the ground to sketch beetles and riding bareback, without a saddle—none of which are proper, perfect-society-girl activities. But I still gave them up. Or snuck them in only occasionally, when I was certain no one was about to see.

  Marianne and my mother were always talking of romance and happy endings—and at age thirteen, in the midst of that year of loss, I wanted desperately to believe that future happiness was still possible. If it meant learning to dance and flutter my eyelashes and never bringing up at the dinner table the interesting fact I had just learned about the mating habits of snails … that was what I would do.

  I thought I had succeeded, too—even if the role sometimes pinched like a pair of too-tight shoes.

  I got engaged to Aubrey, who seemed perfect in every regard. Handsome, well-mannered, rich …

  But I am wandering off track, describing Aubrey instead of myself.

  I am the youngest of three sisters. Elinor is six years older than I am, and Marianne three and a half. I look nothing like them at all, in that my hair is fair and my eyes are blue. I have been told that I look very like my mother did when she was young—though her hair is entirely grey now.

  Our father died when I was thirteen, and we were forced to leave Norland Park where I had grown up and move to Devonshire, where a cousin of my mother’s offered us a small cottage. Then nearly four years ago, my sister Elinor moved into Dorsetshire when she married Edward Ferrars, who is the vicar of Delaford. A bit over two years ago, Marianne married Colonel Brandon, Delaford’s squire and the owner of Delaford House.

  And now I have come here to stay with Marianne. I had to, if I wanted to maintain any kind of grip on my sanity.

  I cannot fault my mother for feeling anxious, considering what she suffered with Marianne four years ago, when Willoughby broke her heart. But my mother kept insisting day in and day out that I ought to sit down or lie down or eat something to keep up my strength. She appeared to have instructed Leah—our cook—to prepare every recipe I have ever expressed a partiality for, beginning with my passion for treacle tart and roly-poly jam pudding when I was five years old.

  Mama is so sweet and means so well—which is why I forced myself to eat them. Though unfortunately I suspect that all she has accomplished is to ensure that I will loathe treacle tart for the entire rest of my life.

  I finally told her I thought an extended stay with Marianne and Elinor would promote my recovery.

  Marianne’s other houseguests here are Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. Charlotte Palmer is the daughter of Mrs. Jennings, and she and her husband have an estate of their own in Somersetshire—a place called Cleveland. But while passing through Delaford on what was supposed to be a brief visit to Colonel Brandon and Marianne, Mrs. Palmer was unlucky enough to break her ankle—and she and her husband have been forced to stay this past week. According to the surgeon who attended her, she will have to remain at least three weeks more, until she has healed enough that carriage travel will no longer painfully jar the broken bones.

  And that is the whole of our household, aside from the servants, since Colonel Brandon has been assigned to his post in Weymouth, and is only able to travel back once or twice in a month.

  Tuesday 1 June 1802

  At least I was not run over by a team of runaway horses today. I—

  Actually, I am not sure there is any point in writing more. When the best that can be said of a day is that one was not actually trampled to death, can there be anything of material value to add?

  However, there is very little else for me to do. I cannot read the newspapers. Ever since the murder of those poor, unfortunate excisemen in Weymouth last month, Marianne’s housekeeper has forbidden newspapers from being brought into the house—on the grounds that such news will only increase my sister’s fears for her husband, which will be bad for the baby. My other options include determinedly not thinking about Aubrey—because every time I do, my fingertips tingle with the urge to break something. Or conversing with Mrs. Palmer—who has told me three times already how very ‘droll’ she thinks diary-writing.

  Both of which make even writing a full account of today’s events seem preferable.

  Marianne and I walked down to the parsonage this morning to visit with Elinor. The distance between Delaford House and the parsonage is not great—not even half a mile. But Marianne was still hot and uncomfortable and out of temper by the time we arrived.

  I should explain that my sister Marianne is about four months gone with her and Colonel Brandon’s first child. Not far enough that the baby shows very much—only as a very slight bump pushing out the front of her gown. But still enough that she is thoroughly uncomfortable with the summer heat, and generally cross with everyone and everything.

  That was how it all began.

  Elinor had planned to walk into Delaford village to call on Miss Trilling, the seamstress, in order to pick up a gown that Miss Trilling had altered for her. She offered to postpone the errand on account of Marianne—but Marianne said, rather grumpily, that she was merely increasing and not an invalid, and that she felt quite well enough to walk to the village.

  She was red-faced and out of breath by the time we reached the edge of the village, though, and had to stop and rest. She scowled, leaning against the hitching post outside the Crown and Feathers, the village tavern.

  “I am going to need new gowns myself soon,” Marianne said. She rested a hand atop her middle, making a face. “I feel as big as … as a milk cow. And I still have five months to go.”

  “You look lovely, as always,” Elinor said soothingly. Of the three of us sisters, she has always been the soother, the peacemaker. “Bright and blooming.”

  Marianne is lovely—beautiful, really, even with the added roundness to her face that increasing has brought. Today she was wearing a deep pink muslin gown that set off her dark curls and very dark eyes.

  She fixed the scowl on Elinor and said, “If you think I am so lovely, you can try trading places with me. See how bright and blooming you feel.”

  Elinor is six years older than I am—two years older than Marianne—which makes her four-and-twenty now. She is pretty—though in a very different style from Marianne, with a delicate complexion, clear grey eyes, and pale brown hair which she wears drawn smoothly back from her brow.

  Elinor is also—unlike Marianne—very reserved about showing her feelings, even with our own family. Today, though, I saw her flinch at Marianne’s words. And Marianne must have seen, too, because she gave a little cry of distress and straightened, catching hold of Elinor’s hand. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it!”

  Her whole face had gone pale with repentance beneath the brim of her high-crowned bonnet, and her eyes had flooded with tears. “It is only that I am so hot and wretched-feeling all the time. And I can scarcely sleep at night. Bu
t I am a horrible sister for having spoken so. Please, please say you forgive me.”

  Elinor forced a smile. Elinor does not hold grudges; she never has. She patted Marianne’s hand and said, “Of course I forgive you. It is all right. Do you feel well enough to keep going—”

  Elinor broke off abruptly as from behind us there came a sudden shout of alarm, a pounding of horses’ hooves and the rattle of wheels. Whirling around, we saw a tradesman’s cart bearing down on us, drawn by a team of powerful bays who were plainly out of their owner’s control. In the instant that I stood, momentarily paralysed, I saw the cart rock dangerously, and the horses buck and kick out, their eyes clearly showing their panic.

  Elinor and I scrambled out of the way, up the slight embankment of the village green. But Marianne’s bootlace had come undone without any of us noticing. When she tried to follow, she tripped and fell to her knees.

  Elinor screamed, and I started to race back towards Marianne, to try to pull her out of the way. Though I knew with a sick certainty that I would not be in time—the horses were bearing down with incredible speed. In another instant, Marianne would surely be crushed.

  The next moments are even now just a jumble of impressions in my memory. A kind of lantern-slide show of nightmare images: Marianne’s white, terrified face. The cart driver’s hands, hauling uselessly on his horses’ reins.

  Then—out of nowhere, or so it seemed at the time—a man in a green hunting coat leapt into the road, and in a blur of movement swept Marianne into his arms, and bounded with her to the safety of the ditch at the side of the road.