Searching For Captain Wentworth (34 page)

Dear Sophie,

Alison told me
you weren’t feeling well last night – I’m so
sorry, I hope you’re feeling better. I didn’t have a chance to tell you
how grateful I was for your company and it meant so much to me
that you came. I must apologize also for not introducing you to
Louisa sooner. I really wanted you to meet her, but that can wait for
another day.

What I’m writing
to say is that we are going away for a few
days, heading further west
to the Dorset coast, and I wondered if
you could do me a huge
favour. I’m expecting a package in the post
any day now, some books that
I ordered last week. I thought they
might have come before I
left, so I’m sorry to bother you with the
inconvenience. If you chance
to hear the postman calling, would
you mind very much putting
them just inside my flat? I’ve enclosed
a spare key, (I hope you
like the keyring) and I’ve left you a very
small something to say thank
you for your trouble on the kitchen
table.

I didn’t like to
wake you this morning – I hope you had a good
night’s sleep – take care of yourself!

We’re not sure
of our plans, but I should be back in a week or
so.

Love Josh.

Turning over the keyring in my hands, I wondered if
it had
been a present.
Perhaps Louisa had bought it for him. Somehow,
that thought irritated me and I couldn’t put my
finger on why it
should straight
away, until I realized that I’d already taken a dislike
to her. That didn’t seem either very nice or fair,
but I decided I
wasn’t keen on
Louisa for three reasons. Firstly, Josh had obviously
not been expecting her. Last night, she’d rudely
turned up out of the
blue,
unannounced without letting him know. Secondly, if she
really was his current girlfriend, why had he asked
me to go with
him to the
launch? I reckoned she’d turned him down, or worse, she
was an ex-girlfriend trying to get him back. After
all, he’d talked
about broken
hearts when we were at the museum. And then there
was reason number three. Well, that made me wince
with shame,
but I just felt
that she was one of those people who knew what a
devastating effect she had on men and was toying
with his
affections.
Josh, I felt sure, had been completely taken in by her. He
was my friend and I didn’t want to see him get
hurt. Well, there
wasn’t anything
that I could do about it. All I could hope was that
Josh would be happy and he had very clearly been
deliriously
happy to see
Louisa.

I am, by nature,
a very nosy person and I’m further ashamed
to say that I was very curious to see inside Josh’s
flat. I had a crazy
idea that if the
glove was going to work anywhere, perhaps it might
do there. Without waiting another moment, I let
myself out, glove
in hand and hurried
downstairs. Hesitating at the door, it occurred
to me that perhaps I ought to wait for the books to
arrive before I
went snooping
round. And what if Josh and Louisa hadn’t really
left yet, or if they’d just popped out to get
something for their
journey? But,
the place seemed deadly quiet, so I told myself I was
just going to peep in through the door and have a
quick look. I was
just about to
put the key in the lock when I was frightened out of
my wits by the sound of the doorknocker and the
buzzing of the
front door bell
going simultaneously. To say that I jumped does not
cover it and as I opened the door my heart was
racing.

‘Package for Mr
Strafford. Is he in?’ said the postman.

‘It’s alright,
I’ll sign for it,’ I said, shoving the glove in my
pocket and staggering under the weight of the box
that he handed
into my arms. I
put it down, scribbled something hardly legible on
his electronic slate and muttered thank you, before
closing the door
with some
relief.

Having now got a
legitimate excuse for opening Josh’s door,
I returned key in hand. I don’t know why I felt so
nervous as the
door opened, but
I suppose it was because I knew that I had no
intention of just putting the books down and
leaving straight away.
I tried
to justify the fact that I was going to have a look round by
pretending that I didn’t know where the kitchen
might be and so
wandered first
of all into the living room. I knew Josh would have
had nothing to do with any of the decoration as
he’d rented on a
short term
lease, but I was pleased to see that at least he had some
updated furnishings and new curtains amongst the
inevitable litter
of antiques that
made up the rest. The mix of ancient and modern
seemed to work. A red leather chair by the fireside
looked comfy
but contemporary
and I could just imagine him sitting there
listening to music or reading a book. On the table
next to his chair
were a couple of
books. There was a biography about Jane Austen
but he hadn’t got very far, judging from his
bookmark, and the
other was about
the history of the Royal Navy, which apart from
being connected with Charles in the slightest sense
did not interest
me so much being
all about fighting ships and battles. I didn’t want
to pick anything up, I felt it would be wrong, so I
just stood and
looked around me
noting the jacket left slung across the sofa on the
opposite side and a solitary, forgotten wineglass
smeared with
lipstick on the
floor. The box was feeling heavier than ever, so I
returned to the hallway passing another room barely
furnished with
a desk in the
middle of book-lined walls and carried on to the
kitchen. Painted a fresh white, a range of modern
kitchen units and
built-in cooker
contrasted with the green painted dresser on one
side of an old Aga at the other end of the room.
The dresser looked
a picture filled
with pretty floral china, art deco tea sets and the
occasional Staffordshire figure, but I couldn’t
imagine that it would
have
appealed to Josh. For a kitchen, it seemed a very feminine
room with its embroidered samplers on the walls and
rose-covered
cushions on the
rustic chairs. An oak refectory table in the middle
of the room gleamed with polish and the markings of
many years
of use. The
delft bowl of planted lilies placed upon the surface
perfumed the air with its scent, as the waxy petals
warmed in a
sliver of
sunlight. There was a package next to the bowl which
made me feel an almost childish sense of excitement
such as I
always get when
presented with a pile of birthday presents.

Wrapped in
powder blue paper of Chinese design with twigs and
apple blossoms in pale cream, a gauze ribbon bound
the whole and
was finished in
a bow. A tag, cut like a luggage label and tied on
with a pink, silk ribbon had my name written on it,
and a message.

Thank you for an
evening of “exquisite moments”, and for
everything else.

Yours ever,

J. S.

I relieved
myself of the books at last, picking up the package
and examining the label carefully. I couldn’t work
out quite why
“exquisite
moments” had been written as a quotation, but I was sure
Josh had intended it to mean something. I pulled
out a chair and sat
down to open my
gift, which seemed extraordinarily generous for
merely opening the door to the postman. Peeling
back the thick
paper that felt
expensive to the touch, I gasped when I saw what
was inside. It was an old, yet pristine edition of
Persuasion
.
Printed
in the nineteen
fifties, it had a grey cover with a wonderful
illustration by one of the Brock brothers on the
front. I’d always
wanted a
beautiful edition, but my own battered paperback copy
showing the old Assembly Rooms in Lyme was a
favourite and I
couldn’t really
afford to spend the sort of money on the type of
book I now held in my hands. Inside was a bookmark,
strategically
placed, and then
I understood. The “exquisite moments” was a
reference to the evening concert that Anne and
Captain Wentworth
attend after
realizing they’re still in love with one another. Josh had
obviously guessed it was one of my favourite parts
of the book and
thinking about
that made me wish to go home, settle down in a
chair and re-live
Persuasion
all over again. I gathered up the
paper,
pocketed the
keys and walked out into the hall. I’d intended to go
straight back to my flat but with even more shame
than I described
before, I
decided to take one small peep in the room I really wanted
to see.

It was not
entirely my fault. At the end of the corridor the
smallest glimpse of another room proved too
tempting. Josh’s
bedroom door was
ajar. I was going to pop my head round merely
to satisfy my shamefully inquisitive nature and
then come out
straight away
again. But I didn’t. As soon as my head moved into
that space it quickly summoned in the rest of me by
what I can only
describe as an
overwhelming sense of Josh’s presence. It was here
he’d made the most impact on the flat. I could
smell his cologne, as
if he had
just walked from the room. Everything was neat and
ordered from the group of silver framed photos on
the tall bow-
fronted chest of
drawers, to the immaculately made bed dressed in
an Indian silk quilt in shades of dark copper and
burnt umber. It was
impossible not
to admire this focal point, which seemed to have
Josh’s exotic personality stamped all over it. The
bed itself was
fashioned from
rosewood, the headboard and barleytwist posts at
each corner, reflecting the skill of the craftsmen
who had carved the
intricate
scrolls, flowers and fretwork at least two hundred years
ago and apart from the magnificent quilt that fell
in exquisite folds
to the floor, a
huge pile of cushions in contrasting block patterns
were arranged with precision. I sat down for a
moment and then
thought better
of it, but as I stood up, the beautifully positioned
cushions toppled over, one or two even falling down
on the floor.

Looking on
aghast at the mess I’d created, I bent down to collect
them up only to discover something else. I couldn’t
believe my
eyes. Like a dismembered
hand on the wooden boards, the tips of
white leather fingers poked out from under the edge of the quilt
cover.

I really did
feel very strange at that moment. I tried to focus
on other objects in the room, a replica of a wooden
sailing ship on
the window
ledge, the ancient-looking telescope in the corner set
on a tripod. But, my eyes kept returning to the
glow of white leather
on the
floor. When I picked it up, the smell and texture of the
leather instantly brought back such sweet memories
that I felt my
heart leap and
pulling my glove out of my pocket saw instantly that
they were a matching pair. If mine had run out of
magic, perhaps
the other might
just work. I knew I shouldn’t, but still, I couldn’t
resist just trying it on.

‘Ooh, Miss
Elliot, you have given me a fright! What on earth are
you doing in here? I thought you were all settled
in the carriage
about to go
off.’

Rebecca, the
housemaid was looking at me as if
she had just seen a ghost. ‘I’m sorry, Miss, but I didn’t hear you
come in, it’s as if you’ve just appeared in a puff
of smoke.’ She
pointed to the
glove I was holding. ‘Is Mr Elliot looking for his
other glove?’

‘Oh no,’ I
answered quickly, wheezing slightly in an effort to
get my breath back, ‘it was just here on the
chair.’ Rebecca looked
at me
again with a puzzled expression. I felt I’d been winded, the
flash through time had been so unexpected and so
fast. It took me
a moment to
realize I was in the same room, though Josh would
never have recognized his bedroom except for the
long window
giving a view
out onto the garden.