Just the Day for a Wedding!

Greetings, friends! I have emerged from the other side of my term in the classroom. My students were fun, as always – but they sure kept me busy grading papers and developing lesson plans!

I am back this month with two posts, both related to our monthly theme: today, I’ll post “Just the Day for a Wedding,” the first chapter of my most recent novel A Year in Between. Later this month (hopefully June 26), I’ll continue my modern Elizabeth/Darcy short story.  Since I’ve promised to include the monthly theme somewhere in the text of each installment, be on the lookout for the phrase “Church bells are ringing”!

A quick note of context for the chapter: to save space, I have cut Marianne’s journal entry, which precedes this first chapter. In that entry, Marianne meditates on her heartbreak — and on Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem Marmion. While Marianne had once seen herself as Clara, the faultless heroine, she has now come to realize she may be more like Constance, a woman blinded by her love by the dastardly Lord Marmion.

Hope you enjoy the chapter, and happy June to you all!

“Just the Day for a Wedding” (Chapter One of The Year in Between: A Sense and Sensibility Variation)

Barton Cottage

August 11, 1810

The day dawned warm and bright, as if the sun had been in such a hurry to rise that it had dispensed with its usual habit of peeping over the horizon before inching, streak by orange streak, into the sky. This morning there was only blue—a bright, blinding blue that made Marianne blink in wonder. How had she missed the sunrise when she had woken early enough to see distant stars give pinpoint definition to the inky heavens?

She glanced down at her journal and sighed. Was this what improvement and study signified—an absorption in trifling words? Was this penance—abstaining from observation of the natural world so that she might ponder her own sins?

“Just the day for a wedding!” cried a voice outside the parlor window.

No, this was penance: to rise before daybreak on the morning of her sister’s wedding and be met not with the brilliance of a sunrise or the song of a lark but with the sight and sound of Mrs. Jennings. Her bonnet bedecked in feathers, the good widow might have passed for a bird herself—not a lark, certainly, but a goose, perhaps. She ambled up the path to Barton Cottage, her honking guffaws crowding out the sounds of an otherwise peaceful morning.

“Aye, Thomas!” she called to the Dashwoods’ manservant, who had been working in the garden since daybreak. “You’ll be wanting to marry next, I wager! I have a pretty young maid in my employ who would do nicely for you.”

As Thomas gave his laughing response, Marianne considered slipping from her chair and crawling across the floor so that Mrs. Jennings would not see her through the window. But Marianne had never been one for deception, even when she had been vain, ignorant, and conceited. Honesty had been her one constant virtue, and so she straightened her shoulders and prepared herself for the moment when Mrs. Jennings turned toward the house and spotted her.

“Ah, there you are, Miss Marianne!”

She flinched (for was there any true method of preparing for Mrs. Jennings, especially at eight o’clock in the morning? Marianne could not think of one).

“Or should I say, Miss Dashwood?” Mrs. Jennings came right up to the window and stuck her head inside, looking about the room. The morning breeze, which had been so helpful in keeping the August heat at bay, now performed a disservice by ushering in a whiff of Mrs. Jennings’s scent—a sickening combination of orange blossom and snuff.

“Yes, Miss Dashwood it is! No more Miss Marianne for you. Miss Dashwood you will be, the moment your sister signs the register this morning!”

Closing her eyes, Marianne tried for some measure of self-command. She thought of the kindness Mrs. Jennings had shown her at Cleveland Park, when fever and heartbreak had nearly been her undoing; she pictured Elinor, her civil words and composed countenance setting the very best of examples; she recalled how Clara, the noble heroine of Marmion, offered prayers of forgiveness for even the worst of villains.

It mattered not.

Slapping shut her journal, Marianne stood. “I will be quite the same person, no matter my sister’s name—or my own.” (Never mind that she had spent the early morning hours writing about how much she wished to change; she would change on her own terms, thank you very much!)

Mrs. Jennings laughed. “Oh, do not worry, my dear. You will always be Miss Marianne to me!”

This concession only heightened Marianne’s annoyance, but before she could respond, Mrs. Jennings took a step backward and waved up at one of the windows on the second floor.

Footsteps clattered above and then down the stairs, followed by the sound of Mrs. Dashwood’s voice.

“Good morning, Mrs. Jennings!”

Marianne saw her mother hurry past the parlor with their maid, Martha, close behind. The front door opened, and Mrs. Jennings was ushered inside. (A heroine such as Clara would surely not have kept an elderly woman—even one so vexing as Mrs. Jennings—standing out of doors.)

“What a surprise to see you so early this morning!” said Mrs. Dashwood as Mrs. Jennings came into the parlor, shedding her shawl. Martha raced behind, catching the outerwear before it fell to the parlor floor.

“Yes, it is early.” Mrs. Jennings threw herself onto the sofa and began fanning her face with a book. (No doubt one Margaret had carelessly left out the night before—no, wait: was that Marmion?)

“As my daughters would be only too glad to tell you,” continued Mrs. Jennings, “I never was one to rise before eight if I could help it. But I said to Sir John just last night, I must see off Miss Dashwood and give her my blessing!”

“That is very kind of you,” said Mrs. Dashwood, who met Marianne’s gaze with a smile suggesting this kindness was one they might all have done without. “I hope your visit this morning does not mean you have been called away from the wedding—or the wedding breakfast.”

Marianne brightened at the thought.

“Oh, I would not miss the day’s festivities for anything!” cried Mrs. Jennings, tossing the book to the seat next to her. (It was Marmion!) “But a wedding breakfast is no place to say a proper goodbye. Why, I remember my own daughters’ weddings only too well. I was hardly able to say word to them.”

Lucky brides!

Marianne recovered herself enough to say aloud, “Might I…?” But she knew not what she might do. Leaving her mother alone with Mrs. Jennings seemed unfair, while offering refreshments, and thus prolonging the visit, seemed unwise.

“Yes, do fetch your sister, Miss Marianne!” said Mrs. Jennings. “I must see her in her wedding gown, and besides, I know how early you hope to arrive at the church.”

Biting the insides of her cheek—a trick she had lately taught herself to keep impertinent remarks at bay—Marianne glanced at her mother, who nodded reluctantly and said, “If she is ready, my love.”

“Aye, Miss Dashwood is ready, we can be certain of that!” Mrs. Jennings’s laughter followed Marianne into the corridor and up the stairs.

Elinor was ready, or nearly so. Her trunk was packed (in fact, it had been sent to Delaford in the wagon yesterday); her hair was done (the curling papers had long since been taken out; the pins were in all the correct places); and her half of the room looked as bare and lonesome as Marianne feared it would on this last day of her residence.

Though Elinor was by nature tidy, the spaces she occupied always showed some small sign of her ceaseless activity: a half-finished sketch on the desk, an open book on the bed, a newly-darned stocking on the dresser. Now there was nothing but polished wood and bedsheets, tucked neatly in place; now there was nothing but furniture.

Elinor stood at the window, wearing a light blue gown she had owned since at least before their father’s death. (“You have chosen it because you wore it when first you met Edward,” ventured Marianne when Elinor had laid out the dress the day before. “I have chosen it,” replied Elinor, “because it does not chafe and is just short enough to be safe from mud when I travel to Delaford.”)

At Marianne’s entrance, Elinor glanced over her shoulder and offered a sardonic smile. “What need have we for clocks when Mrs. Jennings may tell us the time?”

“Oh, Elinor, do not go down to her!” Marianne hurried across the room, hands outstretched. “I will tell her you are indisposed.”

“Indisposed on my wedding day?” Laughing, Elinor squeezed Marianne’s hands before moving to the door. “That will never do.”

“Though I have long thought Mrs. Jennings as vulgar a woman as ever lived, I had not supposed she would be so bold as to invite herself in before breakfast!”

Elinor, who had just opened the door, put a finger to her lips and whispered, “She will hear us, dearest.”

Then let her, Marianne had been about to say before remembering that she was now to be Miss Dashwood. (Drat Mrs. Jennings for being the first to remind her of this fact!) And as Miss Dashwood, Marianne must at least try to behave accordingly.

She looked up to see that Elinor had already left the room.

“Do wait, Elinor!”

Her sister stopped on the top step and turned just as a shaft of sunlight streamed through the upper corridor window.

“Oh, Elinor, if only you could see yourself in this moment! You are glowing; you are alive with color! If only I had your talent for sketching.”

“Yes,” Elinor replied, laughing as she touched a ringlet of hair against her cheek. “I imagine sunlight will cause a person to glow, even one with hair best described as muddy brown.”

“It is more than sunlight, Elinor. You look like a goddess—like Artemis on a hunt, or Athena, flushed with victory after battle.”

“These are rather violent images for a wedding day, but I am grateful to you, dearest, for not calling me Aphrodite. Such a comparison neither of us could believe.”

Marianne smiled. “Edward would believe it.”

This comment brought a fiery blush to Elinor’s cheeks, which pleased Marianne far more than it should have.

For almost the entirety of her courtship, Elinor Dashwood had been too serene to suit her sister. Did not Edward cause Elinor’s heart to pound wildly against her breast? Was not the waiting—made longer by delays in construction on the Delaford parsonage—a form of torture to her? To these and similar questions, which Marianne had posed at night, in the secrecy of their shared bedroom, Elinor had only laughed and said that, after waiting an entire year without any hope of fulfillment, she could manage a few months of anticipation now that marriage was all but certain.

Marianne had long wondered about the depth of Elinor’s feelings for Edward. Was her sister’s love all that it should be? Did she feel anything beyond platonic affection for her betrothed? Then again, Marianne no longer knew what true love ought to be. Her feelings for—well, for that man—had certainly not been platonic; her love for him had been as rapturous as the romances between Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere. These examples were proof only that her love had been doomed from the start, and yet she could not deny how strongly she once had felt (and how strongly she still felt when she did not govern her feelings as she ought).

So perhaps it was best if Elinor’s heart did not pound wildly; perhaps torture was not in fact compatible with love. Still, Marianne could not shake the belief that true love must manifest itself in physical ways, at least on occasion. For a fortnight in May, Edward had stayed at the cottage as their guest, and not once had Marianne (or Margaret, who would surely have told her) seen any outward signs of love beyond pleasant smiles. When Edward had moved to Delaford, he and Elinor had seen each other only on visits, which happened frequently enough, but never with the kind of privacy that would have allowed any expression of sentiment beyond the polite clasping of hands that occurred with greetings and farewells. They behaved more like amiable friends than lovers.

Marianne’s understanding of them changed, however, the week before the wedding, when Edward had come to Barton, ostensibly to oversee the transport of Elinor’s sketches and other personal effects to Delaford. Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret had been on a walk to Barton Park when he called, leaving Elinor and Marianne to host him. After assuring them that he had no need of refreshments—he was here only on an errand—Marianne had gone to the pianoforte, shaking her head at Edward’s lack of feeling. He had barely looked at Elinor and had said only a few words to her before hurrying out-of-doors to direct the servants (as if they could not have managed Elinor’s few items on their own!).

Only when she stepped outside for a calming breath of air (she had been struggling with a particularly difficult sonata; Colonel Brandon seemed to enjoy bringing her music too advanced for her abilities) did Marianne wonder where Elinor had gone. Had Edward’s coolness caused her to rush to her room in tears? Oh, why had Marianne once again been blind to her sister’s feelings?

She had started to turn back to the house to find and comfort Elinor when she saw them. They were half hidden by the wagon, Elinor’s back pressed against the wooden planks of the conveyance as Edward leaned into her.

It took a moment for Marianne to realize what exactly she was seeing. Edward was kissing Elinor—or Elinor was kissing Edward. She could hardly say which was the more accurate statement. One of his hands was in her sister’s hair—now that she thought of it, Elinor’s hair had been frequently mussed after Edward’s visits—and the other was at her waist, inching slowly upward. And Elinor’s hands! They were on his back, his arms, his face, and then one disappeared entirely beneath his waistcoat.

Marianne just barely checked her gasp as she slipped back into the house, her heart racing. She hardly knew which was more disturbing: the realization that Edward and Elinor’s love for each other was not platonic, or the fact that she, Marianne, had never been kissed in such a way.

It would have been terrible, scandalous, horrifying (wonderful) if she had been, for she had not even been engaged. (Nearly proposed to, fully in love, but no, never engaged.)

Sometimes, when she lay in the dark and thought of him—the memories were always worse at night—she had to wonder why he, a cad and a rake, a seducer of innocent women, had never once tried to kiss her. Not once. Oh, he had taken a lock of her hair, and had once been close enough (so close) that she had felt the idea of his lips. But he had never, not even when they had been all but alone at Allenham Court, tried to kiss her. Why not? When she had given him so many opportunities, when she had been willing to give him her heart and soul—why had he not asked also for her body?

Marianne was not so vain as to believe herself a great beauty, but neither was she was coy enough to pretend she was unattractive. She knew, with the unspoken certainty of all pretty young women, that others thought her lovely. Certainly he had thought her lovely. His praise of her beauty was worth nothing now, but the longing in his eyes, the subtle brush of his fingers against hers, the catch of his breath—surely these seemingly involuntary acts could not have been fraudulent? Or if they had been—to what purpose? Even Marianne, romantic that she was, knew she had had little to offer him but her beauty.

Why had he never attempted to transgress that boundary he had crossed so easily with Eliza Williams? Before she had even known of Eliza Williams, before she had possessed any doubts about him, Marianne had supposed his behavior courtly. He was waiting to express his love, just as a truly heroic man ought to wait. Now, though, when she knew he had not been chivalrous, when she saw how true gentlemen such as Edward Ferrars might act when thus inspired, she had to wonder what it was about herself that was lacking.

So to make Elinor blush on the morning of her wedding—to remind her that she might not be a goddess of love in her own mind, but that Edward surely thought of her as such—gave Marianne a savage sort of pleasure. And to know that Edward and Elinor loved each other, truly and passionately—well, it was almost enough for Marianne.

Elinor, being Elinor, recovered quickly from her embarrassment.

“Come, dearest,” she said, smiling with that perfect mixture of serenity and spirit, “let us brave Mrs. Jennings together.”

They did not have to brave her for long, a fact Marianne considered a good omen. Within five minutes of their entering the parlor, Thomas came into the room and announced the arrival of the carriage from Delaford.

“How kind Colonel Brandon is, giving us use of his carriage,” Mrs. Dashwood said as they all rose from their seats.

“Indeed he is, though Sir John was rather vexed at him for stealing his chance to be useful,” said Mrs. Jennings. “Why, look!” The widow hurried to the window. “The colonel himself has come on horseback!”

Marianne frowned. This journey to the church was to have been the last time the Dashwood women might be together as precisely that. Ever after, they would be the Dashwoods and the Ferrarses—a joyful combination, to be sure, but oh, how Marianne would miss sitting side by side with Elinor Dashwood, that young lady whose life had revolved around her mother and sisters! Elinor had assured her, time and again, that little would change when she married—yet Marianne did not believe her. Even she knew enough of love to guess that Elinor’s attentions would belong, first and foremost, to her husband now.

Marianne had been anticipating this last carriage ride with Elinor, this final journey for the four Dashwood ladies. Now it was not to be. Though Colonel Brandon would not travel in the coach with them, Marianne did not want to glance out the window and see him riding alongside them to the church. He would only act as a reminder of all that was changing around her.

Colonel Brandon entered the parlor, greeting each of them in turn. To Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret, he was all that was polite and considerate; to Elinor, he overcame his natural reserve and offered a warm smile. To Marianne only did he seem curt, perfunctory. All summer he had been withdrawn, even when he had come bearing gifts, such as music and books, gifts that made Mrs. Dashwood smile with such hope that Marianne shuddered.

Why were those around her always attempting to match her with Colonel Brandon? First it had been a joke with Mrs. Jennings (but then what was not a joke with that woman), and now, her mother and even at times Elinor seemed to conspire against her. They must have believed that, because Elinor had found happiness, Marianne, too, must marry. Did they not understand that she could never marry now? It was not that her heart had been damaged (though it had been); she simply was not fit for marriage, and certainly not with a man as honorable as Colonel Brandon.

He at least seemed to understand this, for though he had been generally solicitous during his visits, he had treated her with an almost icy formality. (Marianne felt it impossible for Colonel Brandon to show degrees of feeling beyond “generally” and “almost”; she supposed his impassivity the result of his own disappointment all those years ago—that, or his training in the army. In either case, she had never seen him fully animated and still sometimes wondered how he had summoned the emotion to call out a man and nearly kill him.)

“What a good man you are, Colonel!” exclaimed Mrs. Jennings. “I thought I rose early to see them off, but you must have been up half the night to ride all this way!”

Irritated by Mrs. Jennings’s exaggeration, Marianne said, “It is less than twenty miles from Delaford to Barton.”

Her mother frowned at her. “That certainly does not lessen the colonel’s goodness in traveling here. You must indeed have risen early, sir, and for that, we are all of us grateful.”

Marianne colored. She had not been thinking of Brandon when she spoke; she had been thinking (as usual) of herself. She was the very last person in the world who wanted to think of twenty miles between sisters as a great distance.

“Your gratitude, Mrs. Dashwood, is appreciated—but hardly necessary,” he replied. “Miss Marianne is correct: eighteen miles is not far—a few hours’ travel by carriage—and I hope it will not seem far when Miss Dashwood becomes Mrs. Ferrars and is settled in Delaford.”

Whatever might be said about the colonel’s lack of deep emotion, he certainly was gallant. Marianne could not help but smile at him for understanding what she had really been trying to say.

“In any case,” he continued, looking away from her, “I was glad to be out on a morning such as this.”

“Indeed! The sky is so blue, and the air so fresh!” exclaimed Marianne, always glad for an opportunity to speak of nature. “Is it not the finest morning of the summer?”

“I certainly think so,” replied Elinor.

Something in her sister’s smile inspired in Marianne an inexplicable burst of happiness. Oh, she would be miserable enough in a few hours, when she came into this very room to find Elinor’s usual seat unoccupied. But for now, despite all the strangeness of this morning, despite the intrusions (first Mrs. Jennings, then Colonel Brandon), Marianne felt the pure, irrepressible joy she had been searching for in her journal.

Without warning, she crossed the room and threw her arms about her sister, who laughed, even as she stumbled backward. Such a display only encouraged Margaret to follow suit, and then Mrs. Dashwood, and for a long moment, they were the four of them alone with each other, even as Mrs. Jennings and Colonel Brandon looked on.

“Just the day for a wedding!” cried Mrs. Jennings, and this time, Marianne could not find it in herself to resent those words in the slightest.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter! I know not everyone is a fan of Marianne Dashwood, but I have to say, she was a great deal of fun to write! (So was Mrs. Jennings!) Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments, and if you’re interested in reading more, I hope you’ll consider diving into The Year in Between!

See you later this month…