The Wentworths Travel to Bath for Christmas #2
“Have you had one of these biscuits, Wentworth? They are quite fine, and they are delivered each morning from the finest bakery in Bath. They do not come cheap, I can assure you, but as with so much else one cannot scrimp on the necessities of life, can one?”
He took a bite of the final morsel of the biscuit and pulled a kerchief from his sleeve to clean his fingers, all while the others remained silent in the presence of this performance.
Elizabeth was sitting in the chair to her father’s left. She leaned closer to him and said in a low voice that could not help but be heard by the others, “Father.”
The word broke his reverie.
“Oh, yes. Dear Anne, please tell me how you are progressing with your…with your…situation.”
“I am quite well, father. We, especially my dear husband, were concerned about the rigors of the travel here but I assured him that there was little to fear and in the event I have been proved correct.”
“I am pleased to hear it. Very pleased. I am glad that your journey was not unpleasant and that you will be able to spend time with your father and dear sister.”
He suddenly stood up and returned to the side table and lifted the last of the remaining biscuits.
He said, though addressing the now empty plate itself, “You cannot scrimp on the necessities of life.”
***
The cold air that had followed the storm and arrived in Bath hours before Captain and Mrs. Wentworth did decide that it would remain for as long as the Wentworths did.
This meant that Anne was deprived of the opportunity to stroll through the town and even go to the Pump Room as she had when she’d moved in with her father and sister at Camden Place nearly a year earlier.
Ignoring her protests, Frederick would not allow it, and her awareness of his anxiety on the point restrained her from objecting to this. So she spent much of the day reading or doing needlepoint in the drawing room with her father, her sister, and her husband lounging about nearby.
When Christmas morning dawned, the Captain relented and agreed that he and his wife would accompany Sir Walter and Elizabeth to services at the fine church that catered to residents of their caliber in Bath.
It was too far to walk in the weather and with Anne in her condition, so they’d arranged for a carriage to convey them.
The church itself was not as crowded as it was in season and, it must be said, the bulk of those in attendance, including the titled parishioners, were in Bath because of financial difficulties of the sort visited upon Sir Walter Elliot, Baronet.
The Christmas service in the chilled air of the church was mercifully brief and it was not long before the residents of Camden Place were returning home, after exchanges of pleasantries with the vicar and the other parishioners on the steps of church.
***
“I know how much you would prefer to be with your sister and all the others in Kellynch,” Anne said when she and Wentworth were back in their room.
“You must admit, my dear, that there is hardly a hint of Christmas let alone the spirit of Christmas in this desolate place.”
Anne shook her head at her husband, as they were sitting on either side of their bed to prepare for such festivities as Sir Walter and Elizabeth had arranged.
They'd returned from the church fifteen minutes earlier and were glad to again be alone. They were both creatures of being alone, he as the necessarily aloof Navy captain and she as the subtly rebellious second daughter in a baronet’s family.
In part, though, it was independence that allowed them to be happiest when they were, as a couple, alone. As they now were.
“Christmas should be with all of one’s family.” His stubbornness was seeping in again. “I sometimes do not understand why we could not all be together with Sophia and the Admiral and all the rest. Even Lady Russell, lounging in the vastness of the great house.”
“Yet in the end you have come to understand it, have you not?”
“I have. I know how keenly he would feel it a humiliation to be a guest at the Hall. I know it is wrong of me to continue with these feelings, or at least to continue speaking of these feelings now that we are your father’s guests, and I will promise to refrain from doing so any further.”
At this Anne rose from her side and walked around to his.
He leaned back so that his lap would be available to her, and she sat on it, spreading her arms around her husband’s neck so they could stare into one another’s eyes.
She felt his arms tightening around her waist before he pulled his left one away so his hand could run across her belly.
“It can’t be much longer.”
“God willing,” she said, “it will not be.”
He leaned his head to hers and she lifted hers to his and their lips met in a slight but significant kiss which ended when she lifted herself from him, with some effort and a slight bit of assistance from her husband and his arm, and again stood.
“We must make ourselves presentable.”
“Aye, my dear. Aye,” he answered with a formal, Royal Navy salute and in a moment the pair of them were in disarray as they changed into what was appropriate for the Christmas dinner.
***