Free Emma in Love by Emma Tennant

be hard indeed for the poor girl to have us come here to Randalls. But it was so long since Mr. Weston had seen his son. It was not known that Mrs. Smallridge would invite herself for the summer to the Vicarage. When Mrs. Weston wrote to Frank of it, he asked me to come south with him, as an aid in an uncomfortable situation. I was happy to assist him.— If I do, which I doubt,” added the charming young man in tones of great modesty. “We can travel about together, you know, Mrs. Knightley – it is less likely that Frank will come face to face with Miss Fairfax. That would be dreadful indeed.”
    â€œDreadful,” echoed Emma, who had in her mind placed Captain Brocklehurst at her table at Donwell Abbey and made Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill solittle interested in each other that their contiguity was of no importance at all. Now, of course, she saw this as impossible.
    â€œFrank still loves her,” said Captain Brocklehurst in a low voice behind Emma. “It is as hard for him, as it is for Miss Fairfax. And there is no greater pain,” continued the gallant Captain, as the music in the house abruptly stopped and a medley of children’s voices called out, as a new game was embarked on, “no more excruciating agony, than to love from afar: to worship and yet not to speak of it. Do not you agree, Mrs. Knightley?”

Chapter 11
    Great was Emma’s consternation when once she had left the environs of Hartfield and run – or walked so rapidly there was no distinguishing it from a full-fledged run – through the beech woods which separated her old home from her new one: new, as still she found it, though there were those recently come to Highbury who had not known a Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield: Mrs. Knightley, staid and well settled at the Abbey, was all they had ever heard.
    She was not staid on this occasion. Captain Brocklehurst had been too forward.— Yet each time she upbraided him in her mind, his handsome face obtruded, and she smiled, as she hurried along a pathshe took with Harriet, or sometimes with Mrs. Weston, but seldom alone.— He had suggested he accompany her.— No, certainly not! Emma must return to Donwell Abbey without an escort; but she wished from the bottom of her heart that she had not permitted little Mrs. Martin to dash off like that and leave her to her thoughts along the way. He was the handsomest man, certainly, ever to visit Highbury.
    There were few pleasant memories, for Emma, of the last quarter of an hour at Hartfield before her abrupt departure. Miss Whynne had stepped out of the French windows to the drawing-room, and had come to the corner of the shrubbery; she had seemed unsurprised to see Mrs. Knightley there, and had paid no attention to Captain Brocklehurst at all. She was so very sorry – one thing had led to another.— The Baroness had brought the Smallridge children— And now here they were, running out to play hunt-the-slipper in the bushes, as Emma would never have permitted in her days as her father’s châtelaine. She did hope Mrs. Knightley would understand. As for the music – were they not the liveliest tunes? The Baroness had brought them from France – all committed to memory, dear Mrs. Knightley; not a note written down. Is not it most extraordinary?
    Had Emma looked back truthfully over the preceding exchange, she might have reproached herself for being cold and distant to the poor governess. Was it not thecase that Emma pitied governesses?— that she did all she could … though to no avail, and here she felt a lack of gratitude on the part of Miss Fairfax that she had not at least shown her thanks to her benefactress for imagining a match between herself and John Knightley, even if she knew nothing of it, and there had been a mutual dislike that was quite remarkable. But she did not think of Miss Fairfax.—
    For Emma it was not difficult to steer her thoughts elsewhere.