Chapter Text
Sidney
One week after Charlotte’s departure from Sanditon, Sidney awoke with a crashing headache and a lingering sense of shame. Closing his eyes against the room which was whirling around him, he was vaguely aware that he was fully clothed and his boots were still on. His mouth felt as dry as sand and his brain throbbed unpleasantly against his skull. It was the third morning this week he’d woken up like this.
Vague wisps of memory chased through his head. There he was sitting in a corner of the Denham Arms, bottles of wine in a row. Cards…and a brawl. Did he imagine that? He flexed his right hand and winced. Clearly not. Damn it. He would need to make reparations to someone today. He could not remember who.
He rolled over onto his side with a pained groan and blinked against the light filtering through the shutters. A chair was overturned but mercifully his room seemed largely intact. On the table three letters were neatly stacked. Eliza! He sank back into his pillow. He’d forgotten to answer her last. It was rather more acidic than the other two had been and desired to know if he intended to join her in London or whether he had escaped the country on a boat. I know how much you value your family and their little town, but I would hope that you value your betrothed rather more.
If Eliza saw him in this state she might well have second thoughts. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine her breaking off the engagement in disgust. He pictured himself bowing solemnly and then racing to Willingden to beg forgiveness. Then he saw Charlotte’s face in his mind’s eye, anger mingling with contempt and the dream vanished. It was no use. Even if he was free he could not imagine that she would agree to resume their understanding. If she could see him now…
Shame prickled over him. He had broken her heart and this was the way he chose to repay her. Her last words to him echoed in his head. You must try to make her happy. Thus far he hadn’t even tried, too caught up in his own misery to care very much what Eliza thought.
Things had to change. This was the path he’d chosen, albeit one which had been forced upon him by necessity. He sat up and waited for the room to stop spinning. This had to be the last time he did this. If he couldn’t have his happiness with Charlotte, he could at least honour his memories of her and behave like a gentleman. With an unsteady hand he rang the bell and struggled to his feet.
An hour later, shaved and dressed if a little pale, Sidney sat down at the writing desk. Eliza’s letters would be answered, but there was a pressing matter which needed to be dealt with first. Drawing a sheet of paper towards him, he dipped his pen in the inkpot and wrote, Dearest Charlotte. He traced her name with the utmost care.
He wrote with emotion and without inhibition. He wrote about his hopes for them, how he had imagined their futures together. He detailed every moment that he had loved her, and told her how she appeared to him constantly in every part of Sanditon – the town, the cove, the cliffs. He laid all of his heart at her feet and vowed he would strive to be worthy of her every day, even if he never saw her again.
When he finished, he sat back. He felt exhausted, but oddly at peace. He had written his soul onto the page and there it would stay while he left to do his duty to his family and to Eliza.
He folded up the closely written pages and sealed them carefully. He took his travelling bag out from under the bed and cut away the stitching on a section of the silk lining. He turned the sealed letter over in his hands, then kissed it and tucked it away inside, smoothing the lining back in place.
Then he took a deep breath and turned back to the desk to begin his letter to Eliza.
Charlotte
Charlotte had read many love stories during her formative years, hidden away in a window seat. It seemed exciting and grown up, and in the night before she fell asleep, she had often imagined a man taking her hand and whispering sweet things in her ear until she blushed all over her body.
She had not imagined this kind of pain. Sometimes she felt almost breathless with hurt. Other times it felt as though she was outside her body; she watched herself from afar as someone who looked like Charlotte talked to her family in enthusiastic detail about the bathing machines, the grand houses being built, the balls where people flitted about like butterflies in all their finery. If she could have returned to that twelve year old girl in the window seat, she might well have counselled her to guard her heart, and told her that love, in reality, was a torment. She wasn’t sure if it was at all worth the fraction of happiness she had been accorded.
She had only revealed the whole truth to Alison and had promptly regretted it. Alison had listened with wide eyes and at the end had declared Sidney to be a villain, unfit for decent society and who would, she had no doubt, come to a doomed end.
“He is not anything of the kind,” Charlotte retorted, tears springing to her eyes. “I told you, his brother would have been thrown into a debtors’ prison.”
“It seems to me that his brother should have been made to untangle his own affairs. This Mr Parker made you believe he meant marriage only to throw you over at the very last minute. He kissed you!”
“He did mean it. And I kissed him back.” Charlotte could feel the blood rushing to her head. Alison being angry with Sidney made her irritated out of all measure. Only Charlotte herself was entitled to be angry with him, only she was allowed to imagine herself marching back to Sanditon and pummelling him until he begged for mercy.
Alison sighed. “I don’t mean to upset you. But you would be furious too, if I came back with a tale like that. Wouldn’t you?”
Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Sleep eluded her often that first week. Just before dawn the day after her confession, she crept out of the house and walked up to the hill where she had first seen the Parkers’ carriage. She allowed herself to imagine a carriage coming along that same path, and Sidney Parker leaping down from it, striding across the hill to meet her. He would take her hands and say…
New maid?
She choked on a laugh as the memory intruded. He was abominable in every way, and she knew that she would not forget him. But she hated this aching, hollow feeling. She wanted to be rid of it, and she didn’t know how.
A sliver of sun emerged from behind that hill, bringing with it the sweet smell of high summer. In the grass the insects stirred and grubbed, and from the Heywoods’ farm, the cockerel crowed in triumph.
A tiny ray of hope stole into Charlotte’s heart. Perhaps the world was not ended after all. She was realistic enough to know that it would take longer than a week to mend herself, but she was determined that she would feel happy again, and the interlude at Sanditon would become a fond, faded recollection which in private moments she might smile over and then forget.
This resolution made, she turned her back on the Parkers’ hill and made her way back home.