She came down for dinner preoccupied and still lost to the writing. Though she had the broad strokes of the book already thought out, she was adding little nuances here and there to round out various aspects of the plot, and she was quite swept away by it.
Several times during dinner, she had to be called back to the conversation, because she was not paying a bit of mind to any of it.
She went straight back to writing afterwards, and she was thick in the midst of it when there was a knock at the door of her writing room.
“It’s me,” said Cassandra, opening the door.
Jane put her pen back in its inkwell and sat back in her chair. “I shan’t stay up late with it, I promise. I shall likely wind everything down here within the next quarter hour, I imagine.”
Cassandra shut the door behind her. “I wished to speak to you alone, without Mama.”
Jane got up from her chair. “All right. This sounds a bit ominous.”
Cassandra clasped her hands together. “You can be fanciful, Jane.”
“I’m not fanciful at all,” said Jane, affronted.
“No, not entirely. You have a great deal of sense, and you don’t allow yourself to be carried off by flights of fancy overmuch, but you have a…” Cassandra paused, searching for words. “You have a spirit in you, Jane, a spirit of hope and happiness, and I would not end it within you, not for the world, but I also feel as if…”
Jane blinked, waiting for her sister to finish, but Cassandra only stood there, the expression on her face growing more and more pained as time went on, and saying nothing more.
“I don’t wish you to be crushed by the way things have turned out,” said Cassandra finally. “You must have known it would not come to anything, after all. He’s practically an overgrown adolescent, even if he is a baron, and all the things everyone says about him are positively shocking, and he did come here with a married woman he is involved with, and—”
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” said Jane, her voice going high-pitched. Her sister was far too astute, that was the truth of it. Her sister could read things in Jane that others could not. Jane could keep her inner thoughts and desires concealed from nearly everyone, but she and Cassandra were so close that she could not keep them concealed from Cassandra. At times, this was a wondrous thing, and at others, it only felt like an unwelcome intrusion.
“You do indeed,” said Cassandra. “And I do not know if I can bear it if you are moping around for the next several weeks after all this has blown over.”
“Do I appear to be moping?” Jane gestured at the inkwell. “I am, in fact, doing what I can to help provide a bit of income for all of us. Instead of sitting around and accepting the fact that we are all lodestones about the neck of everyone who cares about us—”
“Oh, this,” said Cassandra. “This is what I’m speaking of. That’s a very fanciful way of looking at it. You’re not speaking sense, and you’re making it all very melodramatic.”
Jane scoffed. She sat back down in her chair.
“We are not lodestones,” said Cassandra. “We are perfectly comfortable, well settled here, with everything we might need for health and happiness. We have a life that many would envy. We do not need income, and you know it as well as I.”
Jane blinked at the manuscript. She said nothing.
“And anyway, Henry has had to pay out of his own money for the publication—”
“Yes, but it is selling briskly,” said Jane. “We shall earn money from it.”
“This is not why you published!”
Jane sighed heavily.
Cassandra was gentle. “I think you need to come to terms with the fact that you write these books for yourself.”
Jane’s chin shot out. “People who have read them have enjoyed them!”
“Well, of course they have. That’s neither here nor there.”
“If they give other people enjoyment, they serve some purpose besides being some selfish pursuit for me,” said Jane.
“Oh, I see what you mean,” said Cassandra. She came across the room and knelt down in front of Jane.
Jane pulled away from her sister, shaking her head.
Cassandra reached out and took one of Jane’s hands in both of hers. “I didn’t mean it in that way. I am not saying the books themselves are pointless, Jane, not at all. You are very talented. Everyone has always thought so. You remember how Papa was so incredibly impressed by your skill.”
