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Chapter Text

An Overabundance of Tom Bertrams

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part One of 4

Tom Bertram is simultaneously eight-and-twenty and two-and-twenty:

The first time it happened, she didn't even realise its significance. Fanny was only fifteen. She had withdrawn to the East Room in some considerable distress, for she believed she was soon to be sent to live with her aunt Norris at the White House, now Uncle Norris was passed on.

She was trying very hard not to cry, and had succeeded all the way up the stairs, even managing a smile – albeit rather a wet smile – as she passed Baddeley in the hallway.

Yet, upon seeing this cherished room in the flesh, uncontestedly hers since Maria – upon turning sixteen – had no more need of an extra room for school hours and lessons, almost unconsciously contemplating how Aunt Norris would permit her no such room in the White House (she had been only grudgingly resigned to Fanny's use of this one, placated by the stipulation there was never be a fire lit for her sake, and often making sideways, snide remarks which suggested it to be far finer an abode than it actually was), recollecting her many hours of reprieve here, she crumpled entirely and began to sob into her hands.

She was roused from her sorrow by the noise of logs crackling and the spreading of an unexpected warmth throughout her body. How long had she been this comfortably – almost uncomfortably – warm?

Thinking quickly and opening her fingers to peer through in puzzlement, Fanny was forced to acknowledge it had been warm since she'd entered. A fire had been lit here, and not by her. Certainly, she would not have risked Aunt Norris' displeasure, knowing her to be wandering about the house looking for sympathy from anyone who was willing to dole it out.

She spied the back of a head; there were long, bare legs slung over the arm of her favourite chair by the fire.

For a joyous moment, she supposed it to be Edmund, and her tears began to dry up of their own accord rather than merely from the shock. She was so pleased to see him she did not stop to think he of all people would never be visiting a young lady – cousin or otherwise – in any state of slovenly undress leaving his legs bare; he was much too proper.

She came nearer the chair and realised the figure lolling there with half-closed eyes was not Edmund but Tom, inexplicably wearing nothing but her dressing-gown. This garment tied neatly around his middle, preserving his modesty to a degree, but it was both too short and too tight not to look very funny indeed.

His eyes fluttered open – some small noise she made alerted him to her presence, though he'd not heard her come in by the door – and he smiled indolently, staring up into her face. "Why, hullo! It's Fanny!"

"Mr. Bertram!" She gawked at him, unable to say anything further, long enough for him to take in her tear-stained face and furrow his brow.

"What, tears?" His mouth tightened in concentration. "Let me guess what's caused your upset – no, never mind, I haven't enough information to manage it, have it? I am in a muddle, I'm afraid – I'll need a hint, won't I? When is it?"

"It is not time for tea yet, but it is after three."

"No, no." He rolled his hand in the air. "That is not what I meant. Date, Fanny. I need a date. Year, month, day – that is what I'm after. The hour does me no good. Now when is it?"

She gave him the date, still puzzled.

"Ah!" He snapped his fingers together. "I know what plagues you – tears yet for my Uncle Norris! It was his funeral today, if I'm not mistaken, and you were always a tender-hearted little creepmouse, weren't you?" No answer was made, all possible words were stuck in her throat, and he went on. "I distinctly recall bumping into you downstairs, after a quarrel with my father – I behaved rather like a spoiled prig, alas, droning on, to Father and to myself, and to anyone who would listen, about not being half so in debt as some of my friends – and you were crying then."

"That was fifteen minutes ago," Fanny managed to squeak.

"So, I guessed rightly? You're crying over Uncle Norris?" His brow furrowed anew. "Forgive my crassness, but I never understood why you wept quite so bitterly – I never understood you and he were such friends."

Fanny hardly knew what possessed her to do so, but she found herself blurting the truth – yes, she was very sorry indeed for Uncle Norris, friends or not, he would be missed, not in the least (though this she did not say aloud) because he had at times taken the edge off some of Aunt Norris' more extreme attempts at frugality, but she was set to weeping now, not only for his sake, but because she was afraid of being sent away to the White House, which might be a thousand miles away as easily as within the view of the park.

"Oh, don't worry yourself." Tom's voice was merry, bright. "It doesn't happen – you never go to live there – Aunt Norris makes some objection or other and my parents keep you on here."

He spoke as if he knew all of this for a fact, as if it had happened already in some vaguely distant past. Fanny was both amazed and inexplicably reassured.

"Between ourselves" – he shifted in the chair, sitting up straight and making sure to keep himself covered as he put his feet on the rug – "it doesn't seem too likely you will ever leave Mansfield Park for another home – it seems to suit you very well and it's very nearly been decided–"

There was a rapping at the door and no time for Fanny to answer before Mrs. Norris had her whole head inside and was frowning at the fire. "Fanny! I am surprised at you. The extravagance! And today of all days. Have you no respect for–"

Her face, already flushed with heat, reddened further. "It was not for myself, Aunt Norris; my cousin Tom is using the room."

"Tom? I saw Tom downstairs not five minutes ago."

"A-ask him for yourself," she stammered out, gesturing to the chair, and turning to be astonished at finding her empty dressing-gown there and no Tom Bertram at all.

Mrs. Norris did not catch the gesture at the chair; she thought Fanny was being impertinent and telling her to go downstairs again and ask Tom if he'd used the room. She doubled her scolding's severity and resolved to ask when next she saw her nephew all the same.

And when she did, Tom coolly denied any knowledge of it. He had been nowhere near the East Room. He hadn't the foggiest idea what Fanny was talking about.

Poor Fanny was too embarrassed to relay their conversation, which she was half convinced she must have imagined in some sort of delirium, and only stood nearby – for Mrs. Norris had not had mercy upon her and brought the subject up out of her earshot – wishing the carpet would swallow her up. Her skin tingled and every inch of her felt like raised gooseflesh, despite being hot enough you could have fried an egg upon her burning cheek.

Sir Thomas, however, refrained from having her punished – he seemed, despite being rather blasé about it, to perceive something had happened which was not, in all probability, entirely within his niece's control. He did know something his sister-in-law did not, a secret burden, and he couldn't help suspecting this dreadful secret – a secret which might yet destroy them all – had played a part in this mischief.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously three-and-twenty and one-and-fifty:

By the time Fanny was sixteen, a full year having gone by, and plans were being made – with regret and solemnity – for Sir Thomas to go to Antigua and take Tom with him, the previous adventure had been all but forgotten. Fanny sometimes wondered how it was she had imagined an entire conversation under such strange circumstances, with a very real fire she had not lit backlighting them, and the prediction Tom had made turned out to be true – Mrs. Norris did not want her at the White House, so she remained where she was – but she thought on it less than she used to.

It was probably the only thing – apart from her growing feelings – she never told Edmund about, sharing nearly everything else with him, with her confidant and best friend.

Now she looked on him with pride as the carriage rolled away and Lady Bertram – suddenly overcome by her husband's fresh absence, largely because she was at a loss to work out who would carve at table with both he and her eldest son gone – turned to him in bewilderment and was promptly reassured he could do just as well in his father's – and Tom's – place.

Fanny privately thought he could do much better.

It became something of a trying day for her, following this, when Julia and Maria found her crying over her sewing and accused her of hypocrisy.

They did not understand she cried not because her uncle was gone, but because he had not left without leaving her a parting terse remark regarding her brother William – if he came to visit Mansfield – not finding her much different at sixteen than he had at ten.

As soon as it was possible, she retired to the East Room where any further tears – if she ended up shedding them – would not be so closely scrutinized.

She nearly fainted – dark spots appearing in front of her eyes and the room spin, spin, spinning – when upon entering this promised sanctuary she found herself facing a stark-naked man.

Gripping what had been a table for lessons in the old days under Miss Lee's tutelage and was presently holding her own books and a netting-box she had been using yesterday, Fanny managed – barely – to steady herself.

He was an older gentleman, perhaps in his forties or fifties, with faintly greying hair and sinking jowls, and there was something very familiar about him.

Although this assumption lasted not even a full minute, Fanny truly thought it was her uncle – Sir Thomas – for a few distressing seconds and could not understand how she had seen him and her cousin leave a few hours earlier, bound for the English docks, bound for Antigua, to now find him in this state and not looking at all alarmed by this fact in a room he knew to be primary for her use.

She began to back against the wall, trembling violently.

Perhaps fainting, now she had let go of the table, was not entirely out of the question – fully averted – after all.

Then he said, "I say! You look rather young – when is this?" and she recognized the voice.

"Mr. Bertram?" she gasped.

"Bloody blazes, what ails you, Fanny? You're about ready to lose your luncheon, I think."

"You haven't got any clothes on."

He glanced downward. "Ah. So cosy in here, despite the damnable lack of a fire, I nearly forgot. Sorry, occupational hazard" – he began to turn about at the waist, almost like a dog chasing its tail, searching the space around himself – "you used to keep spare clothes for me in this room, did you not? Wherever are they at?"

"I beg your pardon, but I never had any of your clothes in this room."

"To be sure, you did – the white shirt with the iron-burn mark and the brown breeches. Oh, and one of Edmund's old jackets even Aunt Norris got fed up with mending."

"You must pardon me, but I cannot understand how you – you left for Antigua." She could practically still feel his obligatory parting kiss on her cheek; there were little, near-imperceptible red marks on it from where his short golden stubble had scratched her. "And you're..." Having already confirmed he was unclothed, she could somehow not bring herself to add old. "You are changed."

Tom chuckled. "Fanny, if you think you can manage it without swooning or being sick, be so good as to hand me the large blanket you use for warmth on chillier days when our Aunt Norris still refuses to permit you a fire; I'll cover myself so as to shock you no further, and then I will do my best to explain."

The curious thing was how Tom sounded both like the younger self who had left for Antigua with his father – his tone, his inflections, everything of that sort was a dead-ringer – and, strangely, also a little like Edmund – more matter-of-fact and severe, mature, despite the teasing quirk of one of his eyebrows constantly trying to raise itself higher than the other.

She handed him the blanket, her face scarlet, and tried not to stare at him as he threw it over his shoulders – its length falling nearly to his feet in woolly folds – and pulled it shut. "It's safe to look now, little modest mouse."

Fanny did look at him, and – with a sigh of relief – sank down onto a little three-legged stool she had not sat on since she was twelve, no longer feeling supported about the knees and ankles.

"I have an unfortunate secret," Tom began, shifting the blanket and pacing the room so that his voice seemed to wane and ebb, nearer and farther, though she could still make out what he was saying even at a distance as the East Room's acoustics, being used for instruction in the past, were very good. "For some reason, often without prior warning, I travel through time. I can take nothing with me, when I go, which is why I've appeared before you in my present state. My father has not gone to Antigua because of money woes, though you will have no trouble believing I really did give him plenty of those – the Tom Bertram who is your cousin at present is a compulsive gambler, alas, and unlike myself does little to curb his impulses. No, my father is taking me to Antigua in the hopes of finding a cure for my displacement in time. It has been trying on him for me to constantly disappear in one place and reappear in another without a stitch on – hardly a trait one desires in an heir to a baronetcy. As you can see from my being before you now, he does not succeed. Antigua held no more answers than the English priests who thought me a demon, or the country doctors who believed they could bleed the time travelling out of me. I daresay it works for ill-humours, I've got nothing against leeches – physicians know what they're doing there, I suppose. But for my problem it's been ineffectual, and I could only let them do it so many times before it rather seemed to make the condition worse."

Fanny folded her hands in her lap, willing them to stop shaking. She knotted her fingers together for whatever little good it would do.

"You are very grave," laughed Tom. "Have I astonished you?"

"Indeed, cousin."

"It feels strange to hear you address me so after so many years."

"Do I not call you cousin when you're from?"

"No, we are as equals in the future – when there is a need, you simply use my Christian name as I do yours – if you can believe it."

Fanny did not believe it, what he claimed seemed impossible, considering who and what she was, but neither did she like to contradict this peculiar, older Tom Bertram who seemed so very sure of himself.

Instead, she asked if time travel was what caused the episode with the fireplace on the day of Uncle Norris's funeral.

He smiled apologetically. "D'you know, I'd nearly forgotten about that. But yes, I had travelled into this room through time and, finding it unoccupied and sans gentleman's clothing, borrowed your dressing-gown and lit a fire in here."

"And you did tell me I never went to live with our Aunt Norris?"

"Certainly."

"Then why did you deny it when she asked you?" He had let her get into rather a lot of trouble – at least on Aunt Norris' end.

"Because I didn't know what our aunt was speaking of – it hadn't happened for me – for him – yet." He shook his head. "Beg pardon, I know it's most confusing. But the Tom Bertram who told our aunt he didn't know what you were talking about was not deliberately being deceitful, for all his faults – he was not in this room with you that day. At least not then.

"If it comforts you to know, you are not the sole victim of such an event. Poor Miss Anderson of Baker Street! I mocked her rather mercilessly, out of personal pride and embarrassment, without a thought to her feelings, I'm afraid, for claiming me as an acquaintance after coming out, when – to my knowledge – she had only sat once in a room with me, a year prior, wearing a closed bonnet and severe pout, and we did not speak because she was shy of me. I was unaware she'd later run into an older version of myself – by only a few months, if you can imagine it! – and we had talked a great deal, almost like friends. Of course, she did not know my secret and – believing I snubbed her when she approached me so amiably at Mrs. Holford's – never spoke to me again.

"She and the elder Miss Sneyd, another handsome woman I offended greatly, wind up bonded over their joined hatred of me – it's actually rather touching. They're still extremely good friends when I come from! And the silly old biddies both still stick their tongues out at me in public if they think no one to be observing them.

"Anyhow, recollect, if you can, the Tom you spoke to in this room knew things your Tom from the day of Uncle Norris' funeral couldn't know – such as the fact you never moved into the White House." Pursing his lips and counting back on his fingers, nearly letting the blanket slip by accident as he did so, he added, "I think the Tom who visited you must have been – if my memory serves – that is, he was a few years older and rather incautious because he was merry over his upcoming marriage. Yes, must have been around then."

The corners of Fanny's mouth turned upward. So her cousin was married in the future – as long as it was to somebody suitable, this must have pleased her uncle, who she suspected wished all his children to settle down while still young. She felt a smidgeon sorry for his bride, though, even though it seemed he turned out rather nice – she was, in spite of herself, rather enjoying speaking to this older, affable, less haughty Tom – considering how thoughtless and outright selfish the Tom she knew now could often be.

"I am rather sorry I've come back when my father is just gone to Antigua." His expression was sorrowful and a trifle sheepish. "I should have liked to see him again. I often miss him."

"My uncle is..." She felt her throat constrict. "My uncle is dead in your time?"

He nodded. "Where I am from, I've been Sir Thomas of Mansfield Park for quite a while."

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She was crying already for an uncle who, presently, was not even in peril, if you did not count the sea voyage he was about to undertake.

As if to cheer her, Tom winked and suggested she might mortify Aunt Norris by making accurate predictions about when Sir Thomas and Tom would return from Antigua. "I can tell you things, and you'd be like Nostradamus to her ears. She would be reduced to a jelly if she thought you could predict the future. A merry jest you and I will have at her expense!"

Fanny did not dare. Besides, "You love Aunt Norris."

"Oh, poor innocent, good-hearted Fanny Price." He tsked, sucking his teeth. "You see everything and are too polite to admit it. Presently Tom Bertram loves nothing but himself and he tolerates the aunt who abuses you and rarely comes to your defence because she coddles and pets and fusses over him and stokes his vanity as one might stoke a fire.

"I, on the other hand, God forgive me, miss her very little when I bother to remember her."

"She is gone, too, then?" Fanny loathed herself for not being sorrier of this fact, for not having tears for Aunt Norris as she did for her uncle who was no real blood relation and thus ought to be secondary in the chain of affection.

"Well, she is not at Mansfield Park, has not been for a very, very long time – but she's still alive, tough old bird that she is. I daresay she will outlive us all."

"I scarcely know what to say," she murmured into her lap. Her fingernails, all stuck into her palms at odd angles as she wrung her hands, were digging into her flesh so hard they were on the verge of breaking the skin.

"Now you are aware of my secret, I would appreciate your help – get those clothes I mentioned."

"You'll come back here, then?"

"Oh, to be sure! A number of times, when I'm younger. D'you know, I think we had little visitations like this right up until the present version of myself returned ear–" He stopped himself, coughing. He wouldn't spoil the surprise. "That is, when Tom Bertram from your own time came back from Antigua. Exactly when he is meant to. Otherwise, I don't know. I can hardly speak for my older self."

And then he disappeared.

The empty blanket – still smelling like an older gentleman, still containing his warmth – fluttered to the floor beside her stool.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously three-and-twenty and seven-and-twenty:

The next visit Fanny received from a time-displaced Tom Bertram did not occur – despite her preparations for that exact eventuality, having a box of clothes ready as he'd requested – in the East Room.

She was sleeping, fairly soundly, in her bed in her little attic, as she had done for the last six years, when an arm snaked around her and a face buried itself in her hair.

Startled, Fanny yelped, only to be drawn in tighter and to feel flesh and bones folding against her own. Worse, the caressing hands of whoever was holding her against them were behaving in rather a free, improper manner and her growing alarm at this – for lack of a better word – groping – promptly flooded her entire body.

Another sort of girl would have jerked her knee between the legs of such an intruder, but violence was never Fanny's first instinct. Instead, she contorted, writhing loose with some difficultly, and put her cold feet on his bare posterior, making him scream out with a colourful oath and let go of her in surprise.

Rolling over and reaching for a candle stub, which she quickly lit, she discovered a rather irate Tom beside her.

Sleepy himself and making very little effort to stay modestly concealed under the covers where he had materialized, he sat up and blinked at her grumpily. "Is a man not permitted to sleep in his own bed at night?"

"Forgive me, Mr. Bertram, there has been some mistake; you're not in your bed, but in mine."

"Isn't that one and the same thing?" He was dashing the back of his wrist against his still gritty eyes. "And what did you mean by your putting something colder than the Ninth Circle on my arse? Were those your feet? The devil are you doing with your feet that cold?"

Fanny's hand dropped from being cupped around the candle she held and a little of the flame's light illuminated part of the room.

"Where are we, the bloody attic?" Tom's countenance changed – he looked as if he might take ill. "God. Tell me I wasn't so stupid. Fanny, darling, approximately how old would you say you are?"

Her brow furrowed quizzically. Had he just referred to her as darling? She'd never heard Tom call anyone 'darling' in his life – not once since she'd met him when he was seventeen and she was ten – not even his own mother. "I would say I am sixteen."

"Forgive me, cousin." He put a strange emphasis on the word, as if it tasted strange in his mouth. "This was a dreadful mistake – I'm – erm – do you know?"

"That you time travel?" she asked. "Why, yes, you told me." She thought better of this. "Or, you will, I think."

"Right." He exhaled heavily. "Listen. Where I'm from, you're twenty, I'm currently seven-and-twenty, and I hadn't realised I'd travelled – I must have gone in my sleep. Curious – I didn't know I could do that, what. Rather remarkable."

The candle almost fell from her hand. "But why did you–?"

"I thought you were, erm, somebody else." He winced. "But never mind; if you'll be so good as to loan me your dressing-gown, I'll tell you what – I shall make it up to you." His present effort seemed to be to come across as a manic child, fairly oozing an aura of forced innocence. "We can sit up and play cards! Or Where's The Button. Have you got a spare button?"

Fanny was rather incredulous but not unkind as she reminded him she had to be up in a few hours. She wasn't really allowed to sleep in late.

So Tom – now too awake to rest – resigned himself to putting on her dressing-gown and sprawling beside her to stare up at the ceiling uncomfortably. He sighed a good deal, and made popping noises with his mouth, rather testing poor Fanny's patience.

"Fanny?"

"Yes?"

"Have I mentioned I'm very sorry about this?"

"You have not mentioned it within the last four minutes." She'd almost dared to hope he'd fallen asleep or disappeared, slipping back into his own time as suddenly as he'd come into hers.

"I haven't mortified you for life or anything, have I?" He sounded hoarse and distressed. "I truly didn't mean to paw at you as if you were the last dessert on a service tray – it was an honest mistake."

She assured him he hadn't done any irreparable damage to her innocence, though she confessed some relief she would not have to face his present self at the breakfast table in the morning, being as he was still away in Antigua.

"I loathe Antigua," was Tom's next comment – it was rather a favourite stock phrase of his he never grew out of, regardless of maturity level. He was wont to utter I loathe Antigua, the way some older women randomly complain of the temperature in a room or say they love their lapdogs. Tom's own mother often said she was fond of Pug in much the same absent tone, simply sans the vague hint of disgust in her voice. "D'you know what else I loathe, Fanny?"

She didn't respond.

He went on anyway. "I loathe this room – it's hideous and I don't know what my father was thinking putting you in here – it's such a bloody dungeon – when I inherit this house, I'm going to have it bricked up."

Burrowing her face into her pillow, Fanny silently begged God's underserved forgiveness for uncharitably wishing in her deepest heart this Tom Bertram was away in Antigua as well as the present one.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously three-and-twenty, thirty, and seven-and-twenty:

Hearing voices, coming from the East Room, Fanny froze in the doorway, listening.

"You buffoon! Why didn't you warn me? You, of all, letting me waltz into these humiliating situations – it raises my spleen like anything. You ought to have warned me, I tell you!"

"Warn you about what? Oi, and what do you think you're doing, those are my clothes!"

"They're jolly well mine – I got to the box first."

"I think Fanny would prefer I have them – I don't believe she's very fond of you at the moment, judging by the calendar on the wall there."

"And whose fault is that, you vapid clodpole? It had already happened for you – why the deuce didn't you say something to prevent it?"

Tom was arguing with himself – there were two time-displaced versions of Tom Bertram in the East Room. Fanny wondered if she should have tried to get some extra clothes for the box – she would have, if she'd known, or even suspected, this was a possibility.

"I couldn't have – it happened."

"D'you have any idea how unsettling..." He groaned. "She was sixteen!"

Fanny turned her head so she could see the two Tom Bertrams in her peripheral view and make out what they were arguing over more plainly, without staring dead-on at their joined current state of undress.

The slightly older of the two Tom Bertrams gave a shrug. "Fanny will be just fine, you know she will."

"D'you even recollect what she was like at sixteen, grandfather?"

"Grandfather? Who the deuce are you calling grandfather? I'm only four years older than you!"

"She was still in love with Edmund!"

"Uh-oh, I comprehend everything now – you're jealous."

"Pray do not be absurd; I most certainly am not!"

The other Tom started punching him on the arm, pushing him about the room, and teasing him. "Tom Bertram loves Fanny – Tom Bertram loves Fanny... Nah, nah, nah, nah, naaaaaaa..."

"You shall stop this nonsense at once," demanded the younger Tom, whirling on his older counterpart and glaring hard. "Or I'll tell."

"Tell who?"

"Fanny."

"What, I'd like to see you try it" – punch – "did you not just say this Fanny is only sixteen?"

"Not this Fanny, you idiot – the Fanny from your time, when next I see her!"

"Oi, you leave her out of this or, regardless of if it hurts me later, throttle you within an inch of your sorry life – she's just recovered from a nasty cold that nearly got into her lungs! I will not have you upsetting her."

His expression falling, the younger Tom blanched. "Oh, forgive me, I didn't realise – how unfortunate – was she in any real danger?"

"Doctor doesn't seem to think so – it's nothing like what nearly did us in after that fiasco in Newmarket – but you know how delicate she is."

Beginning to feel she was eavesdropping unethically, and further certain she could bear to hear no more, Fanny pushed open the door and cleared her throat.

"Fanny!" both Toms exclaimed together. "What-ho."

Then the elder Tom disappeared, and the younger Tom – cursing and diving to the floor – scrambled for the box of clothing.

Fanny slowly walked backwards, out of the East Room, and resolved not to return until he was gone again. She didn't like sharing this space with Tom – Tom who, in real time, hardly ever condescended to set foot in here.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously three-and-twenty and three-and-ninety:

Distressed and confused by the previous two visits from Tom's future self, Fanny made a resolution.

She would not interact any further with future versions of her cousin.

Mr. Bertram could appear as he would – it was his future house, after all – but she need not be present.

She had put out the box of clothes he asked her for.

What other need had he of her?

The present Tom, were he at home, might send her on an errand or persuade her to fill in for a task when nobody else was available, and – reminded constantly as she was the great debt she owned all her Bertram cousins – she would be obliged to do whatever his request might be.

The future Tom Bertram was a problem for her older self – a frightening enough thought all its own, as her mind refused to wrap around what that might entail.

The notion she was anything to him in the future was both absurd because they were unequal, and it was an honour she never desired and because she possessed none of the required feelings for it.

If it were Edmund–

No, that was equally impossible, if also less repellent and a sweeter thought.

However, she failed to hold onto her resolution when the next Tom to visit the East Room was not the handsome, fair-haired cousin she dreaded but a little old man with bowed legs from a life spent largely in the saddle, liver spots, a shaky gait, a slightly receding hairline of pure white, and impossibly kind, light eyes only vaguely reminiscent of those possessed by the Tom Bertram she knew.

With a low groan, he concealed himself behind the table, dragged the box across the floor, and dressed quickly before coming out to have a look at Fanny, who hesitated a moment too long before fleeing – a moment in which she was able to see those kind eyes of his were filling with tears.

"Hullo, Fanny." He sniffed, shuffling towards her. "Forgive my staring like a country bumpkin – it's just really good to see you again."

As if being introduced to a stranger, for she very nearly felt she was, Fanny bent at the knees and gave a little bob.

"You look so very, very young," he laughed. "How old are you here, mouseling?"

"Sixteen."

"Well, I shan't be likely to have a run in with myself at least – I'm still away in Antigua in the present, am I not?"

She nodded.

"D'you mind if I take your chair by the hearth? My old legs don't stand up as well as they used to. In my own time, I walk with a cane."

Fanny said of course he was welcome to it, and what was more she would light a fire for him.

"Won't our aunt Norris be dreadfully cross with you if you do that?"

"Yes, but, for you–"

The elderly baronet shook his head. "I'm an old, old man, Fanny – ever so much more than fifty, you know. The doctors aren't expecting me to live much longer – with my condition they're all stunned I've lived long enough to be taken out by something as deadly dull as old age and nothing worse. Lack of a fire here will hardly...well..."

Fanny's chin startled trembling.

"Don't cry for me, little Fanny Price – it's the way of all flesh. Dust to Dust, as they say." He looked very sombre. "I do not know that I should tell you this, but it cannot hurt – you, Edmund, even Mr. Yates–" He took in Fanny's blank expression. "Oh, forget I mentioned him, you won't have met him yet. Dash it. My addled mind is finally going. You'll meet him soon, though." He coughed. "I meant to say you've all been gone rather a while when I'm from. I shall be glad enough to go to Heaven or wherever you've all passed on to without me and see you lot again, in real time."

"Oh, that is why you said you missed me." Curiosity gripped her. "Might I ask...? How long have I...?"

"Oh, little creepmouse, I don't know if I should tell you that."

"It's all right – it won't frighten me."

"About twenty years."

That could mean, Fanny realised, rather comforted than otherwise, I might well live to be seventy.

This was hardly bad news for a girl whose health had never been what might be called good. What was a little more distressing was the idea she spent all her life here at Mansfield Park, presumably living off of Tom's charity. She loved Mansfield Park, every stick and stone of it; it was her home. Still, to contemplate she had either been an indigent relation her entire – rather long – life or else had...and this was worse, somehow...perhaps gone against every principal and value she held dear and married for money and convenience...

"You're troubled," noted the baronet. "You always get that puckered furrow between your eyebrows when..." He trailed off, studying her contemplatively from his seat. "I don't think it's what I've just told you. You're too sensible to fret over that. Whatever is the matter?"

Concluding that telling her woes to an elderly Tom – one on death's door, if he were to be believed – wouldn't be the same as having told the younger Tom Bertrams, even the one who had appeared to be in his fifties, Fanny admitted to being shaken over the last two visits.

He had been in her bed; he had been mocking himself as if he fancied her.

She could not make sense of it in her mind.

"I shouldn't fret over that, either, if I were you," he assured her, chuckling kindly. "My younger self was only being a prig – and to himself, not you. The teasing meant nothing, and the incident in your attic room..." His pale face coloured beet red. "I recall I was just as mortified as you were when I realised my mistake."

"You really did think I was somebody else?"

"Naturally."

"We're not...?" Her throat closed.

"In the future, cousin" – again, the word sounded forced – "we are better friends than in the present. Something happens – I nearly get myself jolly well killed while away in Newmarket – and I am forever a changed man afterwards. In that time, I enjoy your company – while I am recovering my strength, you teach me botany and tell me embarrassing stories about my future self visiting you in this room and I make you lose that grave, mousy expression and laugh a bit with irreverent remarks and anecdotes – and we are equals. That's all. Nothing to frighten yourself over."

Fanny's sigh of relief was heavy, as if unloading a great burden. She liked this grandfatherly Tom best of them all, she thought, for he was the kindest, the least selfish of the whole overabundance of them. It was a shame she would never meet him in real time, a shame she might never see him again after this.

Mistaking the tears she shed – thinking them not for him at all – the old baronet urged her to look at him, and said, "I am going to say something to make you blush, pray don't leave the room in horror – trust me – it is between ourselves – who would I tell?" Reaching out, he patted her hand. "You're in love with my brother."

She shrank back, stricken.

"That's why the idea you married anyone else distresses you."

"Oh, cousin..."

A younger Tom would have told her the full truth cheerfully and suggested she buck up and cope, but Tom at the end of his life was more gracious; it was the end of his journey of learning to be tactful and to think of others, so he'd nearly perfected it. "Go on loving him, Fanny, so long as you feel as you do. There's nothing wrong in such honest feelings."

"There is no hope," she pointed out. "It is cruel of you to–"

"I'm not being cruel – I promise you – as long as you are alive there is always hope." He smiled, then shivered. "I'm going." Lifting his hand from where it still hovered over Fanny's, he patted her head before planting a chaste kiss on her brow. "I'm so pleased I got to see you one last time, little creepmouse. Be good."

Some minutes later, Edmund came into the room – seeking her company as well as her thoughts on something he'd read – to find Fanny crouched by the chair, folding Tom's clothes, and crying.

"So, Tom has been visiting with you – I hope he hasn't said anything unkind."

Fanny lifted her head and gaped at him, lips parted.

"Don't worry, there is no need for alarm, you aren't betraying a confidence – I already know all about Tom's travelling. I'd gladly have told you if I'd been given liberty to. I'm aware of why he really went to Antigua. Who do you think makes sure he has boxes of clothing hidden in practically every room in the house besides this one? I simply hadn't realised he ever appeared here."

It was a relief to not be alone in the secret any longer. She felt closer to Edmund, already her dearest friend, in sharing this with him. Perhaps Tom had not given her false hope at all – perhaps he knew something of the future and...

"But Maria and Julia do not know – Father did not wish them burdened any more than he wished it upon you – I humbly ask you refrain from telling them until Tom inevitably blurts it out in front of them one of these days, as I'm always expecting him to."

"Your mother?" Fanny asked.

"Would you believe, Fanny, I'm not altogether certain about my mother – I overheard Father trying to explain it to her once, saw her nodding, and then a moment later I could have sworn she comprehended not a word he'd said. She's seen Tom, displaced in time, stride by her sofa while she sits with Pug, and she rarely reacts with more than a blasé greeting and a yawn. Perhaps it does not distress her as it does the rest of us."

"Probably," Fanny murmured, shaking off the last of her tears and smiling, "she would not be unhappy if you all disappeared from the present in front of her and popped back into next Tuesday randomly."

"I think you are right," agreed Edmund. "But don't let him vex you – Tom, I mean – when he pops in – I know he sometimes enjoys bossing you about when he ought to let you be."

Tom Bertram is simultaneously three-and-twenty and six-and-forty (and briefly five-and-twenty):

A week after she turned seventeen, Fanny observed Tom – whistling to himself, some warbling tune he could probably play haphazardly on the piano if called upon to do so – watering the plants in the East Room as if it were second nature to him.

Over the past year, she had come to rather like the visits from Tom when he was over forty – he reminded her a little more of the elderly baronet, and his methods of teasing her were all gentler than those he employed whenever he was younger. He was rather like a more playful version of his brother. She felt at ease with him. Further, he had a way of tidying up after himself and helping out without being asked which was nothing like his present self in the least.

Fanny was unaccomplished in drawing as well as in music, having never really wanted to learn, but while alone in the East Room she attempted some easier sketches Edmund had taught her when they were children.

Tom leaned over, setting down the watering can a little too near her elbow, and commented on what she ought to do next. She needed more shade, and to smudge it less as she worked.

Tom was always the best natural artist of all the Bertram children so – despite it being unasked for, and often contrary to what she'd wanted to do originally – Fanny took his advice to heart.

"I say, Fanny," he exclaimed, pulling out a chair and sitting beside her, "I've had a wonderful notion – what if you loaned me the paper, and I sketched, and you posed for me?"

She did not think herself a very interesting subject for a sketch, and began to protest in her usual weak, guilty manner, keenly aware it was but a little thing he asked of her, and no skin off her nose to grant it to him if only it would not make her so uncomfortable, but before she could convince him to leave off the idea and permit her to draw in peace, something crashed onto the floor beside the table.

Fanny and Tom both started and leaned over, alarmed to discover another Tom – this one perhaps five-and-twenty – unclothed, blue with cold, and shivering violently as if he were very ill.

His teeth rattled, his eyes were unfocused, and he seemed unaware he had travelled.

Worse still, he appeared to be badly injured and was covered in fresh bruises, as if he'd taken a nasty fall recently.

The Tom who was six-and-forty recovered himself and sighed, "Oh, him."

But Fanny was aghast. "We must do something for him." Was it all right to fetch Baddeley? Edmund told her the butler knew, too, and sometimes helped conceal Tom's travelling from his sisters. "Let me fetch a blanket, then you can wait with him, and I shall get help." This time she would have started a fire for his sake and would gladly have taken Aunt Norris' wrath if she were caught.

"There's no need," said six-and-forty Tom. "He will be gone in but a moment."

He was right, but Fanny stood over the spot where he had been, holding a woollen blanket, gulping and trying to clear her rapidly drying throat. "What was wrong with him?"

"Intoxication, a rising fever, and several complications from both of those," six-and-forty Tom sighed. "He drank too much after a fall from his horse in Newmarket."

Newmarket... She'd heard thirty-year-old Tom say something about an accident there. And three-and-ninety Tom, the sweet old baronet, had mentioned that same incident. She was sure this was what he'd meant. It was supposed to be what made them friends in the future, at least on his side, but she hadn't expected it to look so grisly. No wonder it had changed him so. He might have... Well! He was luckier even than she'd realised last year to be three-and-ninety when he suspected himself of dying.

"Will someone be there to help him, in his time?"

Six-and-forty Tom shook his head. "Not for some hours yet – his friends will leave him, and the illness will take its course. Fanny, you must promise me now not to interfere, or attempt to dissuade my going to Newmarket when the time comes. You must let it happen. Even if it pains you greatly, knowing in advance. The incident in Newmarket is to be the making of me – without that tragedy, I would be lost for ever."

Chapter Text

An Overabundance of Tom Bertrams

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Two of 4

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and five-and-thirty and six-and-twenty:

Fanny glanced up from the book she studied to where a visiting time-displaced Tom stood looking out the window. He'd forgotten to straighten his collar, when he took his clothes from the box, and she felt a strange urge to get up and assist him with this, but reminded herself if he didn't mind the iron-burn he probably didn't care much about the collar, either.

Nobody save herself was going to see him.

This was something of delicate territory for them both. Fanny was nearing eighteen now; the summer, as it waned on, was hot and golden and foreboding; Tom in the present would being returning early in September, allegedly for gaming purposes – for shooting the birds in Mansfield Wood and the field – but really because the excessive heat in Antigua seemed to make his travelling worse. Five-and-thirty Tom remembered how odd it had been, frequently disappearing from his father's side and reappearing in the places of his early childhood, watching his tiny self learning to ride his first pony and train a spoiled spaniel puppy to chase a stick. He also remembered something Fanny from his own time had told him – when he returned from Antigua, the visitations from the older versions of him in the East Room trickled to a near stop.

This stage between them was nearly over, and Tom felt as if he'd – well, mostly other versions of himself, he'd only been in here with her, perhaps, thrice, at most – done little besides vex and further distress her.

From Fanny's perspective, it was less complicated; she simply did not know what to make of him.

Just when she began to enjoy his being around at a certain age, usually somewhere between forty or sixty, a younger version was bound to pop in next and make her uncomfortable.

She felt guilty disliking him, at any age, given how, even in the present, with his selfish preoccupations, he'd always been kinder than he strictly was obligated to be. Many of the trinkets and boxes in this room (including the very workbox she'd used that morning, and which was still sitting out on the table) were gifts from him.

And if they were such good friends in the future, he must – by the time he was five-and-thirty – have given her a great deal more presents she ought, no doubt, to be thankful for.

She was forever indebted to him by all appearances.

Still, it wasn't his fault entirely, simply the way things were, and Fanny felt she must say something – so she asked, she thought there could be no harm in it, if he knew Maria was newly engaged to Mr. Rushworth at present. Or very nearly. They were simply waiting on her uncle's approval by post.

"Eh?" Tom turned from the window and looked at her. "Is she now? James Rushworth? Heavens, I'd nearly forgotten all about him."

"Their engagement falters, then?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt ashamed – she ought not to gossip in this manner, it was cruel. "Forgive me, I speak out of turn."

Tom didn't seem to notice her rudeness, or even to consider it as such a great breech as she herself did. "Oh, no, that isn't what I meant, I was talking of the divorce."

Fanny's mouth formed an O of ghastly surprise. "Oh, poor Maria."

"Oh, horse shit." The blood drained from Tom's face as he registered the shocked expression on hers – it was as if he'd suddenly realised which version of Fanny he was having this conversation with.

"Mr. Bertram!"

He grimaced. "There isn't some chance you'll get a bump on the head within the next five minutes and forget I told you what happens to Maria, is there?"

After the rather missish expression following his oath faded from her countenance, Fanny admitted she did not think his hoped-for scenario very likely.

"Don't tell her, Fanny – I see what you're thinking, but don't. She wouldn't listen to you, anyway; let alone thank you for interfering. And our aunt Norris would accuse you of scheming to split them up out of spite. There's no cause for giving yourself added grief."

"A divorce would ruin her unless..." Fanny's bottom lip quivered. "Was Mr. Rushworth unfaithful?"

"Pray don't ask stupid questions," he sighed. "We are speaking of Mr. Rushworth. Think, mousy. Think."

"But do you not wish to warn her – to avert...?" Maria might not listen to herself, but she and Tom were close – in their odd way, at the very least always being united in their attacks against Fanny when they wished her to do something and she seemed on the verge of protesting or outright declining – and she needn't know her brother was a time traveller in order to be warned; Tom in his thirties did not look remarkably dissimilar to Tom in his twenties, after all.

"If it were possible, don't you think I'd have tried it?"

Fanny normally would have nodded and let it go, but there was something in Tom's face which made her say, "No – you look as if you want it to happen."

His eyes narrowed.

"Forgive me."

"You don't understand, that's all." He placed a hand over his mouth and moaned, then lowered it. His eyes were slightly glassy. "It was my fault. D'you not suppose the ruin of my sister is a burden I live with every day?"

"But..." Fanny blinked. "Your fault? How could it be?"

"My selfishness was one of the stronger means through which she and her lover were brought together – you'll see, when it happens. You won't be as blind as the others, including my present self. Thankfully, you will also be quiet."

She knew she should leave it at that, only... "But why must Maria–"

"I don't know if it's even possible to change what's already happened – I've tried little things before, just to see – but if Maria does not fall, there is a chance, however slender, a certain union might form which would destroy my happiness. I love my sister, though I show it poorly. There is simply somebody I love more, perhaps too much, perhaps selfishly in spite of my best efforts, and I would never risk giving her to him. If you mar–" He turned red, almost purple in the face, and gave a forceful cough. "Excuse me, I misspoke. If she marries him, I might as well simply die after the Newmarket incident – I know you know about that."

It was obvious her cousin was in real pain. Fanny's heart was not stone. She laid her hand over his knuckles. "I never meant to upset you."

"Well, I shouldn't have told you about Maria leaving Rushworth – let it be upon my own head and we'll say no more of it." One corner of his mouth curled upward. "If it makes you feel any better, my father buys you a new dress for her wedding and it's a very fine one."

"I would rather have Maria's good name preserved than a new dress."

"Hmm, well, you might feel differently once you've seen the dress," he jested.

Fanny opened her mouth to give some little demure reply, when the noise of a chair toppling over startled her and she leaped from her own chair, whirling.

Five-and-thirty Tom let out a distressed yelp and put his hands over her eyes. "You don't need to see this."

Perplexed, Fanny wondered what sight involving his time-displaced self could be worse than the injured, sick 'Newmarket Tom' she'd already seen. From what could he be trying to protect her?

To himself, five-and-thirty Tom snapped, "Cover yourself with the blanket. We have company. You'll frighten her, you complete nitwit."

"The next time you see Edmund – hem, I'm sorry, the Reverend Bertram," grumped the newly arrived Tom, who sounded young and sulky, "do us a favour and ask him what I did to incur the interminable wrath of his God. Why can I not have one – just one – normal bloody thing in my life? A man marries, a man consummates said marriage. Simple enough. People do it every day. Some even without marriage, apparently, way I hear it. I try it, entirely honourably to boot – I disappear. Apparently, God hates me and wants me to die a virgin. There is no other conclusion I can arrive at. What sort of cruel jest–"

"This truly is not the time for this utterly fascinating conversation," growled five-and-thirty Tom. "Stop it. I've got my hands over her eyes, not her ears. Now, stop complaining and cover yourself with the damnable blanket!"

"All right, all right. D'you receive money every time you mention the blasted blanket or something? You are certainly a man of one idea today! Yes, yes, look, I'm getting your precious blanket about myself now; there's no need to bite my head off." Then, as if noticing her for the first time, "What-ho, Fanny."

Sighing, five-and-thirty Tom took his hands off Fanny's eyes. "Trust me, you will thank me for that later."

Standing before them with her blanket wrapped around his middle was a version of Tom only a mere year older than the one in her present – the one in Antigua – would now be. He looked very piqued, and his expression was unfamiliar – having never seen anyone with it before, Fanny was unable to put a name to it. She thought it might be something like yearning but coiled, stormy, like it wanted to pounce, but of course that was nonsense and made no sense – she did not know why she thought that.

Emotions did not pounce.

"Mercy. You're looking at very well," six-and-twenty Tom remarked – his look had turned admiring, but Fanny did not think she liked this sort of admiration. "This was when you first started wearing your hair with the little ringlets upfront. You're what, approximately seventeen?"

"Nearly eighteen," she squeaked, surprised at herself for contradicting him.

"Stop," warned five-and-thirty Tom, through his teeth. "Just stop it."

"Stop what?" Fanny craned her neck to glance back at him.

"Not you, mousy – you haven't done anything amiss – I meant him." He seemed about ready to take up Fanny's abandoned book and knock his former self over the head with it. "If you can't look at her without getting yourself into a heated frenzy right now – if you're that warm – just, I don't know, turn around and stare at the wall until you go back."

Her gaze turned back to the younger Tom, Fanny's innocent brow furrowed. "Why does the front of the blanket stick up in that curious way?"

"For the love of–" Five-and-thirty Tom nudged his way around her, grabbed six-and-twenty Tom by the back of the neck and dragged him to the door. "Go downstairs and have Baddeley prepare a cold bath."

"Well, it isn't my fault–" whined six-and-twenty Tom, scowling. "I didn't ask to come here. I'll have you know, I was having a perfectly lovely time where I was at."

"Yes, I remember," five-and-thirty Tom said dryly. "Quite vividly. Christ, look at you! I wouldn't be you again for all the diamonds in Africa!" Snapping his fingers, he pointed and waved emphatically. "Just go. Downstairs. This instant. Before I am required to take you outside and just throw you in the pond and continuously pelt you with ice chips until you cool down."

"Hang on, Aunt Norris might be down there spying on the servants – she believes me to be in Antigua – I can't just go waltzing across the foyer with my–"

Both Tom Bertrams then turned to Fanny with their heads tilted pleadingly. "We require your services," they said in unison.

"I do not quite understand what it is I'm meant to do," Fanny admitted quietly as both Tom Bertrams sort of herded her towards the stairs.

"All we want," said five-and-thirty Tom, "is for you to go downstairs, address our aunt, and hold her attention for a few measly minutes – whereupon, Tom and I will sneak out onto the lawn and beyond." He seemed almost childishly proud – especially for a man well into his thirties – of this plan. "Isn't that right, Tom?" No answer. "Tom?"

"Yes, anything you say – I agree completely." Plainly not hearing a word, six-and-twenty Tom was preoccupied with grinning over at Fanny in a demented fashion, if his mind were totally elsewhere, until his older counterpart struck him on the back of the head – causing him to cry, "Ow! Was that strictly necessary?" – and reminded him to focus.

"I told you to stop staring at her," he hissed.

"A cat can look at a mouse."

Five-and-thirty Tom rolled his eyes. "I believe the phrase is 'a cat can look at a queen'."

"I've said what I've said," sniffed six-and-twenty Tom.

"Quickly, Fanny – here comes our aunt now." And Fanny felt the back of her heel scrape against the first step at the top of the staircase – where the landing came to an end – as both Tom Bertrams gave her a gentle push from behind.

"D'you really think this will work?" said six-and-twenty Tom from the corner of his mouth.

"Of course," was the bright reply.

"Truly?"

"Frankly, I have no idea – but we'll soon find out, will we not?"

Mrs. Norris was none too pleased to be approached by Fanny – stumbling in an ungainly fashion down the stairs – and asked for a word. "P-please, aunt, I must consult with you."

She gave a weary sigh. "Yes, child, what about? Do make it quick; I'm very busy."

"I... Um... That is..." What could she have to ask her? Was there some favour she could invent a need for? "I needed to ask if it was acceptable if I... Erm..." Sweat ran from her brow to her chin. She felt hot, then chilled, under Mrs. Norris' impatient gaze. "Only... What if..."

Behind them, both Tom Bertrams had nearly reached the halfway point to the foyer, and there mightn't have been any trouble if only six-and-twenty Tom's blanket hadn't slipped, making him stumble as he struggled to readjust it around himself, careening straight into a side-table with a lamp.

Smash!

"What was that?" Mrs. Norris was about to turn her head.

Frantic, Fanny did the first – albeit foolish – thing which came to her mind; she lifted her hand and knocked over a nearby vase.

"Fanny Harriet Price, you deliberately dropped that vase – I saw you with my own eyes – what are you thinking of?"

Prior to Fanny's fast thinking, the two Tom Bertrams had been quarrelling in a series of exaggerated miming motions over the broken lamp, and at one point the shade was over six-and-twenty Tom's head almost like a hat – for some curious reason – while the other Tom mouthed he was a complete idiot and knocked it off him.

They both stood stock-still, however, when Fanny casually tipped the vase, mouths agape.

Until a brief motion of her light eyes signalled they should keep going.

Poor Fanny – unlike the lamp, which they'd practically shattered – the vase was hardly the worse off for having a single large chip at its lip (the present Tom, when he got back from Antigua, would rather think it had more character that way), yet Mrs. Norris glared at her as if she'd murdered somebody; but it worked, the noise behind them was forgotten, and unthought of again even when the broken remains of the lamp were later discovered and blamed on a maid-servant.

Tom Bertram is five-and-twenty:

The last Tom Bertram Fanny saw in the East Room before September was six-and-forty.

Unlike six-and-twenty Tom, he didn't act strangely, or gawp at her with an unnerving expression – he was very much like he'd been the time before, watering plants and making himself useful.

But he'd seemed a little sad – she caught a melancholic look in his eye as he regarded the calendar – and Fanny wished to comfort him. Without thinking it through, she came behind the chair he was seated in and put her arms around his neck, embracing him quickly.

"I'm so sorry," was the last thing he'd said to her, rather cryptically, before he vanished. "I am so very sorry for what comes next. For all of it."

After that, things seemed to happen so quickly – everything at Mansfield Park changed.

The grey pony Fanny loved and had been taught to ride on died, and Edmund – after much debate with Mrs. Norris, who urged him to wait until his father's return, probably hoping he'd forget all about it before then – traded his road-horse for a new one Fanny might ride, a gentle mare suitable for a delicate young lady.

The pleasantness of this event perplexed Fanny, who'd grimly expected far worse to come, given six-and-forty Tom's last words to her.

Perhaps, she reasoned, he had loved the grey pony, too, being as fond of horses as she knew he was, and had known it would affect her greatly.

Still, the reaction seemed exaggerated for only this.

Then Fanny had her eighteenth birthday, largely unnoticed by anyone save for Edmund, and the Crawfords came to the park – to the parsonage to live with Dr. and Mrs. Grant – and Fanny began to comprehend his apprehension for her. She also began to resent him, though she tried in her deepest heart not to, for truly she had come to care rather more deeply for the Tom who appeared in the East Room from time to time, even when he was more a bother than anything else, than she did the present Tom (whose manners and nature she'd nearly forgotten as a consequent of being separated from him for so long), beginning to suspect her visitor of having been a wicked liar and making fun of her.

The little old man she'd loved best of all had said she should go on loving Edmund; seeing him with Miss Crawford – pretty, dark-eyed Mary who played the harp and was utter perfection in all ways save her worldliness which did not match Edmund's ambitions for the church – and realising Tom must have known about her, just about broke her heart.

The present Tom came home early, sent ahead by her uncle, and Fanny – and Edmund, too, though they did not discuss it – no doubt wondered what this meant in regard to how the true purpose of that trip had gone.

At first, Fanny was unexpectedly overjoyed, for Tom's arrival happened in a blur of excitement.

He entered the house unannounced, while the family were having their dinner with the Grants and Mr. Rushworth in the dining room, and – spying Fanny exiting alone, on her way to light the candles, sneaked up behind her, placed his hands over her eyes before dropping them onto her shoulders, and crooned, "Fanny, who's there?"

"Tom?" she gasped, turning to face him. "Mr. Bertram!"

He put a finger to his lips.

"But how are you here?" For a muddled moment she thought it was not the present Mr. Bertram but her time-displaced visitor again – except his good clothes – well-arranged and only rumpled from sitting inside a coach – and deep tan, and something vaguely different about his expression when he looked at her, gave away he could be no other.

"By the mail from London."

She asked after her uncle, of course, was told he remained behind, and then Tom briefly tried to pull her back into the dining room again, under some pretence of surprising all the others, for he could hear there was company and was delighted, but she begged off; she had to light the candles.

"Well, then," he said as if it were all one and the same to him, "I'll go in."

Rather than feel wounded over how blasé he was, Fanny smiled – happy for the family as she overheard their excitement, even Edmund's, when he entered.

Her wounded feelings would come later, however much she would try to suppress them.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and forty:

Because the mare was Edmund's, and because she would deny him nothing he asked for, nothing which might bring him pleasure – even if the mare had been legally her own – Fanny had given up riding for him to teach Mary Crawford, who – every inch as selfish as Tom on a bad day, if not a little more so, for being she was aware of it while Tom at least sometimes had the benefit, though never the excuse, of true ignorance – never thought twice about what she was taking from Edmund Bertram's cousin.

Consequently, Fanny's health began to suffer, and rather than do the practical thing, perhaps pointing her weakened state out to Edmund and allowing him to make amends for his own thoughtlessness in the matter before any real damage was done, her aunts prevailed upon her to cut roses in the heat.

For a constitution as lacking in hardiness as hers, this was bad enough, but Mrs. Norris insisted she wanted the roses in the White House, had her carry them there, and then – upon learning she had not locked up after herself, forgetting the key, and convinced the entire county was waiting to burgle her home at the first opportunity – sent her back again in the heat of the day – carrying another armload of pruned roses, no less.

The second time, Fanny's wearied body gave way and she collapsed on the path in front of the white house, by the gate, the pink roses sprawled out around her.

How long she would have lain there is unclear, but arms suddenly lifted her up – a soothing voice told her it was all right now, he had got her, she was safe – and carried her into the house.

She was deposited carefully onto the bed in Mrs. Norris' guest room – the room, ironically, that might have been her own if things had gone differently – and felt a damp cloth placed upon her brow.

As she came to, Fanny thought it was Edmund tending to her – only to see her old time-displaced friend, Tom Bertram in his early forties, crouching over the bed.

"Aunt Norris will be cross if the coverlet is creased," she murmured through dry lips. "I shouldn't be in this bed."

"Our aunt Norris should count herself lucky not to have a bloody corpse on her porch in this ghastly heat – you're most fortunate I was there – I don't know what she was thinking, sending you here on your own when you clearly couldn't manage yourself."

"I forgot the key; I was obliged to come again."

Tom sucked his teeth. Then – removing the cloth from her forehead with a frustrated flourish – he put a glass of water to her lips and said, rather tersely, "Drink."

Fanny gulped it down gratefully, until he lowered the empty glass. "Thank you, cousin." Then, "But what have you got on?" She eyed his peculiar, off-fitting clothes. "Whose are those?"

"They belong to the parsonage gardener, I think – I took them from Dr. Grant's potting shed."

"I need to go back – and I can't leave the roses in front of the gate." She lifted herself a little higher, winced, put her hand her hand to her forehead and said, "Ahh!"

"Your head?" asked Tom.

A few tears dripped from the corners of her eyes involuntarily.

"Rest a few more minutes. I've bolted the door – if that poky maid of my aunt's comes around, we'll hear her rattling it in plenty of time to conceal ourselves."

"I've missed you," Fanny admitted, almost in a whisper.

"How do you mean? I'm back from Antigua by now, aren't I?"

"Yes, but you're different." The present Tom was kind enough, but he had this way of looking right through her almost as often as he deigned to notice her. She couldn't imagine him taking care of her as his older counterpart currently was doing. "You're more..." She couldn't finish; she didn't know how.

"Remind me, creepmouse, is this before or after the Lover's Vows incident?"

"Lover's Vows?" She wrinkled her nose, looking puzzled. "What's that?"

His mouth pulled itself out of shape. "Oh, dear, before then. Well, sorry in advance. Especially since I think I may have – or will – permanently ruin any pleasure you might get from theatricals. Oh, well. C'est la vie."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, Fanny, what is it?"

"The Crawfords seem to be in our company every day and I was wondering if–" She swallowed. "Do they ever learn your secret?"

Tom's expression was distant, peevish. Given how much the present Tom seemed to genuinely like the Crawfords, she was a little taken aback Tom in his forties looked like she'd just waved something foul-smelling under his nose.

"Yes – Edmund tells Miss Crawford, and she tells her brother."

Fanny was hurt. Edmund would tell Mary Tom was a time traveller? When he hadn't told her?

Tom took in her expression. "Don't be cross with him – nobody's perfect. Not even strait-laced Edmund Bertram."

Two thoughts struck Fanny, then.

One, she yet again suspected three-and-ninety Tom of lying to her; two, she almost dared to hope she was wrong – that he told the truth.

If Mary Crawford knew – or would know – about Tom's condition, maybe it meant she would understand – that it wouldn't bother her – and she could the wife Tom had spoken of having in the future.

Mary wanted a man of wealth with a title – while Edmund was determined to be a humble parson – this, if Tom came to love Mary and make her an offer, would save Edmund from being ruined by her.

Her heart leaped in her chest, felt as if it were banging against her ribcage with excitement.

If Tom had gotten married when he was six-and-twenty, that would mean forty-year-old Tom had been married for well over a decade.

She could have been mistaken in her interpretation of his expression when she mentioned the Crawfords. Perhaps it was only Henry older Tom disliked. And Fanny, who was not very fond of him and did not think him at all handsome though Julia and Maria were and certainly did, couldn't blame him if he didn't care for having that sort of brother-in-law.

"Mr. Bertram, is Miss Crawford – is she your wife?"

"Miss Crawford? Mary?" He gave a snort. "Certainly not."

Her spirits sank. "Oh."

"It distresses you that I am not married to Miss Crawford?"

She nodded; there was no point in denying it.

"I don't love Miss Crawford; I'm in love with my wife."

"I know, I was just..." She inhaled, then sniffed raggedly. "I was just hoping they were one and the same person."

"Miss Crawford is a lively, pretty girl – if she had shown an interest in accompanying me to the races, something might have come from it – I, that is myself in your present, might have been interested, then, but as things stood..." He trailed off. "Mrs. Grant had her designs, not enough attention from a lover of her own, leaving her to meddle with her sister, I suppose – well, forget I said that, Fanny; that is petty and too alike to something I will soon say in your hearing. And it was tasteless then, too." He sighed. "What I meant was it was only she – Mrs. Grant – who ever really supposed Mary and I would be a match."

Fanny closed her eyes, breathing deeply. "Edmund marries her, doesn't he?" She was beginning to tremble. Her head ached so very badly. "Please," she nearly choked the words out, "finish it, let there be an end to this suspense – tell me he marries her." Tell me you lied to me when you were three-and-ninety, urging me to have false hope and let me end it now.

The door-handle shook; Fanny and Tom, noticing at the same time, exchanged pained glances, but before Fanny could ask him where they ought to hide, she saw a momentary look of panic wash over him.

"I'm going," he said, his mouth a grim-set line. "Such dreadful timing. But, no, to answer your question; Edmund doesn't marry her, either."

And then there was nothing but a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed where he had been sitting.

Scrambling and ignoring the throbbing pain in her head and neck and the soreness of her overheated body, Fanny gathered the clothes in her arms, threw herself onto the floor, and rolled under the bed, clutching them, before the maid came in.

She'd forgotten the glass and the wet cloth, and the spread was still rumpled, which clearly mystified the maid, but and the gardener's clothes weren't seen.

Her walk back through the park was lengthened further because she took it upon herself to return the gardener's clothing to the potting shed.

Although Fanny wasn't entirely sure why, she saved one of the roses meant for the White House and placed it upon the loose lapel of the folded shirt when she returned it.

Perhaps she thought a time-displaced Tom might come here again looking for clothes and find it and would somehow know it was her who'd left it – though, more likely, the gardener, at some point later in the afternoon, would just be irritatedly brushing pink petals aside in a hurry and cursing if the thorns pricked his calloused fingers.

Tom Bertram is five-and-twenty:

Fanny's feelings were a tangled mess. She herself could make nothing of them. Tom had told her Edmund didn't marry Miss Crawford, but she wasn't sure she believed him, however badly she wished to. Yet, wedded or not, it seemed to her the attachment, whatever came or did not come of it, was one to govern Edmund's whole life – his affections were total, unyielding, and it seemed unlikely he'd form a second after the intensity of the first.

Tom was a liar – there was no hope here.

She ought to have been spending the latter part of her teenage years learning to put aside childish infatuation and not to love him as more than a cousin, not clinging to a slender, useless hope, only to be blind-sided and forced to watch him fall in love with someone else.

Someone Tom knew was coming.

So, Miss Crawford wouldn't marry Edmund, wouldn't erode his fine qualities with those which had been left too late and spoiled in herself, that was good, there was some relief, but it was not everything.

Even what Fanny delightedly thought of forever after as her first ball – though it was but the work of an afternoon, an afterthought when the young people realised it was within their power to acquire a violin player and raise, possibly, as many as five couples to dance – was shadowed by her being forced to watch Edmund and Mary dance together and act very much like persons falling deeply, irrevocably in love.

Even watching Maria and Rushworth was painful, since she knew what they did not – how their relationship, now as shining as it was one-sided, would end in an ugly divorce.

Still, there was some happiness to be had – Fanny often dreamed, as all girls her age do, of dancing at a ball, and simply being present for one, makeshift though it was, was enough to flush her cheeks and brighten her eyes.

Tom had left the room awhile, and when he returned, after wondering if he'd been briefly time travelling, thus why he'd excused himself so suddenly, a thrill ran through Fanny as she began to think he must – seeing her seated while the others danced – ask her to stand up with him.

Cousin or not, liar or not, prone to ignoring her at his present age or not, he was still Mr. Bertram – the eldest son of the house – and this was still a ball; the honour, even informally, of his coming up and asking her was not lost on her.

She knew it must be a very great honour indeed.

He approached; she looked up, waiting.

Rather than ask her to dance, he pulled out a chair beside her and dropped tiredly into it.

"Are you well, Mr. Bertram?" She realised, suddenly, as soon as she asked, he might not – if Edmund hadn't told him – be aware she knew his secret. He might suppose her still to be as ignorant of his condition as his real sisters were.

She could not tell him here, before all these others, but part of her wished she might, to reassure him, to perhaps make a friend and confidant of him in this way.

Were they truly not permitted to be good friends until after the Newmarket incident? Must he be near-fatally hurt to incite such a camaraderie? Fanny didn't want to believe it. She didn't understand – apart from his occasional affected and condescending manners toward her – why they couldn't talk now as they would then, why she couldn't teach him botany and tell him about his visits to the East Room now.

With all that was currently happening, Fanny would have loved a friend, and she was sure he – who must be so lonely and disappointed after finding no cure in Antigua – must long for a companion with whom to share his secrets.

"I'm well," answered Tom, looking at her sideways as he unfolded a newspaper and idly shook it out. "My favourite horse is not." And he proceeded to give her a full account of his sick horse and the groom's opinion.

She was not upset he spoke to her about ailing horses, if he preferred such a conversation to dancing, even at the expense of her pleasure, but it seemed odd he would discuss such a thing so vividly with someone he never accompanied to the stables or rode out with. She would have loved to ride with him sometime, but he was always too busy for her as well as so often away.

I was unreasonable, Fanny told herself, in expecting him to ask me to dance. I was thinking of his older self, who might have done it for our friendship's sake, and not realistically of what is between us at present. I have shown a lack of humility in expecting it, and ought to be so disappointed so I may learn to be less entitled in the future. I truly am forgetting my place.

But then, as a languid afterthought as he tossed down the newspaper again, Tom did say, "If you want to dance, Fanny, I'll stand up with you."

She shook her head. It was obvious he did not really want to. "Thank you, I am honoured by your kind notice, but I don't wish to dance."

The relief on his face could not have been more evident if he'd tried to make it so. At any rate, he literally said, without any thought to how it sounded, "I'm glad."

What followed was a queer mix of amusement and distress. Tom here launched into a speech about how all the couples must be in love to keep up dancing for so long, and how exhausted he was, somehow leading into what he clearly thought a very humorous rant about Mrs. Grant – who was currently partnered with his friend Mr. Yates in the dance – wanting a better lover than the deadly dull Dr. Grant.

Unfortunately, Dr. Grant was standing right by his elbow in the next minute and Tom – his face going a rather sickly colour – was forced to change his tone and expression immediately.

Fanny tried her best, but she couldn't help laughing so hard she almost gave herself a nosebleed from repressed snorts and jerking her head.

For this, she got a sharp look from Mrs. Norris, who then took notice of Tom and zeroed in on her nephew slyly. She wanted him to join her, Mr. Rushworth's mother, and Dr. Grant for cards.

As Tom was clearly looking forward to just sitting beside Fanny and making what he thought were witty remarks and not having to do anything besides lounge in his chair the rest of the evening, he was very visibly put out.

"I should be most happy to oblige you, aunt," replied he, over-loudly, "but I am just this moment going to dance." And he grabbed Fanny's hand, snatching it up roughly at the wrist, and dragged her from her chair and towards the other couples before she could even squeak in surprise. "Come, Fanny, you dawdle so – the dance will soon be over."

As willing as she was to dance, she could no longer feel gratitude, not with such an invitation as this.

He is so shamelessly selfish, Fanny found herself bemoaning over and over again. I thought he was better, but he is worse than Miss Crawford, who at least acknowledges her own fault, even if she is oddly proud of it, even if she is unwilling to try and cure herself of it.

Even as a mere friend, she did not see how he could ever replace Edmund – if Mary took him away from her – when he thought of nothing and nobody besides himself, when he was wholly unable to distinguish between the selfishness of another person and his own.

All over again, Fanny wished Mary were Tom's future wife.

He'd dashed her hopes in telling her otherwise.

But Mary Crawford was the very one for him in all ways – they seemed to deserve each other. As dearly as Fanny loved this house, they would be happy together in their joint selfishness and surrounded in splendour, and she would be happiest if she could go away and live with Edmund somewhere – some sweet place small and humble and perfect – even as only a sister to sharpen his pencils and encourage him when he wrote his beautiful sermons.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and nine-and-twenty:

If his yanking her into the dancing only in order to escape Mrs. Norris hadn't begun to set her as against him as someone as docile and generally forgiving as Fanny could be set against one she felt indebted to, the Lover's Vows debacle certainly made it far, far worse.

No wonder he had apologized to her when he was older.

He was horrid.

He'd wanted her to be Cottager's wife, since there were no other women to take the part, and refused to take no for an answer. Further, he had no problem letting their aunt Norris berate her on his behalf when she stood firm in her refusal.

It had come to the point where she needed to be temporarily protected by Mary Crawford, of all persons, and given reprieve for a longer duration when Mrs. Grant was convinced to take the part in her place.

To be subjected to seeing Edmund (who was roped more successfully than herself into the play, to be Anhalt to Mary's Amelia, which he felt all the more obligated to do because Mary had delicately defended Fanny when the rest did not) act out his excessively warm lines with his real lover, to have to prompt them both, was almost more than she could bear.

Adding to her distress, Maria and Mary's brother, Henry, giggling with their heads bent close together while they went over their lines, were flirting shamelessly, right under Mr. Rushworth's nose.

This did not bode well; Tom must have been telling the truth about Maria and Rushworth, if Maria was showing herself now to be so easily led astray.

Tom at present didn't appear to care – all he thought about was playing the rhyming Butler and his relief he would not, now Edmund was Anhalt, have to double his part and spoil it.

An evening arrived when Fanny was in danger of being asked again to take the dreaded part, because Mrs. Grant had not come with the Crawfords and was detained back at the parsonage with her husband, who was evidently in an evil temper.

Shrewdly (sneakily, was Mrs. Norris' version of events, when she was asked where the girl had gone off to), Fanny put herself out of the way by leaving the billiard-room and going into the library.

She did not know how long she would successfully hide away, but she took a few steadying breaths as she closed the door behind herself and tried not to imagine the bombardment of vicious claims of ingratitude she would soon be facing down.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Tom in a chair a few feet away, leafing casually through an illustrated book about birds.

"Mr. Bertram!" Her eyes widened in considerable alarm. No doubt he had come to ask her to take the part... Although, she could have sworn she had just seen him speaking his lines unintelligibly fast in the billiard-room while Edmund rolled his eyes, not even four minutes ago.

But his smile was reassuring. "I'm not him, Fanny – don't let the nicer clothes and the neatly-knotted cravat fool you. I was simply fortunate enough to find his wardrobe unguarded when I arrived. All this fuss over Lover's Vows, eh?"

"When are you from?" she whispered, coming nearer. "You don't look any older."

"I'm nine-and-twenty." His eyes darted to the door as he closed his book. "I trust Mr. Crawford is too preoccupied with my sister to come barging in here in search of you – I don't think they'd send him. At least I hope not. It would be awkward to encounter him when we're still supposed to be friends – I've been fortunate enough not to see him in town since–" He cleared his throat, then reassumed on a slightly altered subject. "D'you know, I suspect Crawford was actually jealous of my condition? Evidently, he thinks time-travelling would be a grand lark, an adventure he'd like to have without committing to it. As if that–! Pah! Let us not be absurd. A time traveller named Henry? That would never catch on."

Knowing herself why she disliked Henry Crawford, in spite of thinking him the best actor at Mansfield at the moment, Fanny couldn't curb her curiosity as to what had made a version of Tom only four years older than the present one turn against him so bitterly.

Even if he should choose not to answer, she gathered her courage and asked.

"I shall tell you a little secret, Fanny Price, although I probably shouldn't." And Tom looked both ways before lowering his voice. "At present, that is your present, Mr. Crawford and I are not rivals for the same woman's heart – neither he nor I want her now, because we're both blind buffoons. So, he can admire my horsemanship, and I his reading and acting" – Fanny nodded; she liked those things about him as well – "and we are merry enough with one another. In the future, the woman he might have gained in time, the woman I would have been too ignorant and preoccupied to prevent his pursuit of, accepts my offer of marriage not long after he spoils his chances for good."

Definitely not Mary, then.

"And besides, you must have seen by now how he behaves with Maria."

Fanny nodded. "You don't seem too fretful over it at present."

"I cannot change that."

"I know."

"Oh, don't look so grave – come, sit by me, there is room enough for two in this chair." He patted the sliver of space beside himself. "We'll look over the book I've got here together and let the rest play at their Lover's Vows nonsense."

But no sooner had Fanny squeezed herself in beside him than the doors flew open, and Julia was there, breathless, looking for her. She looked confused at seeing Tom, appearing rather cosy and settled-in, utterly convinced she had just seen him with the others when she had burst in on their rehearsals and put it to an end.

But she seemed to shrug it off, focusing on Fanny.

"My father is come," she told her. "He wants to see you. He's asked where you've gone to, and no one knew, so they sent me to look." To Tom, aside, "You might have told her for me, since you found her first."

Fanny's eyes darted to Tom by her side, shrugging callously at his sister. Had he known?

He mouthed, "Yes," to her unasked question – of course he'd known his father was arriving unexpectedly today, it had already happened for him – and she sighed, pulling herself back up.

She must have looked a little miserable, for Julia – with her nose lifted – sniffed, "Fanny, do not look so alarmed – I'm sure you and I have nothing to be ashamed of. We weren't play-acting."

Chapter Text

An Overabundance of Tom Bertrams

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Three of 4

Tom Bertram is five-and-twenty:

No one, save an older Tom Bertram himself, could have warned Fanny regarding the utter loneliness she would endure after the business of the play, and she very likely wouldn't have understood his warning – wouldn't have comprehended his meaning even in the least – if he'd given it to her directly.

The theatricals ended, Maria sulking over Henry Crawford (who stayed his distance very thoroughly and then went off to Bath) so that even Julia could not crow over such a defeat without feeling sorry for her sister, Sir Thomas returned and, expecting a quiet house as before, and unused to his children being so particularly fond of neighbouring society as they'd become, there was little to encourage the present Tom Bertram to stay on longer than he was strictly obligated to.

When Yates left, he went away with him – early in the morning, without so much as a fare-thee-well.

Fanny happened to be awake, however, and she was looking out her attic window, where she had rather a good view of him as he saddled his horse in the courtyard without even waiting for the groom's assistance.

Without knowing why, she pressed her fingertips to the glass in the windowpane as he rode off.

It was a good thing, she told herself, he was gone; because now they were seeing less of the Crawfords, it would be akin to being alone with Edmund again; Julia and Maria weren't likely to seek her company, and her uncle had never been especially fond of her.

But this pleasure was not to be.

Edmund was not his old self. He still pined for Mary, spoke with sombre regret of his fear she must feel neglected to not be readily invited since his father's return. He would have herself and her brother over, if Sir Thomas would permit it, as soon as Henry returned from Bath.

Did not Fanny think that the best course?

To make matters worse, Sir Thomas noticed her, thought her complexion improved – he had not realised, when he'd gone away, Fanny was growing up to be such a pretty woman.

And so intelligent, too! She'd pleased him with a question asked about the slave-trade.

Most women either had no opinion, or too much opinion – were full-blown absolutists, in name, who had not thought the ramifications of the process, in practice, through and worse yet supposed no one else alive apart from themselves had done so, either – and he was delighted to find his niece not even half so silly as he'd once feared she'd grow up to be.

But Fanny feared a compliment, feared being observed, as much as most other girls tried to gather pretty words and admiring looks up in baskets as though they were ripe strawberries or loose buttons.

It helped very little how extremely cross Mrs. Norris looked each time Sir Thomas gave a nod of approval to Fanny instead of to one of his own daughters.

He ought, she was convinced, to be admiring the advantage match she'd made for Maria, and how prettily Maria had clinched the deal by being the perfect young lady, not wasting his time flattering an indigent niece.

Still, had Fanny guessed how things would progress after Maria's wedding, she would have thought the days before it no real evil in comparison.

She had her new dress, the dress five-and-thirty Tom told her she would have, and it was white with glossy glass beads that winked handsomely under any sort of light and a handsome train and perfectly tailored empire waist; but she could not enjoy it knowing she wore it to celebrate a marriage which would end badly.

Tom in the present – sans Mr. Yates – returned for the wedding, and – forgetting how little notice he typically took of her – Fanny half expected him to acknowledge the dress and was prepared to shrink from his notice, only for it to prove entirely unnecessary. He never looked at her twice the whole time. He made a merry show waving after Maria's carriage – in which also sat Julia, who was going away with the newly married couple at her sister's request – then spent the rest of the time drinking glass after glass of wine in a corner as though he thought they were going to run out of it before he'd got his fill.

The overindulgence must have triggered his travelling, because – before the evening was ended – Fanny found his clothes in the corner in a heap and did her best to conceal them before anyone else could notice.

For some reason, she kept expecting an older Tom to show up and make up for the present one's absence; she thought he'd want his clothes and made sure to remember where she'd squirrelled them away so she could whisper it to him at a moment's notice.

Even despising compliments as she did, she partly wished it to be five-and-thirty Tom who came, particularly so he could see her in her new dress.

But he did not come at all.

The only man who looked long at her was Henry Crawford – also returned for the wedding – and she was unnerved by how often he outright stared. Had he no shame? Had he not practically goaded Maria into marrying Rushworth by making love to her throughout the theatricals, fairly breaking Julia's heart in the process, and then going off without a word? And now he had the gall to stare so at her?

And wish as she might to see no more of a man with such a corrupted mind, Fanny had no choice in the matter – Edmund would connect the families as if he thought they must always be so, and as soon as his father approved of them as he'd felt certain he would, they were always together again.

Without Maria and Julia, Fanny was Mary's natural choice for companion, and rather than see it was only good sense – only chance, only her being the last – Edmund rejoined in what he thought could be nothing besides a mutual love between the two dearest objects in his world.

Losing him more every day, Fanny longed for a confidant. Mary would not do. The present Tom was gone again and would never have cared to listen to her bemoan her situation, anyway.

Sometimes she waited for hours in the East Room, even when it was too cold to be there without a fire, hoping.

Why she should want to speak to him so desperately, she could not have said, only that she did and was denied by his consistent absence.

He is never coming back, Fanny told herself, taking the box of clothing and moving it from its usual place neatly onto a high shelf. He's gone away.

Her eyes landed, as they must have eventually, while tidying up, upon a picture of a sloop William had sent her from afar and her subsequent longing for her favourite brother, unseen for so many years, and never untrustworthy as her cousins (even Edmund) sometimes proved themselves to be, was the strongest longing she'd ever felt.

She almost wasted away for the lack of its being satisfied.

Then a miracle above all miracles. William was coming to Mansfield Park and her world could be made bright again. She could endure a thousand Crawfords as easily as she did only the two if she had the promise of William burning in her heart.

So why, she wondered, still confused, did she yet hope an older Tom would appear in the East Room so she could tell him – all in joy – of William's being on his way?

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and five-and-thirty:

Yet, by the time an older Tom did at last make an appearance, Fanny almost forgot how much she'd wanted to see him – her heart had been too full of William's visit, for it was well in progress and she'd lapped up every joyful moment like a kitten at a bowl of cream.

Still, as it occurred on a morning her aunt Bertram sent her out for lavender, the weather was warm enough, and he'd stolen clothes from some outdoor servant or other, they were able to walk together in the shrubbery.

Tom offered her his arm as if they walked like this every day, and Fanny took it gladly enough, for she found the walk less fatiguing with somebody to lean on.

"So," said five-and-thirty Tom, conversationally, as if he knew the very moment she told him the date what she wished to talk about, "William is visiting, is he?"

"Yes, it has been wonderful – and your father is so very good to us both."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Her only sorrow was at William's misery at not yet getting a commission. Otherwise, all was perfection.

Although his expression clouded, he seemed sincere enough Fanny – despite her scepticism with many things he told her – never thought, in this instance, he lied, when he said, "Oh, don't fret about that; he gets one very soon – he's to be the second lieutenant of the H.M.S. Thrush. I wouldn't want either of you to worry if you didn't have to."

"Why do you not come to the East Room as you used to?" she asked him.

"I would if I could, mousy, but I don't control where I end up – or when."

As they walked out of the denser portions of foliage, they did not know they were being observed – by Edmund and William – from a window.

Fanny hadn't told William – simply because older Tom had not been around to ask for his permission and without it she would not betray his confidence, not even for the dearest person in the world to her – their cousin was a time traveller, so he was a little puzzled by the sight of her arm-in-arm with a man – dressed like a servant, no less – and so deeply engrossed in conversation she nearly dropped her basket of lavender twice.

"Edmund," he asked, when he heard the familiar approach of his most amiable cousin, "who is that walking with Fanny?"

He immediately recognised Tom, who he'd seen in his thirties before a handful of times, and coloured about the face because he didn't know what – or how much – he ought to tell William.

He'd thought Fanny would have told her beloved brother about Tom by now and was surprised she had not done so.

William, however, mistook his raised colour. "I hadn't the slightest suspicion Fanny had a lover. She's so open, usually she will tell me all, yet she never once let on."

Edmund's jaw hung slightly. "A lover? No, certainly not."

"Observe his posture, Edmund – that is surely a man in love if ever there was one." He smiled tenderly. "I've seen men come back from sea-voyages and stand just so with their sweethearts at the dock. Admittedly, Fanny shows little sign of it herself, but she is permitting him to be near her very readily... So, one can only think..."

Edmund did observe, and saw, and blanched. Tom Bertram, his irresponsible time-travelling elder brother, was the very last man alive he wanted for Fanny, for his favourite near-sister as well as dear cousin – he'd never take care of her or put her needs first.

But who would take her away from him? Who would rescue her? How to make certain she was safe from Tom Bertram?

It was a very lucky thing the present Tom was not at home, or Edmund might have been very sharp with him, ignorant though he must be of his older self's actions, and made things far worse.

Tom Bertram is five-and-twenty:

Mrs. Norris was nonplussed when it was announced there was to be a ball for Fanny and William – primarily Fanny – all because William wished to see his sister dance and hadn't had the pleasure since they were small children. She would have contended herself if Sir Thomas' other children, besides Edmund, had been home, but none were, and so there was no call for such a grand party in her mind.

And yet it took place, without her consent.

For Fanny it was – as most things were lately – a mixed blessing at best.

She wanted to dance with Edmund, but Edmund was more concerned with the fact that Miss Crawford said it would be their last time dancing, for she'd never dance with a clergyman, and he was peevishly put out by the painful sting of her playfulness having gone that little bit too far. She could not dance with William, because they were brother and sister, and rather regretted that the ball had been arranged at all rather than William's initial scheme of smuggling her to a ball in some Northampton county where they were not known put into action. That would have been far more enjoyable for her.

In addition, there was some trouble over what ornament Fanny would wear.

William had bought her a beautiful amber cross from Italy. It had winked so prettily when he presented it, she was half convinced it was magic, some misplaced relict of power, rather than wrought by any real persons. But he had not been able to afford a chain; Edmund had surprised her with the perfect chain, the very one to suit, but not before Mary Crawford also gave her a necklace – a heavy golden gaudy thing the ring of the cross wouldn't even pass through when she tried it.

And she was obliged to wear both, though she wanted only Edmund's, to avoid hurt feelings.

I am so very tired, she thought, briefly uncharitable, of tiptoeing around the Crawfords' feelings all the time – I know I am the lowest and the last, but they...they...

Recalling how older Tom disliked the Crawfords, her thoughts then flew in an entirely new direction. The present Tom would not be at Mansfield for the ball, he had better things to do than see his cousin come out into society at his father's indulgence, but she thought an older one might make an appearance. He might even stand up with her, if he could avoid anybody recognising him. She hoped for a Tom Bertram in his fifties, for then everyone would have to take him for a relative of Sir Thomas because of the resemblance and no one would think twice of their dancing a set together.

The idea he might be there made her think she had a possible ally – someone potentially every bit as distressed by the Crawfords cloying company as she herself was.

It was a comforting notion.

She did not, however, let herself consider that she secretly wanted him to see her in the dress from Maria's wedding again, which she would be wearing.

But, regardless, he never appeared.

She watched the door for him all night, very eagerly, hoping he would be able to raid his younger self's wardrobe and come in any moment, but was disappointed at every glance she made in that direction.

Only William noticed, and he suspected her of looking unhappily for her lower-class lover, and felt very sorry for her indeed that she should not dance with him, whoever he was. Still, perhaps it was for the best. What sort of honourable man in his thirties hung about in the shrubbery and made himself overly friendly with his master's niece?

Yet, if he were honourable, if this were all above board, so to speak, Fanny might yet be allowed to have him – her uncle might bless them – she was, after all, not a Miss Bertram...

Still, they'd never dance here.

Having no clue what was being entertained within William's mind, Fanny was wrapped in her own miseries and troubles entirely unrelated to the absence of her supposed older lover. Her dance with Edmund was had, but spoiled, because Mary had put him in a bad temper and he didn't even wish to speak as they stood up together; and she'd opened the dancing, at the front of the line, at the start of the ball, before everyone, with Henry Crawford.

All the same, she managed to enjoy herself enough to be smiling and flushed when it was over and to still have the mettle to beg to be allowed to wake up early and breakfast with William before he was to go away.

How five-and-thirty Tom could have told her, looking straight into her eyes, William would have his commission, and not thought – in some small way – to warn her by what means, to hint what would come immediately after, Fanny failed to comprehend.

What friend would allow such a cruelty to befall somebody they claimed as their dear companion and equal?

She scarcely heard the exact wording of Henry Crawford's proposal, his offer of marriage, beyond the obvious meaning of it, she was so aghast.

It was nonsense, of course, mere trifling – still she could not speak.

Then, most horrible of all, she remembered Tom's explanation of his animosity toward Henry – how he had told her they loved the same woman in the future, the woman Tom had for a wife while Henry lost out – and she thought she would faint.

"No, no, no!" she cried, ripping her hand from Mr. Crawford's and hiding her face. "No!" Anything was preferable. Anything! Her sole hope was rested now upon the fact she was convinced Mr. Crawford did not really love her, and so Tom must have been speaking about some other woman he'd wanted, obviously Henry trifled with enough hearts, flirted widely enough, there was no reason to assume it was her. In town – she – Tom's wife – must be somebody he and Henry both knew from town. "Don't think of me. But you are not thinking of me. I know it's all nothing."

And this ought to have been an end to it, surely, but then Sir Thomas was in the East Room – worrying over how she did not have a fire, astonished to learn this gross oversight had been taking place under his roof for so long, begging her forgiveness – and he appeared to think she had encouraged, if not outright accepted, Henry Crawford.

When she had little choice but to tell him how he was mistaken, his shock – quickly turned to anger – was worse than anything Fanny ever dreamed.

"I am half inclined to think, Fanny," he exclaimed, in a tone which said she ought to be well ashamed for what she was casting off, "you do not quite know your own feelings!"

"Oh," she squeaked, desperate to make herself understood to her uncle, "but I do! Mr. Crawford's attentions were always – what I did not like."

"This requires explanation." And she was very willing, if she were not tongue-tied and scarlet, to give it, but he did not permit her, going on without pause enough for her breath to be caught and the attempt thereby made. "Young as you are – you're so very young – you've scarcely seen anybody, it's hardly possible that your affections have already–"

Poor Fanny – there were two faces, her sweetest Edmund, who she yet carried a torch for despite everything, and that of older Tom, however unwelcome such an image was at a time like this, both resting behind her eyes.

"Mr. Crawford's wishing to marry at all so early in life is to be recommended – I am sorry to think how little likely my eldest son, your cousin, Mr. Bertram, is to marry early."

But he does, thought Fanny, all misery, at six-and-twenty, and that is young enough! That must be early enough to comfort you. Only I cannot tell you, because I do not know why he has not.

"My eldest son has clearly not seen the woman he could love."

"I hope not, sir," she blurted, thinking if he had not seen her yet it could not be herself.

Sir Thomas raised an eyebrow.

"I only meant–" She shook her head. "I misspoke. I meant to agree, sir, not to contradict you."

"Have you any reason, child, to think ill of Mr. Crawford's temper?"

No, not his temper, but the fact that older Tom, whose judgement must be better than that of the present Mr. Bertram, didn't like him – coupled with his treatment of Maria and Julia – made it very impossible she should look with a view to liking him herself.

"A f-friend..." She was shaky. "A friend told me – or he implied – Mr. Crawford's principles are not all which they ought to be."

Sir Thomas wanted this friend's name, but Fanny could not give it, could not implicate her cousin in such a way, even though she might have been believed since Sir Thomas knew his son to be a time-traveller, and there was thus no hope from that quarter, either.

It all, the whole mortifying conference, ended with Fanny in a volley of bitter tears, tears even returning from a walk to a beautiful fire lit in the grate did not quell, wishing so badly for Edmund to speak for her.

But, oh, how much worse it proved to be when Edmund was there for her to confide in!

To learn he – as much as his father – wished her to marry Henry was enough to make her want to run off into Mansfield Wood, get herself hopelessly lost, and never be found again.

"Never, never, never!" she fairly exploded, warm and overwrought. "He never shall succeed with me."

"Never, dearest Fanny? This is not your rational self." Edmund inhaled deeply and slowly released the breath he'd dragged in, as if silently praying for strength. "I think I know why – but I'm afraid–"

"Afraid?" She was almost trembling as he took her hand. "Of what, cousin?"

"Henry – Mr. Crawford – is no common attachment. Mary loves you and there could be no more doting sister I could wish for you to have after you were a bride. I am sure Crawford does love you truly, and it's better if you accept him than–"

Fanny's eyes widened. "Than who?" Her chest clenched. If he said what she feared he might say, her heart would break and she might crumple to the ground this very instant.

"I'm begging you, do not marry Tom."

"Tom?" Her voice was strangled. She pulled her hand away. "But he... He does not... He never asked me! And I do not want–"

"William saw him with you – when he was older – and was convinced there were symptoms of love there, from my brother's side, as was I."

Fanny's eyes filled with hot tears. She was utterly beside herself. No. They could not be speaking of this! God, anything was preferable to this!

"I understand the man who means to make you love him must have uphill work in unfastening your heart from all that is already familiar to you – Norfolk is far away, to be sure – and I realise marrying Tom means you will stay here at Mansfield, possibly forever, if he doesn't gamble the place away, but that is not worth the suffering–"

She could stand no more. "Can you believe I would marry your brother for his house? Can you think it of me?"

"I meant only it was an inducement, because of your attachment, not a primary reason – I said as much to Mary when she was unhappy for her brother, and–"

Now she was angry. "You spoke to Miss Crawford about this? How could you?"

"To defend you, of course – she couldn't understand your refusing him, for she loves him as well as you do William."

"And you told her" – tears were spilling down her face very quickly now – "you believed your brother a rival suitor to hers?" How would she ever endure the humiliation that must result?

"Not in so many words, but I–"

She fled, then, and would have gotten away from him if she did not have to halt against a tree on the path to catch her ragged breath as she sobbed.

Edmund put an arm around her. "Oh, Fanny, it is all right – don't cry any more, please."

"I feel so trapped," she bawled, pulling away from him and covering her face and burrowing as far against the tree's truck as she could without cutting her skin against the bark. "Everything is ruined forever."

"Truly, it isn't – with Crawford–"

"I don't wish to hear any more about Mr. Crawford – I should have thought every woman felt the possibility of a man's not being approved, not being loved by some member of her sex at least, let him be ever so generally agreeable! Miss Crawford cannot understand what I feel any more than her brother can!"

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and nine-and-twenty:

While Sir Thomas thought sending Fanny home to Portsmouth for a spell – under the pretence of letting her witness William's going off to sea and reunite with those she had not seen in so many years – as a near punishment, something to teach her a sharp lesson regarding what she threw away in rejecting Mr. Crawford and refusing to relent though he yet kept up his pursuit of her, Fanny herself saw it as a relief – as his allowing her to go, allowing her to escape.

She wanted to be away from Mansfield because she could not bear it at the present.

Even Mr. Crawford's going away was no balm, for her aunt Norris had learned of his offer and she seethed with rotten looks and angry glances; Fanny had no right in her eyes to receive such an offer, let alone to coolly reject it.

To quell her distress and soften her anger, so seldom held against him such a long while, Edmund stopped speaking of Henry, yet it was clear he wished – still – for her to relent and accept, to be safe from Tom in so doing.

Lady Bertram was delighted and somehow missed entirely that Fanny had rejected Mr. Crawford; she seemed to think of her niece going to live with Henry in Norfolk, at his fine estate, at Everingham, as a grand and settled thing.

And Mary Crawford?

Fanny had avoided being alone with her, fearing the scolding, the sharp words, but the batted dark eyes, clinched-tight embrace, and the expression of emphatic belief they would yet be sisters, that all would work out finally, was a much more bitter pill to swallow; her heart felt as if it were turning to gall; it was suffocating her so she could no longer breathe.

The final blow before leaving was hearing Sir Thomas say to Lady Bertram he had received a letter indicating Tom wished to stay on some more weeks where he was, then travel to Newmarket.

Newmarket.

The bruises... Those horrid, horrid bruises he'd been covered in. He was so cold... So very ill...

It suddenly mattered not that an older Tom told her must let him be hurt; Fanny longed to grab her uncle by the shoulder and cry out, "Write, write him at once – tell him no – tell him to come home early, to avoid setting foot in Newmarket – save him!"

The words always died on her lips as soon as they parted to utter them, however.

Something deep inside warned her if she did this, some part of him would know – despite all which must be changed – and despise her for it for all time hence. It would be a betrayal twice, if not thrice, as bad as Edmund's having talked to Mary about his suspicions regarding her future marriage.

To save Tom Bertram now was to destroy him later.

At least in Portsmouth, she would not have to think about it so often.

But even at home again she found none of the longed-for peace.

The family she dreamed of were exactly thus – a dream. Whereas the reality was entirely different. Her mother cared nothing about her, looked at her less than Tom in the present did, despite having not seen her in so many years; her littlest sister who she had never met was spoiled rotten; her father was dirty and gross, he swore and drank and frequently mortified all in his vicinity; all her brothers, save perhaps John and sometimes Sam, were unruly and uninterested in everything she might have had to say to them.

In her sister Susan, who she had never known very well before, she found a friend and a listening ear, and was glad – especially after William and Sam left the harbour – to be sharing a room with someone sensible, someone who at least did their best, even when they did not always begin aright because their surroundings vexed them.

She had been less than two weeks with her family, started, as anyone with sense would be obliged to, to see what her uncle had wished her to see in regard to money and comfort, when a small rock sailed through the window of the bedroom she was sharing with Susan.

Poor Susie screamed and – raising the blankets – shook the glass fragments from off the mattress.

"Fanny," she said when she'd recovered. "My knife – the one you got back from Betsy for me, it's in the drawer – I'll fetch it, and you–"

But her sister only turned the rock over in her hand and looked dazedly out the broken window to the street below.

It couldn't be...

Surely not.

There came a warping whistle – and how many times had she heard the very same whistle in the East Room...?

T'was no bird, that much was certain.

Turning on her heel, climbing over the bottom of the mattress, she ran out of the room, down the stairs, and straight for the front door.

And there – as soon as she opened it – was Tom Bertram on their front step, wearing a sheet pilfered from one of the neighbour's lines.

"Fanny! It is you. Thank heavens I didn't mistake the date!" He put his hands together, rubbed them, then blew on them. "I'm bloody freezing."

She opened the door wider to permit him to walk inside. It was not raining, but the air felt damp as well as cold – it was hardly a good night to be out in, especially if you hadn't any clothes.

Nonetheless, "Cousin, you did not have to break our window."

He gave her a sheepish smile. "Cheaper glass than I reckoned on."

"You've just about frightened the wits out of my sister Susan."

"Blast! Poor Susie – I'll be sure to make amends to her somehow." He spoke as if he knew her, and Fanny realised – in the future – he probably did, somehow.

"You must be very quiet, Mr. Bertram," Fanny told him. "So we do not wake the rest of the house." She wondered where she was going to hide him until he disappeared. "I may have to tell Susan about you travelling," she warned, glancing warily toward the dark staircase. "It's her finding out or everybody does."

"Oh, everybody does, regardless."

"W-what?"

"Well, they know in my time – even the funny little dark one who likes running around with sharp silver knives – I just didn't know how." He chuckled. "I suppose I am about to find out."

"When is that?" Fanny regarded him – he didn't look much older. "How old are you?"

"I'm nine-and-twenty." He reached out and chucked her under the chin. "And, yes, before you ask, we have already had that conversation in the library before my father returned from Antigua and put a blessed stop to Lover's Vows."

"How long ago was it for you?"

He considered. "A couple of days, give or take. What about you?"

"A bit longer."

"Well, it would be, since you're here."

Making certain they still stood alone, Fanny lowered her voice and brokenly croaked, "Oh, Tom, how could you do that to me?"

"Do what?"

"Let me be shocked by Henry Crawford's making me an offer of marriage!"

"Right." Trying to avoid letting the sheet fall, Tom reached back to scratch uncomfortably at the base of his neck. "This would be after that, wouldn't it?"

"Is that all you can say, cousin? You–" She bit her lip. "You knew. It was too cruel! You told me about William's commission, and–"

His brow furrowed and he appeared slightly indignant. "I did not!"

"You did – you were in your thirties, and you said–"

"I'm nine-and-twenty, I'm not responsible for him yet."

This rather took some of the wind out of Fanny's sails. She exhaled and stopped berating him, having no choice but to concede to this fact, though he had still brought up Henry Crawford during what was – for him – their last conversation, and he might really have told her then.

She brought him upstairs and gave him some of John's old clothes Susan was able to sneak from a mending basket, after she introduced them as quickly as possible.

Susan remarked that their fancy cousin Tom was rather a handsome man, for all that he was also a dangerous lunatic who threw rocks at windows while young ladies were trying to sleep, and he took it as a great compliment, preening and looking very pleased with himself.

He acts, Fanny realised, blood running cold, as if they are old friends. How does he know her so well as this only four years from now?

Even though he had told her the whole family would find out about him, presumably now, Fanny hoped he was wrong – she really believed, too, they would sleep, with Tom between them snoring like anything so that poor Susan couldn't get back to sleep, and wake up to find only John's clothes with them in the bed.

Yet when they woke in the morning, Tom was still there.

"I do not understand why you don't vanish," Fanny marvelled as he got up and began trying to stretch but found the room too confining to do so without tripping and – upon hurting himself – letting out several sharp oaths.

"Oh, I'm stuck – this happens sometimes."

"It didn't happen when you visited the East Room."

"More's the pity." He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you – but I'll disappear eventually. I was a bit anxious before I remembered you'd be in Portsmouth – the whole being stranded by the harbour without any clothes or shelter debacle, all the sailors giving me looks, you know..."

She asked him what was the longest he had ever been stuck out of his own time.

"A few weeks." He sniffed, bending over to readjust the cuffs on John's breeches; they were slightly too tight around his own calves, cutting off his circulation. "Give or take."

It was with a strong tinge of overarching anxiety that the three of them – Susan, Tom, and Fanny – came down the stairs to breakfast, but they needn't have bothered worrying. Fanny's littlest brothers barrelled past them without noticing the new addition to the girls' company, eager for their usual noise and breakfast, and Fanny's father had left the house early, and Rebecca – the sole household servant, of whose merits Mrs. Price frequently despaired – didn't seem to care.

Even being aware her family were not of the most naturally observant class of persons, Fanny was a little alarmed at how long it took any of those present to realise they were one extra at breakfast.

It was Betsey who noticed first, and only to cry out because Tom reached for a half-burned roll (the outside was scorched and did not look appealing but the inside proved delightfully flaky) she'd wanted.

Fanny thought of telling them only it was their cousin, visiting from Mansfield, and leaving out the time-travelling, but then she thought of how near the present Tom was to Newmarket and how puzzling any news of his inevitable illness would be if they could see simultaneously see him healthy as a horse before them at the breakfast table.

There was no telling how long he would or would not be here.

"There's no such thing as time travel!" cried Betsey, when Fanny's explanation was finally heard over a great deal of shouting and – with effort – somewhat understood.

Tom smiled at her. "Keep your eyes on me long enough, Betsey-girl" – he folded his knuckles against the table and leaned in conspiratorially – "and you may just see me disappear."

(She followed him around the parlour for over an hour after breakfast, in hopes of exactly this eventuality, just in case he was telling the truth, then – disappointed – got bored and wandered off.)

"My poor sister," remarked Mrs. Price, as if she had just offhandedly been told the baby of a distant relation had the croup. "I have been meaning to write to her, you know."

For his part, Tom was distressed by how little Fanny ate. She wasn't quick enough to get at the rolls and she couldn't stomach Rebecca's gruel-like porridge. Fanny hadn't told him much in the future about her time in Portsmouth, so he hadn't been aware how strong her deprivation really was – he was angry with his father for making her suffer, all in hopes of coaxing her into a marriage with Henry Crawford which would never happen anyway.

He took Susan aside and asked if anyone was bringing Fanny anything to supplement what she would normally eat at meals, and she only shook her head and said, no, nobody did, except when her brothers – some evenings – were sent out with a little money Fanny had brought with her and asked to return with buns and biscuits.

"Those make up her heartiest meal here," Susan admitted, abashed, for she would have liked to give something better to her sister, but she had no money of her own and could not wander the streets unescorted.

What Tom would have liked best to have done, he decided, after thinking the matter over, was take Fanny and Susan both to have dinner at the Crown at least one night that week and see them have a good tuck-in of proper, edible food.

But he despaired of doing so because he didn't have access to his own fortune while time-travelling...

But then, he thought, I could just have the bill sent to my father at Mansfield Park – his credit is good here, being as he's a baronet and all, and it's literally the least he can do for Fanny, though I doubt he'll thank me for interfering with his stupid lesson he's trying to teach her.

So, Tom mentioned his plan to Mrs. Price, and offered to treat her as well, but she said for herself she was too busy to go out but if he liked he certainly could take the older two girls for some exercise and a meal with her blessing – two less at table certainly made things a little easier, more to go around for everybody else.

Betsey cried bitterly not to be included in this scheme because of her age, not even to be asked, but Tom – who was proving rather a soft-touch with her – promised to bring her back a pastry wrapped up in paper and tied with a pretty ribbon and she was mollified.

What followed was the most pleasant day Fanny ever did have in Portsmouth since William left it. She and Tom and Susan walked by the harbour, and Tom took her arm when she got tired and they sat down and watched the swooping gulls and docking ships a while before making their way to the circulating library and picking out some volumes of Shakespeare and Cowper, and then finally they had their early dinner at the Crown.

Fanny was afraid of the disrespect to her uncle regarding the bill, but Tom pointed out – in fairness – it was his own inheritance in question.

She didn't think the present Tom would like his future self spending his money, either, and the imposition there was also too much for her conscience, but Tom snorted that he of all persons could assure her the present Tom Bertram would get over it.

Susan laughed, and Fanny couldn't bite back her own smile quickly enough to hide it.

In the end, Fanny had to be satisfied with paying – out of her own money – for the promised pastry for Betsey, which Tom was not very willing for her to do, knowing her meagre funds were far from inexhaustible, but was unable to talk her out of.

What neither of them knew, and were not to find to discover until the next morning, was no sooner had they exited the Crown and been on their way back to the cramped Price house than Henry Crawford himself came in by another door and paid for a room.

The breakfast things were being cleared away and Tom was – already a little out of temper because of sleeping with Fanny's brothers who kicked like mad, since he couldn't risk sleeping with Fanny and Susan again and getting their father angry at the impropriety, cousin or not, being eaten up by bugs around the neck and ankles, and the comfortability of simply being stuck out of his own time for this long a duration which always left him feeling homesick – slumped in a parlour chair, watching the weak fire from under his lowered lashes.

Fanny had some notion of joining him, instead of going upstairs with Susan for a bit of (relative) quiet as she usually did, but before she could settle on this notion one way or the other, there came a knock at the door.

"Rebecca will have that door opened in under a second, mark me," Mrs. Price muttered as she loaded a tray for Susan to take into the kitchen for washing up. "It's the only thing she does unasked."

Sure enough, Rebecca entered the room saying, "A gentleman to see Miss Price," and a familiar person followed her.

A feeling of dread washed over Fanny at the sight of Mr. Crawford. Not only did she have no wish to see him, but she knew nine-and-twenty Tom in particular – the very Tom sitting in their parlour and unable to avoid him now – hadn't desired a run in with him after some falling out in their future.

His smile when he saw her was charming, to be sure, and he was so amiable it was clear Mrs. Price liked him straight off, as well she might, but his charm was unwelcome here.

Tom grimaced and straightened in his seat with a look like he'd just swallowed something foul-tasting.

"Oh, Mr. Bertram." Henry tipped his head graciously forward. "Greetings."

For a moment, Fanny wondered how Mr. Crawford could so calmly accept discovering her cousin here in Portsmouth when he was supposed to be elsewhere but recalled quickly he knew about Tom's being a time-traveller.

Tom barley managed not to talk through his teeth. "Hullo, Crawford."

Mrs. Price cleared a seat for their guest and he was cheerful as he answered their questions – yes, he knew William was away; no, he was not hungry or in need of refreshment, he already took his breakfast at the Crown; and, no, he did not have particular business in Portsmouth other than coming to call in on them – but he seemed wholly oblivious to Tom's darkening expression every time his gaze fell affectionately, as it was wont to do, upon Fanny.

When Henry, as a prelude to a suggestion Fanny and Susan take a walk with him about the harbour (he could see no way out of asking her as well, though privately he desired it be only Fanny alone, his chief object), stated he did not like to see dear Miss Price appearing so pale, his remark was, "I do wish you could be out in the sun – your lovely, soft skin is quite perfect, but you're in desperate need of some freckles, I think."

"Oh, make yourself easy about that, Crawford," said Tom coolly, glaring daggers, "she has them – just not in any place you shall ever see them."

Fanny had been holding a teacup and saucer, which she immediately dropped onto the floor (these things bounced on the carpet rather than breaking, though there was a small crack formed on the teacup's handle), gawking at her cousin in absolute horror.

Henry at last looked a little discomfited. He very probably would have taken his leave and tried coming back the next day, if Fanny herself didn't put an end to the mortifying interview by giving one last hurt glance in Tom's direction and fleeing the room.

Susan – after a moment's hesitation – hurried after her.

"Mr. Bertram," said Henry, voice lowered, "I have known you to be neglectful of your cousin – but never cruel. My dear fellow, what is come over you?"

Tom closed his eyes and sighed. "Just do what it is you're going to do, Crawford, all right? Let us have it done with once and for all."

"D'you mean my plans go to Norfolk and sort out Maddison? Can you know about that? I had meant, believe it or not, to ask Miss Price–"

"What you do in Norfolk doesn't concern Fanny," snapped Tom, opening his eyes again; they were bright with over-brimming emotion. "Besides, let's be honest – we both know you'll never actually do the right thing and go there, do we not?"

Mr. Crawford's eyes narrowed. "Tom, my friend, why are you doing this?"

Tom was silent for a moment – should he just tell him? Maybe this was what gave him the push straight into Maria's arms – maybe it was even more his fault than nine-and-twenty Tom ever yet realised, but he felt like he couldn't stop it and, further, had no desire to even if he could.

"Because I'm her husband."

Mrs. Price's eyes widened, but all she said aloud – looking from Mr. Crawford to her nephew – was, "Goodness."

Chapter Text

An Overabundance of Tom Bertrams

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Four of 4

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and nine-and-twenty:

"Might I have a moment to speak with her alone?" Tom asked, peering into the girls' bedroom and – almost sheepishly – stepping inside.

Susan opened her mouth to tell him he most certainly couldn't, he ought to be quite appalled with his ghastly behaviour downstairs and should count himself a most lucky gentleman indeed if Fanny ever wished to speak to him again, indigent cousin or not, but she happened to glance at her sister before beginning her rant and noticed her giving an almost imperceptible nod.

"It's all right, Susie."

"Well," she sniffed. Then, at Tom, "Hmmph."

"Pray don't be angry with me."

How could he reasonably expect her to be otherwise? Her eyes were accusing. "Why? Why-ever did you do it?" Why did you say it?

"Oh, really, Fanny – come – Henry Crawford is a pest. You wanted his affection for you cured, did you not?"

Her lower jaw set itself, then trembled. "That – what you said downstairs – was a sort of cure almost as bad as the complaint!" She swallowed. "You did not do it for me."

He sighed. "Dash it, but there's the rub – I did do it for you – I did it because I love you. And I hate to see an unworthy man look at you thus. It raises my spleen more than anything, the way he stares at you as if he were a starving wolf and you a lamb he should like to gobble for luncheon."

"No," said Fanny simply, unaccepting. "Please." If he had any mercy, he'd stop. "No."

"I may as well just say it – you're a clever girl – you must have guessed."

"No."

"You're my wife; I am your husband; and we live in a constant state of near-delirious felicity." Perhaps he was exaggerating the last part. But only a little.

She felt the floor fall out from her feet and wished she could sink and sink and never, never stop. "I could never marry anybody without affection."

He gave a little smirk. "Oh, believe me, you don't."

"You told me" – or he would tell her – "in the future we were friends." You never prepared me for this. "I do not love you, not in such a way as that."

"You do." His tone was affectionate as he added, "At least a little bit."

Here it was all happening again – no one was listening to her. She had said no, and a would-be husband was still thrust upon her. First Henry, who everybody wished her to marry, and she could not like, and now Tom, who surely nobody wished her to marry save, inexplicably, Tom himself.

"I cannot – I won't – marry you."

"Fanny," he laughed, and reached for her though she flinched and turned her head away, "it doesn't work like that – you already have – you can't refuse an offer you already accepted. We've been married nearly four years. When I finally get unstuck from this time, I'm going back to you."

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Oh, creepmouse, don't cry." He tried a more jovial, jesting approach: "I don't expect perfection in a wife, you know."

She croaked, "I knew you must be a liar; I knew all along."

"I don't understand." Well, and how could he? The Tom Bertram who had told her she had nothing to fear from that quarter was not yet him – he had not lived that baronet's life yet.

"It hasn't happened for you yet," Fanny murmured; her hands were shaking, they were wiggling like loose jam from the wrists downward. "Just as so many things haven't happened for me yet. I could still change it."

"No." He shook his head. "You couldn't." He sat down on the edge of the mattress. "I'll tell you something – something I never told anyone – I tried to change things once." He dropped her gaze. "I was seven-and-twenty and travelling and I thought, perhaps arrogantly, I could make it so my father never promoted the match between yourself and Crawford. Further, I thought – well, you were young in his present, only a dozen years old – he would make your childhood a good deal happier if he knew you became his daughter. I thought it would spare you pain and was pleased with myself for coming up with what I believed to be such a clever scheme."

Fanny was rapt with growing curiosity. "Pray go on, cousin."

"I went into my father's study, and I proudly told him all about us – about you and I being married in the future – and I..." A cloud passed over his face. "Oh, Fanny, I've never seen him so angry. It quite unsettled me, and no mistake! I never imagined... When we did marry, he approved the match; it never occurred to me the difference a few years could truly make!"

"Are you saying my uncle knew?"

Tom shook his head. "I panicked – I thought he would do something terrible and perhaps it would change the future – just not in the way I had wanted – I thought he'd send you away from Mansfield or treat you with contempt even if he did not. So, I quickly recanted and told him I invented the entire story as a sort of practical joke. I convinced him I was unmarried in future and likely to be so for a long, long time yet. It didn't please him, but I think it saved you from some unpleasantness."

"But why do you tell me this?"

"What, have I lost you? You don't catch my point?"

She shook her head.

"The point is everything ended up remaining exactly the same – you had the same childhood as ever you did before – we're still married – nothing changed."

But it might have, if he hadn't panicked and lied, Fanny thought – it really might have.

"You may as well accept it and give me a chance."

"I know you dislike Mr. Crawford," whispered Fanny, a touch bitterly, "but you're being as unfair as ever he was." As ever he is yet.

"You just wait – when you're older, Fanny, you'll see that I'm right – you shall find I am nothing like him."

"Is all wisdom merely an attribute of age? I surely am old enough to see clearly when there are two equally selfish men before me."

"Well, the little mouse certainly has grown some teeth today, hasn't she?" Tom simpered, cocking his head to one side. "There was a time you'd have lost your nerve if you thought to speak to me like this. Not now, though, eh? Good for you.

"At any rate, you should be aware Henry Crawford only wants you because he thinks you're this perfect little doll – this incorruptible angel" – he popped his mouth – "whose affections he supposes will resolve all he despises in his own nature."

"And you?" she breathed.

"I know you to be an insufferably prim little madam who unnervingly has a look of my younger brother's sometimes" – Fanny started at this, for Miss Crawford had said something similar, though less insulting, to her once – "but I still want you in spite of that. I don't expect you to fix me; I'd rather fix myself and be better for you."

She shivered. This was too much. The strain was grown too great. To endure Tom Bertram saying such things to her! There must be a way of stopping it. A way of changing the future.

There must be.

"If I wrote to Mansfield Park, to my uncle, as soon as this week, is it too late already to save you from what happens at Newmarket?" She knew this to be the unspeakable blow, a strike at something he was extremely sensitive about, and she was not really thinking of doing it, for it was clearly taboo, but desperation – because he was looking at her in such an intense way – made her say it. "That would stop this, wouldn't it?"

Tom's reaction stunned her. He did not answer her in words, though his countenance darkened considerably, and his lips parted as if he had something very severe indeed to say.

Instead, he lunged forward and grasped her by the sides of her arms, swinging her down onto the mattress beside him and pinning her into place upon her back.

"Mr. Bertram!"

He practically smothered her face with kisses – her hairline, chin, mouth, cheeks, brow – so rapidly it almost tickled, like being swarmed by an army of butterflies.

It was impossible for her to wriggle free, and Fanny had little choice – aside from slamming her knee between his legs and possibly hurting him in order to make him let her up – but to permit this unwelcome, though not unpleasant, plethora of kisses.

Her face was like scarlet as he finally released her and she remained rigidly in place, panting at the ceiling, her chest heaving, utterly winded.

"Suggest rescuing me from Newmarket in the present, and I'll just do that again – and again – every single time, until you stop talking nonsense."

Slowly, Fanny sat up and put her fingertips to her still-tingling lips. "That wasn't nice, Tom." She'd never had a kiss from a lover before, and now she felt as if the moment had been quite snatched away from her along with all the rest of her free will. "What would my aunt and uncle think of your ungentlemanly behaviour toward me?"

"We can write and ask them, if you like," he said a trifle tartly; "we can add a postscript about it to your letter warning them about Newmarket. If you're going to become all missish on me."

Susan came in, then, to tell them Mr. Price could be heard downstairs, cursing at the younger boys for tripping him up, and if he happened to make his way up here for any reason, clearly intoxicated and in no good temper, they had better make certain he didn't find Tom alone on the bed with Fanny.

Tom rose to leave the room, but Fanny had one final statement to make. She sucked in her lips tightly. "You were wrong before – in what you said to Mr. Crawford – I do not have any hidden freckles."

Considering, Tom glanced sideways at Susan before shrugging. "Oh, you never noticed?" He gestured behind himself and tapped his posterior. "Left arse cheek. You have five of them."

Fanny goggled at him, nonplussed.

"If you were to connect them, they'd sort of look like..." He snapped his fingers together, trying to come up with the name in his mind. "What's that fancy constellation you and my brother are always looking for in the sky? You know, the Greek queen one."

"Cassiopeia?" She fervently wished she could vanish in time and travel someplace else, that she had his affliction and might escape the tail-end of this continuous mortification.

"Aye, that's the very one I was thinking of – Cassiopeia."

As soon as he was gone from the room, Susan asked Fanny if she was all right. "You look as if he shocked you dreadfully."

"I have never," she confessed, "more wanted a cordial in my life."

Susan eyed the door cautiously. "I have a little mirror – I will guard the door for you" – the bolt was not strong and any of their siblings, particularly Betsey, might charge in, as it was the middle of the day and all were in an uproar of activity – "d'you want to check?"

Red-faced, Fanny nodded.

He's a liar, she reminded herself. Tom Bertram is a liar. At any age.

But a quick examination of her backside using Susan's mirror revealed the freckles were not a fabrication – even she had to admit they looked, as he'd claimed, just a little like Cassiopeia.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously five-and-twenty and nine-and-twenty:

Fanny was to receive, in due course during her time yet remaining in Portsmouth, two letters from Mary Crawford which were to distress her and from the contents of which she required consolation.

The first:

My dearest Fanny,

As pleased as I should be to write you of my own volition, it is for Henry I write this particular missive to you. He says he has been to see you and has told me what occurred with your cousin. For shame! For Mr. Bertram to behave so is astonishing indeed, upon my word! Wicked enough he should impose himself upon you when he might, twice as easily as you, have gone to Mansfield Park where would wait – if nobody else – an understanding father, but to deprive you of a lover such as my brother with some outlandish claim! Your husband? I cannot believe it. You have better sense than that – I told Edmund as much when you initially refused Henry's offer.

But now for the intention of my writing this: oh, do not stay on in Portsmouth to be abused so by your cousin, and to have your pretty looks lost. Henry and myself, at but the smallest word from you, shall ferry you back to Northamptonshire! Once you are at home again, your uncle won't bother sending you back; but do not wait about for ever and ever for him to recall you on his own. There lies unnecessary folly.

All this was bad enough, but there were three pages more – Miss Crawford could claim all she pleased she wrote for her brother's sake alone, but this fact didn't prevent her from spending most of the letter talking vapidly about Edmund's looks – how handsome he was in town – and the temptation this provided her with, though she could still never accept a poor clergyman.

Oh, how she longed, she said, for Fanny to advise her.

Poor Mary. For here was irony. One could almost – almost – feel sorry for her there, for Fanny's true advice, if she could have ever got it out of her, would not have been to her liking.

She imagined Fanny smiling indulgently at her shallow admiration of Edmund, not bemoaning that such admiration was not of a worthier nature.

That is the trouble when a woman like Mary befriends one like Fanny – the selfish friend will nearly always see in the quieter their own muted reflection blinking back at them rather than the true face of the friend themselves.

In truth, Fanny was so offended by this letter that, if she were more impulsive, she might have been inclined to love Tom more than she otherwise would simply because Mary so hypocritically advised against it.

Her own objections against her selfish eldest cousin certainly seemed a good deal less egregious when compared to the folly of the Crawfords and their corrupted minds.

Tom, at least, regardless of his age, she felt certain would never have suggested she outright disobey her uncle and go home to Mansfield early against his will and rely upon his simply accepting her arrival and not sending her back!

And this was the man who had turned Mansfield into a theatre without a second thought, who understood his father the least of any of them!

Then, the second letter:

I want to know the state of things at Mansfield Park, and you, no doubt, are perfectly able to give it. One should be a brute not to feel for the distress they are in; and from what I hear Mr. Bertram has a bad chance of ultimate recovery.

Except, of course, we know, do we not, he must surely survive this, as his older self has been made known to both you and to Edmund – and, if I am not mistaken, to our dearest Henry as well. The Mr. Bertram who was with you when my brother visited and treated him and you both so unfeelingly was surely older than the one languishing at Mansfield at present.

With this in my mind, I can feel sorriest only for those obliged to nurse him; Tom is the sort to make a fuss of any trifling disorder, though I admit he may have some true cause, if his complaints are as serious as they say.

But, Fanny, are you absolutely certain the future as you know it to be is set in stone? I particularly wished to ask you this. I cannot believe it is. And the idea Mr. Bertram might not recover, and the future thereby being changed, has set me to trembling. To have such a fine young man cut off in the flower of his days is most melancholy. Poor Sir Thomas will feel it dreadfully.

Yet – oh, and yet – I put it to your conscience whether Sir Edmund would not do more good with all the Bertram property than any other possible 'Sir'.

And I think it would be no bad thing for you, were you widowed before you were wed and thereby spared.

Fanny, Fanny – I see you smile and look cunning, but, upon my honour, I never bribed a physician in my life.

This, of course, was after the dreaded Newmarket incident had finally taken place, unimpeded.

Already Fanny had been in agitation – Edmund and Lady Bertram had both previously written to her to express their concern over Tom's failing health, telling her the doctor feared for his lungs – her feelings were not favourably helped along by this heartless letter from Mary being thrown into the whole nasty muddle.

Nine-and-twenty Tom was still with them, still stuck out of his own time, and although he had maintained a sort of awkward distance from Fanny since Crawford's visit and their exchange upstairs (as much as was possible in so small a house), perhaps aware he had crossed a line, he could not ignore her clear distress now.

Tears leaked from her eyes as she read Mary's letter, and he – when she nodded her consent – read it for himself over her shoulder, bristled at Mary's wishing him dead, and set to comforting Fanny as best he could.

He took her out into the open air and walked with her and spoke so kindly and gently as they stood on the ramparts, she could not remain long in despair over the illness of the very person reassuring her it would be all right in the end.

In spite of herself, she permitted – without turning away – him to stroke her curls, tucking them more securely under her bonnet, and to rub his right thumb over her cheekbones and along her jawline.

She'd never realised before that day Tom had a callus from drawing on that thumb, not until she felt the little hard knob caressing her face.

The morning following this excursion, Fanny resolved to be friendlier with nine-and-twenty Tom, to forgive him completely, even if she still felt she could never marry him, whatever he claimed she did in the future, only to discover John's clothes – the ones they had loaned to Tom – in a pitiful pile by the foot of the stairs.

He'd gone.

When a third letter – this one with only the power to mystify, rather than to wound – arrived from Mary, frantically insisting some rumour Fanny had never, at that time, even heard was entirely unfounded and hoping she did not repent not letting them take her back to Mansfield, she was on her own.

Although she never told anyone, it was not the final correspondence she ever got from the Crawfords – Henry himself sent her a scrap of a note, though he had no right to do so, written as boldly as if they had been engaged, imploring her to forgive his folly and declaring that at the smallest word from her – the slightest suggestion of a promise she would consent not to marry Tom Bertram – he would remove her cousin Maria from his protection and never look twice at another woman again.

Indignant, Fanny burned the note promptly, using a poker and jabbing it down into the embers of the smoky little fireplace in the parlour till it was naught but ash.

She never even showed it to Susan.

Part of her, glancing repeatedly over her shoulder as the paper burned up, expected a time-travelling Tom – at any possible age – to appear before it was properly destroyed, and to be outraged, but he did not.

Only Rebecca, who'd delivered the shocking missive one morning while the rest of the family was out and Fanny rested upstairs with a sick headache, knew of its existence, and Fanny swore her to secrecy, for all that such an extracted promise might actually be worth.

Tom Bertram is five-and-twenty:

There had been several moments during his struggle after the fever set in when Tom had honestly believed – in spite of having seen his future self many, many times – he'd reached the end of his life.

He had been nearly insensible when Edmund and their father and Baddeley carried him across the foyer and struggled to bring him upstairs to his bed, unable to even focus his gaze upon his mother as they passed her.

The only bright spot during his recovery was the comfort he took from Edmund – the brother he had never realised he loved so before now.

There was no one else he felt comfortable with, for Mrs. Norris frightened him with her fussing, and his mother's helplessness made him feel his own uselessness at the moment doubly hard.

Then the blow, of course, of learning about Maria and Henry and being plagued by his own guilt in the matter... He had done this – he had pushed them together during the play – and he had single-handedly destroyed the family's peace in so doing.

What transpired was that the Tom Bertram who emerged from the sickroom, when he was well enough to sit up on the sofa and take short walks with the aide of a cane and another person, was not remotely the same Tom Bertram who had been brought into it – the foolish gentleman who had fallen from his horse and drunk himself into a deadly stupor.

He had suffered, and he had learned to think.

So, by his twenty-sixth birthday, Tom Bertram of Mansfield Park was a steady and quiet sort of man who only occasionally – when strictly provoked to it – had the tell-tale glint of mischief in his light eyes.

He was taken aback somewhat when he first saw Fanny Price again upon her return to Mansfield Park.

She came with her younger sister, brought thither by Edmund, who had gone to fetch her back from Portsmouth where she'd been visiting her family, and when he came out to meet them he thought there was something odd in Fanny's manner of looking at him.

Her eyes sparkled at him – as he had never known them to sparkle before – as she said, "Cousin Tom, I'm glad to see you well."

It was as if she recognised his altered persona from somewhere, and he suddenly realised she must have known his secret – known of his time-travelling – and never said a word to him of it.

Sly girl!

All he could manage before Edmund helped him back inside was to take both her hands and Susan's and laugh, "The blasted leeches the doctor applied when I was in bed had so much of me, I'm glad you see me at all."

But he was smiling to himself and was eager, as he never had been before, to catch a moment alone with Fanny and discover what those glittering looks she was giving him were all about.

Naturally, it did not immediately transpire that upon a first conversation both Fanny and the present Tom realised it truly was love and gave up upon all other inclinations, but they certainly had a mutual agreement of liking the other one to be close by whenever possible.

He was initially very sorry for her, thinking – much the same as his brother did – she'd had all the real loss of a lover in Mr. Crawford's betrayal, through the whole recent unpleasant business, and was relieved to discover the heart which knew no guile – which plotted nothing for itself even in the smallest measurement during the whole sorry affair – did not suffer.

Fanny was helped past her true first inclination – no small hurdle, to be sure, for Edmund was always more to her even than the mere object of her affections alone; he was also her long-held ideal in looks, temperament, and in morality – by Tom in the present not having any knowledge whatever of their supposed future together, no more than she did, and simply being able to become his friend and talk to him just as the elderly baronet version of him had told her she would, so that, exactly at the time it was right, and not an hour sooner, Fanny ceased to esteem Edmund as more than a treasured brother and adviser, and was growing very eager for Tom, instead, to make her an offer and complete her happiness.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously six-and-twenty and one-and-thirty:

Fanny was out riding one morning when another rider came galloping up behind her seated upon Tom Bertram's favourite mount. "What-ho, Fanny!" The waving, halloing figure appeared to be wearing some sort of rags and looked like a mad gypsy.

It took a startled Fanny several breathless, anxious minutes to absolutely reassure herself it was only an older Tom – of about one-and-thirty – and not a horse thief.

During their many conversations as of late, Tom had told Fanny one of his worst fears concerning time-travelling was losing a cherished horse, because there was always the chance of disappearing and leaving the beast riderless, so she was a little surprised at him riding out in so carefree a manner as this.

When they came to a pretty clearing, they both dismounted to walk a little ways, leading their horses behind them, although walking the mare as opposed to riding her rather fatigued Fanny greatly and could make her tired and stupid for a full day afterwards if she tried it for too long a duration, especially on a bright morning such as this, when there was next to no shade.

This was when Tom, giving her a smile from the corner of his mouth, asked her to be his wife.

He vanished before she could give any kind of answer, and Fanny was obliged to take up both horses' bridles and lead them back toward the stables until she could hand them over into the care of the groom.

The resulting headache from her extended exercise was frightful and left her with no opportunity to seek out Tom in the present; she had little choice but to go to bed in her attic until she was recovered enough to be at large again.

However, the moment she awoke without feeling the pulsing pain of a headache, she dressed quickly, forgot entirely about breakfast, and ran – breathless and wheezing – into the usual place in the shrubbery where she and Tom were wont to sit studying botany on clear mornings; she discovered him there, as she had hoped to, with a book of flora and fauna open across his lap.

"Yes," she rasped out as he stood up and held out his hand to steady her, looking a little alarmed. "Yes, I'll marry you."

"Will you now?" Tom was delighted – to the point where there were tears glistening in his eyes. "Marvellous!" He sniffed. "Excellent, capital. That's brilliant news. I couldn't be more pleased." His ensuing smile was bright, but a furrow was forming simultaneously between his eyebrows. He had been contemplating marrying Fanny Price at some length, however, not for the life of him could he recollect having made her an offer. "Not that it matters, Fanny, but – erm, how shall I put this – have I asked you?"

"You will ask me," she told him. "When you're older."

He slipped his arms around her waist and drew her to him and into a lingering kiss as their quivering lips met.

As they broke apart, Tom rested his forehead against hers. "How can I have known you for so long – all these years, Fanny – and never guessed?"

"I was so frightened of marrying without affection," she breathed. "But you have my affection – all of it." She kissed his lower lip before touching the tip of her nose to his. "I wish never to be parted from you."

"You have to realise I shall always be going," he warned her. "I may never be able to control when I travel."

"When you were nine-and-twenty, when you visited me in Portsmouth, you said – you will say – you were going back to me – when you finally returned to your own time." That was all she truly desired. "Just promise me you'll always come back, and we shall make the best of the rest of it."

The flat of his hand pressed against the small of her back, holding her firmly against him. "I promise you."

Tom Bertram is six-and-twenty:

It was difficult for the newly pledged young couple to disentangle themselves from one another, even as they stood in the foyer of the house and were preparing to go their separate ways; Tom and Fanny had walked back from the shrubbery with their arms linked and had been so preoccupied with staring into each other's eyes it was something of a miracle they'd reached the house at all rather than accidentally wandering together onto another path leading away from it.

With reluctance, Fanny pulled herself free from Tom's grasp and began to walk towards the staircase, only for him to snag her wrist and drag her back.

"How can you leave me thus," said he with faux reproach in his voice, "without so much even as a 'fare-thee-well, Tom Bertram'?"

She smiled. "Goodbye," she said innocently. "Pray don't look so unhappy, Mr. Bertram – we will see each other at supper, if not any sooner."

"That is not the manner of farewell I had in mind." He folded back the collar of her faded lavender pelisse and began to stroke her neck with his fingertips before bending his head forward to kiss her. "Give me something to think about in the hours from now until the supper hour."

A small, nervous giggle escaped her throat. "What can I give you?"

Rather than answer, he dragged his hand lower so that it came to rest on the top button of the pelisse and he undid it gingerly – then he undid two more, very slowly, and slipped his hand inside.

"Mr. Bertram!" she squealed, pulling away.

"All right, all right," he laughed, removing his hand and holding it aloft in surrender. "I'll stop – I have done."

Fanny was blushing madly. "You must excuse me."

Giddy, she rushed up the stairs and onto the landing as speedily as her weak, tired legs would permit her to, and as she turned, she crashed almost directly into Mrs. Norris.

"Beg pardon, Aunt Norris," she panted. "I did not see you there."

Mrs. Norris glared. "But I saw you, Fanny Price – do not think to conceal your vile tricks from me."

"Tricks, aunt?" She blinked in considerable confusion.

"First," she snarled, "you bring that prying sister of yours here as a spy, snooping throughout every corner of the house so there can be no peace, then you set your cap at Tom, thinking to snatch up Mansfield for your own – I saw you with him downstairs, Fanny, behaving little better than a painted London doxy." She took in a ragged, dramatic breath. "I am greatly ashamed of you – after all Sir Thomas has done for you, this is how you show your gratitude."

"Aunt–"

"And this is added insult to the fact that – had you accepted Mr. Crawford when you ought to have done – were it not for your insistence upon never being dictated to – our dearest Maria's marriage would not presently be on the point of dissolving! And now – now – you would have the integrity of her brother into the bargain. I bitterly regret the day I advised Sir Thomas to take you in – if only I could have known you then for the great, selfish cuckoo in the nest you've shamelessly revealed yourself to be."

And poor Fanny was subsequently dragged back down the stairs she'd struggled up, pulled by her arm, and brought into Sir Thomas study while her aunt Norris told her version of what she perceived Fanny and Tom to be doing in the foyer.

It was rather amazing how little resemblance the tale carried to what had actually occurred – much was emphasised to make Fanny appear uncharacteristically aggressive and Tom nearly blameless.

But Sir Thomas only asked that Tom be brought in and questioned, and hardly enough time had elapsed for Fanny even to really worry he would be angry before the matter was resolved thusly:

"Did Mrs. Norris witness some exchange of physical affection between yourself and Fanny in the foyer?"

"Yes, Father, apparently she did."

"D'you intend to wed Fanny?"

With raised colour, "Indeed, Father."

"Fanny herself has no objections, she has resolutely accepted you?"

"None, and – yes – she has."

Sir Thomas raised a hand and beckoned his niece forward. "Is this true?"

"Yes, sir."

"Practical joke, my foot." He took up his pen and inkpot, dipping his quill emphatically. "Well, I hope that satisfies your scruples, Mrs. Norris – it does mine."

"But Sir Thomas, you cannot wish" – she practically spat the name – "Fanny to–" She broke off, then resumed. "I know you never wished either of your sons to marry her."

"On the contrary, she is exactly the daughter I want – I am wearied to my bones of ambitious and mercenary connections."

A felicitous laugh of immense relief here escaped from Tom, who had privately been a little worried in this regard, though he'd said nothing about it aloud.

Mrs. Norris – even faced with Sir Thomas giving them his blessing – could not be reconciled to the match and was, eventually, driven away quite voluntarily to be Maria's companion in her disgrace in some other country and to see no more of Mansfield Park or the White House.

For Fanny and Tom themselves, some small difficulty was made in concern to what the neighbourhood would conjecture from their still living under the same roof after the Banns were read but prior to the actual marriage taking place, and there was a great deal of lamentation from Lady Bertram that they seemed to be, presently, at odds with the Grants after the debacle with the Crawfords– for mightn't Fanny have gone to the parsonage?

However, Mrs. Norris's leaving the country left the White House, in turn, unoccupied, and Tom was very willing to live there alone and allow Fanny to continue where she was until the wedding took place.

The joyful day itself was the only time Tom Bertram was ever to wear a wedding ring – his time-travelling condition made him too likely to lose any frequently worn jewellery – but Fanny still felt immensely satisfied when in the sight of the church and all their family who could be in attendance, including Julia and her new husband Mr. Yates (who were quite reconciled with Sir Thomas and very ready to prove themselves amiable), she had the pleasure of sliding it onto his finger.

It was Edmund who married them, for certainly Dr. Grant wouldn't have suited, and he was very pleased to have been so grossly mistaken about Tom's merits as a future husband for Fanny, who – prior to the reconciliation with Julia – he considered as being very much his only living sister.

After much waving and flower-throwing – and Tom dramatically kissing his hand and standing up in the carriage, though it had already started moving and he was most fortunate not to merely fall right back down into his seat for his pains, to bid goodbye to everyone standing outside the church to see them off – they were en route to Brighton for their wedding trip.

Initially, when Tom disappeared on their wedding night, his travelling perhaps triggered by the nearly thirteen-hour trip beforehand, Fanny was mildly dismayed, before she quickly remembered six-and-twenty Tom in the East Room – and five-and-thirty Tom's desperation to conceal his aroused state from her by covering her eyes – and she smiled to herself.

She felt a give in the mattress, not an hour later, and – in the low candlelight – turned to look at what she supposed to be her own present husband returned, to find none other than five-and-thirty Tom Bertram beside her, unclothed and sprawled across the coverlet.

"Hullo, Fanny," he said with soft feeling, trailing his fingers along the side of her arm.

"You," she murmured. "I was not expecting you."

"Is this Brighton? Our wedding trip?"

"Yes."

"Our first night as man and wife?"

Her colouring cheeks answered for her.

"D'you mind it very much?" He peeled back the blankets and began running his hands over her belly.

She shook her head. "No." No, she did not mind at all, though she expressed some small doubt Tom in the present would have his feelings hurt in all this.

"No, no – he won't mind it." Five-and-thirty Tom chuckled at her sweet, mildly concerned facial expression. "Rather gives him something to look forward to." And his hand slid lower, slipping between her legs.

Fanny yelped.

He froze, momentarily puzzled.

"Cold," she told him. "Your hands are a bit icy."

"Sorry, mousy." He withdrew them, holding them up above the covers. "Go on; breathe on them and warm them up for me."

She did; then, she kissed each one of his knuckles lingeringly.

Readjusting himself and climbing astride her, five-and-thirty Tom sighed, "You know, it's probably just as well – I'm a good deal less clumsy than six-and-twenty Tom." He smiled down at his wife. "Are you comfortable?"

Fanny nodded.

Truly, she couldn't readily think of a time when she had been more comfortable, more posed for what was to come, more contented, and was caught somewhere between delight and alarm by this fact.

Tom Bertram is six-and-twenty; Fanny Bertram is eight-and-twenty:

She'd been seated at the letter-writing desk Tom had had installed into their sitting-room which adjoined to their bedroom last year, her quill lifted but her mind blank.

Sometimes, when her husband disappeared – lost far off in time – and she had no idea when he would be back, Fanny Bertram took to writing him letters which she'd leave folded on the desk for him upon his return, but this day the words wouldn't form.

There came a crash from behind her, and she turned around in her seat to see Tom's art supplies, a collection of charcoals and paintbrushes scattered across the floor, the tin box he kept them in overturned.

And Tom himself – younger than when he'd left her a few days before – naked and soaking wet, dripping on the rug by the fireplace.

Fanny rose and went to him, hands out, all compassion. "Oh, Tom, what happened?

He saw the date on the calendar, concluded she was married to the same version of himself he'd just interacted with, and scowled sullenly. "I broke a lamp trying to sneak past Aunt Norris, and your husband threw me into the pond."

Fetching a towel, she began to fuss over him and dry him off, trying not to laugh at his stunned expression.

"Oi, I've just realised – we must be jolly nearly the same age," Tom mused, studying her with passionate interest. "How strange that feels."

"I'm eight-and-twenty – that's still two years' difference."

"Not much of one, really." He grinned. "You look exceedingly well. For an older woman." Two of his fingers played flirtatiously with one of her curls hanging near her face. "Now, leave off teasing me with that damnable towel."

She hadn't known she was teasing him, she was only drying off the space above his knees which had been beaded with water droplets, but now she saw – looking into his face – how tightly wound up he was.

Drawing her mouth to his, she nibbled lingeringly on his bottom lip.

Tom moaned appreciatively.

When she pulled back to draw in a breath, she murmured, "We can go into the bedroom, if you like."

Six-and-twenty Tom – despite being rather worried it would all be for naught, and he'd just disappear again, frustrated behind reason – didn't need to be asked twice; he scooped her up off her feet and fairly kicked the double doors between the sitting-room and bedroom open.

Tom Bertram is simultaneously six-and-twenty and one-and-thirty:

Fanny rested with her head on one-and-thirty Tom's bare chest, listening to the briny wind – which had picked up a little – rattle the casement window across the room.

Clack-clack-clack.

"D'you think we'll ever know what makes you travel?" she whispered.

"Honestly?" he sighed. "I like to hope so, but I don't believe it. I think my older self would have said something about it by now."

"You live to be at least three-and-ninety, and you're still travelling then."

Tom seemed impressed by this. "Truly? Well! The oldest I've seen myself is sixty something or other."

"You were the sweetest little old man I ever saw."

"Ah – well, if that isn't precisely the manner of thing a fellow desires to hear from a wife he's just bedded for the first time," he teased, slipping his arm around her middle and squeezing.

"Mr. Bertram!"

"Oh, so I'm Mr. Bertram again – am I?" He kissed her brow. "Well, I suppose it's better than cousin."

"Will you stay with me all night?"

"I wish I could, mousy, but I already feel myself going – I'm sorry – but think of it this way: less time with me now means more time with me in the future."

"Unless you're going further into the past, and I'm not there."

He loosened his grasp on her slightly. "That's a fair point."

"I wish I were a time-traveller, too – I wish we could go wherever you go together."

He shuddered. "I'm bloody grateful you don't follow – that you aren't like me – I hate the idea of you suffering through some of the mortifications I've had in the places I appear."

"It isn't that I mind waiting for you, you know." She lifted her head and gazed down at him. "It's... Well, it makes me sad."

"What does?"

"To think of you – to think of you being all on your own."

But it was Fanny who found herself alone just then, because he vanished and all that was left was his indentation upon the pillow.

Tom Bertram is six-and-twenty; Fanny Bertram is eight-and-twenty:

"That... That was my first time." Six-and-twenty Tom rolled over in bed to look at his wife, who in turn snuggled up closer to him.

Her lips curled upward. "Oh?"

"Is it always like that?"

"How do you mean?"

"So easy – no fluttering nerves, no disappearing in time, just" – he sighed – "like that?"

"Mostly, yes."

"So, I was near out of my mind with worry about being a virgin my entire life for no reason at all?"

"It would seem so."

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. "We could do it again, you know – I don't think I'm going just yet."

Fanny giggled. "Tom!"

"What?"

"Must we? I'm exhausted."

He kissed her on the tip of the nose. "Beg pardon." A pause. "How about this afternoon, if I'm still here?" Then, after the only answer he received was a sort of gurgling grunt he decided to interpret as maybe, "I say! Did the puppy my mother gave you put on a lot of weight in the last few years?"

"N-no," she murmured, eyes still closed. "Why?"

"Something extremely heavy is sitting on my thigh."

At that exact moment, whatever it was put a tiny moist finger into his ear and poked.

Tom opened his eyes to see a plump golden-haired child – two or three years old – in a long white nightshirt staring down at him.

Fanny sat up and sighed, "William?" She looked to Tom apologetically. "Oh, I'm so sorry; I thought he was with his uncle at the parsonage. The nurse must have brought him back without telling me."

This was when Tom realised the child peering down at him with steady blue eyes bore a striking resemblance to himself, though his mouth and the shape of his chin reminded him more of Fanny's father, of Mr. Price.

"Well, that was quick," Tom remarked dryly.

The child poked him in the ear again.

"Youch; please stop doing that."

"Papa young."

"Yes, Willy," Fanny told the child, climbing from the bed and tying a dressing-gown around herself. "Your papa is younger today." She looked at Tom again as she lifted the – now fussing – child from off his leg. "He doesn't understand you're a time-traveller yet – he thinks you just change age a lot." She felt she would do best to add, "So, you see, he may be a little offended if you act like you don't know him. He doesn't realise you never met him before."

Tom released a breath he hadn't realised he was holding in. "So, he doesn't...?" His son didn't inherit his condition? "He hasn't shown any signs of...?"

Fanny shook her head. "Not so far."

"Thank God," whispered Tom, crossing himself even though he wasn't Catholic. "Maybe it isn't genetic."

Fanny gnawed her lower lip.

"What? What is that look?"

"I do not know if ought to tell you."

"It's all right, you can tell me."

"It likely is genetic – we lost one before we had William." Her eyes shone with unshed tears. "I think it travelled before it was born and it..."

"Oh, Fanny..." He forced his face from sympathetic into a more resolute expression as it occurred to him she was trying not to cry in front of tiny William, who – however little he understood of their conversation – was definitely observing their expressions very, very closely. "Well, never mind – let me get up and dressed and I'll play at being a good father and take William to the stables." He hesitated. "Has he got his own pony yet? He ought to have a pony."

"You've already bought him three – a grey one, a black one, and the little cream-coloured creature with the shaggy mane – none of which he's big enough to ride yet."

Tom considered this. "He's big enough to visit them and feed them apples and carrots and lumps of sugar, anyway, I suppose."

"Please, Tom, be careful." Her face looked a little grave again. "Don't make him promises about what you're doing with him today – please."

"Why-ever not?"

"I told you – he doesn't understand that you disappear without choice – even when he sees it happen. If you tell him you'll take him to the stables, and don't, because you've gone back in time, he'll assume you forgot him and cry inconsolably for an hour."

Guilt pricked at Tom; he got the impression the described scenario had happened before. "Why do you suppose I never told myself I had a son?"

"Oh, I asked you not to – when he was born – I was afraid if something happened..."

He nodded. Then turned a little pale. "Fanny, I'm going."

"Yes, I thought you would – I tried to warn you. You never stay here very long at this age."

His eyes darted to his wife, then to his child – who was now darting about the length of the room in circles and laughing – then to a gorgeous spilling of sunshine spreading like a thin golden rod through a gap in the curtains.

Regretfully, forlornly, Tom knew it must be an utterly beautiful day outside. "I don't want to go."

"You will be back," she promised him, as the empty blankets fluttered and settled. "You always come back."

~Finis~