Sense and Sensibility (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (58 page)

Marianne stared at her fiancé, mouth agape. “You mean you don’t wish to enter me?”

Colonel Brandon chuckled. “My darling, I wish it more than you could possibly know. But I will not do that with anyone who is not my wife.”

Marianne’s mind raced to keep up with the sudden turn of the conversation. “Are you saying you’ve
never
… ”

Colonel Brandon nodded. “That is what I’m saying. I’ve seen what can happen when men take advantage of women in such a way. I respect you too much to put you in the position of being with child before you are wed.” He smiled. “But in the interest of being perfectly honest, I must confess I do not know how much longer I can wait — would a brief engagement be acceptable to you? I wish you make you my wife as soon as you shall allow me.”

Marianne threw her arms around him. “Would to-morrow be soon enough?”

Colonel Brandon threw back his head and laughed, more happy in that moment than he’d ever been in his long, solitary life. “To-morrow would be perfect.”

Marianne then crawled down his surprisingly toned, youthful body and took him in her mouth, encircling his hardness with her tongue, and exulting in his answering groans. “Marianne, no,” he gasped, protesting as severely as he could. “I wish for to-day to be all about
your
enjoyment.”

“Well then to-day is your lucky day, my dear Colonel,” she murmured against his delicious, perfect shaft, “because I enjoy this very much.”

Some time later, when they’d both achieved a state of bliss several times over, they lay naked in one another’s arms, perfectly content.

“I love you, Marianne,” Colonel Brandon whispered into her hair, his voice filled with all the roughness and emotion of a man deeply in love.

“I love you too, my dear Colonel Brandon,” she responded. And it was the truth.

Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible passion which held no real substance apart from the benefits of carnal delights, instead of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm and sober judgment she had determined on, — Marianne found herself at nineteen, submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village. And on top of all of that, her marriage was filled to the brim with love and a passion neither she nor her husband had ever experienced, and they relished the moments where they got to teach each other things, and experiment together, bringing each other over the edge again and again.

Their honeymoon night was perfect in every way, the two lovers finally coming together as one, uniting their bodies and their lives forever.

Colonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best loved him, believed he deserved to be; — in Marianne he was consoled for every past affliction; — her regard and her society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became even more devoted to her husband than it had once been to Willoughby.

Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted; — nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on — for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, and almost always willing to cater to his every whim in the bedroom, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.

For Marianne, however, in spite of his incivility in surviving her loss, he always retained that decided regard which interested him in every thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman; and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon.

Mrs. Dashwood was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, without attempting a removal to Delaford; and fortunately for Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, when Marianne was taken from them, Margaret had reached an age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being supposed to have a lover. She considered the marriages of her sisters her model for achieving love and passion, and she eagerly anticipated experiencing a romance — or two — of her own.

Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate; — and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.

THE END

Instead of the peace and coffee she’d been looking for before boarding her plane, Margo Keyes’s latte came with a side order of idiot-on-a-cell-phone. Anyone within twenty feet of the man in the blue blazer heard some of the conversation. Where she was sitting, it was in Dolby digital surround sound.

It figured her trip would start like this. She’d been apprehensive about it from the get-go. Not that she had a fear of flying. It was the landing — or rather, what was waiting for her
after
she landed — that was the problem.

Her chance for quiet acquisition of caffeine courage diminishing by the second, she glared at the man in the blue blazer, hoping he’d take the hint and shut up. Too intent on his call, he seemed to miss what was, she was quite sure, a stunning look of disapproval.

“Are you interested or not?” he yelled. Allowing no answer to what was apparently a rhetorical question, he continued, “If you don’t want what I’ve got, I know someone who does. So, what’s it worth to you?” After he paused, presumably for the response, he said, “Good. I’ll let you know what the bid is after I talk to my other customer.” He ended the call, shoved his phone in his pocket and glared back at Margo before storming off.

Walking down the concourse, she consoled herself that if the coffee break hadn’t worked, at least she had a business class seat reserved on the plane and a hotel suite waiting at her destination. She’d indulged in both, rationalizing if she was making this trip at least it should be comfortable. Interesting concept, that; comfortable discomfort.

As the plane taxied out to the runway, she pulled out her BlackBerry to review her schedule for the next ten days, hoping some magic wand had been waved over it, making it all shiny and fun. However, as usual, her fairy godmother was AWOL. She put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking, saying yes to this? Ever since she’d moved to Portland, she’d restricted her Philadelphia visits with her mother to long weekends in the spring and fall. It got her points for being a good daughter, avoided too much time being fussed over and kept her out of the two East Coast seasons she didn’t like. This trip? Ten days in mid-June when she’d just been there two months before.

Checking the airline schedule online, she found a flight home the day after the presentation she was to give the following week. That would cut three days off the trip. But before she could change her reservation, the flight attendant asked her to turn her phone off.

Nothing left to do but work. She opened her stuffed-to-the-gunnels messenger bag and took out what she’d brought to help her craft her speech. It looked like she’d included everything in the courthouse except the old law library. Being tapped as the last-minute stand-in for your boss at an important conference will make you do that.

While trying to organize it all, she lost track of her jacket. She eventually saw it too far under her seat to grab and asked the person sitting behind her to get it for her. A man threw it back. When she turned to thank him he added a dirty look — a familiar dirty look. Shit. The man in the blue blazer from the coffee stand.

Finally settled, she began to review case files. Unfortunately, the steady stream of orders to the flight attendants from the seat behind her distracted both her and the cabin crew. When she’d read the same report three times and still didn’t know what the hell it was about, she gave up trying, put her work away and replaced it with her iPod. By plugging in the ear buds she could drown out ABB (“Asshole in Blue Blazer,” as he had now morphed into being) with Pink Martini, Colbie Caillat, Suzanne Vega and Alicia Keys.

By the time she’d worked through most of her current favorite albums, the pilot announced their imminent arrival in Philadelphia. Winding the cord for the ear buds around the iPod before stashing it away, the thought occurred that ABB had now wrecked a second part of her day. Two strikes against her and she hadn’t even gotten to the hard part yet.

The man jumped up as soon as the plane’s wheels hit the ground, arguing with the flight attendant when she insisted he get back in his seat. He sprang into action again as soon as they arrived at the gate, rooting around in the compartment above Margo like he was hunting for truffles. Fearful he’d dump out the contents of her messenger bag she stood, too, and removed it from the overhead.

“Out of the way,” ABB said. “I’m in a hurry.”

“We all are,” Margo said. “But they haven’t opened the door yet.”

“I have to be out of here when they do. Move, bitch.”

“Excuse me? What did you … ?”

The man grabbed his briefcase and pin-balled his way through passengers and cabin crew to the door, which was still closed. “Asshole in Blue Blazer” moved ahead of “walking across the country pushing heavy beverage carts” on the list of reasons she was glad she hadn’t followed up on that girlhood fantasy of being a flight attendant so she could get paid for traveling.

At baggage claim, still thinking of comebacks for ABB, some of which were anatomically impossible, most of which were too obscene to say out loud and many of which were both, she let her bag go past a couple times before she realized it had made an appearance. Off balance when she snagged it, she swung around awkwardly, smacking into someone behind her. When she started to apologize she saw, much to her consternation, she’d whacked — guess who? — talking again on the phone.

Echoing her sentiments, ABB said, “Oh, hell, you again. Just what I need,” and elbowed past her. He grabbed the briefcase leaning up against the luggage belt in front of her, and ran toward the taxi stand, leaving her apologizing to empty air. “Welcome to Philadelphia, Margo,” she muttered to no one in particular as she pulled out the handle from her suitcase.

At the exit for the rental car shuttles, she hesitated long enough to inhale one last little bit of cool, clean air. Thus prepared, she forced herself out the automatic door into the wall of hot, wet vapor, which, laced with vehicle exhaust and the effluvium of the nearby oil refineries and storage facilities, was what passed for air during summer in her birthplace.

Oh, yeah, welcome to Philly.

• • •

A short, stocky man in a business suit paced on the spongy ground, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and swatted away a bug. He hated this weather. When he delivered what he was about to get, he’d be on the next plane out of here.

A taxi approached and he stepped back into the shadow of the trees. The car’s interior light illuminated a man in a dark blue blazer paying the driver. After the cab peeled off, the stocky man emerged from the shadows and beckoned.

The two men walked silently into the copse of trees. When they were hidden from the road, the stocky man asked for what he’d contracted to purchase. The man in the blue blazer said he had another offer that the buyer had to meet or the deal was off. The stocky man shook his head. The man in the blue blazer pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He handed the phone over after the call was answered. The stocky man said a few words in a foreign language before handing the phone back to its owner.

While Blue Blazer was focused on winding up the phone conversation, the stocky man reached under his jacket and pulled out a gun. His problem eliminated, the gunman pulled the blazer-clad body further into the trees and covered it with branches.

Taking the phone and the briefcase, he returned to his car. When he searched the briefcase, he discovered that what he wanted wasn’t there. Nor, he found out when he went back and searched the body, was it in the fucking blue blazer. All he had was a flash drive with what he’d already seen and a pissed-off buyer waiting for what he now couldn’t deliver.

• • •

In her rental car and headed toward Center City on I-95, Margo went over, again, what she had ahead of her. The shoes she’d packed said it all — Manolo Blahniks for a high school reunion she’d been conned into attending, mid-heel pumps for the conference where she was to give the still-unwritten presentation and the flats she wore to please her mother who hated running shoes. No shoes were needed for the other thing niggling at the back of her mind.

In Portland, where she was a thirty-something deputy district attorney, Margo’s colleagues thought it was great she was going for a longer-than-usual visit with her mother. She’d explained her reluctance was because she didn’t like the summer weather. But it wasn’t just the weather she didn’t want to face. There was the world of Daisy Keyes to deal with.

“Daisy” was what her maternal grandmother, for whom she was named, had called her. It was the literal translation of Margherita, her given first name. Margo was grateful no one else had joined her
abuelita
in that folly. What the hell had she been thinking? Daisy? Really?