Chapter Text
As is so often the case, Woodston parsonage, beloved as it already was to Catherine, had never looked finer than on the morning of her departure. Looking back at the cheerful, well-built stone house as she was driven through the green gates enclosing its grounds, she felt as forlorn as if it was already her home. In driving through the village, however, there was a true source of comfort, for she had not been able to enjoy it when she had passed through it last.
Woodston was a large and populous village, in a pleasant situation and with a pretty aspect. Catherine, who could have no scruples in indulging her heart now, preferred it to any place she had ever been at, and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the rank of a cottage, and at all the little chandler’s shops which they passed.
Henry and Catherine, considering what had passed between them at the abbey, and the as of yet clandestine engagement that united them, did not observe the melancholy style of travel that tradition dictate they should. Captain Tilney had granted them the use of General Tilney’s carriage and coachman, as well as restored to Catherine all the luggage that Henry had abandoned in his haste to remove her to safety. Moreover Henry’s manservant travelled with them, and more dreadful still, their destination was not some distant farmhouse, nor even Gretna Green, but the parsonage at Fullerton.
In return home so suddenly and as of yet unlooked for, Catherine was sure she would bring joy to all her family. Her expectation of the delight of Sarah, George, and Harriet, softened even the hardship of leaving Woodston without known when she was to return, and of her mother and father’s pleasant surprise at her arriving with Henry Tilney she did not doubt. The letter Captain Tilney wrote was charity itself, and – as Catherine agreed that the painful circumstances of the family affliction warranted a good deal of delicacy and could not yet be disclosed in full – to both Henry and his family name there could be no objections.
She was, in short, as happy as she might have been travelling towards an uncertain destination in a dingy coach on a stormy, moonlit night, with only a brooding lover for company. Her own lover, having had the benefit of good meals and a few night’s decent rest at his own home, was in very good looks and particularly high sprits. He sat opposite her and gently questioned and teased her with so smiling a countenance that she was forced more than once, to remind him not to show his teeth.
The current state of his teeth was a sad affliction to Henry, who feared he would not have learned how to hide them while speaking and smiling before it was time to meet her family. He was by nature more animated than his father and brother, and did not have their knack for restraining his expression.
“I shall make a poor suitor,” he said dolefully, to make Catherine smile instead of him. “I shall not smile once, nor open my lips more than twice in half an hour’s conversation.” He studied his reflection in the glass of the carriage window. “I have not yet been able to find out,” he said thoughtfully, “whether these physical effects will fade over time, when my abstinence is restored. But I think it likely.”
“You mean you will lose them!” Catherine exclaimed.
“I sincerely hope not,” Henry replied, excessively amused. “I dearly value the use of my teeth. I referred merely to the alteration.”
“Well, yes,” said she, colouring, “but you will lose the...the fang-like appearance.”
He looked at her with a puzzled smile. “You do not sound altogether pleased with the thought.”
Catherine coloured a little deeper. “They are really very becoming on you.”
Henry sat rather still for a moment, and then averted his eyes, softly clearing his throat.
“That is not to say—I have always— I do not know any man half as prepossessing, and I thought so from the first of our acquaintance, but there is a sharpness to them that is really very… distinguished.”
At this point Henry, who might have listened to her speak in this vein ten minutes more, took pity on her and laughed, saying that if such was the case, he might almost be persuaded to mourn the loss of his fangs. “To own the truth,” he said, his voice sinking a little, “I feel in better health than I have done in years. It is a painful thing to have to reconcile, such violence with such benefits.”
This was something Catherine had spent some considerable time reflecting on, in the idle moments before sleep, lying in the room she knew to be so close to his, and it was quite without hesitation when she spoke: “But there need not be violence! Nor any deception.”
“Be that as it may,” replied he, with visible discomfort, “practical as my fathers arrangements were, I would be ill at ease attempting to replicate it. There is not one among my staff I would wish to present with such a proposition.”
“Oh,” cried she gently, “I had never thought of that.”
He looked at her in amazement. “You had not? Surely you must know, dear Catherine, that it would be quite impossible for me to obtain the necessary consent from any other person!”
She looked at him with earnest eyes, a good deal taken aback. After all, while it was very probable that nothing very material was to be learned from Byron and Goethe when it came to the generality of life, there was no better reference work for the laws of vampirism than the work of poets. And did they not all agree that the hunger was for the heart already beloved, as well as the lifeblood it moved? And here was Henry, refusing even to think of her!
“And would it not be acceptable to you if I consented?”
“My dear Catherine!” he exclaimed, and for perhaps the first time Catherine watched in wonder, how the colour rose to his cheeks.
“It cannot be improper!” she protested. “Not when we are married.”
Catherine had heard her mother and the ladies of the parish made several veiled speeches about the delights that were a woman’s marital right, and while she had to admit that none of them had explained themselves further, she had hoped that these delights – dependent on personal preference as they must be – would be open to some negotiation. And imagining herself Henry Tilney’s wife, to be held by him, and to be kissed by him in such a way that she might feel those flawless teeth, seemed to her a delight to eclipse all others. Only her dear Henry was looking at her with a great deal of shock, and she felt forced to explain herself further.
“I would hope— that is to say— Your brother’s conduct made me quite angry, but only because he chose to be so very callous, and,” she continued with some alarm, “when I think of you paying such attention to any other person makes me even more so!”
Startled as she was by it, the truth of it was plainly visible on her face, and Henry, still looking quite flushed, regarded her with his eyes fixed on her face in silence for such a long time, that she eventually begged:
“Henry, you are very quiet, will you not answer me?” For she rather feared she had upset him.
But then he took her hand, and as his eyes met hers it was with such an expression that no doubt could exist in her mind as to the quality of his feelings.
“I was merely thinking, sweetest, loveliest Catherine,” said he, at once quieting all Catherine’s fears and confirming all her hopes of the future, “that we simply must be married by a special license.”