Sanditon: Episode 9

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This story is greatly indebted  to the wit, the genius and the spirit of Miss Jane  Austen, and the imagination of Mr Andrew Davies.

I don't like to keep people waiting and dangling, so I'm going to publish this in one go. And as this is basically the first fanfiction I've ever written, I'll be grateful for any comments. Now lean back and enjoy our Sidlotte finding their happy ending!

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»He's a conundrum.«

»But even a conundrum can be solved.« - and since the last twenty minutes of Episode 8 left me with a major conundrum, I decided to solve it.

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Two weeks later

A lady travelling from Tunbridge towards the Sussex coast caused quite a stir among the good people of Willingden once her carriage had left the high road and turned into a very rough lane that led to the only gentleman's house in the area.

Mr Heywood, as was the gentleman's name, advanced the carriage with a very civil salutation and some surprise at the identity of the visitor, who presented herself as Lady Susan, come from London to see her very particular friend, Miss Charlotte Heywood – his daughter. Mr Heywood, trying to give the impression of a man used to great ladies travelling all the way from the capital in order to see one of his many children, led her into the house, offered her the best chair of the drawing room, sent his wife for refreshments and his daughter Alison to fetch her sister who, since returning from the seaside resort of Sanditon two weeks earlier, had shown a certain inclination to long and solitary walks among the fields.

There was no doubt that Charlotte had enjoyed the most exciting holidays in Sanditon, and there was also no doubt that she had returned grown up and refined, a true young lady. But least of all was there any doubt at all that something had happened to her while away, something that had muted her natural optimism and activity and quite extinguished the sparks in her fine brown eyes.

Her parents suspected a matter of the heart, but Charlotte wouldn't talk to either of them. Shortly before her return and under an oath of secrecy, Alison had murmured something about the most wonderful news her sister expected to share soon, but as it turned out, the most wonderful news was not a dashing young gentleman asking for her hand in marriage, but Charlotte herself, coming home to be reunited with her family.

And now there was a great London lady sitting in Mr Heywood's drawing room, calling his daughter her very particular friend. Yes, the lady had featured in Charlotte's tales from Sanditon, but merely as a supporting character: as the dea ex machina who had saved Mr Tom Parker's regatta. Yet Mr Heywood had not expected that this good deed qualified for a very particular friendship with his daughter. Charlotte had enough other friends in Sanditon: dear Mrs Parker, who suffered the never-ending whims of her husband with the patience of an angel, Miss Lambe, the unhappy heiress from Antigua, and young Mr Stringer. For a while, Mr Heywood had suspected him for being responsible for Charlotte's heaviness of spirit, until he realised that it was not the recollection of Mr Stringer's kind and handsome face that made her smile whenever she spoke of him, but the memory of his building activities.

It must have been quite a society at Sanditon, and sometimes Mr Heywood wondered how his dear girl, who only in her books had ever ventured further away from Willingden before, had managed when meeting the terrifying Lady of the town, Lady Denham. Or how she had stayed away from Lady Denham's two-faced niece, Clara Brereton, who had engaged in the most scandalous schemes with her aunt's heir, Sir Edward Denham, a truly dangerous rake.