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Edmund watches the courtship between Henry Crawford and his cousin Fanny with something approaching unease. He can’t quite believe that Mr Crawford will have much interest in Fanny once the chase is over; he seems to Edmund like the sort of person who prefers winning friends to keeping them. He never mentions this to Fanny of course, not wanting to hurt her tender feelings.
He’s surprised when she finally accepts and Henry begins to plan the wedding in earnest, even more so when his interest doesn’t flag after a few weeks. He shrugs off these uncharitable thoughts and tries not to worry about Fanny. It’s a good match for her, far better than anyone could have expected, and Henry is devoted to her. Still, they are an odd couple.
But no odder than Miss Crawford and himself. Once her brother is engaged, Mary becomes more amenable to the prospect of marrying a clergyman. He takes this new spirit of compromise as an encouraging sign. Perhaps Fanny’s sweetness and patience had been a tempering influence on her. It occurs to him that if he marries Mary Fanny will become his sister, not only in his affections, but in the eyes of the world. The thought is strange to him and he puts it aside to think about the other practical considerations of being married to Miss Crawford. Could she ever be content to be the wife of a clergyman? Could he give her the lifestyle she wants without compromising his vows? He knows that a union with her won’t be easy but she has a particular amused way of looking at him through her fine dark eyes that makes him hope fervently that it is not impossible. He knows, with the sense of dizzying intoxication experienced by the restrained and rational when they do something out of character, that possibilities and dangers aside, he's probably going to do it anyway.
Mary finally accepts him after much flirtation and dancing back and forth. From then on, all her activity goes into planning their life together. She drops hints about her trousseau, a mysterious and feminine process that amuses him because he has never met a woman with as many clothes as her, even growing up in the same house as his sisters. His mother and Aunt Norris set about putting together a trousseau for Fanny as well, generously (his aunt might say too generously) funded by Sir Thomas. She’s shy about it and thanks everyone at least a hundred times as was necessary but she doesn’t exist in the state of grateful mortification she would have a few months ago. Being courted has done her good.
After Fanny becomes Fanny Crawford, she and Henry go to Bath and it’s months before Edmund sees her again. The Crawfords are as close as siblings can be but Mary has decided that there are limits. Besides, she’s set her heart on an Easter wedding. Fanny had no preference and had let Henry organise it as quickly as possible. Edmund remembers seeing her on her wedding day, looking small and scared and utterly, utterly beautiful. Looking at her felt like a kick to the chest and for reasons he didn’t entirely understand at the time he went over to find Tom and got far more drunk than was appropriate for a future member of the clergy.
He and Fanny write to each other constantly at first and he’s surprised how welcome her letters are. Her round, sloping script is childish but easy to read, easier by far than Mary’s energetic scrawl. After a while, her letters become rushed and blotted, whole paragraphs drop out to save time and then the letters themselves become far less frequent. Edmund knows she’ll be busy in Bath, doing all the things newly married young women do, but he can’t help but be a little hurt. Perhaps he’s got too used to being the centre of her world. Either way, he doesn’t imagine fast paced, fashionable life can be agreeing with her. Perhaps she’s ill.
In her absence Edmund begins to feel dislocated, like a planet knocked off its orbit. Fanny is noticeable by her absence, a thousand little things that should have been done but haven’t, a cutting remark that isn’t smoothed over in time, a sudden unexpected loneliness whenever he thinks of going riding. Someone who was barely thought of when she was there becomes vital. ‘I don’t see what business the girl had getting married,’ Aunt Norris says over a game of whist one evening. Julia has been made to play and is sulking and Edmund doesn’t feel much happier about the prospect. Somehow in Fanny’s absence things seem sharper at the edges. Edmund wonders that he never noticed this quality of hers while she was here. Henry Crawford is a more perceptive man than Edmund has given him credit for.
The first time Edmund sees the new Mrs Henry Crawford, it comes as quite a shock. Her hair has been cut and fashionably dressed and her clothes are quietly expensive and in a style and colour that suit her. There’s colour in her cheeks and her eyes are bright and active. The really alarming thing is that now he’s seen her like this he can’t remember how she used to look: the old Fanny fades like a ghost, merging with the fall of a curtain or the pattern of the wallpaper. He feels her loss but is captivated by this new and yet familiar creature. It pains him that Mr Crawford is the one who finally tempted her out of her shell.
Tom slopes over and hands him a glass of claret with a look more knowing that Edmund ever expected to see on his brother’s face. He follows it soon after with another and then moves onto the port. About halfway through his third glass he is forced to admit that the woman he loves is not the arch and elegant Mary Crawford but shy, sweet little Fanny Price, now Mrs Fanny Crawford. As this is the sort of thing he has no business realising he puts the glass down half finished, excuses himself and hopes the new understanding will have gone away when he wakes up. What else can he do?