Chapter Text
It had been an especially trying day, noisy and chaotic - her brothers running hither and thither, making mischief; Betsey and Susan squabbling over something; her mother complaining about Rebecca - and Fanny’s head had not stopped aching since breakfast that morning. It throbbed painfully now, as she tried to concentrate on her work in the dim light. Her hands shook slightly, from fatigue and repressed emotion. If she did not escape to her room soon, she felt as though she might explode, shattering into a million pieces. Hot, frustrated tears prickled unpleasantly in her eyes. She excused herself gently; no one seemed to notice.
It had never been more of a relief to climb the stairs and sink into her lumpy, uncomfortable bed. Fanny was grateful for even its dubious solace as she grappled with things more decidedly distressing.
There was something new and unwelcome and awful growing within her; something she tried to push down and repress but that kept inching its way back, curling itself around her heart, sinking in its claws.
She felt abandoned, neglected, forgotten; she could not distract herself from her own loneliness, her own sadness, her own secret, simmering rage. She was angry that she was stuck here in Portsmouth, angry that she had no power to change or fix her situation, angry that she had not heard from Edmund.
She was unused to the sensation of prolonged anger, bubbling under the surface, making her seethe. She was more accustomed to brief, momentary flashes of it - anger that quickly flared up but that disappeared just as swiftly, swallowed up in her subsequent contrition.
This was an anger that blazed forth, hot and fast, but that was not smothered; instead, it turned inward, making her feel wicked and fretful. She was a selfish, ungrateful creature; she had no right to this anger.
So why did she still feel it boiling within her, every time she thought of the injustice of her circumstances?