“Come on, Miss Erstwhile,” Miss Charming said, “it’s your turn, what-what.”
Jane played her card, and after a moment stole a glance at Mr. Nobley. He’d been watching her, and when he looked away, guilt betrayed his forced serenity. Sir John, a nearly empty glass trembling in his hand, snorted in his sleep on the sofa. Jane heard Miss Charming say “jolly good” again, caught Colonel Andrews passing her a sly smile, and found herself wondering if she wasn’t the prettiest, smartest guest they’d had in some time. Or ever.
All was going splendidly.
And here we begin with Jane’s ill-fated, numbered list of boyfriends. Boyfriend #1
Justin Kimble, AGE TWELVE
According to sixth-grade reckoning, Jane and Justin had been “going out” since fourth grade, when he’d shared his Pixy Stix with her during the class carnival. This meant that Justin sometimes pushed her in the hall, Jane gave him significant valentines (I “heart” you), and whenever receiving a “rating phone call” asking them to score classmates on looks and personality, both scored the other as a ten.
Then came the fateful day Mrs. Davis went through her class list, letting each boy pick his folk dance partner for the upcoming “Hooray for Culture!” assembly.
Mrs. Davis called Justin’s name.
Jane sat up.
Justin said, “Hattie Spinwell.”
Hattie flipped her hair.
For years after, there were few things Jane distrusted so much as the words “guy’s choice.”
days 2–4
THE NEXT MORNING THEY EXPECTED a visit from the guest of Pembrook Cottage, but the rain was so dense, Jane felt as trapped as if the estate were surrounded by a moat. At least the wet kept the gentlemen from hunting.
“You will simply adore Amelia Heartwright,” A unt Saffronia said as the ladies embroidered in the sitting room. Jane eyed her aunt’s neat little flowers and fields of cross-stitches. She was transforming her own fruit basket sampler into a knotted mass that resembled a cornucopia beaten and left for dead. Miss Charming had abandoned her embroidery in favor of pacing by the door, ready for the first sign of the gentlemen’s return from billiards.
“She has been living in the city this past year and is only just returning to the country to tend to her mother in her declining health. Her mother, Mrs. Heartwright, is Sir John’s widow aunt. It is so good of him to give her the cottage. I have not seen Amelia Heartwright in a year at least. Last she was here—”Aunt Saffronia glanced at the hallway and then at the window as if suspecting eavesdroppers. She lowered her voice. “Last she was here, I detected some attachment between her and a young sailor, a certain George East, of decent breeding but no real prospects. I do not know what became of them. Miss Heartwright returned to the city and Mr. East to the sea, I suppose. A shame, even if he was as poor as a farmer. They did seem very fond of each other, but young hearts are fickle things, are they not, Miss Charming?”
“What?” Miss Charming stopped pacing. “I mean, what-what? Just so.”
The gentlemen, much to Miss Charming’s palpable elation, did conclude their billiards and join the ladies for tiffin and tea, charades and gossip. Jane sat beside Colonel Andrews. He had a dashing smile. It nearly dashed right off his face.
Another day, another night followed of pleasant meals, conversations indoors, restful afternoons watching the rain thicken the panes. No great events transpired, and Jane found that to be a relief. She still felt dried up and brittle in this new pretend skin, and she really didn’t think she could stomach false declarations of love and bogus trysts. Yet. Eighteen more days to go. There would be time to celebrate her last hurrah, to face Mr. Darcy and say good-bye forever. So for now, she relaxed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the luxury of taking an afternoon nap. It felt scandalous.
But when the rain lifted on her third day, her muscles awoke and scolded her for so much sitting. It had been nearly a week since she had last done anything that in good conscience could be considered “exercise.” She wasn’t a health nut (those people could be so irritating), she was just a touch obsessive-compulsive, thank you very much, and if she didn’t follow her compulsion to exercise hard, her body freaked out on her and began to demand she eat enough sugar to choke her pancreas. She had wandered the grand house and found no hidden gym (Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s Ideal Client, apparently, insisted on mascara but not a StairMaster), so Jane excused herself after the sausage and jellied-egg breakfast, saying she desired a solitary walk around the gardens. She was wearing her least favorite day dress (the pink one with little rosebuds that resembled splattered tomato sauce) and so felt no fear for its ruin when, once out of sight of the house windows, she held the hem above her knees and ran.
It was awkward in her ankle boots, the slap-slap of her un-cushioned feet soon insisting she tone it down to a speed walk. Even so, speed-walking in a corset was surprisingly vigorous, and soon the cool autumn day began to feel like a crispy hot Texas summer. She was sitting on a bench, her skirts bunched up on her thighs and her elbows resting on her knees as she tried to slow her breathing, when she heard a male voice.
“Um, I think I should tell you I’m here.”
Jane sat upright, quickly pulling her skirts back down to her ankles. She had been wearing drawers, of course, but it still felt absurdly immodest to sit that way in 1816 attire. She looked around, seeing no one.
“Where are you?” she asked.
Theodore, her dance partner of late, stood from behind the bush directly in front of her. His impressive height made it seem that he was slowly expanding while standing up, like stretched taffy.
“What were you doing back there?”
“I’m a gardener,” he said, raising the shovel and pick like a show of evidence. “I was just working here, I wasn’t trying to spy.”
“You, uh, caught me there at an unladylike moment. Mrs. Wattlesbrook would probably box my ears.”
“That’s why I spoke. I wanted to let you know you were not alone before you did something—something worse.”
“Like what?”
“Whatever women do when they think they’re alone.” He laughed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about, you surprised me and I’m just—” His smile dropped. “Sorry, I shouldn’t talk . . . I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Well, you already have. We may as well meet for real this time, without old Wattlesbrook spying. I’m Jane.”
“Theodore the gardener,” he said, wiping off his hand and then offering it to her. She shook it, wondered if they should be bowing and curtsying, but is that what you do with a gardener? The entire conversation felt forbidden, like a secret Austen chapter that she discovered longhand in some forgotten file.
“The gardens look lovely.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Ma’am? she thought.
“So,” he said, his eyes taking in everything but her face, “you’re from the former colonies?”
She looked hard at him to detect if he was serious. He glanced at her, then down again, and sort of bowed. She laughed.
He tossed his pick into the ground. “I can’t play this. I sound completely daft.”
“Why would you have to play anything?”
“I’m supposed to be invisible. You don’t know all the lectures we heard on the matter—stay out of the way, look down, don’t bother the guests. I shouldn’t have said a word, but I was afraid of getting stuck behind that shrub all day trying not to make a peep. Or worse, you discovering me after a time and thinking I was a lecherous lunatic trying to peek up your skirt. So, anyhow, how do you do, the name’s Martin Jasper, originally from Bristol, raised in Sheffield, enjoy seventies rock and walks in the rain, and please don’t tell Mrs. Wattlesbrook. I need this job.”
“I didn’t exactly find Mrs. Wattlesbrook the kind of lady I’d be tempted to confide in. Don’t worry, Martin.”
“Thanks. Guess I should leave you to your lady stuff.” He picked up his t
ools and walked away.
Jane stared after him, certain he was a bit loony, if handsomely so. Then again, perhaps many wealthy and elderly twenty-year-old women had ratted on forward servants in the past. He likely had the right to be paranoid. She just wished he’d known that she was different. Speaking to a real person had been like drinking a cold glass of water after too much sugary punch.
Jane was hurrying back toward the house and the hopes of a bath before the promised call from Pembrook Cottage that afternoon. She turned a bend and knocked right into Mr. Nobley and Colonel Andrews coming from the other direction.
“Excuse me!” she said, backing away. She was afraid she smelled like sweat after her surreptitious speed walk, but perhaps the exercise had also reddened her cheeks and brightened her eyes. One can hope.
“Pardon indeed,” said the colonel. “I was just telling Nobley here, I think that divine Miss Erstwhile sneaked off into the grounds alone. Let’s see if we cannot find her out.”
“Oh.” Jane felt herself sway. That encounter with a real person had roused her up inside more than she’d realized. Her dress hung on her shoulders like a potato sack, her bonnet felt like a vise, the sunlight scratched at her skin.
“I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered, too low for anyone to hear.
“I say, Miss Erstwhile, you are tongue-tied today,” Colonel Andrews said. “What secrets is your mouth trying to hold back? I must know!”
“Stop it, Andrews,” Mr. Nobley said, coming up beside her to take her arm. “Can’t you see that she is unwell? Go fetch some water.”
The colonel’s face was suddenly serious. “Apologies, Miss Erstwhile. Do sit down. I will return swiftly.” He set off at once toward the house.
Mr. Nobley put an arm behind her back, guiding her to a nearby boulder, helping her to sit as though she would break if breathed upon. No matter how she protested, he would not let her go.
“If you permit me,” he said, crouching beside her, “I will carry you inside.”
She laughed. “Wow, that sounds like fun, but really I’m fine. I don’t feel sick, I just feel like a schmuck, and that’s not a malady you can throw water at.”
“You are homesick?”
Jane sighed, wishing for Molly, but all she had was this strange, sideburned man who was generally as boring as gray and dull as oatmeal. But at least he was listening. She leaned forward, whispering, in case Mrs. Wattlesbrook installed microphones in the shrubbery. “I don’t know if I can do this.” She shook the skirt of her dress. “I don’t know if I can pretend.”
He stared at her, unblinking, for long enough to make Jane uncomfortable.
“You are being serious,” he said at last. “Miss Erstwhile, why are you here?”
“You’d laugh at me if I told you,” she whispered. “No, wait, you wouldn’t, it’s not in your character.”
He blinked as though she’d flicked water at his face.
“Did that sound rude? I didn’t mean to. Ugh, I feel so tired. I just want to lie down and sleep until I’m myself again, but I’ve only been half myself lately, and I thought coming here would let me work this part out of me so I could be me again. I just said ‘me’ a lot, didn’t I?”
He smiled briefly. She noticed that his eyes were dark, a warm brown, and noticing made him a fraction more real to her, not so much set dressing but a person she could actually know.
“Tell me, Mr. Nobley, or whoever you are, how do you do it? How do you pretend?”
Her question seemed to stagger him so profoundly, he held his breath. It surprised Jane that she would notice his breath at all, then she realized how close their faces were, how far she had leaned in to whisper.
“Miss Erstwhile,” he said flatly, not moving, “play your little charade, but do not try to trap me. I will not sing for you.”
He stood up, glaring, until he turned his back to her and took three steps away.
She sat still on the rock, her insides buzzing like a beehive shaken and tossed away. She almost apologized, but then stopped herself.
Apologize for what? she thought. He’s a mean, unpleasant, loathsome man.There’s no Darcy in him. And I don’t need him to get me through this. I can do this; I want to do this.
She prickled with anger at that jacketed back, and the fury helped her burn away her flimsiness. She looked down and breathed.
Be the dress, she told herself. Be the bonnet, Jane. Stage fright, that’s all this is. I’m just afraid of looking like a fool. So stop it. Admit that you are a fool already and do this so you can let it go.
She smoothed the stomach of her dress. She closed her eyes and tried to catch the feel of Austen dialogue—it was like trying to hum one song while listening to another. When she opened her eyes again, Colonel Andrews was sprinting across the lawn, a cup of water sloshing over his hand.
“I have it! I have the water! Never fear.” He bowed as he gave it to her, smiling the smile of a rake. She took it and drank. The water tasted of minerals and was deep-earth cold, as though it had been drawn from a well. It hummed in her belly. She could do this.
“Well, gentlemen.” She took a breath and smiled at the colonel. “Now that you’ve found me and watered me, what will you do with me?”
“What a marvelous question! How shall I answer?” Colonel Andrews chuckled low in his throat, mischievous. “No, I will be a good boy. So, what adventure were you on before we bumped into you? Keeping a tryst with a clandestine lover or following a map to hidden treasure?”
“I’ll never tell,” she said.
Nobley’s face was impassive, and when he spoke, his voice was traced with formal boredom. “It was my intent to go riding and leave you be, if you wished so much to walk alone.”
“But I will not have it,” Colonel Andrews said. “After all that rain, it is far too mucky to go hunting, and I need amusement, so you must go riding with us now that we have caught you. You are my butterfly and I refuse to turn you loose.”
She took the colonel’s arm as they walked to the stables, turning toward his bewitchingly smooth voice. He asked Jane question after question, hanging on her answers and utterly absorbed in her conversation as though she were a novel he could not bear to put down, his interest pulling her back into character as Miss Erstwhile.
Mr. Nobley walked beside her, then rode beside her, and never said another word. She tried to enjoy riding her pathetically docile mount, but Mr. Nobley’s silence felt like a slap. Hadn’t he seemed human for a moment, before he got all nasty and turned his back? Hadn’t the fake world tumbled away? No, it was a mistake, her own dratted hopefulness building castles again where there was only mud. She’d been wrong to try to lower the Regency curtain with that man. He was an actor. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Of course, she returned Mr. Nobley’s silent treatment. Something about the way he looked at her made her feel naked—not naked-sexy, but naked-embarrassed, naked-he-sees-through-my-idiocy-and-knows-what-a-silly-woman-I-am. And she was still straddling the real world and Austenland too precariously to meet his eyes again that day.
The colonel made her laugh and forget, and so despite feeling slightly sticky and foolish and wrapped in a potato sack, Jane had a pretty nice afternoon. She did keep looking out for the tall gardener, hoping he wouldn’t see her pretending to be a lady with two costumed gentlemen. Then once, for a moment, hoping that he would.
JANE DID GET HER BATH and felt the sexier for it, empire waist and all. So, clean and sexy, and fiercely clutching her fake Austenland self, she waited that afternoon in the drawing room for the much-anticipated visit from the denizen of Pembrook Cottage. Jane was wearing one of those small, sheer scarves around her shoulders and knotted at her chest, properly acknowledging that Regency breasts should be veiled during daylight hours. Miss Charming’s lacy neck scarf barely covered the recesses of her cleavage, daunted as it was by the tundra expanse of the woman’s chest.
Miss Charming was fanning her neck with a hand. Jane did the
same. Her dress was of light muslin, but beneath lay chemise, corset, and stockings gartered to her thighs, and the autumn sun was vigorous that day, pounding through the windows and flooding the room. Jane waited faintheartedly for the sound of air-conditioning clicking on. No such luck.
At the sound of the bell, Jane and Miss Charming rose from the sofas, straightened their skirts, and listened for the maid to admit the visitors. The men were elsewhere, of course. Aunt Saffronia was waiting in the hall.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Miss Charming said with no trace of her faux British accent.
“I’d be very impressed if you did.” Just at that moment, Jane had been fantasizing about chocolate soup, a dessert she’d once inhaled at a spiffy restaurant in Florida. There was no chocolate in Pembrook Park, though Jane couldn’t figure if that lack was helping or impeding her attempt at make-believe.
“You’re hoping that Amelia Heartwright is an old, unattractive thing and that the boys won’t like her at all. Am I right?” Miss Charming bobbed on her toes.
“Actually, now that you mention it . . .” Miss Charming made an excellent point. Jane gave her a sheepish smile.
They were both disappointed.
“Girls! Look who is here at last. Miss Amelia Heartwright. Miss Heartwright, may I present Miss Elizabeth Charming and my niece, Miss Jane Erstwhile.”
The three ladies curtsied and bowed their heads, and Jane noticed how natural and elegant Miss Heartwright’s curtsy seemed. She had clearly been here before and come back for more, one of Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s ideal clients. She would know the system, the players, the language and customs. She would be a formidable foe.
And she was lovely. Her (natural-looking) blond hair was long, twisted up with plenty of curls around her face. She had an open, honest face (heart-shaped even, as those old writers might have said), pink cheeks and lips, and darling blue eyes. She was slender and tall and not a day over thirty-nine. Forty-three, tops.