Pies & Prejudice

  The crowd loves it.

  Seconds later I’m upright on my feet again, and with this hurdle overcome, we sail through the final section of the free dance with ease.

  The arena explodes in applause as we finish with a dramatic twin knee slide. Tristan gives me a huge hug. People throw flowers. I could get used to this.

  We come in third.

  Third is just fine. It’s enough to keep Tristan in the running for his next competition, and it means I’ll be taking home a trophy to add to Mrs. Bergson’s display case at the rink.

  After a celebration dinner, we drive from London back to Bath. On the way to our hotel, we stop by Ivy Cottage to pick up the rest of the Hawthornes’ things. They’ve moved into the hotel with the rest of us now that the Berkeleys are back, and we’ll all be heading directly to the airport from Chawton after the ball.

  “Come in!” Mrs. Berkeley calls out the kitchen window, as our mini-coach pulls into the front drive. “I just put the kettle on.”

  We crowd into the kitchen, where the rest of the Berkeley family is seated around the table. It’s obvious they’re happy to be home again.

  “Wasn’t that exciting?” says Mrs. Delaney. “You and Cassidy were wonderful, Tristan.”

  “Shhhh!” whispers Mrs. Berkeley, pointing to the ceiling. “Annabelle is asleep upstairs.”

  “Gotcha,” says Jess’s mom.

  Mrs. Hawthorne starts talking about the Regency dance thing we’re supposed to go to tomorrow night. “I have a few extra tickets,” she says. “We thought Michael Delaney and Henry Chadwick and Jerry Wong would be able to come, along with my daughter Courtney. I thought about offering one to Rupert Loomis—”

  “MOOO!” squawks Toby from the corner, making us all jump.

  “How odd,” says Mrs. Berkeley, frowning at the parrot. “I wonder what made him do that?”

  The Mother-Daughter Book Club tries really, really hard not to giggle.

  “—but then it occurred to me that you all might like to come.” Mrs. Hawthorne continues. “We’d love to have you join us if you can.”

  “I’d like to go,” says Tristan, looking straight at me.

  I feel my face flush and I look away. Across the room, Toby is gnawing at a carrot.

  “Me too,” says Simon with a smile. I notice Megan perk up at this.

  “I do so wish I could say ‘me, three,’ but alas I’m leaving in the morning for a conference in Edinburgh,” says Professor Berkeley. “But you should go too, darling. It’s quite the affair, from what I’ve heard.”

  “I’d love to,” says Mrs. Berkeley.

  “Perhaps Annabelle would like to go as well,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “Not that she’d be able to dance, but still, it might help cheer her up after her disappointment.”

  “Here she is now,” says Mrs. Berkeley. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Annabelle comes stumping into the kitchen on crutches.

  Behind me, I hear the thud of a carrot against the bottom of a bird cage.

  “STINKERBELLE!” squawks Toby.

  There’s a shocked silence in the kitchen. Then Tristan starts to snicker. Pretty soon his brother joins in, and then my friends and I are laughing, too. Mustering as much dignity as she can, Annabelle Fairfax stalks out of the kitchen.

  I smile.

  Life is good.

  So good, in fact, that sometimes you don’t even need to keep score.

  Emma

  “The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family.”

  —Pride and Prejudice

  “Excuse me, miss, but a packet came for you earlier this morning.” The hotel desk clerk holds out a thick envelope.

  “For me?”

  “Boy about your age delivered it. Bit of a gawky fellow.”

  Rupert. Who else?

  I glance into the breakfast room. No sign of Stewart yet. Too bad. He’s been in England nearly a week and still hasn’t met Rupert Loomis.

  “Thanks,” I tell her, and duck into the sitting room to open it. Inside are two copies of a big magazine-size booklet with a glossy cover. The Knightley-Martin Literary Anthology! In all the excitement of having my friends here I’d completely forgotten about it. There’s a note attached: Your story is the best one. It’s signed Your friend, Rupert Loomis.

  My story made it into the collection? How come no one told me? Heart pounding, I flip the anthology open and thumb through the pages. There it is! Stinkerbelle the Bad Fairy. And right beneath it, my name: Emma Jane Hawthorne. My byline for the middle school newspaper back home was always “E. J. Hawthorne,” but when I submitted this story I decided to use my full name, since it would be my official literary debut. I run my finger over it. It looks good in print.

  I turn the pages, happy to see that they used Lucy’s clever illustrations of Stinkerbelle and her helper fairies Puff, Smiles, and Buttercup too. The two of us had a whole lot of fun with this project, and I think it shows. The judges must have thought it did, anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t have decided to include it.

  I hope my father thinks so too. Stuffing the extra copy back into the envelope, I head for the breakfast room to find him. I told him a while ago that I was thinking of submitting a story, but I didn’t give him any more details.

  “Come sit by me,” he says, patting the chair beside him. “Your mom’s sleeping in this morning. Too much excitement yesterday.” He gives me a wink.

  My mother was not happy with the whole Stinkerbelle thing, and apologized profusely to the Berkeleys last night after Toby’s outburst. “I had no idea that Emma trained Toby to do that,” she told them. She made me apologize too.

  My father thought it was funny, though.

  “Serves her right, the little blister,” he’d said.

  I pass him the magazine. I can only imagine what my mother will say when she sees it. It was so worth risking her wrath, though. Annabelle deserves every ounce of comeuppance she gets, after all the mean things she’s done this year. Most people aren’t going to have a clue that she’s Stinkerbelle, and besides, I’m leaving the country in two days, and with any luck I’ll never see her again after the ball tomorrow night.

  My father glances at the cover, then looks up at me. “Did your story make it in?”

  I nod, smiling, and watch as he opens to the page I’ve marked. He chuckles at the title. As he starts to read the chuckle blossoms into full-blown laughter, until finally he has to take his glasses off and wipe his eyes.

  “Brilliant,” he tells me when he’s done. “Just brilliant.”

  “What’s brilliant?” asks Cassidy, her mouth full of scone.

  My father passes her the magazine, and her eyes widen when she sees the title. “Way to go, Hawthorne!” she crows, spraying the table with crumbs. “Check it out, you guys!”

  My story makes its way around the table to much hilarity and congratulations. I try and look humble, but I can’t help it, I’m grinning like a jack o’ lantern. Now I know how my father felt last summer when he got that call from New York about his book. It’s really, really great to finally have something officially published.

  If only Stewart were here so he could see it, too. I’m dying to ask him what he thinks about it. He’s been my best literary critic for two years now. But just like my mother, he’s sleeping in this morning, which means I’d have to go knock on his door and give it to him face to face, and that’s just too awkward right now.

  I only wish he’d had a chance to see Rupert while he was here in England. I know Stewart, and he has just as keen a sense of the absurd as I do. One look at Rupert Loomis and he’d instantly know that I was telling the truth about the mistletoe kiss.

  After breakfast, we all head back upstairs to finish packing. Since the Berkeleys are home again, and since we’re flying back to Boston this weekend anyway, my family and I moved out of Ivy Cottage and into the hotel last night with our friends. My parents and Darcy are in the Lord Byron suite, and I piled in with my
friends on a roll-away bed.

  “I can’t believe how fast this week has gone by,” sighs Becca, unzipping her suitcase. “I’m not ready to go home yet.”

  “Me neither,” says Megan. “I could spend another week just in London, easily. Their stores are amazing.”

  “Well, we still have all day today and the ball tonight,” I remind them.

  Megan takes her rented ball gown out of the closet. It was delivered to the hotel yesterday with the rest of our costumes, while we were at the skating competition. It’s pale blue, with short puffed sleeves and a scoop neckline, and there’s a wide ribbon of white satin under the bodice, accentuating the high, Empire-style waist. It’s stunning. “Tonight, tonight,” she sings, hugging the dress to her as she dances around the room. “Won’t be just any night!”

  Megan’s happy because Simon is speaking to her again. I guess his brother set him straight about Annabelle’s little schemes, and helped patch things up between the two of them.

  “Wrong musical,” says Jess. “ ‘Tonight’ is from West Side Story. A Regency ball is more—I don’t know, more like a fairy tale, don’t you think? How about ‘Someday My Prince Will Come,’ from Snow White?” Humming the tune, she takes a turn around the room with her own dress, which is pale pink with lace inset at the bodice.

  Becca grabs her choice—daffodil-yellow, with a ruffle around the bottom—and jumps up on her bed. “Or how about, ‘I Am Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ from The Sound of Music?” she suggests, and the four of us burst into a chorus of “I am fifteen going on sixteen,” which is closer to the truth.

  “How about put a sock in it already?” says Cassidy, who’s still grumpy at the prospect of having to wear a long dress in public. We’ve told her a zillion times that lavender looks great with her red hair, and that she absolutely does not look Little Bo Peep, but she’s still convinced she’s going to make a fool of herself.

  I carefully pack my dress—a soft peach with a crossover V-neck—back into its plastic bag and carry it down with my suitcase to the mini-coach.

  “I’ll take that, milady,” says my father, stuffing the suitcase in the compartment underneath and hanging the dress up in the boot with the rest of our clothes for tonight. I see Stewart’s name tag on one of the suit bags, and wonder briefly how he’ll look dressed up like Mr. Darcy. As good as he looked in that tuxedo a couple of years ago at our fashion show, I’m willing to bet. In other words, pretty fabulous.

  “Good-bye, Bath!” I call out the window softly a few minutes later, as we pull out of the hotel parking lot. “Good-bye Ivy Cottage, and Knightley-Martin, and Lucy and Toby and fish and chips and Sally Lunn’s and everything else I love about this place!”

  My brother is sitting across the aisle with Jess. He smiles at me. Despite all our misgivings last summer when our parents sprang the idea of living abroad on us, it’s been an amazing year, and I know he’s going to miss England just as much as I will.

  This morning we’re headed to Chawton, and the Jane Austen House Museum. Chawton is also where the ball will be held tonight. We’re staying at a nearby inn since it’s closer to London and the airport. It’s hard to believe we fly back to Boston tomorrow.

  I didn’t think anything could top the British Library, but I’m wrong.

  It’s a little misty when we pull into Chawton, the village where Jane Austen spent the last years of her life. I look out the window, eager for a glimpse of her house. This is where the magic happened, after all. This is where she wrote her books.

  Oddly, this is my first visit to Chawton. I’d been to all the other Jane Austen sites we visited this week except the British Library, and I was supposed to come to Chawton earlier this spring with my mother, but that was the weekend I ended up going with Lucy’s family to Yorkshire.

  My stomach flutters as we get out of the bus. How often do you get to visit the home of your favorite writer? Back in Concord, I’ve toured Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott lived when she wrote Little Women, a zillion times before, but this is different. This is Jane Austen.

  I stand in the parking lot, looking across the street at the big brick house with the walled garden. It’s newer than the Berkley’s house, my mother tells us, built in the seventeenth century, but the front door is white, just like Ivy Cottage, and there’s a climbing rose scrambling up the wall around it.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” says Cassidy’s mom with a sigh.

  I nod. Jane’s family always referred to it as a “cottage,” but it’s bigger than our little house back in Concord. It’s not grand, though, and it reminds me a bit of Half Moon Farm—a little shabby and worn but as comfortable as an old shoe. Inside, the likeness to Half Moon Farm is even stronger. Just like Jess’s house, this one has uneven floors and creaky stairs and fireplaces in nearly every room. And there are views of the garden from nearly all the windows.

  There’s a piano in the drawing room, with music books displayed on it that were Jane’s. You can see her handwriting and everything. I linger by a display case that has a lock of her hair—brown, like mine—and some of her jewelry, including a blue beaded bracelet and a topaz cross necklace her sailor brother Charles sent her from Spain.

  “She mentions that necklace in one of her books,” my mother tells me. “Remember?”

  I nod. “Mansfield Park. Fanny Price gets one from her brother William. Only it’s amber, not topaz.”

  My mother laughs. “Spoken like a true fellow Janeite,” she tells me, putting her arm around my shoulders and giving me a hug.

  The two of us have actually read all of Jane Austen’s novels together this year. We didn’t tell the rest of the book club, though, because they already think I’m an overachiever where books are concerned.

  Upstairs, I spend a while in Jane’s bedroom, the one she shared with her sister, Cassandra. It’s tiny—about half the size of my room back home. There’s a canopy bed, and a fireplace with narrow closets on either side. One is for clothes, and in the other there’s a china washbasin and a blue bowl on the shelf underneath.

  “What’s that for?” asks Cassidy, pointing to the bowl.

  “It’s a chamber pot,” my mother tells her.

  “Huh?”

  I give my friend a significant look. “Um, they didn’t have indoor plumbing back then, remember?”

  “Eeew,” she says.

  “Beats running to the outhouse in the rain,” my mother points out.

  “I guess.” Cassidy doesn’t look convinced.

  We wander into another bedroom where there’s a patchwork quilt on display that Jane and Cassandra and their mother made. It’s faded, but pretty. Megan takes a picture of it.

  “For Summer?” I ask, and she nods. Summer Williams is Megan’s pen pal from Wyoming. She’s absolutely mad about quilting.

  Megan takes pictures of the mannequins in Regency clothes that are standing in many of the rooms, and of the lace shawl one of them is wearing. Gigi points to a lace collar that’s framed and hanging on one of the walls.

  “Be sure and take a picture of that,” she says. “Can you believe Jane actually made it?”

  “Pretty cool,” agrees Becca. “They must have had a lot of time back then, though, to sit around doing something like making lace.”

  “Well, they did,” says Mrs. Wong. “Just imagine—no TV, no radio, no computers, no malls.”

  Becca makes a face.

  I head back downstairs, where I’ve saved the best for last. Pausing on the landing, I look out the window and see that the mist has burned away. Stewart is sitting on a bench, soaking up the sun. At the far end of the garden I spot Jess and Darcy, admiring the flowers and each other, from the looks of it. I smile. I’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea of my brother liking my best friend, and it’s just fine with me.

  My father is in the parlor, standing by a small, round, twelve-sided table under a window.

  “Humbling, isn’t it?” he says.

  I nod. The plaque on the wall above e
xplains that this is where Jane worked.

  “To think that she wrote six of the world’s greatest novels sitting at this tiny table! I’ll never complain about my office at home again,” he says.

  My father’s always grumbling that he needs more bookshelves. “At least you have an office!” I tell him, and he grins.

  “What are you fussing about, laptop girl?”

  It’s true. I love my new laptop. It’s really fun to write on.

  He takes a picture of me standing by Jane’s writing table, and on the way out we test the door to see if the hinge still squeaks—it does. I totally understand why Jane was so private about her writing. I am too.

  Leaving my parents in the gift shop, I head outside, pausing briefly in the doorway to gaze at the garden with its low brick wall. I try and imagine for a moment that I’m Jane, getting ready to go for a walk. I can see why she loved living here. Thatched roof cottages line the town’s narrow streets, and beyond them stretch the green fields and woods of the Hampshire countryside. No wonder Jane wrote as much as she did here. She was happy. I can just feel it.

  Across the lawn, Mrs. Chadwick is kneeling on the grass, her large bottom sticking up into the air. She’s taking close-up shots of all the flowers in the border.

  “Looks like Hepzi—I mean Calliope—has found her calling in life,” says my father, coming up to stand beside me.

  I turn around and stare at him, openmouthed. “Dad!”

  He grins sheepishly. “Busted!” he says. “I guess somehow she did manage to wander onto the pages of my book. What can I say, Calliope Chadwick is just larger than life. You know how that goes, right?”

  “Right,” I reply, thinking of Stinkerbelle the Bad Fairy.

  He holds up his pinkie. “This will just be our little secret, okay? Writer’s honor?”

  I hook my finger around his. “Writer’s honor.”

  Lunch is soup and sandwiches across the street at Cassandra’s Cup, the little café named after Jane’s sister, then we climb back onto the mini-coach for the short drive to the inn where we’re staying tonight. Tomorrow morning, we’ll drive directly from Chawton to Heathrow Airport.