Midnight in Austenland

by Shannon Hale

  He kissed her neck, his hands tight on her back, and she closed her eyes and felt extremely angry at Mallery for needing to be hunted out. This was really inconvenient timing.

  Forget Mallery, said her Inner Thoughts.

  Eddie started to kiss her shoulder.

  Forget who? Charlotte asked.

  She was kissing Eddie now because, though he was brave, surely he needed some comfort as well. It was the nice thing to do. All thoughts, Inner and Otherwise, turned off for a few moments. When Practical Charlotte tried to reclaim her brain, she found herself pressed against the bedpost, her arms around Eddie’s neck, her hands clutching his hair. She disengaged her lips.

  “Mallery?” she said breathlessly. “Danger? Police?”

  “Right,” said Eddie. “Call. Now.”

  He looked over her face then slowly let her go, seeming bewildered as to why he would willingly do such a thing.

  “I hate him,” Eddie said with real sadness.

  Charlotte nodded.

  She and Eddie held hands as they ran down the gravel drive. The air was warm and cool at the same time, and for just a moment, her running strides slipped into a straight-up skip.

  The inn was unlocked, and they phoned Detective Sergeant Merriman, who sounded sleepy but willing to come out.

  “It will take her half an hour at least,” said Eddie after he hung up. He raised one eyebrow. “What shall we do?”

  “Go wake Mrs. Wattlesbrook,” said Charlotte. “See what she knows of this house’s other secrets.”

  He sighed. “Why are you so practical?”

  Mrs. Wattlesbrook was not happy to be awakened and told that the police were coming yet again. She gruffly asserted that there were no other hidden spaces in the house besides the room on the second floor.

  “Must we uproot the entire household at midnight for yet another fruitless search? Perhaps you could have left well enough alone.”

  “I guess it was well enough for her,” Charlotte said as she and Eddie made their way back outside. “She wasn’t the one imagining the pink bonnet on the hook was Mallery coming back for a second chance at her throat.”

  They sat on the front steps of the house, waiting for the police.

  “Sorry, Eddie. I just felt so sure.”

  “There may be secrets about this house that even Mrs. Wattlesbrook doesn’t know.”

  “But how do we ferret him out?”

  “I’d wager Mary knows where he is.”

  “And she’ll never tell.” Charlotte started to make a wish on a star peeping through a hole in the clouds, till she realized it was a satellite. “You know, when Mary came into my room last night, her clothes were dirty, as if she’d climbed through a dusty space. But the dirt was black. Maybe not just dirt, but soot. Ashes.”

  “A passageway through a fireplace?”

  “Or maybe …”

  Charlotte stood up, looking off into the distance. Eddie stood beside her.

  “Pembrook Cottage?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  They ducked into the morning room, grabbed a couple of candles, scrawled a note to the detective to meet them at the cottage, and left it on the front steps under a rock.

  They’d intended to wait for the police outside the cottage, but once there, neither could resist creeping through the burned-out front door to look for signs of Mallery. Footsteps had scuffed the layer of ash, but for all Charlotte knew, they were the mark of firefighters. Without speaking, they made their way through charred rubble to the back of the house, where walls and roof were stained with smoke but intact.

  Eddie was scanning the floor for clues. Charlotte meant to search, but she was distracted by the way the walls seemed to undulate in the candlelight. How could there be so many shadows when the only light came from a thumb-size flame?

  “What a creepy little house,” Charlotte whispered.

  Eddie made no response, and she thought he must not have heard her. Or perhaps the house swallowed up sound. She walked down the hall, her feet probing for creaking boards to convince herself sound was possible in this place. Would Mallery really prefer to skulk in an ashy, dark half-of-a-house than to run to freedom? It didn’t seem likely anymore.

  At the end of the hallway, just before the stairs going up, she found a small sitting room. The smoke had barely touched the walls and ceiling, leaving intact a small table with chairs and a bookcase. Charlotte held up her candle, curious what books lined the shelves. She read titles under her breath.

  Charlotte frowned. The bookcase seemed to be coming slowly forward. She shook her head, sure it was just her candlelight creating false motion on the bookcase’s uneven surface. She was about to remark on it to Eddie when a hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the wall behind the bookcase. All in the same second, the bookcase/door shut, a breath blew out her candle, and a hand covered her mouth.

  “Don’t scream.”

  Charlotte, you’re so stupid! screamed her Inner Thoughts.

  Yeah, thanks, I’ve figured that out, she thought back.

  Being in a hidden room with Mallery again—her heart doing that manic tickety-tack, tickety-tack—felt so familiar.

  Mallery whispered, “Do you promise to stay quiet?” she nodded under his hand.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said, letting go.

  “I don’t believe you.” She hadn’t meant to keep her promise. She’d planned on screaming bloody murder to alert Eddie, but it was hard to talk at all. She felt as if she were underwater, her lungs tight, the pressure of the pond pushing her head down.

  Mallery guided her to a small sofa in the dark and invited her to take a seat. Her head brushed a ceiling that slanted down, and she realized they were in the space under the stairs. This scarcely qualified as a secret room—more of a secret hole, or nook, or niche even, perhaps a cavity or alcove …

  Come up with synonyms all you want, said her Inner Thoughts. It’s not distracting me from the fact that you’re stupid.

  “I am happy you came to me, Charlotte,” Mallery said, sitting beside her.

  Uh-huh. “Eddie is out there. And he’s … he’s armed. And the police are on their way.”

  Mallery ignored this, but the calm in his voice was forced, fraying at the edges. “I would not have done what I did if there had been another way. Wattlesbrook did not deserve to live. He had no respect for women or ancient edifices.”

  She had a sudden image of Mallery the night Pembrook Cottage was burning, running to the pond for water and racing back to the fire, tossing bucket after useless bucket on the growing flames. He must have been mad with frustration. The fire had burned fast, the firefighters had come too late, and the pond water had done nothing. Not that night. But he’d returned to the pond two days later, and then its waters had been very effective at swallowing a car with a body in the trunk. That is, until Charlotte had taken an afternoon plunge.

  “You know it’s not really 1816, right?” she said. “You’re not delusional. Pembrook Park was never your grandfather’s, and killing Mr. Wattlesbrook to protect your workplace seems extreme. So, why?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Wattlesbrook burned down the cottage, lost Windy Nook and Bertram Hall because of his incompetence, and planned to divorce his wife and sell off Pembrook Park. Why do you, the real you, care so much? Is it because you belong here, as Neville said? I can believe that. You know it’s fantasy, but it’s as real as you can get to being where you feel you belong. Maybe killing him seemed like a necessity. You were protecting yourself, as you saw it anyway. It was practically self-defense.”

  His voice was a raw whisper. “Self-defense of the most sublime nature.”

  “But you tried to kill me, and that wasn’t self-defense.”

  No response.

  “One thing I admire about this era that you love so much is the civility. Etiquette is observed, respect maintained. Whatever your reasons, strangling me in the storage room was pretty darn uncivil, and I’d like a real
apology.”

  “I am sorry I tried to kill you. I am, Charlotte. I am seared with regret. At the time … I … I saw no other way.”

  His voice did sound sincere, and that, for some reason, made her spitting mad.

  “What you’re doing to Mary is cruel, you know. You don’t really love her.”

  “She has desires that don’t fit in her world. I help her realize them.”

  “She covered up your deeds. She attacked me. She’ll probably go to jail for a long time.”

  “I am sorry she was captured, but all she did was her choice.”

  Charlotte felt his finger touch her cheek.

  “Charlotte?” she heard Eddie call. He sounded far away.

  “You killed a man.” She couldn’t help trying to make him feel some regret for the murder. “He was alive and you killed him. Whether or not he was pond scum, that wasn’t your choice to make.”

  “But it was,” he said, his whisper so low now there was no tone in it. “He was worth less than the damage he did. It was within my power to stop him, and so it became my responsibility.”

  “You could be hundreds of miles away by now,” she whispered. “Why did you stay? What are you really afraid of, Mallery?”

  He put a hand on the back of her neck and pressed his forehead against her temple. She could feel the breath from his whisper on her cheek.

  “I do not know where else in this world I can exist.”

  He sure sounds delusional, her Inner Thoughts said.

  Charlotte wondered if she would have recognized the crazy much earlier if he looked more like Steve Buscemi than Mr. Medieval Hotness. She was about to, in appropriately ladylike terms, ask him to get his hands off her, when his lips were on hers. It was so surprising she didn’t move.

  He withdrew his lips but left his fingertips on her face. “I know why you made me nervous, Mrs. Cordial. To yearn for you, and yet be forbidden to touch you.”

  “Your character was scripted to love me,” she whispered, almost feeling sorry for him. He sounded heartfelt. “None of that is real.”

  “It is all real, Mrs. Cordial. All.”

  “Charlotte?” Eddie called, his voice still faint but perhaps closer.

  Charlotte saw a flicker of light. There must be a small hole in the bookcase for spying out, she thought. Eddie was probably in the sitting room, for the moment anyway.

  “Eddie—” Charlotte breathed.

  Mallery kissed her again, longer, his arms wrapping around her. It is such an awkward thing to be the recipient of an unsolicited kiss. She didn’t want to kiss him back, and yet she was afraid he’d feel bad.

  Had she really just thought that?

  She put a hand on his cheek and pushed him away. “You need to turn yourself in now.”

  He pulled her to her feet and stood behind her with one arm tight across her diaphragm.

  “You know how much it grieves me that I hurt you,” he whispered in her ear. “You will not put me through that again, and I will not hurt you so long as you don’t hurt me, Mrs. Cordial. I cannot stay here any longer.” His voice cracked at that. “You will accompany me off Pembrook property, and then I will set you free. Unless you wish to stay with me.”

  He listened by the hole in the bookcase. All was silent.

  “Now behave yourself,” he whispered and pushed the wall, opening the bookcase like a swinging door into the sitting room. The bookcase clicked closed behind them.

  Behave herself, huh? Absolutely. Charlotte elbowed Mallery in the gut, right where she was pretty sure she’d previously bruised his ribs. He let go.

  “Bloody murder!” she screamed.

  “Halt!” Eddie shouted, rushing into the room and pointing the tip of the foil at Mallery’s chest. Charlotte leapt to the side.

  Mallery eyeballed the blunt tip and knocked the blade away impatiently. Eddie whipped him with it on the top of his head.

  “Ow,” said Mallery.

  He took a menacing step forward, but Eddie whipped him again on the shoulder.

  “Stop that!” said Mallery.

  The two men stared each other down.

  “I have a knife,” said Mallery, pulling one from his belt.

  “Mine is longer,” said Eddie.

  Boys, Charlotte thought, with an internal roll of her eyes.

  He whipped Mallery’s hand, and Mallery dropped his knife. They stared again. Charlotte found it all very dramatic. Mallery faked as if to pick up the knife but ran instead, dodging Eddie to get down the hall and out the charred front door. He didn’t look quite so menacing when he ran.

  Eddie and Charlotte chased after him, leaping over debris and coughing on the ash his flight kicked up. Car headlights met them outside, coming from the direction of the house. The police! Mallery swerved and made toward the wood.

  “That’s him! That’s him!” Charlotte yelled.

  The detective’s car left the drive and crossed the lawn, the tires churning up the grass.

  “Mrs. Wattlesbrook is not going to like that,” Charlotte said.

  Police scrambled forward, shouting, a couple of them pulling out guns. More guns! Weren’t they supposed to just use billy clubs in England? Where had she been getting her information? The detective’s car cut off Mallery’s route to the woods, and he stopped, hands in the air.

  Eddie was beside her.

  “Are you happy you got to use your foil?” she asked.

  He smiled, his dimples like full moons.

  “I think I owe you some kind of an apology,” she said, “about how I misjudged your prowess with a weapon and how you really are dangerous.”

  His arm went around her waist.

  “I am officially the happiest man alive.”

  After questions and explanations, the police sent Charlotte and Eddie back up to the big house. It was silent, most of its inhabitants asleep and clueless about the happenings at the cottage down the lane.

  Soon Charlotte found herself once again in bed, in a room without a lock, awake long after midnight. But something was different tonight. Something was missing. She looked around her room, patted herself as if searching for lost keys, ran her fingers through her hair. Something large, something usually present, was just gone.

  I’m not afraid, she realized. I don’t feel the least bit afraid.

  She thought of the dead body in the secret room. Nothing. She imagined her brother in a mask chasing her through a dark house. Nada. She thought of Mallery trying to kill her, and Mary in her room with a gun, and murdered nuns and ghosts and a house that might eat corpses alive …

  She sighed, rolled onto her side, and fell asleep.

  Home, thirty-one years before

  “Let’s play castle,” said Charlotte’s loud and bespectacled friend Olga. “I’ll be the princess, and you be the lady-in-waiting.”

  “Okay,” said Charlotte.

  She watched Olga traipse about with Charlotte’s plastic tiara on her head and felt a mild ache that her lot was to sit on the basement carpet and pretend to weave a tapestry. But Olga looked really happy, and being the lady-in-waiting wasn’t so bad. She still got to be a part of the story. Even if she wasn’t the heroine.

  Austenland, day 13

  Charlotte poured milk in her tea, dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin, and said, “Last night Eddie and I found Mallery hiding in Pembrook Cottage.”

  The sounds of chewing, tinkling utensils on plates, and subdued breakfast conversations hushed at once. Even Neville, just entering the dining room from the kitchen with a plate of sausages, gaped openly.

  “The police arrived,” said Eddie, “but not before Charlotte was nearly taken hostage.”

  “What happened?” Miss Gardenside asked.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, waving her hand as if it were all so typical. “He was hiding behind a trick bookcase in a secret alcove. Or was it a nook? Anyway, he pulled me in. He apparently had been dying to apologize for almost killing me. Then he kissed me.”

  Ed
die stood up, rattling the table and knocking over a glass of orange juice. “He what?!”

  “He kissed me?” she said, more apprehensively this time. She hadn’t expected a table-rattling, juice-spilling reaction to that news.

  “Did you let him?”

  “Yeah. NO! It wasn’t … it was … well, he needed closure, I guess. He’s like those old heroes—or villains, maybe—those tragic princes and tortured Heathcliffs and Rochesters. At least, he sees himself that way. He wouldn’t have lasted long in that little cubbyhole, and I think he was waiting for a finale of sorts before he left this old world behind. He was still calling me ‘Mrs. Cordial.’ After everything that’s happened—Mrs. Cordial. He’s that far gone. But he wanted that final moment, right? He wanted to end it with a kiss. And now that he’s in jail, his last free action wasn’t trying to kill the lady, it was kissing the lady, and he can live with that. You know?”

  Miss Charming rested her cheek on her hand. “What was the kiss like?” she asked.

  “Well, it was very dark, I couldn’t see him, and suddenly—”

  Miss Charming put her hands over her mouth and squealed with delight. Eddie slammed down the empty juice glass he’d just picked up. Colonel Andrews and Miss Gardenside were looking back and forth from Charlotte’s fumbling to Eddie’s fuming.

  “Never mind,” said Charlotte. “It was just a kiss. It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to tell you all, so you knew that Mallery is no longer a threat.”

  Charlotte gave Eddie a stern look, warning him to calm down. He sat and reached for a piece of bread, then tore it apart over a plate.

  “I just don’t like that he took such a liberty. I should have been there to prevent it.”

  “It’s really okay, Eddie. I’m okay. Mallery tried to kill me, but I still feel sorry for him. It’s not easy to be him in this world. He doesn’t deserve much, but maybe he did deserve his final moment.”

  Eddie laughed, and Charlotte shrugged.

  “I know,” she said. “But I’m nice. It’s what I do.”

  It was the heroine’s prerogative to give the villain a final kiss, and she had decided to be the heroine after all. Jane Austen had created six heroines, each quite different, and that gave Charlotte courage. There wasn’t just one kind of woman to be. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She was feeling at home at last in Austenland, and she meant to enshroud herself with that boldness and take it home with her.