Friday night passed in another flurry of texts, a phone call, and an unexpected visit.
Isabel arrived around eleven o’clock. She was dressed in slim jeans, boots, and a black silk top. Her eyes trailed from my head to my bare toes. “You stayed in tonight?”
I waved her into my apartment, fluttering my hand toward the mess. “It was a long week and I needed to pack.”
She stopped and rested her handbag and another bag on my high kitchen counter. “We’ve got trouble. I completely forgot you’ve never traveled. You need a passport.”
“Like this one.” I pulled it off the small pile I’d created on the same counter. “All you need is a form, two pictures, $349, and two business days.”
“Of course you took care of it.” She gave me a small bow. Dad always said if there was a job to do, I’d get it done and Isabel would make it look good.
I followed her gaze around my apartment. It did not look good. Usually neat and spare, it looked like a tornado had struck. Gadgets and junk covered the coffee table; clothes were scattered across my bedroom, which we could see through the open door; and tonight’s takeout containers still rested on the counters.
Despite Isabel’s copious instructions and the fact that the estate was supplying my wardrobe, I had no idea what to pack or how much. She was right; I’d never been anywhere. The farthest I’d gone was from Round Top to Austin when I left for college—a ninety-minute drive—and I’d taken everything I owned.
“It’s going well, I see.” She walked toward my bedroom. Her boots made a firm rap against the wood floor. “Good call.” She pointed to the discarded swimsuit and flip-flops that lay on the floor by my dresser.
She then noticed my unwieldy Austen book and reached for it. Her wrist gave from the weight and she grabbed for it with her other hand. “This thing is huge.”
“I got to thinking about Mom. She loved real books, the smell, the weight. So last week I found the biggest copy I could. But for the trip, I also downloaded them all to my Kindle.”
“She did love herself some Austen.” Isabel turned the book over in her hands. “Remember how she’d prop books on her knees? She said they kept her warm.”
“I expect they did.” I pointed to the book and scrunched my nose to get the words right. “It is a ‘truth universally acknowledged’ that reading that whole thing in less than a week proves I am the best friend in the universe.”
“Bravo.” Isabel flattened her palm on the book’s green cover. “And?”
“And . . .”
She sat, waiting for my answer.
“They surprised me. And to be truthful, I’m not quite finished with Persuasion.”
“You’ll like that one. But you can’t expect to understand them fully with one quick reading.” Isabel pushed off my bed and returned to the small hallway area between my front door and kitchen. She carried the huge book with her and placed it on the counter next to her bag. Reaching in, she pulled out six books and stacked them one on top of the other. “You’ll need to spend more time with them.” She leaned against the counter. “We’ll trade.”
My mom’s six leather-bound copies of Jane Austen’s novels rested behind her.
I backed away. “She gave those to you.”
“Only because you showed no interest. Please, Mary. I’m trying to make things right.” She put my copy into her bag. “Which did you like best?”
“Northanger Abbey was the most interesting. I saw a little of you in Isabella Thorpe.” I said the name tentatively, in question. I had so many questions after reading that book, but none would come out well. Isabella Thorpe was not a likable character.
“The antihero?”
“That might be too strong. She was also beautiful and charming and—”
“We can talk about her later . . . I’ve got to go.” Isabel headed the few steps to the door. “I haven’t even started packing.”
“Hey.” I followed her. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I only wondered when you read Northanger Abbey and if you liked Isabella’s confidence. She’s a fascinating character.”
Isabel shrugged and looked thirteen again—a flash of vulnerability I hadn’t seen in years. She pointed back to the six books on the counter. “Cherish those . . . The car will pick you up first, then swing by my place. I’ll probably need the extra minutes. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She asked the last as if it were a genuine question. Isabel had often given me this feeling of heightened expectancy in the past few weeks. Statements had turned into questions and she’d taken on an indecisive stutter-start-stop that was at odds with her usual decisive nature.
It had started long before tonight and my clumsy Isabella Thorpe comparison. I glanced around my apartment as if the cause was material and I could find it.
“It isn’t a question, Isabel. You know you’ll see me. Is there something—”
She gave a quick head shake—decisive, even brusque. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Be ready at noon.”
And she was gone.
Chapter 7
Isabel slept most of the plane ride to London. I savored every moment—I watched a couple movies, read my book, ate all the warm nuts and chocolates, and discovered that the seats in first class really did recline into flat narrow beds. At one point I wandered the aisles and found that the entire flight did not have it so good, so I returned posthaste to my fuzzy slippers and Bose noise-canceling headset. Isabel’s dad had clearly not skimped on any detail.
Now we sat in the back of a car heading to Bath and Braithwaite House. We had not mentioned the books again. We had not mentioned Isabella Thorpe again. We had not talked much at all. If pressed, I wouldn’t know what to say—I was still surprised we were sharing Austen and a trip to Bath.
After all, Austen was another thing that Isabel had “laid claim to,” as my dad so aptly put it. She had staked Austen out sophomore year in high school with a book report on not one but all six of the completed novels—which she delivered dressed in a period gown. Our teacher dubbed her his “most brilliant Austen scholar,” and she had actually replied, “It was wonderful to read them again. My mother and I read them together when I was young. They meant so much to us.”
She avoided me for days after that class. I never said a word, never told my mom or complained. I also never read another Austen. I doubt Mom noticed. There were other novels, other things to fill our time together. And in the end, she gave Isabel her beloved copies.
I glanced at her. Isabel faced the window and had for the past couple hours. She seemed deep in thought and much less excited than I thought she’d be as we approached her “ultimate escapist experience.”
I counted fields and cottages as we dipped farther into the countryside. London had given way to pastureland hours ago. There’d been an uptick in traffic and interest around Oxford, but as the car dropped farther south to Bath, pastureland reclaimed our view. A light rain dampened the fields, the roads, and the car’s windows, making the world look obscenely green and lush.
“It’s hard to believe we’re in a drought back home. I’ve never seen so much green. Is this how you remember it?”
“We lived in London and I don’t think we ever left the city. If we did . . . No . . . I don’t remember a thing. Isn’t that odd? I was eight when we left, but not a single thing.” Isabel stretched to see from the car’s front window as we topped a hill. “Look. Bath.”
The car’s hum turned to a pebbly rumble as smooth road gave way to cobblestones. The driver’s tired gray eyes captured mine in the rearview mirror. “I thought I’d bring you in on the A3039, then to York Street, so you can see some of the sights. It’s a Sunday, so no shops are open yet, but some will be after noon. Welcome to Bath, ladies.”
A low sandstone-colored city opened in the valley before us, punctuated vertically by church spires. It was larger than I anticipated. From my reading I’d almost expected to find a Regency town. Brigadoon come to life with horse-drawn carriages and strolling ladies
. I almost laughed at my own absurdity. It was two hundred years later. Of course Bath would be modern, industrial, filled with shops, cars, and even a factory spewing smoke atop a distant hill.
Our driver tapped his window as we turned the corner. I felt reassured; Brigadoon existed—curiously well preserved.
“This is the heart of traditional Bath. Right there are the famous Roman Baths, first used by the Celts, long before the Romans. They are already open for the day; over a million tourists a year visit there. And up here . . .”
I plunged toward Isabel as the car took a sharp right turn.
“Landsdown Road comes right into Bennett Street and the Assembly Rooms.” He stretched his arm across to the passenger window. “You cannot come to Bath without visiting there.”
He drove through a large roundabout with a sign announcing The Circus, then steered into a gentle and broad arc to the right. There stood a long, semicircular row of townhouses, completely contiguous and—semicircular. It spread for what seemed like half a mile and was the most extraordinary street I’d ever seen.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to have a compass large enough to measure this? It feels like a full one-eighty degrees. It’s gorgeous.”
Isabel shook her head at me, but she smiled.
The driver twisted in his seat and offered me a toothy grin, minus a few teeth. “The Royal Crescent is beautiful, isn’t it? It’s one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the country, built in the mid-1700s. It looks the same today as it did then, and some of them are private homes. Can you imagine that?”
“Honestly, no, but it is beautiful.”
He turned out of the crescent and away from town. “Wait until you see where you’re headed. Braithwaite House is a right gem. An American couple fixed it up and it is beyond something grand now.”
Isabel pulled herself forward by the driver’s headrest. “Is it far?”
“Less than a mile. It’s one of the only estates in the county left with its full acreage. I don’t often say it, but it was a good thing when those Americans bought the property. They kept it intact. A good number of estates have long been carved up by developers.” He adjusted his rearview mirror to capture Isabel’s face. “Have you been to Bath before?”
He didn’t wait for her answer, but continued his monologue down Weston Road in a long, contiguous sentence. He had much to tell us and, if we were going to reach our destination in a few minutes, his time was running out.
I caught a sign for Braithwaite House. “This is it.”
Isabel slapped my arm. “Okay, now I’m getting giddy.”
“About time.” My excitement matched hers.
She stretched farther ahead. “Look. Look. There’s the house.”
I held my breath as the large four-story home came into view. I blinked and studied it. Two stories. The tall windows revealed that it had only two stories, but very high ceilings. The beigetoned gravel drive, flanked by mature trees, turned and continued to rise to a car park at the side.
I mentally calculated the house to be at least fifty thousand square feet, but I couldn’t see how deep it ran—meaning my estimations could be shy by several thousand feet, if not more. The front featured tall, rectangular, flat windows in the center and curved ones set in deep bays at the corners. I caught glimpses into the rooms where the sun shot through the glass rather than bouncing off it. And fireplaces . . . I looked up and counted eight chimneys visible from my vantage point alone.
“It’s . . . it’s massive.”
The driver heard me and chuckled. “Here we are, ladies. Braithwaite House.” He pulled the car to the front door and made a dramatic skid on the gravel. He then twisted to almost fully face us. “I’ve never been in, mind you, but they say the queen herself could stay here and not be disappointed.”
I faced Isabel. “Are you ready? This could be your Pemberley or Netherfield Park, or even your Kellynch Hall.”
Her face glowed. “I’m beginning to believe in my own thesis. Let’s go.” She gestured to the car door.
I climbed out, a sense of awe welling inside me. Colin Firth had never occupied a moment of my time; Downton Abbey never swallowed a Sunday evening; and even love, friendship, and zombies had failed to entice me into the theaters. But I agreed with Isabel—I was beginning to believe her thesis too. This was the ultimate escape and a luxury beyond imagining.
She stood beside me. Eyes fixed on the building, she grabbed my hand and squeezed tight. “It’s perfect.”
I followed her up the six broad front steps to the single-pane glass front door. It opened out, while an enormous wood one opened into the house.
Between the two open doors stood a woman, tall and elegant, dressed in gray with silver hair. Something about her glowed against the now graying sky—as if they were one and she was the brighter iteration.
Although she came from inside the house, she wore a deep-gray waxed coat and hot-pink rubber boots.
I felt her track my gaze to the boots and back. When our eyes met again, hers danced with laughter.
“Aren’t they marvelous? I was crossing from the side garden when I saw your car.” She pulled her hand from a gardening glove and stretched it toward me. “Welcome to Braithwaite House. I’m the manager, Gertrude. You must be Miss Dwyer.”
“I am.” Isabel stepped fully in front of me and captured her hand. “Isabel Dwyer. It’s nice to meet you, and this is my friend, Mary Davies.”
Gertrude nodded at the rushed introduction and peered at me over Isabel’s head.
“It’s lovely to meet you as well, Miss Davies.” She cast her gaze beyond us to the driver. A single flick of her fingers conveyed he was to bring our bags in a side door somewhere to the left. She then retreated into the house and wiggled the same fingers to beckon us to follow.
“You are the third academic group to stay with us this year. You are the professor?”
“Doctoral candidate.”
Gertrude continued. “First your Jane Austen Society of North America came to town last spring, then we hosted Harvard’s English department in July.”
“The entire English department?” Isabel’s mouth dropped open.
I suspected the rest of her thought had fallen out. I bumped her. “UT’s endowment is big too. Get tenure, then make a plug for this.”
“Shh . . .”
Gertrude’s pink boots squelched across the marble floor. “Come through to the Day Room—that’s what I like to call it. I had Duncan lay a fire there to chase away the damp.”
I lagged behind, not wanting to miss a single detail—the black-and-white checkerboard pattern on the hallway’s marble floor; the oil paintings, landscapes and portraiture, that covered the hallway walls beyond the high arched front foyer; the door and window frames, with their unpainted wood polished to a deep high-gloss brown. The play of light was beautiful across the different colors and textures. A bevel in one of the windows caught an errant sunbeam and shot a rainbow across the floor.
Gertrude waited for me at the doorway of the small sitting room. Entering, I understood why it spilled green light across the hall. Its walls were covered in pale-lime wallpaper with white sprays of flowers. There was a single seating arrangement situated by the fire, composed of two delicate and feminine-looking chairs and a love seat. A small writing desk sat under the window, its chair set at an angle as if someone had been writing letters and had just left the room—maybe to check today’s menu with Cook.
The Day Room, as Gertrude called it, faced the back of the house, where the gardens spread the expanse of a football field before dropping, perhaps into a valley, beyond our vision.
“The Stanleys decorated this as a lady’s sitting room, as it would have been fashioned in the early nineteenth century. They used only historical papers and fabrics. It would have been called a drawing room, and back then one might find the lady of the house writing her correspondence at that desk in the mornings or painting screens near the fire with friends in the afternoon.�
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She seemed pleased with our rapt expressions—at least I assumed I looked as hypnotized as Isabel.
Gertrude continued. “The Stanleys are only the second owners in the house’s history. Upon purchase in 2004, they put the house through a full five-year restoration. All work was completely in keeping with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation. And while these Austen offerings focus upon the Regency period, spanning from 1811 to 1820, or the Regency era, which encompasses a larger time period from 1795 to 1837, the main section of the house dates slightly older than that.” She glanced to Isabel and broke into a self-conscious smile. “I get so used to that introduction I sometimes forget. You likely know all that.”
“Not about this house.”
Isabel’s eagerness called forth a more relaxed smile in our host.
“Well, the house is older. Construction began in 1760, but it wasn’t finished and situated with the Duke of Walsham’s family until 1780, which puts it right at the doorstep to the Regency era. And in Bath, Regency is good for business.” Her smile turned yet again. This one felt laced with cynicism.
I tapped off the years on my fingers. “Only the second owner in 258 years? It must have been hard for the Walshams to sell.”
“Braithwaite was the family name and yes, I expect change of any kind is hard.” She spread her hands flat as if offering us the house. “Today you’ll find every service and amenity you can imagine . . . and tea. I’ll send Sonia in with the tray while I register you.”
Gertrude left us to ourselves, and I joined Isabel by the fire-place. I dropped into the blue-and-green armchair across from her and sank into its cushions. “Have you ever?”
“No.”
We sat grinning at each other. I felt just as I did the first day we met in second grade—struck with awe and expectancy. Something new was about to begin.
“Thanks for inviting me. Really, Isabel, I mean that, and I’m sorry I pushed back. It was beyond generous of you.”
She held up her hand. “We both know you pushing back was long overdue. Don’t say any more.”
The Austen Escape Page 5
