Austenland

by Shannon Hale

  Touché, Miss Charming.

  Boyfriend #7

  Juan Inskeep, AGE TWENTY-FIVE

  Gay.

  day 9

  AFTER BREAKFAST, THE GENTLEMEN WENT shooting, Aunt Saffronia was busy with the mute servants, and Miss Heartwright was still at the cottage, leaving Jane and Miss Charming alone in the morning room. They stared at the brown-flecked wallpaper.

  “I’m so bored. This isn’t what Mrs. Wattlesbrook promised me yesterday.”

  “We could play whist,” Jane said. “Whist in the morning, whist in the evening, ain’t we got fun?”

  The wallpaper hadn’t changed. Jane kept an eye on it all the same.

  “I mean, is this what you expected?” asked Miss Charming.

  Jane glanced at the lamp, wondering if Mrs. Wattlesbrook had it bugged. “I am Jane Erstwhile, niece of Lady Templeton, visiting from America,” she said robotically.

  “Well, I can’t take another minute. I’m going to go find that Miss Heartwreck and see what she thinks.”

  Jane’s gaze jumped from wall to window, and she watched for hints of the men out in the fields, wondering if Captain East thought her pretty, if Colonel Andrews liked her better than Miss Charming.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  And then she thought about Mr. Nobley last night, his odd outburst, his insistence on dancing with her, and then his abrupt withdrawal after one dance. He truly was exasperating. But, she considered, he irritated in a very useful way. The dream of Mr. Darcy was tangling in the unpleasant reality of Mr. Nobley. As she gave herself pause to breathe in that idea, the truth felt as obliterating as her no Santa Claus discovery at age eight. There is no Mr. Darcy. Or more likely, Mr. Darcy would actually be a boring, pompous pinhead.

  Wait a minute, why was she always so worried about the Austen gentlemen, anyway? What about the Austen heroine? Even poor Fanny Price leaned back, held her ground, and waited for her Edmond to come eventually to her. And Elizabeth Bennet—wonderful Elizabeth! Remember how quickly she learned her lesson after Wickham and laughed it off? Remember how easily she let the disappointment of Colonel Fitzwilliam slip off her shoulders? Jane was shocked to recognize in her old self more of the anxious, marriage-obsessed Mrs. Bennet than the lively Elizabeth. With her father’s estate entailed away, marriage was not a convenience for Elizabeth—it was life and death. And even so, she managed to laugh and spin and wait to fall really in love. So. Jane couldn’t give up men. Martin had proved that. But she could fling off her binding intensity, live out the dream now, and return to the world whole and Darcy-free.

  She was ready to start right now. The morning room clock ticked. Nothing moved outside the window. She scratched her neck and sighed.

  Chased by restlessness and anxious for action of any kind, Jane ran up to her bedroom to check her e-mail on her cell phone. Matilda barged in to clean, so Jane tucked her phone into her bodice and stole down to the library. From a seat near a window in the corner, she was hidden from the rest of the room and the sight line of the corridor. Stealth was her name, contraband electronic messages her game. It took her just a moment to scan her in-box for the one she wanted. Molly hadn’t let her down.

  Jane,

  Couldn’t turn up a thing on Martin Jasper of Sheffield, at least of our generation. Sorry. Clean living, maybe? Did search on Henry Jenkins of Brighton. No priors, no dependents. Studied theater and history at Cambridge. I read through transcripts of his divorce proceedings from four years ago—whoa, baby! Talk about melodrama. So, this Henry seems like a real rock, didn’t let himself get baited by the barrister, but the stuff he recounts—his wife slept with the neighbor, he forgave her, she sold his car to pay for an impetuous weekend in Monaco, he forgave her, but when she shish-kebabbed his pet fish because he said he’d like to have children, he finally called it quits. Said stuff like he still loved the woman he married and always would. Then her testimony—she’s the heartbroken, cast-off woman, but as soon as the other side starts in, she cracks, screaming like a banshee, and gets thrown out of court. Who is this guy that he stayed married to her for five years? You’ll have to give me the scoop.

  I miss you. I think it’s great that you’re there, I think you’re very brave. Let’s hit the coast after you get back. I’ll lose Phil and the twins for the weekend, girls only. And if you run into Mr. Darcy, tell him I want my black nightie back.

  xxxo,

  Molls.

  Jane was reading it for the fifth time when she heard voices on the other side of the bookcase. Her hands trembled as she turned off the phone, stashing it down her cleavage. When she calmed herself enough to listen, a man and woman’s conversation echoed dully off the books.

  “Miss Charming, I . . . I . . . that is—”

  “Yes, Colonel Andrews?”

  “Miss Charming, forgive my impudence, but I must speak with you alone or go mad. I have been wrestling with my feelings for some time and . . .”

  Sounds of pacing.

  “Yes, yes, go on.”

  “It is not easy, being the son of an earl. So much is expected of me, of the way I behave. I am known in town as a rake, a rogue, a rascal . . .”

  Jane shook her head. Austen, she was sure, would not have written such dialogue.

  “Is that so, Colonel Andrews?”

  “Well, perhaps I was once, but I’ve grown tired of the act. I feel—deeply. I long to have someone who knows the true me, who I can be alone with and share my thoughts. And I have come to feel, with no uncertainty of the heart, that you are that someone. That someone is you, Miss Charming.”

  “Oh, Colonel Andrews!”

  “My dear, dear Lizzy.”

  Giggling, sounds of smooching and whispers.

  “You must tell no one—please, Lizzy. I am sworn to another, an odious widowed countess, but there must be a way out of the arrangement. I will find a way. I must have you, Lizzy. You are enchanting.”

  More giggling, some whispering, the sound of someone departing, and then Miss Charming’s voice singing to herself, “Ha ha-ha ha ha-ha,” before she wandered away.

  Jane rested her forehead against the bookshelf and breathed out a very slow laugh.

  Well, she thought, that proposal should be about as good a tonic to her fantasy as any.

  Ah well. One gentleman down, two to go. The game was afoot.

  Boyfriend #8

  Bobby Winkle, AGE TWENTY-THREE

  Theirs was a relationship that began as friends and slowly transformed, allure building like static electricity between their bodies. They dated for six months during that between-undergrad-and-grad-school, no-career-yet tricky time. Neither of their parents made any fuss (he was black, she was white), and they just got along so great, defying the hoot and holler of culture clash. He left for an internship in Guatemala, a step toward his future career in international affairs. They both cried at the airport.

  He returned six months later and didn’t call. Last year, Jane heard that Bobby (“Robert” now) was running for Congress. At a recent polling, he wasn’t doing so hot in the thirty-something jilted female demographic.

  days 9–10

  WHEN THE MEN ENTERED THE drawing room before dinner, Miss Charming, who had been quietly slumped in her chair, perked up and blushed, coy and self-conscious. Jane watched it play out—Miss Charming’s need for acknowledgment of what had happened in the library, Colonel Andrew’s stolen half smiles, Miss Heartwright’s unaware melancholy. Strangely, Mr. Nobley (was he Henry Jenkins?) seemed in good spirits. For him. At least, he came into the room with almost a smile and kept something of it around his mouth all evening.

  Jane grinned for Lizzy Charming through dinner. It was clear that forgoing the car and Florence was paying off. Then sometime around dessert, Jane felt a tick bite of jealousy. She scratched it away. It flared again, though this time it morphed into self-pity, but of the low-key, ladylike variety. The problem was that nagging, life-long question—What was the matter with her? Was she that unattractive? S
he’d never been really in love without having her heart mashed. And now, because she wasn’t their typical client, would she be denied even fake love?

  No. There were still two gentlemen left, and Miss Heartwright couldn’t have them both.

  “No more whist, I beg you,” Aunt Saffronia said after dinner. “Let us have some music.”

  “Indeed,” said Captain East. “I believe, Miss Erstwhile, that you promised me a song.”

  Jane was quite certain that she had never promised any such thing, but it seemed a fitting remark to make, and so Jane rose and made her graceful way to the piano.

  “If you insist, Colonel Andrews, but I must beg you forgive me at the same time. And you too, Mr. Nobley, as I know you are particular to music played well and no doubt a harsh critic when a piece is ill executed.”

  “I believe,” said Mr. Nobley, “that I have never been witness to a young lady about to play without her excusing her skill beforehand, only to perform perfectly thereafter. The excuse is no doubt intended as a prelude that sets up the song for deeper enjoyment.”

  “Then I pray I do not disappoint.”

  She smiled expressly at Captain East, who sat forward, forearms resting on knees, eager. With professional suavity, Jane arranged her skirt, spread out the music, poised her fingers, and then with one hand played the black keys, singing along with the notes, “Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her, put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.”

  She rose and curtsied to the room.

  Captain East smiled broadly. Mr. Nobley coughed. (Laughed?) Jane sat back on the lounge and picked up her discarded volume of sixteenth-century poetry.

  “That was . . .” said Aunt Saffronia to the silence.

  “Well, I hope the weather’s clear tomorrow,” Miss Charming said in her brassiest accent. “How I’ve longed for a game of croquet, what-what.”

  THEY PLAYED CROQUET THE NEXT morning.

  “Won’t you show me how to use your mallet against the balls, Colonel Andrews?” asked Miss Charming, her eyebrows raised so high they twitched.

  Colonel Andrews had trouble unplasticizing his smile.

  Captain East chatted away the discomfort, his working-boy build meets gentleman grace working for him every inch. Not that Jane was looking at every inch, except when his back was turned. He kept the conversation on the weather, but did it in a very beguiling manner. To Jane’s mind, clouds had never seemed so sexy.

  As the game progressed, Andrews and Charming took the lead with professional zeal, followed by Heartwright and Nobley, an impressive pairing. Lingering in the rear, Erstwhile and East talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk. The worse they played, the more Jane felt inebriated on bad sports and her partner’s undulating laugh. Captain East looked like he could play pro football, but he held the mallet in his hand as though being asked to eat steak with chopsticks, which Jane somehow found hilarious. He hammed it up for her benefit and made it very easy to laugh.

  He straddled the ball and pulled the mallet back.

  “Careful, careful,” Jane said.

  He swung—a hollow thock, and the ball smashed into a tree.

  “I swear I’m trying my best.” The captain’s laugh made his voice go dry and deep, and Jane thought if he really let himself go, he might actually bray. “I’ve never played this game before.”

  “Captain East, do you see how Mr. Nobley keeps giving me that look?” Jane said, watching the couple ahead. “Do you suppose he’s ashamed to know us?”

  “No one could be ashamed to know you, Miss Erstwhile,” said Captain East.

  It was precisely the right thing to say, and somehow that made it wrong. Jane wondered if Mr. Nobley had heard it, wondered what he thought. Then asked herself why she cared. The only discovery she could make was a hard bite of truth, like a bite of apple stuck in her throat—she did care what Mr. Nobley thought of her. The thought rankled. Why was the judgment of the disapproving so valuable? Who said that their good opinions tended to be any more rational than those of generally pleasant people?

  Jane’s turn to swing. Her grip on the mallet slipped, the ball lurched forward a dramatic two inches, and they laughed again. Mr. Nobley was still staring their way. Was it possible that he wished he were laughing, too?

  “Look, Miss Erstwhile,” the captain said. “Someone is arriving.” His voice twinged with interest, and she guessed the actor had no idea who it could be.

  A carriage and two horses pulled up at the house’s front. A new guest was big news at Pembrook Park, and all three couples abandoned the game to inquire. But soon they were able to see two servants carrying a trunk the wrong way—from the house to the carriage. Someone was going, not coming. And the trunk was Jane’s.

  When she spied Mrs. Wattlesbrook hovering about the scene, Jane felt her stomach squirm as though she smelled rotten meat.

  “What’s going on?” Jane asked.

  “Your maid discovered an unmentionable among your things.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook dangled a cell phone between her pinched fingers. Jane glared at the maid Matilda, who smiled smugly.

  Probably gets a bonus for getting rid of me, Jane thought. The little turd.

  “I believe I was very clear, Miss Erstwhile. We thank you for your stay and I regret that your actions have forced me to cut it short.”

  “You’re really going to kick me out?”

  “Yes, I really am.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook folded her arms.

  Jane bit her lip and bent her head back to look at the sky. Funny that it looked so far away. It felt as if it were pressing down on her head, shoving her into the dirt. What a mean bully of a sky.

  Much of the household was present now. Miss Heartwright was huddled with the main actors, whispering, like rubberneckers shocked at a roadside accident but unable to look away. A couple of gardeners strolled up as well, tools in hand. Martin wiped his brow, confusion (sadness?) heavy on his face. Jane was embarrassed to see him, remembering how she’d ended things, and feeling less than appealing at the moment. The whole scene was rather Hester Prynne, and Jane imagined herself on a scaffold with a scarlet C for “cell phone” on her chest.

  She realized she was still holding her croquet mallet and wondered that no one felt threatened by her. She hefted it. Would it be fun to bash in a window? Nah. She handed it to Miss Charming.

  “Go get ’em, Charming.”

  “Okay,” Miss Charming said uncertainly.

  “If you would be so kind as to step into the carriage,” said Mrs. Wattlesbrook.

  Curse the woman. Jane had just started to have such fun, too. Why didn’t one of the gentlemen come forward to defend her? Wasn’t that, like, their whole purpose of existence? She supposed they’d be fired if they did. The cowards.

  She stood on the carriage’s little step and turned to face the others. She’d never left a relationship with the last word, something poetic and timeless, triumphant amid her downfall. Oh, for a perfect line! She opened her mouth, hoping something just right would come to her, but Miss Heartwright spoke first.

  “Mrs. Wattlesbrook! Oh dear, I have only now realized what transpired.” She lifted the hem of her skirts and minced her way to the carriage. “Please wait, this is all my fault. Poor Miss Erstwhile was only doing me a favor. You see, the modern contraption was mine. I did not realize I had it until I arrived, and I was so distressed, Miss Erstwhile kindly offered to keep it for me among her own things where I would not have to look upon it.”

  Jane stood very still. She thought to wonder what instinct made her body rigid when shocked. Was she prey by nature? A rabbit afraid to move when a hawk wheels overhead? Mrs. Wattlesbrook had not moved either, not even to blink. A silent minute limped forward as everyone waited.

  “I see,” the proprietress said at last. She looked at Jane, at Miss Heartwright, then fumbled with the keys at her side. “Well, now, ahem, since it was an accident, I think we should forget it ever happened. I do hope, Miss Heartwright, that you w
ill continue to honor us with your presence.”

  Ah, you old witch, Jane thought.

  “Yes, of course, thank you.” Miss Heartwright was in her best form, all proper feminine concern, artless and pleasant. Her eyes twinkled. They really did.

  Everyone began to move off, nothing disturbing left to view. Jane caught a glimpse of Martin smiling, pleased, before he turned away.

  “I’m so sorry, Jane. I do hope you will forgive me.”

  “Please don’t mention it, Miss Heartwright.”

  “Amelia.” She held Jane’s hand to help her descend from the carriage. “You must call me Amelia now.”

  “Thank you, Amelia.”

  It was such a sisterly moment, Jane thought they might actually embrace.

  They didn’t.

  Boyfriend #9

  Kevin Hyde, AGE TWENTY-SEVEN

  Man, Jane loved him. Sure, he wore an unnecessary tie to work and “weekend casual” meant khaki slacks, but who’s perfect? She’d once made a list of“must-have attributes in future husband,” and Kevin even made most of the “nice-to-have but not nonnegotiable” items. In retrospect, he’d had some kind of Darcy appeal about him from the very beginning, just in his mannerisms, his cool indifference, his falling for Jane despite the fact he hadn’t wanted a serious girlfriend.

  He played guitar, modestly. They did the Sunday crossword together. He loved his mom. He loved Jane. Until he told her over the blaring of a local car dealership ad that maybe he never really had.

  “It’s just gotten too hard, hasn’t it? I mean, are you still having fun?”

  Once in high school science, Jane’s teacher had dipped an orange in liquid nitrogen and then thrown it on the floor, cracking it like glass. That’s the only way she knew how to describe the physical sensation in her heart—cold and shattered. She tried to play it cool, to say, “Yeah, it’s fizzling out, isn’t it? Well, let’s still be friends.” She tried, but she ended up pleading, her nose running, making promises, splaying out her emotions in a desperate way that would haunt her long after she’d forgotten Kevin’s smell.