Her more than thirty novels have won her many awards, including five RITA, the top award in romance, and two career achievement awards from Romantic Times. She’s a member of the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame and Honor Roll. Publishers Weekly declared her “arguably today’s most skillful writer of intelligent historical romance.”
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I stood outside the Green Park Underground station with my tour leaflet thrust high in the air, ignoring the feelings of ridiculousness that made my arm waver. The leaflet should have been unnecessary for attracting notice, given that I was wearing a plumed bonnet, an empire-waisted long dress, and a little jacket known in Jane Austen’s day as a spencer. On a busy London street on a Sunday afternoon, though, few people were paying any attention to my getup. That was good news and bad news. Because when you’re trying to attract tourists to your bootleg Jane Austen tour, you’re shooting for notice.
After five minutes or so, my arm started to ache from holding up the leaflet and my cheeks ached from smiling, but at last a middle-aged couple was heading toward me. Ka-ching. That would be six pounds each, which would at least buy a few groceries or top off my Oyster card.
“Do you know where we can find a restroom?” the woman asked in a nasal American accent. Midwestern definitely. Possibly Chicago.
“If you go back in the station and follow the subway under the street, it’s on the other side there.” I nodded across Piccadilly and its buzz of traffic. “I’ll hold the tour for you.”
“Tour?” She looked at me strangely. “Oh. I see. I thought you were just … well, local flavor.” She and her husband turned and made a beeline for the entrance to the station.
Who was I kidding? I’d thought putting together a tour of Jane Austen’s London would be easy money. I’d throw up a website, get a costume, and use my grad student’s knowledge of my favorite author to drum up some much-needed income. As an American studying in London, I wasn’t technically supposed to hold a job. I’d managed to wheedle my way into a few hours at a local bookstore, but London was expensive. Very expensive. I was going broke just washing my clothes at the laundromat. A young single female shouldn’t have to choose between eating and not smelling. And then there was the small matter of next year’s tuition.…
My arm started to wilt and the leaflet sank along with it. Well, it had been worth a shot. This was my third Sunday morning in a row holding up my leaflet, and I still hadn’t had any takers. Perhaps it was time to throw in the tea towel.
Then I spotted him emerging from the station. You couldn’t miss him, really. He was tall, made even taller by the high-crowned hat of a bygone era. Jane Austen’s era, to be exact. The hat matched his dark brown cutaway coat, vest, and Hessian boots. Buff-colored breeches and a white shirt, complete with cravat and high collar points, finished off the outfit of a Regency gentleman.
I shut my mouth so it wouldn’t hang open. What was this guy—the competition? I could tell him not to bother. He might be a nice-looking man, swoon-worthy really in that getup if one was a Jane Austen–inclined kind of gal, but I doubted he would be any more successful as a tour leader than I had been.
He spotted me, even without the leaflet in the air, and strode toward me with purpose. When he came to a stop in front of me, I had to look way, way up to talk to him.
“Are you here for the tour?” I asked in my best fake British accent. I’d been practicing it in the mirror for weeks now. I mean, how many tourists want a Jane Austen experience in an American drawl?
He smiled. A very nice smile, if a little crooked. He had dark eyes, brown hair, and a bit of a hook to his nose. Not exactly Colin Firth, but not too shabby either.
“I am indeed here for the tour.” His accent was much better than mine because it was authentic. His word choice was appropriate, too. When I’d dreamed up the tour, it never occurred to me that participants might turn up in costume as well.
“We’ll just wait a few minutes for the … others.” I looked around, aware that my optimism was misplaced.
He pulled a pocket watch from his vest, opened it, and frowned. “A quarter past.” He joined me in looking around at the hordes of people passing by, all in distinctly modern clothing and none of them paying any attention to us. “Perhaps we should begin.”
In all my planning, it had never occurred to me that I might end up doing the tour for one person, much less a good-looking man dressed in period clothing.
“Yes, let’s begin.” I paused, unsure what to say next. My plan had been to escort the group around the corner to a quiet spot and give my opening spiel. But wouldn’t a guy who was dressed like Mr. Darcy already know all about Jane Austen? “This way please.”
We made our way down Stratton Street and then around the corner to stand in a recess along the front of a large office complex. Once upon a time, a stately London mansion, the home of the Dukes of Devonshire, had stood upon the spot. Now it was a very posh office block.
I turned to my customer, swallowed past the lump of anxiety in my throat, and tried to keep up my accent.
“My name is Elizabeth.” I held out my hand expecting a handshake, but instead he took my gloved fingers in his and raised my hand as he made a small bow. For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss the back of my hand, but he completed his bow and then let go.
I felt strangely disappointed.
“And you are …?” I prompted.
A small smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
Okay, he could be a complete weirdo. Or a serial killer. Or maybe just someone a little too into that strange role-playing or LARPing or whatever it was called. But he reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-pound note, which he held out to me.
“Um, thanks.” My accent slipped as I accepted the money and dropped it into the small basket I carried over my arm. What could I do but play along? I rummaged for change, but he put a hand over mine.
“It’s not necessary.”
“But—” I looked up at him and tried to decide if he was too good to be true.
“Honestly.” He flashed that crooked smile. “I’m sure it will be well worth it.”
I was twenty-three. Too old to blush like I was in junior high and the cutest boy in school had just confessed to liking me.
“Thank you.” I hitched the basket higher on my arm, cleared my throat, and began.
“Jane Austen was born in 1775 in Hampshire, about sixty miles southwest of London.…” I’d memorized my facts so well that I said them automatically, filling him in on her family, her early years, and her preference for country life. “Jane had mixed feelings about the city, but she did enjoy the theaters and the shops when she came to London.”
He nodded. “I often feel the same way.” Then he smiled again. Slightly crooked but totally charming.
Oh, dear.
“When Jane visited London as a girl,” I continued, “she stayed with her aunt and cousin. Later, when she was an adult, she stayed with her brother, Henry.”
I started to move along the front of the building, and as I did, my erstwhile Mr. Darcy held out his arm, offering me his escort. I froze, uncertain whether to play along, but then I looked up at him and our gazes met.
I had learned over the course of the past year to read a lot in people’s eyes. I’d seen the grief and sorrow in my father’s after the financial markets had tumbled into oblivion. I’d seen the frustration in my mother’s gaze when my father walked out, unable to deal with his failure. And I’d seen the scorn in the eyes of some of my British classmates who’d lumped me in the category of rich American whose Daddy paid her credit card bills. What I saw in my Mr. Darcy’s eyes at that moment told me a lot. Maybe I should have hesitated more, but I didn’t. I reached up to curl my free hand around his offered arm. Beneath my fingertips, he felt solid. Strong. Dependable. Real.
“If we turn right just ahead,” I said, “we’ll see the premises of John Murr
ay, one of Jane Austen’s publishers.”
He nodded without saying anything and we moved along the pavement under the shelter of the building’s enormous portico.
“Jane dreamed of finding success as an author, but her first effort at publication was a disaster. With her brother’s help, she sold the rights to an early novel for ten pounds, but the publisher never produced the work. When her brother pressed the man, he demanded the same amount to return the manuscript. I’m sure Jane must have been heartbroken. But she then sold Sense and Sensibility and it was published first in 1811, followed by Pride and Prejudice two years later. With the help of her brother, she arranged for the publication of Emma by John Murray, whose offices were just here.”
We came to a stop in the middle of a row of Palladian townhouses. The steps and doorway were like all the others. “We could almost imagine Jane and her brother pulling up just here, in a carriage”—I waved toward the road where a black cab whizzed by—“to pay a call on Mr. Murray to discuss business or make corrections to a manuscript.”
My Mr. Darcy nodded. “She must have enjoyed the wealth that her writing brought her.”
I shook my head. “Oh, no. She really earned very little on her novels. It was one of the great disappointments of her life.”
We exchanged rueful smiles and my heart beat a little faster in my chest. For Mr. Darcy, he might not be terribly informed about the woman who had created him, but he was certainly sympathetic to her plight.
I would never have imagined that my two-hour tour could go so quickly. We made our way through the back streets of Mayfair, pausing here and there at a blue plaque or a pub important in Austen’s day. We stopped in front of a Regency townhouse that was almost unaltered from its original state, and I gave him the complete rundown on life in the city. I had been chattering on for a while when I looked up at my companion. His eyes had glazed over.
“If you’ll follow me, we’ll see the only plaque in London commemorating Jane Austen.” I stepped toward the curb, but he reached out to grab my arm.
“What about a cup of tea instead? There’s a place just around the corner.”
“But the tour—”
“We can continue it. Just a short break.”
I looked up at him and hesitated. My professionalism was at stake here. Well, not that I was an actual professional guide or anything. But it was the principle of the thing.
Then he smiled. My knees went all warm and liquid, much like that cup of tea he was suggesting.
“Maybe just for a minute.”
And that was how I found myself being hustled into a fancy tea shop while dressed in full Jane Austen regalia. Heads turned, of course, but we got as many admiring looks as we did headshakes. Well, my Mr. Darcy did anyway.
He settled us into an out-of-the-way corner, and I untied the ribbons of my bonnet and lifted it off with a sigh of relief. I don’t know how women in Jane Austen’s day managed to tolerate those torture devices.
“You have beautiful hair,” Mr. Darcy said. “It’s not brown, but it’s not black either.”
“My mother calls it ‘nondescript.’ ” My response was automatic, but the moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t. I shrugged. “She’s blonde.”
“It’s the color of coffee,” he said, and he lifted a hand, as if he were about to reach out and touch one of the ringlets I’d left on either side of my face.
“Dingy brown, then.” I decided to keep my fake accent going. He might be charming. He might be handsome. He might even claim to be Mr. Darcy. But he was still a paying customer, not a suitor.
He paused and looked at me for a long moment. I fought the urge to squirm in my chair. I wasn’t used to such close scrutiny. I’d kept to myself for the most part since I’d arrived in England. Classes. A sandwich and a cup of tea—Earl Gray, two sugars—in the student center every day. My few hours in the bookstore, and then there was the laundromat, of course. But as far as a social life … Well, I’d had too much on my mind. Too many regrets to ponder. Too many ways to devise for pinching pennies and stretching pounds.
“You look sad.” This time when he reached out, he did touch me, gently, with a fingertip that barely grazed my jaw. “A damsel in distress.”
I hadn’t told anyone how much distress. Or was it that there hadn’t been anyone to tell? My mom had all but ordered me to stay home. She’d assured me she wouldn’t give me a penny to go running off to England. She thought she was teaching me the value of a dollar. I thought that she just wanted me to share her misery.
“Fine. Go, then,” she’d said. “But find yourself a rich Brit. Like that Mr. Darcy. Only make sure he can hang on to his money. Make sure he’s not like your father.” My father had retreated to his hunting cabin in North Carolina. He hadn’t even called to say good-bye before I’d left.
“I’m perfectly fine,” I said to Mr. Darcy—a little briskly, so I softened the words with a smile. “Really.”
He shook his head. “You are a heroine in need of a hero.”
I laughed, and even though we were hidden in the corner, my laugh drew attention. It was a cross between a hen’s cackle and a donkey’s bray and had been the bane of my existence as long as I could remember. I quickly swallowed the sound and sipped my tea.
“What gives you that idea?”
“The worry lines. Here.” He raised his hand and ran his thumb lightly across my forehead. “And the frown lines, here.” He dabbed each side of my mouth.
“Gee, thanks.” I abandoned the pretense of the accent altogether. “I’m too young for Botox.”
He sipped his tea in a way that was well mannered without being uptight. “Perhaps I can help.”
Now I wasn’t sure if he was hitting on me or just being nice, but really, how was I supposed to judge, given the fact that we were sitting in a fancy London patisserie wearing Regency costumes as if it were the most ordinary thing ever?
“Not unless you really are Mr. Darcy. I could use a few of your twenty thousand pounds a year.”
When I looked at him, he was smiling again. He really needed to stop doing that. Before it had made my knees weak. Now it caused my heart to thump in my chest at an alarming rate.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “We should move on,” I said. The tea hadn’t soothed my nerves. “Covent Garden awaits.”
“Of course.” He nodded, reached in his pocket, and settled the bill with another twenty-pound note. Then he stood up.
“Don’t you want to wait for your change?” I asked. I couldn’t help but do the mental math. I knew exactly how many loads of laundry a tip that size could do.
He bowed again. “I wouldn’t dream of imposing upon your time.” He waved a hand toward the door and I led him out of the tea shop.
We finished our tour on Henrietta Street, outside the building where Jane Austen’s brother had lived. Since she’d never been an official resident of London, she didn’t have a blue plaque, but there was a green one here, put up by the City of Westminster.
“And that’s all, I’m afraid,” I said as I finished telling him how Jane Austen had died tragically young. It didn’t make for a very peppy ending to the tour, but real life wasn’t as conducive as a novel to a happy ending. At least, that’s what I’d learned over the course of the previous few months.
“You’re very well informed,” he said with a wry smile. “And very charming.”
“Thank you. Listen, I’m sorry about sharing my personal life with you. You were very kind to buy me a cup of tea. I didn’t mean to dump on you.”
He reached out and took my hand in his. “No apologies necessary. It was my pleasure.”
I wanted to ask him who he really was. Why he’d turned up in that outfit. What he really wanted. But even more, I didn’t want to break the spell. The afternoon had been an episode out of time. It was a memory I would always cherish. That magical day when Mr. Darcy had shown up, at least for a little while, and made the awful things in my life a little more bearable.
“Good-bye,” he said. He bowed over my hand once more.
“Good-bye.”
I had left little flyers about my tour all over London for the last three weeks. He could have found one anywhere. Or he might simply have stumbled over my homemade website. However he had found me, I could only be grateful. Still, as I turned toward the Tube station, my heart felt as heavy as my feet.
If only real life could be like one of Jane Austen’s novels.
Class on Monday morning lacked its usual luster. Normally I would have been transported out of my worries by the vigorous discussion of Austen’s use of irony in her novels. After my experience the day before, though, I wasn’t quite so easily engaged. Or pleased. A dry, academic discussion wasn’t enough. Not when I’d spent two hours the day before with the living, breathing embodiment of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Why had I let him get away? I could have gone after him, when we’d parted there at the edge of Covent Garden. Instead, I’d watched him disappear into the crowd and done nothing.
Because I’d been afraid. It was so much easier to be brave in a fantasy than to be brave in real life.
Despite the costume and the role-playing, my Mr. Darcy hadn’t seemed like a nutcase. No, he’d been charming and kind. Familiar, somehow, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe he’d been an actor, preparing for a part in some “bonnet and bustle” production, as they called them over here.
Whoever he was, he was gone now.
You could show up again next Sunday, a voice whispered in my head. He might turn up again, too.
But if he’d wanted to see me again, he would have asked for my number. Or, if he wanted to stay in character, my address. Instead, he hadn’t even asked my last name.
I found myself at the door to the student café and followed the crowd inside. Maybe a cup of tea. Or a cup of coffee. Like my hair. I hadn’t been sure at the time that it was a compliment. Now, surrounded by the comforting smell of roasting beans, I decided that it was.
Jane Austen Made Me Do It Page 16
