4
With fans running twenty-four hours a day in their flat, the white noise helped make Aurelia’s escapes down to the shop at night easier to pull off without disturbing Oliver.
That night, she managed once again to get out of their bedroom without waking him.
In the bathroom, she changed out of her nightclothes and into what she’d been wearing earlier that day, which she’d made sure to hang from the hook on the back of the door.
From the bathroom, she padded down the hall to the living room, where she grabbed her props—her notebook and pen—so that if Oliver did happen to wake up, he’d think she was downstairs writing.
At the top of the stairs that led to the shop, Biscuit sat waiting for her.
He knew her routine well at this point, and hardly ever barked at the characters anymore.
Fezz, meanwhile, was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, where Aurelia slipped on a pair of shoes before opening the door that led into the shop.
It was quiet and dark as Aurelia made her way down the spiral staircase at the back of the shop’s mezzanine, but she didn’t bother to turn on the lights since the shop would be filled with a soft, mysterious glow once the characters arrived.
She made herself a cup of coffee and leaned against her desk as she waited for the clock behind her to chime midnight.
A few sips of coffee later, and Aurelia spotted the familiar white mists beginning to form above the Recommended Reads table.
Smiling and excited to see who might appear, she thought yet again that she’d never get tired of seeing the shop reveal its magic.
The mists rose up from each stack of books on the table, then spilled over to the floor, growing upward into columns that soon shaped themselves into six distinct people.
“Hello!” she said as she approached them. “Welcome. I’m Aurelia Lyndham and I own this shop. Has anyone visited here before?”
“I have, Miss Lyndham,” said a man in an expensive-looking frock coat, waistcoat, and cravat. “Fitzwilliam Darcy. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
He nodded his head in greeting and Aurelia felt herself dipping into a curtsy before she could stop herself.
“May I also introduce you to my wife, Elizabeth Darcy.”
The woman at his side—Lizzy—curtsied to Aurelia before breaking into a large smile.
“Miss Lyndham! I am very happy to meet you. I have been to your shop—oh, countless times. But last I was here, Marigold—I should say, Miss Clarke—owned the shop.”
“Marigold was my aunt. I’m sorry to tell you, but she passed away a few years ago.”
“Oh, I am very sorry to hear that,” Lizzy said, her smile fading.
“I am, as well, Miss Lyndham,” Darcy said. “She and I had some heated discussions during my visits here, but I did enjoy them.”
The other characters joined in with their condolences, and Aurelia thanked them.
“Do you know, I think we might have missed each other the last time I was here,” Lizzy said.
“We’d been visiting the shop a few nights running without seeing Marigold, and we did begin to wonder if something had happened.
Then for a night or two there was some commotion about someone coming into the shop—just there,” she said, pointing to the mezzanine.
“I never seemed to turn around in time, but the others thought it must have been the new owner.”
“That was you?” Aurelia asked excitedly. “I heard someone mention Pemberley! Marigold never told me about what happens here, so it was a complete shock when I first heard voices in the middle of the night.”
“Yes, that was Sergeant Cuff’s guess. I was disappointed not to have met you then but am happy we shall have an opportunity to become better acquainted now.”
They smiled at each other and Aurelia felt elated to think she’d finally get a chance to chat with one of her favorite literary characters.
“Does the shop look as it did before, Jane? Tell me.”
A man with curly black hair to his shoulders and sharp features had spoken, his words addressed to a younger woman at his side who was wearing a simple grey dress. His eyes wandered the room but didn’t seem to focus on anything.
“The shop looks just as it always has, Edward,” the woman said, her eyes soft as she gazed at him.
Aurelia instantly knew they were Jane and Rochester. And she understood that he was asking Jane to describe the shop because he’d been nearly blinded at the end of Jane Eyre.
“Mr. and Mrs. Rochester! Welcome—I’m so glad to meet you both.”
“We are very pleased to meet you,” Jane said with a smile and nod to Aurelia.
An older man, perhaps in his sixties, stepped forward. His face was shining with enthusiasm as he pulled along a woman of about the same age. She seemed to tuck herself into his shadow, nearly hiding her face behind him.
“Hello to you, Miss Lyndham!” the man bellowed out. “I’ve never been to your shop before, but my sister, Miss Matty, tells me she visited when it was owned by a Miss Lucy.”
Now she recognized them; it was Matty and her brother Peter, from Cranford. Matty, always shy, peeked out from behind her brother, who gently tugged her forward to face Aurelia.
“Lucy was my great aunt. I never got to meet her, but if you have any memories you could share, I’d love to hear about her while you’re visiting.”
“I have a store of memories about her, indeed, Miss Lyndham. I should be happy to call upon them to give you a sense of your relative.” Miss Matty spoke quietly but animatedly, as though eager to speak in spite of her shyness.
Biscuit had begun wandering amongst the characters, attempting to investigate their clothes, which temporarily morphed back into mist and printed words with each sniff. Matty drew back into her brother for a moment, before laughing in relief at Biscuit’s harmless wagging tail and lolling tongue.
“There is a dog here, Edward—much smaller than your Pilot, but very friendly,” Jane told Rochester.
“Can we reach out to pet him, Jane? Is he one of ours?”
“No, it seems he belongs to the shop, not a book,” Jane said.
“Yes, he’s my… my husband’s dog.”
Aurelia would truthfully be able to call Oliver her husband soon enough, but in the meantime she’d found it easier to tell characters that they were already married.
The white lie avoided awkward conversations about nineteenth versus twenty-first-century views of cohabitation between unmarried couples.
“You hesitated, Miss Lyndham. May I conclude that you are newly married, and are not yet accustomed to the word ‘husband’?”
Lizzy had a sparkle in her eye as she spoke, giving Aurelia a momentary jolt to think she’d figured out the truth.
“I am, yes,” Aurelia said nervously. “It’s… very new.”
“Best wishes to you, then! I suppose we must call you Mrs. Lyndham.”
“Oh, no.” Aurelia blushed at the mistake. “You can just call me Aurelia.”
“Aurelia, then. And you must call me Lizzy, as Marigold did.”
“Let’s all agree, shall we?” Rochester called out. “That’s something I always liked about this shop—modern manners.”
Darcy looked taken aback by Rochester’s casualness, but when he turned and saw Lizzy’s smile, he seemed to try and match her good humor.
“My sister tells me the shop looked quite different when she last visited. Tell them, Matty.”
Matty’s eyes widened, but at a look of encouragement from Peter, she gathered her courage.
“In Lucy’s time, the curtains were a pale pink linen, though slightly faded with age, I must own. The carpet was a lovely aquamarine, like a tropical ocean underfoot. I once coveted a turban in that shade, but alas I never did acquire one.”
“Pink and aqua?” Aurelia asked with a laugh. “I had no idea! I can’t even picture it—I’m so used to Marigold’s yellow and blue.”
Lizzy and Jane had begun a conversation, with Darcy and Rochester standing stoically by their sides. Aurelia led Matty and Peter around the shop, with Matty pointing out everything that had changed as they gave Peter a tour.
Aurelia enjoyed the rest of the night as she got to know the characters. When dawn arrived and she waved goodbye as they were pulled back into their books, she wondered which of their stories Julia would want to read first when she arrived later that day.