Day 3
“You will simply adore Amelia Heartwright,” Aunt Saffronia said as the ladies embroidered in the morning room.
Jane eyed her aunt’s neat little flowers and fields of cross-stitches.
She was transforming her own fruit basket sampler into a knotted mass that resembled a cornucopia beaten and left for dead.
As an artist, she would have hoped she had a little more skill, even in a new medium.
Maybe she’d spent too long in the creative desert, and now she was simply a former artist. That was disappointing.
Also disappointing was waking to find that the gentlemen were out hunting. Her intense anticipation last night had made falling asleep feel like trying to catch a fly with her toes.
“How did you sleep, Miss Charming?” she asked.
“Like a pig in a poke. I mean”—she straightened, her lips tightening—“like a . . . proper pig in a British . . . uh, whatever a poke is.”
Miss Charming had abandoned her embroidery in favor of pacing by the door, ready for the first sign of the gentlemen’s return.
“Miss Heartwright has been living in town this past year,” Aunt Saffronia babbled on, “and is only just returning to the country to tend to her mother in her declining health. Mrs. Heartwright is Sir John’s widow aunt.
It is so good of him to set her up in Pembrook Cottage.
I have not seen Amelia Heartwright in a year at least. Last she was here—” Aunt Saffronia glanced at the hallway and then at the window as if suspecting eavesdroppers.
She lowered her voice. “Last she was here, I detected some attachment between her and a young sailor, a certain George East, of decent breeding but no real prospects. I do not know what became of them. Miss Heartwright returned to London and Mr. East to the sea, I suppose. A shame, even if he was as poor as a farmer. They did seem very fond of each other, but young hearts are fickle things, are they not, Miss Charming?”
“What?” Miss Charming had been looking out the door. “I mean, what-what? Just so, pishposh.”
Jane wished that last night she’d slept like a British pig in a proper poke, whatever that meant.
The time change was still pulling her between continents, twisting her till she dripped dry.
She stood up to stretch, and her muscles groaned and scolded her for so much sitting.
It had been days since she had done anything that in good conscience could be considered “exercise.” She had a magpie soul, flitting this way and that, distracted by every new, shiny thing.
Without a routine, she could lose hours to daydreaming, and whenever she ignored her compulsion to exercise hard, her body freaked out on her and demanded she eat enough sugar to choke her pancreas.
That morning, she had properly poked around the grand house searching for a gym, but Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s Ideal Client, apparently, insisted historical accuracy be set aside for mascara and blush but not for an elliptical.
So as soon as Aunt Saffronia’s raptures about Miss Heartwright waned, Jane excused herself and slipped out the front door.
Matilda had dressed her in the worst of her wardrobe (the pink gown with little rosebuds that resembled splattered tomato sauce) and so Jane felt no fear for its ruin when, once out of sight of the house windows, she held the hem above her knees and ran.
It was awkward in her ankle boots, the slap-slap of her uncushioned feet insisting she tone it down to a speed walk.
Even so, speed walking in a corset was surprisingly vigorous, and soon the temperate autumn day began to feel like a crispyhot Texas summer.
She headed onto a path through a grove, the trees showing off yellows and reds, the footpath softened with fallen leaves.
Her track spilled out into a manicured garden with a bench beckoning her to rest. She sat and immediately pulled her skirts up on her thighs, resting her elbows on her knees as she tried to slow her breathing.
“Um, I think I should tell you I’m here.”
Jane sat upright, quickly pulling her skirts back down to her ankles. She had been wearing drawers, of course, but it still felt absurdly immodest to sit that way in 1816 attire. She looked around, seeing no one.
“Where are you?” she asked.
Theodore, her dance partner of late, stood from behind the bush directly in front of her. His impressive height made it seem that he was slowly expanding while standing up, like stretched taffy.
“What were you doing back there?”
“I’m a gardener,” he said, raising the shovel and pick like a show of evidence. “I was just working here, I wasn’t trying to spy.”
“You, uh, caught me there at an unladylike moment. Mrs. Wattlesbrook would probably box my ears.”
“That’s why I spoke. I wanted to let you know you were not alone before you did something—something worse.”
Jane felt a laugh bubble up in her throat. “Like what?”
“Whatever women do when they think they’re alone.” His mouth twisted into a self-conscious grin. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, you surprised me and I’m just—” His smile dropped. “Sorry, I shouldn’t talk . . . I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Well, you already have. We may as well meet for real this time, without old Wattlesbrook spying. I’m Jane.”
“Theodore the gardener,” he said, wiping off his hand and then offering it to her.
She shook it, wondered if they should be bowing and curtsying, but was that what you did with a gardener?
The entire conversation felt forbidden, like a secret Austen chapter that she’d discovered in longhand in a locked drawer.
“The gardens look lovely.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Ma’am? she thought.
“So,” he said, his eyes taking in everything but her face, “you’re from the former colonies?”
She looked hard at him to detect if he was serious and realized how handsome he was, in a tall, strong Paul McCartney kind of way, and his slightly crooked teeth gave his look even more interest. His bone structure would be a dream to sculpt in clay.
Perhaps Mrs. Wattlesbrook not only hired the most gorgeous actors she could find but even insisted on eye-candy staff.
He glanced at her, then down again, and sort of bowed. The rising laugh in her throat burst out.
He tossed his pick into the ground. “I can’t play this. I sound completely daft.”
“What are you trying to play ?”
“I’m supposed to be invisible. You don’t know all the lectures we heard on the matter—stay out of the way, look down, don’t bother the guests.
I shouldn’t have said a word, but I was afraid of getting stuck behind that shrub all day trying not to make a peep.
Or worse, you discovering me after a time and thinking I was a lecherous lunatic trying to peek up your skirt.
So, anyhow, how do you do, the name’s actually Martin.
Martin Jasper, originally from Bristol, raised in Sheffield, enjoy seventies rock and walks in the rain, and please don’t tell Mrs. Wattlesbrook. I need this job.”
“I didn’t exactly find Mrs. Wattlesbrook the kind of lady I’d be tempted to confide in. Don’t worry, Martin.”
“I should let you get back to your lady stuff. Cheers.”
“Sure. Right. Thanks.”
Jane hurried away, worried she had done something wrong.
By talking to him. By not continuing to talk to him.
By merely existing perhaps. He had seemed a little scared of her, and that made her wonder if wealthy and elderly twenty-year-old women had ratted on too-talkative servants in the past. He likely had learned to be paranoid.
She just wished he’d known that she was different.
For her, speaking to a real person had been like drinking a cold glass of water after too much sugary punch.
Jane had worked up enough of a sweat that her corset irritated her skin as she walked.
She found the path back through the trees that she hoped would lead her toward the house, wanting to grab a bath before the promised call from Pembrook Cottage.
But she turned a bend and, only seeing more trees, doubted herself, crisscrossed again and, coming around a large shrubbery shimmering in yellow leaves, suddenly knocked right into Mr. Nobley and Colonel Andrews.
“Crikey, we’re under attack at our broadside,” said Colonel Andrews.
They were both dressed in brown breeches and coats, knee-high boots, and caps as if just returning from hunting.
Her heart set to pounding against her pinned-in ribs.
She took several steps back, afraid they would notice she was sweating from her surreptitious speed walk.
But perhaps the exercise had also reddened her cheeks and brightened her eyes? One could hope.
“This is providential,” said the colonel. “I was just telling Nobley here, I think that divine Miss Erstwhile sneaked off into the grounds alone. We will brave the intemperate seas and cross dazzling deserts till we find her.”
“Oh.” Jane felt herself sway.
For the past twelve or so largely sleepless hours, she had been looking forward to a moment just like this.
But the encounter with a real person had riled and roughed her up inside more than she’d realized.
Her dress hung on her shoulders like a potato sack, her bonnet felt like a vise, and the sunlight scratched at her skin.
In her chest, her breath felt as flat as a hair ribbon.
“I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered, too low to hear.
“I say, Miss Erstwhile, you are tongue-tied today,” Colonel Andrews said. “What secrets is your mouth trying to hold back? I must know!”
“Stop it, Andrews,” Mr. Nobley said, coming up beside her to take her arm. “Can’t you see that she is unwell? Go fetch some water.”
The colonel’s face was suddenly serious. “Apologies, Miss Erstwhile. Do sit down. I will return swiftly.” He set off at once toward the house.