Day 3 #2
Mr. Nobley put an arm behind her back, guiding her to a nearby boulder, helping her to sit, as though she would break if breathed upon.
No matter how she protested, he would not let her shoo away his attention.
It did not feel like a romantic moment, especially feeling as she was, sweaty and itchy and fairly hideous in that pink dress.
But there was a tenderness to his attention.
“If you permit me,” he said, crouching beside her, “I will carry you inside.”
She managed a thin laugh. “Wow, that sounds like fun, but really I’m fine. I don’t feel sick, I just feel . . . not myself, and that’s not a malady you can throw water at.”
“You are homesick?”
Jane sighed and did wish for Molly, someone safe to talk through all this.
But now that she considered it, bouncing truth off this incredibly handsome sideburned actor felt easier somehow.
She didn’t have to worry that he would judge her because he didn’t seem interested in anyone enough to bother.
Surely his good opinion of her was an impossible achievement, so there was nothing to lose there.
And he sat so patiently, radiating the energy of someone who actually listens.
She was put in mind of a calm wild animal that is too dangerous to fear any danger.
She leaned forward, whispering, in case Mrs. Wattlesbrook had installed microphones in the shrubbery. “I don’t know if I can do this.” She shook the skirt of her dress. “I don’t know if I can pretend.”
He stared at her, unblinking, for long enough to make Jane uncomfortable.
“You are being serious,” he said at last. “Miss Erstwhile, why are you here?”
“You’d laugh at me if I told you,” she whispered. “No, wait, you wouldn’t, it’s not in your character.”
He blinked as though she’d flicked water at his face.
Had he taken offense? No, she could see no insult in what she’d said, and she certainly hadn’t meant to be rude.
Tiredness overtook her, and her body slouched.
She muttered, “I just want to lie down and sleep until I’m myself again, but I’ve only been half myself lately, and I thought coming here would let me work this part out so I could be me again. Like getting a soul Rolfing.”
She looked up, and his attention was still intensely hers.
She noticed that his eyes were a dark, warm brown, but his right iris was marked with a single fleck of gold, and noticing made him a fraction more real to her, not so much set dressing but a person she could actually know. Someone she wanted to know.
“Tell me, Mr. Nobley, or whoever you are, how do you do it? How do you pretend?”
Her question seemed to stagger him so profoundly, he held his breath.
It surprised Jane that she would notice his breath at all, and then she realized how close their faces were, how far she had leaned in to whisper.
And she made the mistake of looking down at his mouth.
They were close enough that a breeze might push them into a kiss, and the idea of it filled her at once with longing.
To be kissed. To be touched. To be adored. By someone. By this man.
No, not him. He’s as unreal as Mr. Darcy.
She forced her gaze away from his highly kissable mouth back to the fleck of gold in his eye. And then she noticed the tension in his brow.
“Miss Erstwhile,” he said, “play your little charade, but do not try to trap me. I will not sing for you.”
He stood up, glaring, and then he turned his back to her and took three steps away.
She sat still on the rock, her insides buzzing like a shaken beehive. She almost apologized but then stopped herself.
Apologize for what? she thought. For asking a vulnerable question? What a mean, unpleasant, loathsome man. There was no Darcy in him after all.
For a moment she’d felt a profound certainty that she could trust him, that he might be a potential friend, that they might even be kindred spirits. Well, she didn’t need him or anyone to get through this. She could do this on her own.
She prickled with anger at that jacketed back, and the fury helped her burn away her flimsiness. She looked down at herself and breathed.
Be the dress. Be the bonnet, Jane. Stage fright, that’s all this is. I’m just afraid of looking like a fool. So stop it. Admit that you are a fool already, and do this so you can let it go.
She smoothed the stomach of her dress. She closed her eyes and tried to catch the feel of Austen dialogue—it was like trying to hum one song while listening to another. When she opened her eyes again, Colonel Andrews was sprinting across the lawn, a cup of water sloshing over his hand.
“I have it! I have the water! Never fear!” He bowed as he offered her the half-empty cup, his frown worried. She took it and drank. The water tasted of minerals and was deep-earth cold, as though it had been drawn from a well. It hummed in her belly. Not only could she do this; she wanted to.
“Well, gentlemen.” She took a breath and smiled at the colonel. “Now that you’ve found me and watered me, what will you do with me?”
Colonel Andrews’s mouth slowly lifted from a frown to a very dashing smile. It nearly dashed right off his face.
“What a marvelous question! How shall I answer? No, no, Andrews, be a good boy. So, what adventure were you on before we bumped into you? Keeping a tryst with a clandestine lover or following a map to hidden treasure?”
“I’ll never tell,” she said.
Nobley’s face was impassive, and when he spoke, his voice was traced with formal boredom. “It was my intent to go riding and leave you be, if you wished so much to walk alone.”
“But I will not have it,” said Colonel Andrews. “I require amusement. You must go riding with us now that we have caught you. You are my butterfly and I refuse to turn you loose.”
She took the colonel’s arm as they walked to the stables, turning toward his bewitchingly smooth voice.
He asked Jane question after question, hanging on her answers and utterly absorbed in her conversation as though she were a novel he could not bear to put down, his interest pulling her back into character as Miss Erstwhile.
Mr. Nobley walked beside her, and then rode beside her, and never said another word.
She was able to enjoy the novelty of riding sidesaddle on her pathologically docile mount, but still, Mr. Nobley’s silence felt like a slap.
Hadn’t he seemed human for a moment, before he got all nasty and turned his back?
Hadn’t the fake world tumbled away? No, it was a mistake, her own dratted hopefulness building castles again where there was only mud.
She’d been wrong to try to lower the Regency curtain with that man.
He was an actor. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She returned Mr. Nobley’s silent treatment.
Something about the way he looked at her made her feel naked—not naked-sexy, but naked-embarrassed, naked-he-sees-through-my-idiocy-and-knows-what-a-silly-woman-I-am.
And she was still straddling the real world and Austenland too precariously to meet his eyes again.
Colonel Andrews made her laugh and forget, and so despite feeling slightly sticky and foolish and wrapped in a potato sack, Jane enjoyed herself.
She did keep looking out for the tall gardener, hoping he wouldn’t see her pretending to be a lady with two costumed gentlemen.
Then once, for a moment, hoping that he would.
After a bath and changing into fresh corset and a new day dress, Jane fiercely clutched her fake Austenland identity as she waited in the morning room for the much-anticipated visit from the denizen of Pembrook Cottage.
Her yellow dress had a V-neck, so her maid had fitted her with a small sheer scarf around her shoulders and knotted at her chest, acknowledging that Regency breasts should be veiled during daylight hours.
Miss Charming’s lacy neck scarf lay across her cleavage like a fluttering flag over the Grand Canyon, cowed by that wonder of the vista.
Miss Charming was fanning her neck with a hand.
Jane did the same. Her dress was of light muslin, but beneath lay chemise, corset, and stockings gartered to her thighs.
And it was no longer morning in the morning room, the low autumn sun pounding through the windows and flooding the space.
Jane waited faintheartedly for the sound of air-conditioning clicking on. No such luck.
At the sound of the bell, Jane and Miss Charming rose from the sofas, straightened their skirts, and listened for the maid to admit the visitors. The men were elsewhere, as receiving guests was a feminine pastime. Aunt Saffronia waited in the front hall.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Miss Charming said, with no trace of her faux-British accent.
“I’d be very impressed if you did.” Just at that moment, Jane had been fantasizing about chocolate soup with meringue and raspberry islands, a dessert she’d once inhaled at a spiffy restaurant in Soho.
There was no chocolate in Pembrook Park, though Jane couldn’t figure if that lack was helping or impeding her attempt at make-believe.
“You’re hoping that Amelia Heartwright is an old, unattractive thing and that the boys won’t like her at all. Am I right?” Miss Charming bobbed on her toes.
“Actually, now that you mention it . . .” Miss Charming made an excellent point. Jane gave her a sheepish smile.
Miss Charming offered a big wink, and said kindly, “Solitarily.”
Jane blinked, confused. What could Miss Charming mean? Oh, perhaps, solidarity. A united front, mutually supportive in their shared interest to save the gentlemen for themselves. After all, there were only two, and they had first dibs.
And then into the room came the most disappointingly lovely woman Jane had ever encountered. She didn’t even appear to take steps as she moved. Perhaps hidden under her skirt she had ankle wings.
“Girls! Look who is here at last. Miss Amelia Heartwright. Miss Heartwright, may I present Miss Elizabeth Charming and my niece, Miss Jane Erstwhile.”
The three ladies curtsied and bowed their heads, and Jane noticed how natural and elegant Miss Heartwright’s curtsy seemed.
She had clearly been to Pembrook Park before and come back for more, one of Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s ideal clients.
She would know the system, the players, the language and customs. Would she be a kindred spirit or a formidable foe, pulling the gentlemen’s attentions?
Her natural-looking blond hair was long, twisted up with plenty of curls around her face.
She had an open, honest face (heart-shaped even, as those old writers might have said), pink cheeks and lips, and darling blue eyes.
She was slender and tall and was either in her early thirties or had access to the type of skincare only the mega-wealthy could afford.
Jane scratched her ankle with a toe beneath her skirt. Miss Charming scowled, her shoulders visibly slumping.
“Mama sends her regrets, Lady Templeton, but she is quite fatigued today,” Miss Heartwright said in an infuriatingly real British accent. “She bade me bring these apples from our tree.”
Aunt Saffronia took the basket. “Lovely! I will give them to the chef and we shall see what splendid treat he can make out of them. You must stay for dinner, Amelia. I insist.”
“Thank you, I will.”
Jane and Miss Charming looked at each other with sad eyes. All air fizzled out of their solidarity balloon, because who could compete with that angel?
The four ladies sat and chatted, or mostly Miss Heartwright and Aunt Saffronia chatted while Jane and her unhappy ally listened, glumly plucking at their embroidery. But among her other qualities, Miss Heartwright was also generous in her attentions.
“Miss Erstwhile, do you enjoy novels?”
“I do, yes.”
“I know they are naughty things, but I devour novels. The Castle of Otranto had me in chills.”
“Yes, how can I forget that giant helmet?” Jane had done her homework on gothic novels a few years ago, thank goodness, in an attempt to better understand Austen’s gothic parody Northanger Abbey. “But Mrs. Radcliffe’s writings are my favorite, particularly The Mysteries of Udolpho.”
Miss Heartwright clapped her hands with delight. “Wonderful! We’ll have so much to talk about. I hope you will call on the cottage often during your stay.”
Jane was spared answering when the maid announced that the gentlemen had arrived to pay their respects to Miss Heartwright.
“Show them in, thank you,” Aunt Saffronia said.
The gentlemen entered, still looking smart in their sporting attire, unbathed and redolent of the outdoors and animals.
Jane stood before them, thinking about whether an 1816 woman would arise for men, accidentally made eye contact with Mr. Nobley, and fumbled her embroidery, sending it to the ground.
Colonel Andrews bent to pick it up. On his breath she caught a whiff of tobacco, which only slightly damaged the pleasing effect of that dashing smile up close.
The gentlemen remembered Miss Heartwright from last year, of course, and they all sat and commenced a cordial reunion.
Cordial? Jane admitted that they both seemed awfully pleased to see her.
Well, the colonel was effulgent and Mr. Nobley was polite—but wasn’t there a knowing look that passed between them?
Did they, the enchanting Miss Heartwright and cold Mr. Nobley, have a history ?
“You are looking well, Mr. Nobley,” Miss Heartwright was saying. Jane almost gasped. Who said such things to that man? “I hope your arm is quite recovered from the accident last year.”
And Mr. Nobley nearly smiled! His eyes did anyway. “You remembered. One of my less graceful moments.”
Colonel Andrews guffawed. “I had forgotten!” He turned to Jane. “Nobley here was trying to show off on the ballroom floor—for some lady, no doubt—and he slipped during the minuet and broke his arm!”
“Merely a sprain,” Mr. Nobley said.
“Do not be so hasty to spoil it, Nobley. A broken bone makes the better story.”
“Indeed you are right, Colonel Andrews,” Miss Heartwright said. “And I am near expiring, Mr. Nobley, to see what charming bit of fun you will come up with this time. You must, of course, outdo yourself, or what will we have to talk about next year?”
He bowed, polite but by no means offended. “I am your willing servant and shall have no other object than to seek your amusement.”
“Well, that is neatly settled, then.” Aunt Saffronia was all grin. “What a breath of fresh air you are, Miss Heartwright! You must visit the house every day, as often as you like.”
Jane glanced at Miss Charming, who in the past half hour had withered like a carrot forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. She was hunched in the sofa, glaring at her embroidery, twisting her foot around, around, around.