He blinked. “What are you—”
I folded it carefully, tucked it into the pocket of my dress like a keepsake.
“You won’t need this where you’re going,” I said.
And then, right there in the center of Carsondale, under God, gossip, and the watchful eye of three shopkeepers and a cow, I found myself at the heart of the biggest scandal the town had seen since the traveling dentist ran off with the mayor’s wife.
Because Major, the brother of the richest man in town, had just kissed his brother’s fiancée full on the mouth. In broad daylight. With witnesses.Children.
And not just kissed me—kissedme. Like a man starving. Like he’d known me longer than my own mother, and was just now allowed to come home. There was no ring on my finger, no announcement in the paper. Just two people, holding nothing back, in the center of the square, like a pair of fools who’d finally figured it out.
The whispers started before we even pulled apart. I didn’t have the good sense to care.
The town buzzed for weeks. I had neighbors dropping by with rhubarb pie and pretense, pretending to borrow sugar but really just angling to hear the story straight from the horse’s mouth.
And I told it. Every time.
Because for once, it was my story to tell.
And next time you hear it back east—turned inside out, sharpened into scandal, passed around parlors like teacups—maybe I’ll be a cunning mail-order bride who fell into a torridaffair with her intended’s wicked brother, or a con artist, or a runaway heiress.
But just so you know:
It was me.
And it was glorious.
The Triumph of Hetty Jane BatesSARAH MACLEAN
“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house, as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man’s eyes as I am in my father’s.”
“But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!”
“That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly—so satisfied—so smiling—so prosing—so undistinguishing and unfastidious—and so apt to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry to-morrow. But betweenus, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried.”
“But still, you will be an old maid! and that’s so dreadful!”
Jane Austen,Emma
A million years ago, when I was a brand-new author with one Regency under my belt, I was invited to speak to the Connecticut chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America. After my presentation, I opened the floor to questions, and a single hand rose, belonging to a woman who had spent obvious years, lifetimes, with Austen. Did I have a favorite Austen novel? she asked.
Of course I did. Doesn’t everyone? I replied with complete certainty. “Emma.”
The room erupted into what I can only describe as disdainful murmurs, as the questioner cast a sidelong, knowing look at her companions. After their silent discussion of my shortcomings, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “You’ll grow out of it.”
Reader, I never grew out of it.
Emmais a banger. It’s full of all the things I love in a romance—a deeply unlikable heroine who gets a real deal setdown, a mysterious relationship that is about to set the whole world aflame, a hero who is a particular flavor of Exasperated Man™, and a side character who deserves to be the heroine of the next book. Over the years, I’ve loved all of these aspects ofEmma, but the romance reader in me keeps coming back to that last one.
If ever there is a character who deserves to be loved out loud, to be swept off her feet, to be the heroine of her own story, it’s Miss Bates. Poor Miss Bates. Silly Miss Bates. Miss Bates, who deserves nothing but our condescension and pity, being, as Austen tells us (as Austen herself was),neither young, handsome, rich, nor married. Miss Bates, who is limitedto three dull things in the picnic scene that has haunted me since I was fourteen years old and read it for the first time.
But what if we don’t listen to Emma, that unreliable narrator who is so busy learning her lesson? What if, instead, we listen to Austen, who describes Miss Bates asa happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will? Or what if we pay close attention to Mr. Woodhouse when he echoes his creator, describingexcellent Miss Batesas athorough, worthy person? What if we imagine Hetty Bates as the best of us?
She is worthy of such a lens: A devoted daughter. A good sister. An auntie for the ages. An excellent friend. And a capital citizen, worthy of a monument in the town square, if you ask me, for putting up with Emma and her outsized ego. In a different book, through a different lens, Miss Bates would have made an excellent heroine. She certainly deserves the treatment.
So, here we go. Justice for Miss Bates.
ONE
