Byron chuckled. “It’s too bad that’s the end of it with us, Miss Jane. I had a feeling, you know, a strange sort of feeling, but it felt right to me, that you and I were at the beginning of something rather prolonged.”
“Well, that would have been a bother for me.”
“Yes, with your scheduled life,” he said, with another chuckle.
She felt herself flush. “No, I suppose I know what you mean. I thought it, too.”Maybe I hoped it. Maybe my life has been ever so dull for ever so long.
He let out a breath, surveying the tavern, crossing his arms over his chest, his brow furrowed.
Neither spoke again for some time.
Finally, he said, “I shall escort you back home.”
“No, no need for that,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “my horse.”
“I can easily walk,” she said. “I walk into town all the time.”
“Yes, of course you would,” he said.
Another silence, and then they said their goodbyes.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN JANE ARRIVEDhome, she announced loudly and with great fanfare that she was relieved to have discovered that Miss Seward had died of an accidental laudanum overdose and that there was no reason or need for her to do anything more.
“Oh,” said Cassandra, “you seem cheery.”
“Yes, it’s quite good to have it all sorted,” said Jane, all smiles. “Now, I have more time to write.”
“But the puzzle of it,” said Cassandra. “Sewing it all up.”
“Seems to have sewn itself up,” said Jane.
“Yes, but why was there a ladder up to her open window?” said Cassandra.
“Don’t know,” said Jane. “And it doesn’t matter.”
“What if someone came up that ladder, with laudanum, and forced it down her throat?” said Cassandra.
Jane glared at her.
Cassandra noted her sister’s glare, looked pointedly away, and then, after some consideration, nodded. “Yes, all right, I see. It doesn’t matter.”
“Lord Byron is going back to London and everything is back to normal,” Jane said airily. “If you’ll excuse me, I shall be locked up all day with my pen, scribbling. I have ever so much time to make up on the manuscript.” She swept up the stairs, away fromCassandra and her mother, who had said not a word during the entire exchange.
Jane went and did exactly as she’d indicated, escaping back into her own little world. It was actually great fun taking the novel out of letters and crafting it again as the narrator over everything. It was as if she now had complete control over the characters in this little world she had imagined. She felt a great sense of peace and excitement as she wrote.
There was something about the practice of writing, a way of imposing control, and she had precious little control over her own life.
She could not help but enjoy the sheer fantasy of it, a girl in the country, with all her sisters, no hope of marriage, and then Mr. Darcy, wealthy, dashing, and above all, deeply honorable and good,sucha good man.
True, he didn’t appear good in the beginning, but he was.
Jane, sadly, had to own that she had never really met a man like Mr. Darcy in her entire life. He was a fiction, and perhaps men like him didn’t even truly exist.
But it was lovely, wasn’t it, to go and be enveloped in a world in which he did?
