“What isn’t?”
“You aren’t jealous of them, you’re jealous of me,” he said. “Imagine if everyone in that room knew that you had writtenSense and Sensibility.”
She turned to look at him, and she felt as if he’d just smote her, as if she had been struck, right in the chest, with an arrow. A deep arrow, one that had lodged itself in her heart and now her life’s blood was draining out of her.
Yes, all right, Cassandra was right. Sometimes she was fanciful and dramatic.
“Well, that will never happen,” she said.
“You’ve got the better deal, let me assure you. I would much rather have publishedChilde Haroldanonymously and got the money for it.”
“Oh, no you wouldn’t have,” she said.
“Have I mentioned how much I could stand money?” said Byron.
“I think you talk about money far more than is really proper, my lord. It’s not done to complain so about your finances.”
“Well, I do all sorts of things that aren’t done,” he said.
“Yes, so you do.”
He gave her a little smile. “It is so trying. They don’t understand it. They make it all about… the entirely wrong things. They think I am some dashing and sad romantic tragic figure, that all I need is the love of a good woman to set me straight. They don’t understand what the poem is evenabout.”
“And what is it about?” she said.
“You know,” he said. “You can feel it. It’s about… the ache. The one we both feel. All the time. The one that is never soothed. The one that can’t be soothed. The one that smites one in the chest, like a deep arrow, forcing us to bleed out our life’s blood—”
She smirked, unable to stop herself.
He looked down, flushing. “All right, I had expected better from you, though everyone will say that I do go on too much and that I am far too dramatic—”
“No, it is not that,” she said. “It is only that I was thinking a very similar metaphor, in almost the exact same words, only moments ago. We are a bit of a pair, I’m afraid, my lord.”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “That we are. You do understand.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I would never write a poem about that ache. Anyway, women aren’t allowed to have that ache.”
“I think they are,” he said. “It’s only that women always associate it with romantic love. This is why women like my poem.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“People don’t know what your book is about either,” he said. “That Willoughby fellow, he’s the most tragic and romantic of the heroic figures that have ever cut against a novel’s horizon. And he’s not the answer to Marianne’s predicament, is he? It’s not romanticism or that ache that saves her. It’s good common sense. People think your book is about romance, about finding love. But it’s about women thinking for themselves and denying it, in all truth.”
Jane looked away, sighing.
“Well, as much as one is able, I suppose,” he said, his voice soft.
It was quiet.
“I have an idea,” he said. “I shall convince Caro to throw a masquerade ball in London, and you will come, as the author ofSense and Sensibility, not as Jane Austen. No one will know your name. You will be masked the entire time. But you’ll be introduced to everyone as an author, and they’ll all fawn over you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Jane, whose stomach had turned to jelly at the very prospect.
“Why not? You’d be in a mask.”
“I have been to a masquerade ball before, my lord. As much as Shakespeare wishes us to believe that no one is recognizable when in costume, I can tell you that it is usually quite easy to determine the identity of everyone in attendance.”
“Certainly, but no one in London knows you. And they do know the book. I tell you, it’s quite popular.”
