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 filledher 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 heoffered 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 seemedhuman 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.
