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.
Boyfriend #3
Rudy Tiev, age fifteen
Rudy was hi-lar-i-ous and so fine. Wherever he went in school, crowds scooped back, forming into spontaneous audiences, waiting with ready smiles for his wit. Or maybe, Jane considered later, drawing back out of fear?
After four months of school dances, mall movies, and after-homework calls with Jane, Rudy’s repertoire began to suffer for lack of a fresh subject. Without warning, the heat of his humor veered toward her.
“We were making out, and suddenly she licks my mouth like a cat!” he told a group lunching on the lawn. “Lapped me up like milk. Meow, little pussycat.”
Rudy’s friends were suddenly no longer Jane’s friends. Strangers would meow at her as she walked the school halls. In the dizzying weeks that followed, she readPride and Prejudiceover and over again.
At her ten-year high school reunion, three people remembered Jane as “tiger tongue.” Good old Rudy was there, looking thirty years older and spouting jokes that just couldn’t bring in the laughs.
Day 3, Continued
That evening, to make herself feel better after her embarrassing breakdown plus the beginning of the Heartwright Era, Jane donned her favorite evening gown, pale peach with a flattering scoop neck and fluttering short sleeves. These last three days, she had been seesawing between giddy headlong rush into fantasyland and existential terror, but sometimes when she slipped into a new dress, the only word that really applied washuzzah.
She practically skipped down the stairs, eager and ready to reengage. But she was met almost immediately with a sort of “you’re one too many” problem, as the addition of a fourth woman with only three gentlemen threw a wrench in the precedence. Aunt Saffronia declared she would dine upstairs, and then it was Jane’s turn to say that was nonsense and that she would simply walk from the drawing room to the dining room unescorted. At the back of the line. Like a cast-off puppy. Well,she didn’t actually say the puppy part. She did enter alone, behind Miss Heartwright and Colonel Andrews, but she told herself she did it with style.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room after dinner, Jane was hoping for charades or some group activity where she could try banter and coy flirtation, but Miss Charming was quick on the draw—“I’ll pout all evening if you don’t, Mr. Nobley, and I’m a very effective pouter”—and secured both the single gentlemen at the whist table. Quite a coup. Miss Heartwright, as the guest that day, naturally made up the fourth.
And so Jane sat board-straight on a sofa and pretended to be perfectly fine and in fact enchanted by her own thoughts. That lasted about three minutes. Next, she attempted to amuse herself by trying her artistically rusty hand at a new embroidery sampler, though the product itself was soon much more amusing than the occupation.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely alone. Sir John, usually too engaged with his drink to do more than grumble to himself, was particularly attentive to Jane. He stared at her until she was forced to acknowledge him and then topple into his staccato conversation.
“Do you shoot much? Mm? Birds? Miss Erstwhile?”
“Uh, no, I don’t hunt.”
“Yes, of course. Quite, quite.”
“So, uh, do you shoot much?”
“Shoot what?”
“Birds?”
“Birds? Are you chirping about birds, Miss Erstwhile?”
Aunt Saffronia wasn’t as quick as usual in detecting uncomfortable situations. She sat by a lamp, an open book on herlap and a glazed expression in her eyes. It made Jane wonder how many breaks the poor woman got. The men were often off doing man things, but Aunt Saffronia always had to beon.
“Aunt Saffronia.” Jane sat beside her so the others wouldn’t hear. “Can I persuade you to retire early? You do so much for all of us, all day long. I don’t think anyone would deny you a little rest.”
Aunt Saffronia smiled and patted her cheek. “I think I may, just this once. If you promise not to tell.”
