“Patience, Miss Erstwhile. It is only day four. By the ball, you will have a partner secured for the first two dances, that is my guarantee. And recall that you are not our usual type of guest and so should not expect the same Experience as Miss Heartwright or Miss Charming.”
Jane nodded, curtsied, and hurried out before Mrs. Wattlesbrook might add something like, “And you’re ugly too.”
Jane found the two pairs walking the footpaths, and she plodded along behind them, consoling herself with the thought that having a perfect Experience would only make it harder to leave the fantasy behind.
It didn’t help that Mr. Nobley kept looking back at her with those intense eyes, no doubt finding some fault with her.
After the walk, tea, and a game of charades in the conservatory, they returned to their rooms to dress for dinner. Jane didn’t think she could ever get used to an early dinner at five while wearing formal attire. If anyone noticed that she was unusually quiet over the red mullet with cardinal sauce and cooked cucumber with caper sauce, no one commented on it. Colonel Andrews and Miss Heartwright were charming enough alone to out-charming Charming.
In the post-dinner drawing room, Jane endured a painfully long hour playing speculation until she finally risked declaring she would retire early.
At that, Mr. Nobley, who had been reading silently in the corner, finally looked up. “Already, Miss Erstwhile? Are you—”
“Sleep well, Miss Erstwhile!” Miss Heartwright spoke over him. “Dream of fluffy lambs leaping!”
“And waltzing lovers spinning,” said Colonel Andrews.
“And naked broads,” said Miss Charming.
Everyone stared.
Miss Charming stared back. “What? I heard it’s good luck to dream about naked broads. I wasn’t being inappropriate ’cause I didn’t even say anything about knockers or hoo-haws.”
Jane took advantage of everyone’s stunned distraction to slip out of the drawing room, grabbed a cloak hanging by the front door, and sneaked away.
By the time she arrived at Martin’s apartment, his bedspread was already blocking the window, Stevie Wonder was playing on his speakers, and his bedside table was set up with a towel as a tablecloth and a Coke bottle full of fresh lavender.
“You mentioned your longing for familiar food,” he said, and pulled out a McDonald’s bag.
They ate the meat-product hamburgers and nearly potato-free fries while trading tragic childhood stories.
“I was twelve and my mom wouldn’t let me attend a sleepover party,” Jane said. “My friend Molly convinced me to sneak out through my ground-floor bedroom window, but somehow I still managed to fall and break my arm. I was grounded for three months.”
“I was a punk kid, horribly skinny at age ten, and liked to throw eggs at cars. Yes, I know, the creativity of lads is inspiring. I made the mistake of hitting the car of Gerald Lewis, our neighborhood gym’s weight lifting record holder, who at age thirty still lived with his mum. He slung me up by my belt on a tree branch eight feet off the ground. I hung there for an hour.”
After the sweetness of Regency dessert, she’d needed this. Not the cold hamburger and fries, but the metaphorical savory meal, a robust slice of reality. Her heart beat happily, and shecongratulated herself for starting to bend her yearnings away from the fantasy and toward something real.
And Martin was so cute and funny and so not–Mr. Darcy. And she felt so light and silly and so not-typical-Jane. What a last hurrah he was, this tall, coy Englishman who loved basketball and was so easy to relax with. He was nothing like her fantasy, nothing like anything she’d done before. She didn’t once try to steer the conversation to the topic of whether he wanted one day to be a father (her oft-used test), and she wasn’t even tempted to daydream about a wedding with that soaring figure by her side. She was just present in this unexpectedly delightful moment.
Tonight she would definitely leave without so much as a goodbye kiss. She was in this for the company, after all. This was not a reality TV show where the producers, in attorney-approved speech, persuaded the bachelorette to make out with every hunk in the game. But then, as she stood against the door, her hand on the doorknob, he leaned over to kiss her cheek. The salty smell of man deluged her, and she leaped up to reach his lips, wrapping her legs around his middle, separated by oodles of skirt.
She held on to his neck and he held her against the door, kissing until they couldn’t breathe. Making out with Martin was perhaps the most fun kissing she’d ever had. His hands seemed impatient, and she marveled at his ability to keep them out of the No-Fly Zones. The result was the passion didn’t escalate to frenzy. It was soft and ardent, the focus just on the kissing, just on the pressure of two bodies near, and the exhilarating restraint. For Jane, the thrill and danger felt like an extreme sport.
“You should probably go,” he said.
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled, her mouth on his, her hands investigating the girth of his chest.
She didn’t want to go. He didn’t want her to go, either. She could feel the eagerness in his hands, the speed of his breathing. He groaned regret, but he grabbed her waist and placed her back on her feet.
“As much as I hate to, I really should walk you to the door.”
She laughed. She was already at the door—pressed against it, in fact. He turned the knob, letting in the drenched smell of night.
“Good night, Miss Erstwhile.” He pressed his lips to the back of her hand.
Jane went through the door backward as though she were departing from the presence of a king, turned around, and found herself walking crooked, drunk on kissing.
The night was perfect, the darkness reclining smooth and full on the garden, as rich as a painting of a classical nude. The leaves churned above Jane’s head. The pale snaking garden paths hinted at movement, at possibilities not seen. All the beauty of the cool autumn darkness seemed too much to comprehend, and her artist’s instinct perked up again. She told it to hush—now was not the time to work out how to paint an English night. She was spinning from this unexpected find inside Austenland. A real man. A tall man! Someone to kiss and make her feel sexy and fun. Someone who didn’t insist on more than she could give, who allowed her to live in perfect moments, who made her want to smile instead of fret about future what-ifs. For the first time in years, Ms. Jane Hayes felt . . . relaxed.
