Hey chica, I’m not supposed to be using my phone here (don’t tell), but if you have a sec, could you do a background check? Martin Jasper of Bristol and/or Sheffield, probably late 20s. Also Henry Jenkins, Clapham, 35 or so. How are the kids? I miss you.
This place is bizarre and fun. I will have many stories to tell. You will laugh so hard. J.
A peek at her inbox reminded her how piteously dull the real world can be, so Jane began to playBubble Master, an addicting strategy game for long subway rides. She had not been at it fifteen minutes (with a record high score of 582 points!) when her maid came barging in for their daily round of strapping-Jane-into-her-corset. Jane thrust the phone under her pillow.
The gentlemen were not present to break their fast. With just three ladies clinking the flatware, sipping tea, and chewing currant cakes, the breakfast room was tense.
“Sir John was not feeling himself last night,” said Aunt Saffronia, her eyes flicking from plate to Jane and back to plate, “so Mr. Nobley offered to accompany him to see an apothecary in town, and Colonel Andrews went as well, having some business to attend to there. They are so attentive, such honest, caring lads. I shall feel their loss when they leave.”
“I feel it today.” Miss Charming pursed her lips. “Eating breakfast with no gentlemen and that Heartwright girl coming over all the time to poach on my men—this isn’t what I was promised.” She looked at Aunt Saffronia with the eye of a haggler.
Aunt Saffronia placed her hands in her lap, a calming gesture. “I know, my dear, but they will be back, and in the meantime . . .”
“I didn’t come here for the meantime. I came for the men.”
Poor Aunt Saffronia! Jane felt for her. She put a hand on Miss Charming’s arm. “Lizzy, maybe you and I could go visit the horses in the stables or—”
“Not today, Jane. My feelings are hurt.” A tear formed in one eye. “I was promised certain things about this place. After my divorce, I told my travel agent that I felt like a worn-out brassiere that’s lost all its elastic, and I needed something special or I was going to start eating doll stuffing and talking to walls. And she told me she knew just the place, where women go to feelenchanting. That was her word. And I believed her, I really did, true as tits. But I can tell you one thing—so far, no one’s made me feelenchanting.”
“Oh my,” said Aunt Saffronia. “I can’t have unhappiness at my table. Spoils the digestion. Miss Charming, what say we call on Mrs. Wattlesbrook? I believe she would be very concerned to hear of any dissatisfaction during your visit.”
Miss Charming looked at Aunt Saffronia with her dry eye, like a goose considering biting, and then nodded her head and said, “Done.”
Jane was certain Mrs. Wattlesbrook would have Mr. Nobley tamed into Charming’s personal pet by sundown. He was clearly the catch in the bunch, the big prize. The dishy Mr. Darcy.
From the beginning, Miss Charming had understandably showed interest in the handsome gentleman. Though taciturn, he betrayed signs of real depth and feeling. It was such an intoxicating combination. At times he seemed too reserved for the exuberant Miss Charming, but if he loosened up and declared his love, surely any woman would melt.
Jane was curious to see how he changed once the proprietress instructed him to charm Charming. And that would be fine by Jane. So what that he’d come (needlessly) running to her rescue with bare feet and untucked shirt? The way he’d said, “Don’t be a fool, Miss Erstwhile,” made her want to pokehim in the eye. He was supposed to be Darcy-adorable, not teeth-grindingly maddening.
Aunt Saffronia stood. “Shall we go, Miss Charming? I am certain we can sort this out. You will feel how you hoped you would.”
“Like a brand-new brassiere?”
Jane glanced up at Miss Charming, curious if she would look triumphant at getting her way or doubtful about Aunt Saffronia’s grand promise. But instead, there was an openness to her face that belied both desperate hope and intense fear. Jane found herself startled to goose bumps. Once upon a time this woman had been a little girl who needed to be loved, and nobody had loved her.
In a flash, Jane’s mind pulled up a remembered photograph of her mother, Shirley, smiling at the camera, her full lips painted red, her smile delighted. And half out of frame in the corner was a toddler girl, her knees scraped, her tiny arms out, reaching up toward the mother, who didn’t look down. There were few photos of Jane as a child, so this one always stuck out. How hard Jane wished she could enter that photo, pick up that little girl, and hold her, whispering, “She didn’t see you, but I do. You’re not unlovable. I care about you.”
As the ladies walked out, Miss Charming turned back to give Jane a big, hopeful grin and a thumbs-up. Jane wouldn’t be surprised if in a box of photographs in some Southern state was a similar picture of little Lizzy, reaching out to be noticed and loved, half out of frame.
Alone again, Jane read in the library, then in the morning room, then in the false summer of the conservatory, the tips of leaves whispering to her neck, tickling her to irritation. Soonbored to desperate measures but determined to stay immersed, she called on Pembrook Cottage.
It was a brisk five-minute walk down a gravel path, her parasol draping her in a circle of shade. The November morning was chilly and damp and filled the air with ideas of harvest and pumpkins and trick-or-treating in a scratchy ballerina costume completely engulfed by a ski parka. It made Jane wistful.
Pembrook Cottage was built of the same yellow stones as the main house, though much smaller, with only a ground floor and four facing windows. The garden around it was picturesque, low-hanging apple trees bearing late-season offerings, a few clumps of blue asters still poking through the tangles of grass. It was the kind of house you dreamed about renting for a summer, a place you’d run to, sit down in a comfortable chair, and let out a sigh of relief.
Jane spied Miss Heartwright through the window, doing embroidery in the cottage’s only sitting room while her mother, Mrs. Heartwright, snored in a chair. Miss Heartwright glanced up from her embroidery, and Jane caught a glimpse of her face—the look in her eyes warned of panicked boredom. Jane nearly ran away before pity for the poor woman drove her to knock at the door.
Besides, Jane thought, I’m in the game for real now, and this is what a Regency woman would do. Even wealthy and popular Emma made house calls.
A red-cheeked maid led her into the sitting room to a chair by the fire and pleasantries were exchanged.
“Oh, thank you for calling, Miss Erstwhile!” Miss Heartwright said many times. And somehow that wasn’t irritating. The lovely lady was positively glowing.
“Why do you . . . ?” Jane had been about to ask why Miss Heartwright put up with this drab little existence. Surely with the money she was paying and the status of Ideal Client, she could be a guest in the main house—but Jane knew such questions were forbidden. Likely Mrs. Heartwright was only faking the snore and listened keenly for any illegal tidbits to pass on to the proprietress. Then again, maybe she was some poor, senile lady from a nearby village who had no idea what was going on. It seemed like Mrs. Wattlesbrook to fool the old lady’s family into paying for her stay in an authentic nineteenth-century nursing home.
Jane cleared her throat. “That is to say, how do you fare today, Miss Heartwright?”
They chitchatted—weather (breezy and damp), the results of the gentlemen’s hunting (pheasants), news (Sir John at the apothecary and unlikely to return). Jane thought she understood why Austen often left these conversations up to the narrator and spared the reader the grotesquerie of having to follow it word by word.
