Mr. Nobley, andzing, there was his smile again, brief, urgent.
When his lips relaxed she wanted it to come back.
“That is a shame,” said Captain East.
After dinner that evening when Jane retired from the drawing room, she found a large package wrapped in brown paper on her side table. She ripped open the paper, and out tumbled neat little tubes of oil paints and three paintbrushes. She saw now that an easel waited by the window, with two small canvases. She smelled the paints, and sense memory of a younger and more hopeful Jane bloomed up from her middle.
She ticked her palm with the largest brush and wondered: Who was her benefactor? It might be Captain East. Maybe he still liked her best, even after his tête-à-tête with Miss Heartwright. It could happen. Even so, she found herself hoping it was Mr. Nobley. Instinct urged her to stomp on the hope. She ignored it. She was firmly in Austenland now, where hoping was not only tolerated but buoyed and buttressed.
Had Austen herself felt that way as she wrote? Hopeful for her characters—for her own self? She imagined Austen leaning close to Jane’s own sensibility—amused, horrified, but in very real danger of being swept away.
Her time was half over. Only one week left to fix everything.
Boyfriend #11
Kevin Hyde, age twenty-seven
Oh but how Jane loved him. Sure, he wore an unnecessary tie to work, and “weekend casual” meant khaki slacks, but who’s perfect? She’d once made a list of “must-have attributes in future husband,” and Kevin had most of them, like financial security, a lovely singing voice, and a welcoming family. She could imagine herself a part of it for the rest of her life, on a group chat with his sisters planning Mother’s Day gifts for their mom and meal planning for weekends at the family cabin.
In retrospect, he’d had some kind of Darcy appeal about him from the very beginning, just in his mannerisms, his cool indifference, his falling for Jane despite the fact that he hadn’t wanted a serious girlfriend.
And he was so good for her. He took an interest in her self-improvement and urged her to stop reading novels and engage with more nonfiction. He declaredher painting supplies messy and too expensive. “Besides, you’re not actually going to be an artist, Jane. Be realistic.” In an attempt to be a good girlfriend, she painted less and less, barely noticing when she stopped making art entirely.
But Kevin was just so great! He serenaded her on his guitar. They did the Sunday crossword together. He loved his mom. He loved Jane. Until he told her over a street kebab that maybe he never really had.
“It’s just gotten too hard, hasn’t it? I mean, are you still having fun?”
Once, in high school science, Jane’s teacher had dipped an orange in liquid nitrogen and then thrown it on the floor, cracking it like glass. That’s the only way she knew to describe the physical sensation in her chest—cold and shattered. She tried to play it cool, to say, “Yeah, it’s fizzling out, isn’t it? Well, let’s still be friends.” She tried, but she ended up pleading, her nose running, making promises, splaying out her emotions in a desperate way that would haunt her long after she’d forgotten Kevin’s smell.
They’d been together for twenty-three months. She’d gone wedding-dress browsing on the sly. The apartment had been his, so she spent a month living on Molly’s couch, curled up and consuming ice cream by the pint. At last, Emma-esque, she burned Kevin mementos one by one in her wok lid. But she never got back her art supplies.
Day 8
The next morning, rain blurred the hard edges from the world, transforming objects into simplified shapes, like Christo’s fabric-wrapped bridges, nudes, and trees. Jane had been painting since daybreak. Yellow, red, orange, blue. The colors made her hungry, but she was too infatuated with paint on canvas to dress for breakfast. When Matilda came, Jane shooed her away.
She had forgotten the thrill she used to feel when buying a new paintbrush, squeezing all those colors onto her palette, smelling the clean, natural odor of the oils, the reckless unknown of first spoiling a white canvas. These past years, she had become comfortable with her mouse and computer screen, creating corporate art, lazy and dull. Kind of like her last relationships. And now, smearing green and blue together, interrupting it with orange, she realized she wanted to love someone the way she felt when painting—fearless, messy, vivid.
In honor of Jane Eyre, she did a self-portrait. When she caught just the right shading of a cheek, her heart bumped her ribs as though she were in love. She was after that self-assurance in the eyes of those old portraits, a knowing gleam that insisted she was worth looking at. It was tricky to achieve. She wanted to ask someone else’s opinion about her painting, but not the traitor Matilda. Aunt Saffronia? No, she was too eager to please. Martin? Oh, stop it. Mr. Nobley? Yes, but why him?
When hunger at last chased her from her easel, she threw on a day dress and crept downstairs, finding a maid, who served her tea and bread in the gray-washed morning room. The house echoed as though long deserted. She thought of returning to her easel but felt unsettled by the expression she’d left in her painting—she feared it was forced assurance, an actor’s eyes. She decided to give both pairs of eyes a break.
Voices in the hall chased her down a corridor. She didn’t feel fit for company. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders; her feet were bare under her dark gray day dress. She wasn’t even wearing a corset. And her mood felt more gothic horror than cheery comedy of manners.
She slinked into the library, staring at the streaks of water against the window, the bookA Sentimental Journeyhalf open before her. What do gardeners do in the rain? she wondered.
Mr. Nobley had entered the room before he noticed her. She startled upright in her chair, feeling as if she should hide her unkempt self, but he didn’t seem to notice and instead groaned dramatically.
“And here you are. Miss Erstwhile. You are infuriating and irritating, and yet I find myself looking for you. I would be grateful if you would send me away and make me swear to never return.”
His easy manner was like a tune that bade her body relax. “You shouldn’t have told me that’s what you want, Mr. Nobley, because now you’re not going to get it.”
“Then I must stay?”
“Unless you want to risk me accusing you of ungentleman-like behavior, yes, I think you should stay. My brain had been hatching a plan to hide for the rest of the day, but I think too much time alone in this mood and I’m in real danger of doing a convincing impersonation of the madwoman in the attic.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And how would that be different from—”
“Sit down, Mr. Nobley,” she said.
