Oh! Jane thought sadly. She knew it was pretend—of course she knew—but in that moment, an arrow of ice seemed to enter her heart at the thought of losing this man.
Barely audible, a servant in the audience muttered, “For the love of god, how much longer is this?”
Jane and Nobley both curled forward, incapacitated again by uncontrollable laughter. Jane really tried to hold it in—if Wattlesbrook kicked her out for the phone, would breaking on stage earn similar condemnation?—but every time she heard Nobley’s little strangled gasps of suppressed chortles, it kicked up her own. She covered her face with her hands and tried to breathe.
When at last she didn’t feel assaulted by laughs, she lowered her hands and found Nobley looking up at her, inches from her face, his recent laugh still bending his mouth into a smile.
And he spoke his dying line.
nobley:
I yearned for heroics and bloodshed, but now that the only blood shed is my own, my heart is free to feel for the first time. And what it yearns for is . . .you. I—
He took a breath, and then, “I love you.”
An inhaled breath froze in her throat. Her heart battered against her corset. It’d been the essence of his line, though simplified, and stripped of similes and farms and rain and moonand all, it pierced her. Nobley’s eyes, no longer laughing, were gazing up at her. At her and into her. Into her eyes as though he couldn’t bear to look away. The delicious curl in his smile melted, as if he had startled himself with the words, as if they had come to his lips unprepared and unbidden. How, in the middle of all this silliness, while speaking cliché lines, did this feel like the most real moment in all of Austenland?
Jane put a hand on his face, acting out her character comforting a dying soldier. But it was still Jane’s hand. And it was still Nobley’s face. She touched a laugh tear leaking from the corner of his eye. Her fingers lightly grazed his temple, down his cheek, across the short whiskers on his chin, her thumb stopping just below his lower lip. She thought she felt his body shiver under her hand, though perhaps not in laughter. She no longer battled her own laugh. All her energy went into keeping her body from leaning forward those few inches and meeting his mouth with hers.
A cleared throat in the audience startled Jane out of this moment. In the front row, Aunt Saffronia, who’d been laughing encouragingly during the parts that were supposed to be sad and clapping gleefully whenever a new character came onstage, cleared her throat again, as though intensely uncomfortable.
Colonel Andrews whispered, “Charming, my pet, this is the part where you heal him.”
And Miss Charming whispered loudly, “Oh right! I forgot what I was doing. Those two kinda looked like they were gonna tackle each other.” She skipped back onto the stage, her wings shimmying.
charming:
Surprise! ’Tis I, your fairy queen.
Why so much death? Oops, not ag-een!
When her hand went for the glitter pouch, Nobley raised his own in a defensive posture.
nobley:
No! Not that stuff. Er . . . You are so powerful, fairy queen, surely you can just heal me? Without the glitter?
charming:
I guess so. Boom, you’re healed. And I guess you, too, Heartwreck.
heartwright:
Death undoes the fairy curse, and as my soul returns from across the river Styx, I recognize the face of my soulmate. This kindly shepherd holds my heart.
east:
I cheer . . .and something—something. Er,huzzah!
jane:
My love was wreathed in the robes of war, but returns to me in peace.
east:
My love was run through with my enemy’s sword, but returns to me whole.
andrews:
