Austenland (Austenland 1)

She smoothed the stomach of her dress. She closed her eyes and tried to catch the feel of Austen dialogue—it was like trying to hum one song while listening to another. When she opened her eyes again, Colonel Andrews was sprinting across the lawn, a cup of water sloshing over his hand.

“I have it! I have the water! Never fear.” He bowed as he gave it to her, smiling the smile of a rake. She took it and drank. The water tasted of minerals and was deep-earth cold, as though it had been drawn from a well. It hummed in her belly. She could do this.

“Well, gentlemen.” She took a breath and smiled at the colonel. “Now that you’ve found me and watered me, what will you do with me?”

“What a marvelous question! How shall I answer?” Colonel Andrews chuckled low in his throat, mischievous. “No, I will be a good boy. So, what adventure were you on before we bumped into you? Keeping a tryst with a clandestine lover or following a map to hidden treasure?”

“I’ll never tell,” she said.

Nobley’s face was impassive, and when he spoke, his voice was traced with formal boredom. “It was my intent to go riding and leave you be, if you wished so much to walk alone.”

“But I will not have it,” Colonel Andrews said. “After all that rain, it is far too mucky to go hunting, and I need amusement, so you must go riding with us now that we have caught you. You are my butterfly and I refuse to turn you loose.”

She took the colonel’s arm as they walked to the stables, turning toward his bewitchingly smooth voice. He asked Jane question after question, hanging on her answers and utterly absorbed in her conversation as though she were a novel he could not bear to put down, his interest pulling her back into character as Miss Erstwhile.

Mr. Nobley walked beside her, then rode beside her, and never said another word. She tried to enjoy riding her pathetically docile mount, but Mr. Nobley’s silence felt like a slap. Hadn’t he seemed human for a moment, before he got all nasty and turned his back? Hadn’t the fake world tumbled away? No, it was a mistake, her own dratted hopefulness building castles again where there was only mud. She’d been wrong to try to lower the Regency curtain with that man. He was an actor. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Of course, she returned Mr. Nobley’s silent treatment. Something about the way he looked at her made her feel naked—not naked-sexy, but naked-embarrassed, naked-he-sees-through-my-idiocy-and-knows-what-a-silly-woman-I-am. And she was still straddling the real world and Austenland too precariously to meet his eyes again that day.

The colonel made her laugh and forget, and so despite feeling slightly sticky and foolish and wrapped in a potato sack, Jane had a pretty nice afternoon. She did keep looking out for the tall gardener, hoping he wouldn’t see her pretending to be a lady with two costumed gentlemen. Then once, for a moment, hoping that he would.

JANE DID GET HER BATH and felt the sexier for it, empire waist and all. So, clean and sexy, and fiercely clutching her fake Austenland self, she waited that afternoon in the drawing room for the much-anticipated visit from the denizen of Pembrook Cottage. Jane was wearing one of those small, sheer scarves around her shoulders and knotted at her chest, properly acknowledging that Regency breasts should be veiled during daylight hours. Miss Charming’s lacy neck scarf barely covered the recesses of her cleavage, daunted as it was by the tundra expanse of the woman’s chest.

Miss Charming was fanning her neck with a hand. Jane did the

same. Her dress was of light muslin, but beneath lay chemise, corset, and stockings gartered to her thighs, and the autumn sun was vigorous that day, pounding through the windows and flooding the room. Jane waited faintheartedly for the sound of air-conditioning clicking on. No such luck.

At the sound of the bell, Jane and Miss Charming rose from the sofas, straightened their skirts, and listened for the maid to admit the visitors. The men were elsewhere, of course. Aunt Saffronia was waiting in the hall.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Miss Charming said with no trace of her faux British accent.

“I’d be very impressed if you did.” Just at that moment, Jane had been fantasizing about chocolate soup, a dessert she’d once inhaled at a spiffy restaurant in Florida. There was no chocolate in Pembrook Park, though Jane couldn’t figure if that lack was helping or impeding her attempt at make-believe.

“You’re hoping that Amelia Heartwright is an old, unattractive thing and that the boys won’t like her at all. Am I right?” Miss Charming bobbed on her toes.

“Actually, now that you mention it . . .” Miss Charming made an excellent point. Jane gave her a sheepish smile.

They were both disappointed.

“Girls! Look who is here at last. Miss Amelia Heartwright. Miss Heartwright, may I present Miss Elizabeth Charming and my niece, Miss Jane Erstwhile.”

The three ladies curtsied and bowed their heads, and Jane noticed how natural and elegant Miss Heartwright’s curtsy seemed. She had clearly been here before and come back for more, one of Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s ideal clients. She would know the system, the players, the language and customs. She would be a formidable foe.

And she was lovely. Her (natural-looking) blond hair was long, twisted up with plenty of curls around her face. She had an open, honest face (heart-shaped even, as those old writers might have said), pink cheeks and lips, and darling blue eyes. She was slender and tall and not a day over thirty-nine. Forty-three, tops.

Jane scratched her ankle with a toe beneath her skirt. Miss Charming scowled.

“Mama sends her regrets, Lady Templeton, but she is quite fatigued today,” Miss Heartwright said in an infuriatingly real British accent. “She bade me bring these apples from our tree.”

Aunt Saffronia took the basket. “Lovely! I will give them to the chef and we shall see what splendid treat he can make out of them. You must stay for dinner, Amelia. I insist.”

“Thank you, I will.”

Jane and Miss Charming exchanged frowns.

The four ladies sat and chatted, or mostly Miss Heartwright and Aunt Saffronia chatted while Jane and her unhappy ally listened, glumly plucking at their embroidery. But among her other qualities, Miss Heartwright was also generous in her attentions.

“Miss Erstwhile, do you enjoy novels?”