Austenland (Austenland 1)

Tonight, Jane had been kissed. Tonight she thought, Mr. Darcy who?

Boyfriend #3

Dave Atters, AGE SIXTEEN

She really liked this one, the power forward on the high school varsity team and the beginning of her unhealthy infatuation with basketball. She giggled and sighed and dreamed. He said jump, and she leaped. But when he parked his spoiled-boy convertible in front of her house after a date and thrust his hand up her skirt, she pushed him away. When she wouldn’t relent, he ordered her out of the car. At school, he acted as though they’d never met.

Years later, she considered seeing a therapist about this one until she realized that Dave “Fancy Hands” Atters wasn’t the guy holding her back—the blame really lay with Fitzwilliam “I love you against my better judgment” Darcy. Besides, there’d been the night of Homecoming when she and Molly had spray-painted she-male on the side of Dave’s convertible. That had been fairly therapeutic.

days 5–6

JANE COULD SCARCELY WAIT FOR night to come again. Social rules required that the ladies now visit Pembrook Cottage, and then Miss Heartwright had to be invited over to dine yet again. Jane had become the fourth woman in a three-gentleman household. Though the colonel’s smiling eyes often sought her out, and she was able to flay Mr. Nobley verbally at dinner, her attention kept dancing to thoughts of bedspreads on the curtain rod, root beer and television, and a man who smelled of gardens. Something real.

After Martin’s room, life in the drawing room seemed dulled and fuzzy—waiting for the gentlemen while chatting about nothing, welcoming the gentlemen and continuing to chat about nothing, every topic harmless and dry, everyone holding themselves a careful arm’s distance away.

What a crock, she thought. What absolute boredom and inanity. It can’t really have been like this. And if it was, why didn’t all those Regency women go insane?

After a painfully long hour pressed into playing speculation, she declared she would retire and sneaked out to the servants’ quarters.

She didn’t intend to make out with Martin again. But she did anyway. He 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 watched basketball. 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. A true miracle.

The next morning at breakfast, she looked at the gentlemen and felt proud, perhaps even smug. A house full of Regency dreamboats and she chose the root-beer-sipping gardener. Martin was appearing to be a serendipitous answer to her Darcy therapy.

The third night, by the time she’d arrived at Martin’s apartment, his bedspread was already blocking the window, Stevie Wonder was playing on his CD player (“very superstitious”), 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 cold meat-product hamburgers and nearly potato-free fries by the light of television static, which had become to Jane more romantic than candles, and traded tragic childhood stories.

“I was twelve and my mom still wouldn’t let me shave my legs,” Jane said. “One night I stole her razor and shaved in bed. In the dark. Without soap.”

“I was a punk kid, horribly skinny at age ten, and liked to throw eggs at cars. Yes, I know, the creativity of young boys is inspiring. I made the mistake of hitting the car of Gerald Lewis, the neighborhood’s bodybuilding record holder, who 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.”

Tonight she would definitely leave without so much as a good-bye 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. 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.

“How tall are you anyway?” she asked.

“About two hundred centimeters,” he said, his glance flicking from her eyes to her lips. “Six-foot-six to you, Miss American Pie.”

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 kissed her hand.

Jane went through the door backward as though she departed from the presence of a king, turned around, and found herself walking crooked.

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. 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, or perhaps ever, Ms. Jane Hayes felt . . . relaxed.

She plunged into bed and closed her eyes. And wondered how early she could slip away to see Martin again tomorrow.