Midnight in Austenland (Austenland 2)

Another shot splattered plaster in the wall above her head. She screamed, nearly tumbled down the rest of the stairs, and knocked into the front door. Someone opened it from the outside.

“Charlotte,” said Eddie, “what’s—”

She pushed him out and ran for the gravel drive. “Mary. She’s back. With a gun.”

The front door opened and Mary came out, rifle on her shoulder.

“You should have left him alone!” she yelled.

A shot fired into the night. Eddie pulled Charlotte down flat then sprang back up, tackling Mary to the front stairs. He ripped the rifle from her hands, flung it away, and grabbed her fast. Mary struggled weakly for a few moments then started to weep. Her cry was high-pitched and rhythmic, reminding Charlotte of a wounded bird. Eddie didn’t let go, but after a moment, he did began to mutter, “There, there.”

Charlotte almost said, Hey, she just tried to shoot me in the head! Don’t there, there her!

But she couldn’t really blame him. Her cry was pathetic.

Mrs. Wattlesbrook stood over them, arms folded. “Really, Mary, you cannot expect to work here while engaging in such behavior. And your hair is a sight.”

Charlotte was lying on the gravel, her ears still ringing with the sound of rifle fire, and she wondered how many people had twice been the object of attempted murder on the very same day. She was special, that was sure, part of an elite club of other unknown almost-victims. Maybe she’d get a special citation from the queen. Maybe Lu would think she was cool.

“Are you going to faint again?” Eddie asked, kneeling beside her as the police cars rolled in.

“No … I think I’m getting used to it all,” she said, her voice sounding hollow and far away. “Attempted murder is becoming so mundane.”

He pulled her up into his arms. She closed her eyes.

“Oh no, Eddie,” she said, alert with a new thought. “You know what Mary would do first, before coming to kill me?”

Eddie groaned. “Let Mallery go.”

When the police went upstairs to the locked room, it was empty. Cut rope lay on the floor. Justin the guard was sound asleep in the hall beside a cup of tea, likely drugged and brought to him by Mary.

“At least it wasn’t yew tea,” said Eddie.

Charlotte had to push through half an hour of questions with the detective sergeant and wait outside with everyone else while the police conducted a thorough house search. There was no sign of Mallery. By the time the detective agreed that the rest of the questions could wait till morning, Charlotte felt more than half dead—at least two-thirds dead. The police were pretty well occupied with questioning their rifle-shooting prisoner, setting up a perimeter to catch an escaped murderer, and dredging a car out of a pond.

“I’m so sleepy,” Charlotte said, leaning into Eddie as they walked upstairs. Her speech was getting slurred and slushy. “I guess too much adrenaline in the system has some side effects, huh?”

Her eyes were closed when he picked her up and carried her into her room. She was going to accuse him of carrying her just so he could show off his manly strength, but speaking required so much effort. She’d removed her dress before the Mary incident, and handily she’d gone sans corset ever since her swim, so he slid her dressed as she was beneath the sheets. He lay down beside her.

“What are you doing?” she said, though it was barely intelligible.

“Staying beside you, making sure you aren’t attacked again tonight. If I don’t have that privilege, then no one should.”

“Okay,” she said. She turn

ed on her side and looked at him once more before closing her eyes for good.

“You’re safe,” she mumbled. “I love that. I love that so much.”

Home, before

Another universal truth is that endings trump beginnings. Charlotte’s memories of James began to warp and darken, like photographs held too close to heat, till all his past kindnesses were tainted by how he’d ultimately hurt her. James had been sweet at first only to make her ache all the more when he wasn’t.

Now that she thought about it, his name should have been a red flag: “James.” What kind of a person is so fussy he can’t dress down to a decent “Jim”? She didn’t need a “Jimmy” necessarily—though she wasn’t opposed to it. And there was always the “Jamie” option. But no, it was James all the time. His name, his betrayal: all cold, calculating, and self-important.

At least one memory remained vivid: once or twice each night, James would turn over in his sleep, his back to her, and play a long note on the buttocks bassoon. Hey, Justice, enjoy that adorable quirk.

Austenland, day 12