Midnight in Austenland (Austenland 2)

The romance and awkwardness and sublime uncertainty would have broken her heart and driven her crazy. What next, what then, what should I say, what if I turned around, what will we do? But age gave her the peace, at least, to live inside that moment like a poet—to not sacrifice the beauty to the anxiety of What Next, but to just observe. The warmth of his hands under hers. His heartbeat against her back. The moment he adjusted his head to the side, as if he wanted to feel her skin against his cheek. The way his arms subtly tightened—conscious of her waist, feeling her there, enjoying her. How she felt from inside her throat down her middle toward her legs—all zingy and cold and light too. This was why she’d come here. Nothing else ever need happen again. She’d had her moment in Austenland, and even unfulfilled and uncertain, it was perfect. She leaned her head back till it touched his own, and she heard him sigh.

“I will be dancing with Miss Gardenside tonight,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.”

“It’s why you’re here. Why she’s here. It’s supposed to happen this way.”

“I wish it weren’t.”

Charlotte was about to say what she wished when her door opened. She moved out of Eddie’s embrace, and he whipped out his foil.

Miss Charming screamed, raising her hands in the air. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

Eddie lowered the weapon, his face flushed. “Sorry. I—sorry.”

“He’s standing guard in case there’s yet another person in this house who wants to kill me,” Charlotte said.

“Good thing I want you alive, then, so you can do up my back,” said Miss Charming. “Don’t want to ring for a maid. Don’t trust any of them anymore, crazy-eyed, trigger-happy lot.”

She turned her back to Charlotte and submitted to the buttoning, then fixed up the mismatched mess Eddie had made of Charlotte’s buttons, chatting all the while of past balls and favorite dances and the squelchy excitement she always got in her tummy whenever the music started. Her faux-British accent had taken a holiday ever since Mallery had tried to murder Charlotte.

Miss Charming volunteered to do Charlotte’s hair and dragged her to her own room. Through the open door, Charlotte could see Eddie in the hallway, holding his foil uncertainly.

“Go get dressed, Eddie,” she called out. “If any hopeful murderers attack us, Lizzy has promised to beat them with her curling iron.”

Charlotte thought it a reasonable threat, and Eddie must have agreed, for while he hesitated for a moment, he soon nodded and left.

“You really are more beautiful than you seem at first,” Miss Charming was saying, sticking a plastic Bumpit under Charlotte’s hair to add volume.

“Thanks?” said Charlotte.

“You’ve got a look that a person’s got to get used to, then after a while, voilà, you’re beautiful. My Bobby totally would have tested out a mattress sample with you.”

“Okay.”

“ ’Course, not that you woulda. You’re not one of those dangerous women, Charlotte. You’re nice.”

Charlotte heard the ball before she saw it. Music floated upstairs and lured her out to the landing. It was remarkable how different she felt in a ball gown—like someone special, someone princessy.

Miss Charming and Miss Gardenside met her on the landing. Strangers in formalwear swirled through the front d

oor, handing cloaks and hats to servants, laughing as they made their way to the great hall. Charlotte had to wonder where Mrs. Wattlesbrook found them all. A casting agency? The local YMCA? There must have been three dozen fresh bodies in Regency clothing. From this vantage, Charlotte couldn’t see the police tape on Mallery’s door or the bullet hole in the wall. Austenland was primped and pretty.

“Each time it’s like the first time,” Miss Charming whispered. “Each time, I think, This is the ball when everything changes.”

“Does it change?” Miss Gardenside asked.

“Sort of. But maybe … not quite enough.”

Colonel Andrews strode to the bottom of the stairs. Like all the men that night, he wore a black jacket and breeches, white shirt and cravat, the Regency version of the tuxedo. He put one hand behind his back and lifted the other up, an invitation.

“Do not require me to grovel, Miss Elizabeth, for you know I will. Come to me and make me the happiest man in the world, or I will grieve to the heavens of the injustice. I will tantrum until the gods take pity and strike me dead to save me the agony of a broken heart. I beg you, be my lady!”

Miss Charming pressed her gloved hands to her chest and gasped with delight, then jogged down the stairs with much roiling and shaking in her upper regions. Colonel Andrews flew up the stairs to meet her halfway, as if he could not wait another moment to touch her.

He took her hand, kissed it, then sighed to the ceiling. “She is a goddess, I say. A goddess!”