Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

Maggie, the red-faced housekeeper, hurried into the bedroom and stared in confusion at the unconscious man lying on the floor.

“Don’t just stand there,” said Jane, bending over him. “The gentleman has fainted. Help me get him back into bed.”

Together the two women managed to haul Darcy back onto the bed. When it was done, they both stood panting from the effort. Maggie fanned herself with her apron for a few moments. Then she went around to the foot of the bed and started removing Darcy’s boots.

Jane watched her, then reached over and unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt, revealing a chain holding a gold medallion emblazoned with the Darcy family crest. She curiously lifted the pendant in her hand, looking at the detail in the design, then returned to the business of unfastening his shirt.

“Now you leave all that to me, Miss Jane,” fussed Maggie, placing Darcy’s boots in a corner and returning to the bed. “I’ll look after the gentleman properlike.”

“Nonsense, Maggie,” Jane replied. “I grew up with six brothers. So I believe I am perfectly capable of managing one unconscious gentleman. Now do go down to the kitchen and put on the kettle for Mr. Hudson. He’ll want hot water, basins and clean muslin for this wound when he arrives.”

Frowning and muttering at the impropriety of her mistress dirtying her hands on the muddy stranger, Maggie nevertheless scurried off, as she had been ordered to do.

When the fretful housekeeper was gone Jane lifted Darcy’s gold medallion from his chest and examined it more closely. Then she covered him with a blanket.

She stepped back from the bed, and noticed a glint of light from something on the floor where Darcy had fallen in his attempt to stand. Her curiosity aroused, Jane picked up a small, rectangular object no larger than a gentleman’s calling card. She frowned and looked closely at it, scarcely believing her eyes. With the strange card held high in her hand, she walked straight to the window and extended it into the bright shaft of midmorning light pouring into the room.

“Such a thing as this cannot be!” Jane gasped as a perfect, three-dimensional hologram of a prancing horse danced and wheeled in the sunlight before her disbelieving eyes. Squinting to better see the magical picture, she saw behind the tiny horse the same golden crest that she had observed just moments before on Darcy’s medallion.

Jane read aloud the words “‘Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pemberley Farms,’” impressed in graceful black type below the hologram on the clear plastic business card—a box of which had been a gift to Darcy from Faith Harrington the previous Christmas.

Jane scanned the senseless jumble of e-mail, fax and telephone numbers beneath Darcy’s name, unable to decipher their meaning. Then she ran her fingertips over the flat surface of the hologram once more, confirming for herself the reality of the thing.

Turning, she stared at Darcy, who lay unmoving on the bed. “Who are you, sir, to possess such a wondrous, nay, impossible object?” she whispered to the helpless stranger. “And what will others think of you when they see such an astonishing thing?”

She was startled out of her rumination by the sound of carriage wheels on the drive below. Looking out the window she saw Mr. Hudson’s modest black surrey pulling to a stop before her gate. To Jane’s surprise, her sister, Cassandra, whom he must have met along the way, was riding beside the white-haired doctor. She heard the urgent sound of their voices as they hurried into the house and started up the stairs.

Wracked with indecision, Jane looked from the impossible card in her hand to the unconscious man on the bed. Footsteps were sounding outside the bedroom door as she stole another look at the clear plastic card, then tucked it into her gown.

It was midafternoon before Darcy again awoke. This time there was an intense, steady throb in his head and a strange tingling sensation in his right arm. He opened his eyes and blinked up at a high ceiling finished in swirls of dazzling white plaster. Grimacing at the pain, he tried to recall the strange dream he had just had. He vaguely remembered falling from his horse and being brought to some sort of theme park where the employees all wore old-fashioned costumes.

Turning his head, Darcy looked at his right arm, curious to discover the cause of the itchy, tingling sensation. He was horrified to see three glistening black leeches, each the size of his thumb, greedily sucking at the soft flesh on the inside of his forearm, which was suspended over a porcelain basin containing several more of the engorged nightmare creatures.

Darcy’s scream of terror immediately brought a white-haired gentleman wearing a bloody apron to his bedside. “There, there, sir!” said the startled old gentleman. “Steady now. As your physician I must caution you against any abrupt—”

“What the hell are those things doing on me?” Darcy shouted, struggling to rise.

“Sir, you were badly in need of bleeding to reduce the dangerous humours occasioned by your injury,” the doctor patiently explained.

Finding that he was too weak to sit up, Darcy again interrupted the man by screaming, “Get them off of me! Now!” His eyes darted wildly about the room, seeking someone to help him, but he saw that he was alone with the demented old man. “Get them off!” he again ordered.

Obviously distressed by the vehemence of his patient’s outburst the doctor quickly removed the leeches from Darcy’s arm and retreated, muttering, with his horrible basin to the far corner of the room.

At that moment the bedroom door flew open and a handsome, middle-aged man entered. He was wearing a splendid tailcoat of wine-colored velvet over spotless doeskin breeches tucked into a pair of gleaming knee-high boots. Peering through the doorway behind the new arrival Darcy glimpsed Jane, the pretty brunette, and a taller, slightly older blonde woman.

“Everything all right, Hudson?” The man in the velvet coat had a pleasant, cheerful voice and the tenor of his question suggested he might have been asking if the tea was satisfactory.

“No! Everything is not all right!” Darcy shouted. He pointed his finger accusingly at the elderly man in the bloody apron, who was protectively cradling his basin of wriggling leeches. “I woke up to find this…witch doctor sticking those things on me—”

Darcy broke off his complaint to take a closer look at the odd assemblage in their long dresses and funny suits. They were all staring at him as if he was mad. “Who are you people anyway?” he demanded.

“Sir, I beg you to remain calm,” said the handsome gentleman in the tailcoat. He stepped forward and bowed slightly at the waist. “My name is Edward Austen,” he continued, “and upon my word as a gentleman, Mr. Hudson is an eminent member of the Royal Academy of Medicine.”

Stepping over to the white-haired man, Edward Austen placed an approving hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Hudson has for years been entrusted with the care of my own dear family and is of the highest repute,” he assured Darcy.

“Your confusion of the moment is understandable for you have suffered a severe blow to the brain, which has temporarily addled you, sir. But for your own welfare you must remain calm.”

Darcy struggled to sit up in the soft featherbed but Mr. Hudson rushed over and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Please, sir!” he cautioned. “The bleeding will have made you quite lightheaded. Now, if you will just lie back quietly while I stitch up your wound with cat’s gut—”

His eyes widening, Darcy feebly pushed the old man away. “Cat’s gut!” he moaned. “Are you insane? Let me up!” He rose a few inches from the pillows, and then fell back, unconscious.