Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“I am going to insist on heavy security,” he continued in his sleep, “because I do not want any television…”

Darcy’s speech died away, leaving Jane staring at him in complete puzzlement. For though she was able to derive little meaning from his actual words, neither did they sound to her like the rantings of one who is deranged. It was altogether quite mysterious.

While Jane was pondering the mystery of Darcy’s peculiar mutterings, the bedroom door quietly opened and Cassandra stepped into the room. Dressed in her nightgown and carrying a candle of her own, she came over to the bed and stood beside her sister.

“Is he any better?” Cassandra whispered.

“He is very feverish, I fear,” Jane told her.

“Poor man,” Cassandra sighed. “Has he spoken again?”

Jane hesitated before replying. Then, without knowing exactly why, she shook her head. “No,” she lied, “he has said nothing more.”

Cassandra looked around the dimly lit bedroom. “It must be most inconvenient having this stranger occupying your bedroom,” she sympathized. “Shall I stay and sit a while with you?”

Jane kissed her sister’s cheek. “No, thank you, dear Cass. I shall work on First Impressions a while longer,” she said.

Cass’s eyes lit up at the mention of the novel, an older work that Jane had lately begun to rewrite. “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve decided to get back to that one,” Cass whispered, “it’s always been my favorite of all your works. Tell me, have you yet decided the fate of all the Misses Bennet?”

Jane smiled, for her sister was the one person in the world with whom she felt completely at ease in discussing her writing. “I have decided that I want both of the elder Bennet sisters in my book to be happily married in the same ceremony,” she confided to Cass. “Do you think that will seem too contrived?”

Cassandra laughed delightedly. For, despite Edward’s brotherly view of her as a somber old maid without a trace of passion in her soul, Cass never tired of discussing Jane’s wildly romantic stories. “A double wedding will make a perfect ending,” she said. “And I never care if an event in a novel is slightly contrived, as long as the contrivance leads to a blissfully happy ending.”

Cass paused for a moment, then continued. “But I still do not like the title First Impressions ,” she informed Jane. “I think you should call it Improper Pride . For that is what the story is really about.”

“It is about pride, yes,” Jane grudgingly conceded. “But more than that, my novel is about the prejudices that often unfairly attach to persons merely because of circumstance beyond their control.

“However,” she promised Cass, “I shall think about a new title if it will make you happy. Now go to bed,” Jane ordered. “I will come to your room and sleep later. After you have rested.”

Cassandra nodded her agreement but she remained standing beside Jane’s bed, looking down at the tall man. “Mr. Darcy is very handsome, is he not?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Jane agreed. “Very.” By the candle’s glow she saw a tear glistening in the corner of Cassandra’s eye, and from it she knew that her sister was thinking of her late fiancé, a dashing young naval officer who had died of fever in the Indies, just months before he and Cass were to have been wed. Though nearly two decades had passed since the young man’s tragic death, theirs had been a deeply passionate and loving relationship, and one from which the beautiful Cassandra had never recovered.

At least, Jane reasoned as she read the grief on Cass’s face, there had been one great love, however brief, in her dear sister’s life. And, though she would never have dared mention it to Cass, Jane sometimes envied her that.

Long after Cassandra had gone to bed, Jane stood silently regarding Darcy’s face. Presently, she retrieved from the bodice of her gown the transparent card that looked like glass but was not. She marveled again at the cunning portrait of the tiny prancing horse frozen in the depths of the soft glass by some unimaginable magical process.

“I cannot believe, Mr. Darcy,” she said aloud to the still figure on her bed, “that you are what my brother thinks you are. But whatever else you may be, you are by far the most fascinating personage this house has ever entertained. And my honor as well as my own curiosity about you demands that I keep your secrets until you are able to explain them for yourself.”

Jane smiled down at Darcy, reaching out to lay a soft hand against his cheek. “Cass is right on one count, though,” she told him. “You are a very handsome rogue.”

She left him then, walking across the room to a tall wardrobe and removing her nightgown from it. Casting a self-conscious glance at the masculine form on her bed and feeling slightly foolish, she stepped behind a thin screen of sheer muslin and began to disrobe.

Darcy, had in fact been wide awake for all but a few moments of the evening, when he had dreamed he was giving orders to his trainer about Lord Nelson. Now he opened his eyes and silently studied the slender feminine form, which was clearly silhouetted by the firelight, enchanted by the image.

“So I lay there in the darkness of that strange room,” Darcy said, “unable to move and afraid to speak to her…” He was still leaning on the fence, talking.

Eliza, who had listened silently to his story until now, could not resist interrupting. “Afraid…of her?”

Slowly Darcy turned at the sound of Eliza’s voice, as if he was emerging from a dream. “Yes,” he replied without evident embarrassment. “You see, I was wholly convinced that my head injury had triggered some sort of delusional state and that I would snap out of it at any moment and find myself in an ordinary hospital room, babbling to some poor bewildered nurse.”

“But you were really somewhere back in the nineteenth century…with Jane Austen.” Eliza could not keep the cynicism out of her voice.

“May of 1810, I soon discovered,” Darcy responded matter-of-factly. “But there were far too many other things concerning me at that moment to have immediately connected her with the Jane Austen. In fact, Jane’s first novel had not yet been published in the year 1810.”

Eliza was still dubiously shaking her head. “You’ll forgive me if I find all of this extremely hard to believe,” she said.

“Miss Knight, you insisted on knowing why I said that Jane’s letter was meant for me,” Darcy brusquely reminded her. “I had very little expectation that you would believe my explanation. Which is also why I’ve never told anyone else what happened.”

“Then why tell me?” Eliza countered argumentatively.

“Because,” Darcy responded with rising frustration, “you have something that I desperately want. And I am not ashamed to confess that I will do anything I can if there is even the slightest chance of convincing you to let me have that letter.”

“Ah, yes! I forgot,” she shot back. “A letter from a lover you abandoned two hundred years ago. Well, it is a wildly romantic concept.”

Darcy’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “You don’t understand at all!” he said vehemently.

“What doesn’t she understand, Fitz?”

They both turned to see Faith Harrington walking down the lane toward them. Darcy cast a warning glance at Eliza, then smiled at the new arrival. “Eliza doesn’t understand the many difficulties of breeding champion jumpers, Faith.”

Playing along with his deception, Eliza looked down at the ground and kicked at a clump of grass. “I guess I’m just a dumb old city girl,” she admitted. Then, raising her eyes to Darcy’s, she put on what she hoped was her dumbest expression. “Now it’s the mares that have the foals, right?”