Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

Eliza raised her eyebrows at this seeming exaggeration of a good friend’s character, but Jenny wasn’t finished yet.

“The times might have changed,” observed the beautiful black woman, “but you still don’t find that many Southern aristocrats hobnobbing with the descendants of the family slaves. And besides his other work and contributions to a number of causes, Fitz puts on this charity Rose Ball at his own expense every year, just so the poor kids around here—many of them from former slave families like mine—can go to college.”

Jenny was obviously speaking on a favorite theme and she reached her conclusion with near religious fervor, “The man is a saint in my book.”

“Yet he seems to be somewhat…obsessed, too,” Eliza timidly observed.

“Oh, you mean the Jane Austen thing?” said Jenny. “Isn’t that why you’re here after all?”

“Well, yes,” Eliza admitted.

“I can’t honestly claim to be a big fan of that Austen lady,” Jenny said, “considering the fact that she was bemoaning the problems of the not-quite-rich-enough back in England while my people were chopping cotton and being sold by the pound. Though to be fair,” Jenny went on, “Miss Austen did from time to time write a few things disapproving of slavery.” Jenny lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I have my own private theory as to why Fitz is so hung up on Miss Jane Austen.”

Eliza leaned forward eagerly.

“First,” Jenny explained, “you have to understand that this place almost came apart two hundred years ago, when Rose Darcy read that woman’s book naming her man and a place he owned called Pemberley. I suspect that if Rose hadn’t known that no Darcy had set foot in England for forty years or more, the rose-petal baths would have come to a screeching halt.”

Eliza stared at the other woman. “Are you saying that Fitz’s ancestor wasn’t in England around the time that Jane Austen was writing?”

“Lord, no!” Jenny snorted. “The Darcy family were American patriots back in 1776, and not a one of them ever went back to England again until well after the end of the Civil War.”

Jenny suddenly hesitated, almost as though she feared revealing embarrassing family secrets that had come to light yesterday, rather than two centuries earlier. “But after Pride and Prejudice was published here in the U.S.,” she said in a low voice, “there was scandalous gossip that the first Fitzwilliam Darcy, the man who built Pemberley Farms, must have been Jane Austen’s lover, else why would she have used his name in her book?”

“Good question,” said Eliza, remembering the haunted look in Darcy’s verdant eyes as he had related his extraordinary tale to her. “Why do you think Jane Austen used those names?” she asked Jenny. “I mean, the mere fact that she linked two rather odd names like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Pemberley together would seem to rule out coincidence.”

Jenny laughed. “Well, if the same thing happened today,” she said, “my first guess would have been that she must have picked them out of the phone book…or off the Internet. But where or how she might have run across them two hundred years ago is anybody’s guess.

“All I know,” Jenny said, “is that because of Pride and Prejudice there were no Austen lovers in the Darcy family. And though Fitz doesn’t talk about it, I think his obsession with Austen’s letters and papers may have something to do with proving once and for all that there was never any connection. You know, family honor and all of that.”

Jenny paused and her eyes lit up as she pulled another gown from the rack. “Oh, my! Look what I just found for you!” she breathed, holding up an emerald green velvet Regency-era ball gown that was strikingly similar to the one that Eliza had seen and discussed with Darcy at the library exhibit.

Eliza took the gown from her, turned to a full-length mirror on the wall and tried to imagine how she would look in the shocking garment. “Well, it might fit me,” she reluctantly admitted, “but I have it on good authority that Jane Austen would never have worn anything this revealing.”

“Maybe not,” Jenny grinned, “but then she didn’t have access to the Wonder Bra either. You have just got to try it on,” she insisted, standing back and scrutinizing Eliza. “And we need to do something with your hair.”

Having minutes before calmed the frantic caterer, Darcy was now standing out on the front lawn, facing the Great House. As was his custom each year before the ball, he was going over last-minute details with the two dozen employees and volunteers who had assembled on the drive. It would be their responsibility to transport arriving guests by carriage from the gatehouse parking area to the house.

The men, most of whom were local grooms and trainers, would be transformed for one evening into liveried carriage drivers, footmen and attendants, and many of them were nervous or uncertain about their roles in the grand costumed drama of the Rose Ball.

Eliza stepped out onto the balcony wearing the green Regency dress, her hair swept up, with soft tendrils framing her face. She stood there for a moment and watched Fitz on the lawn with his employees, joking and having a good time. She smiled at his seeming ability to fit into any situation with ease.

“Now, as the guests arrive tomorrow night,” Darcy said, pointing to two younger men near the front of the group, “Jimmy and Larry here will help them from their carriages as quickly as possible. Speed is very important,” Darcy stressed, “because we only have a limited number of carriages and they must be turned around and sent immediately back down to the gatehouse to…”

Attracted by a flash of movement, Darcy let his eyes wander up to the second story of the house. He stopped talking at the site of Eliza at the balcony railing. She looked like a snapshot out of time. Their eyes met, they stared at each other, bewitched. Eliza recovered first and quickly vanished into the bedroom.

Darcy remained frozen to the spot, gazing up at the balcony as if he’d seen a ghost. Several of the men turned to see what had distracted him, but there was nothing to be seen. Jimmy, one of the two young stable hands whom Darcy had been addressing a moment before, cleared his throat for his employer’s attention.

“Uh, Fitz, are we footmen supposed to escort the guests up to the steps, or what?” Jimmy asked.

Darcy slowly lowered his eyes to the group of men patiently waiting for him to resume speaking. “What?”

“After we get them out of the carriages,” Jimmy began again, “do we walk them over to the steps?”

“Sorry, Jimmy. No,” Darcy replied, trying to remember exactly what he had been saying before Eliza’s ghostly appearance. “One of the hostesses will be waiting to escort each group into the house,” he resumed. “It’s your job to get those carriages turned around as fast as you can.”

“Fitz, what about these here costumes ?” whined another young hand. “Do I really gotta wear them tight fancy pants they give us?”

Darcy smiled at the predictable question that was always prompted by the men’s first sight of the red satin breeches that went with their bright green coats of Pemberley livery. “Ben, this is your first year in costume,” he replied. “But the other guys here can all tell you that once your girlfriend sees you in those tight red pants she’ll never let you go back to wearing overalls again.”

Ben nodded miserably. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he groaned, prompting a good-natured outburst of laughter from the other men standing on the drive.

Inside Rose Darcy’s bedroom Eliza leaned against the beveled glass of the French doors trying to catch her breath. God, the way he looked at her, the butterflies were going crazy in her stomach.