Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“Oh there you are!” Faith waved and hurried down to the lakeshore. She had changed from her riding outfit into a frilly pink summer dress, which somehow made her look even harder and less feminine than she had before. “Now y’all aren’t having a little secret affair, are you?” the tall blonde chirped, leering at Eliza.

Annoyed by the sudden interruption, Eliza stooped to retrieve her sketch pad and her shoes. “If we were it wouldn’t be a secret for long around here, would it?” she murmured resentfully.

“My goodness, aren’t we cranky? I just came to tell you that dinner is being served.” Faith’s manner was full of wounded innocence. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting your little soiree otherwise,” she pouted, turning and stomping back toward the house on her own. Darcy and Eliza waited a moment before following her at a safe distance.

“Do you two have a thing going?” Eliza asked him when the other was out of hearing range.

Darcy shook his head and smiled. “No, old family friend and Harv’s sister,” he told her as if to explain Faith’s presence, although he wasn’t sure why that was important. He looked up at the retreating pink figure flouncing through the dusk ahead of them. “I’m afraid that poor Faith just can’t stand not being the center of attention.”

Eliza laughed at the ridiculous explanation of the other woman’s bad manners. “You don’t really think that’s all it is, I hope.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Eliza said, pointing at Faith, “that the woman looks like a disgruntled postal worker who just got a pink slip.” She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “You don’t have any automatic weapons lying around, do you?”

“Well, not any that are loaded,” Darcy replied with a grin. “Shall we go up to dinner now?”

Eliza shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Sure, why not?”

Eliza, Harv, Jenny and Artemis were clustered at one end of the huge table in the echoing dining room, eating a delcious meal of crab bisque and cold fried chicken. Faith, meanwhile, had once more appropriated Darcy for herself. She had moved him to the opposite end of the table, where she had been chattering nonstop for the past half hour about some arrangement or other.

“Admit it now, aren’t you glad you stayed?” Harv Harrington was pointing a partially consumed drumstick at Eliza.

She cast a deadly glance in Faith’s direction. “Let me get back to you on that one, Harv,” she replied, attacking the savory pink soup with an antique silver spoon, the bowl of which was cunningly formed to resemble a miniature seashell.

Harv’s handsome features contorted into an expression of mock concern at her reply. “Oh, my! I do hope my big sister hasn’t been bothering you,” he said.

“No more than your average case of bubonic plague,” Eliza assured him. “What is with her anyway? I mean, it’s not like she caught Fitz and me playing doctor behind the barn.”

“Artie, I told you I liked this girl,” Jenny piped up.

Artemis looked up thoughtfully from his bisque. “Playing doctor behind the barn? I must have missed that course in med school,” he commented dryly.

Jenny leaned over and kissed his neck. “I’ll fill you in on it later, dear,” she solemnly promised. Then she turned to Harv. “Harv, why don’t you be a darling and explain to Eliza about Fitz and your sister,” she said.

Delighted at actually being invited to speak for once, Harv quickly finished demolishing his chicken drumstick and washed down the last bite with a large swallow of scotch. “Fitz and Faith,” he said at length. “Well, that’s simple enough. You see, Eliza, Faith has dreamed of becoming the mistress of Pemberley Farms since she was old enough to read a Gucci label—”

“And she learned to read from the Neiman Marcus catalog,” Artemis interjected, reaching for the chicken platter.

Harv shot the handsome doctor a pained look, then turned and refocused his attention on Eliza. “As I was saying, Faith’s most ardent wish is that Fitz will marry her. A wish Fitz isn’t likely to grant. But I suppose I should start at the beginning. Although our family—mine and Faith’s—is old and aristocratic, our wealth isn’t what it once was. So, unless one of us should ever decide, God forbid, to go to work, our only track to genteel prosperity is for me or Faith to marry somebody rich enough to keep up with our spending habits.”

“Which together roughly rival those of Argentina,” interrupted Jenny.

Artemis threw Harv a pitying glance. “The man is in a tough position,” he told Eliza. “I’m talking about using his mansion’s swimming pool to raise catfish .” Artie managed to look suitably solemn. “It’s very sad to see a once-rich-and-powerful white family reduced to such a state,” he intoned.

“Thanks, Artie, I knew you’d understand,” Harv said gratefully. “And despite what you’ve heard from the AMA, catfish contains almost no fat. It’s the beer and cornmeal batter that really puts on the pounds.”

“Now that’s a true fact!” Jenny declared.

Harv turned back to Eliza. “At any rate, Eliza,” he continued, “I have tried my level best to secure a bride who would restore the family fortunes and, incidentally, put a new roof on the summer house, but alas the only suitable candidates all rejected me, including one who actually looked like a catfish…”

“She did, too!” Jenny giggled. “It was a match made in heaven.”

Harv ignored the remark and, clearing his throat, continued in a mournful tone, “I struck out in the marriage bowl. My sister hasn’t fared any better and continues to hope that Fitz will reconsider his stand and marry her. But the only way that might happen is to get him blind drunk so he forgets how obnoxious she is long enough for us to whisk him off to Juarez or someplace where they still perform fifteen-dollar weddings without a blood test.”

By this time Eliza had caught the giggles from Jenny. “Wow! I’m sorry I asked,” she told Harv, whose nose was back in his glass. “And Fitz doesn’t have any inclination to go along with this program?”

Snorting into his drink, Harv rolled his eyes but kept drinking so Jenny attempted to interpret for him, “Absolutely not.”

Finally coming up for air Harv added, “We couldn’t actually get him that drunk.”

Eliza queried, “Doesn’t he like her?” Wondering why the woman was there at all.

Artemis joined the conversation. “Well, he liked her enough to take her to England with him.”

“She was with him?” startling herself with the quick stab of jealousy she felt.

Jenny seemed to sense Eliza’s alarm and was pleased that things were moving in that direction. “The tabloids had a field day with it but it was Harv’s idea, to keep her out of trouble here alone.”

Harv added, “Yeah, turned out she wasn’t the one we had to worry about.”

Eliza questioned the meaning of his cryptic statement, so Jenny explained, “That was when Fitz pulled his vanishing act. The tabloids had a field day with that, too.”

“Well, the tabloids got it all wrong,” intoned Harv. “I’m convinced he disappeared because he’d had just about enough of my darling sister as any sane person could take. I considered running away myself, he just beat me to it.”

Being reminded now of Fitz’s own explanation, she remembered the look on his face when he was talking about his first meetings with Jane Austen, and another small stab of jealousy surprised her.

Still in her own thoughts she mumbled aloud, “No, but he had fallen in love…” She stopped short, the three other diners turned and looked at her. Glancing at each in turn she realized that she couldn’t explain why she’d said it, so she hastily got up and excused herself. Bidding a good night to everyone at the table she retreated to the Rose Bedroom.