Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

Later, Eliza sat cross-legged on the floor of her room, reviewing the events of her peculiar first day at Pemberley Farms. Because she always did her clearest thinking while she was working, her sketch pad was in her lap. Why had she felt jealous over a man she’d known only a few hours? Jealous of a woman he didn’t like and another who’d been dead almost two hundred years. She had to laugh at herself for the absurdity of it all.

Glancing up from time to time at the lovely portrait of Rose Darcy, Eliza drew the first mistress of the Great House precisely as Jenny had described her, standing on the balcony of the Rose Bedroom dressed in her silken gown, watching the distant fields for the return of her man.

Trying to sort out the strange thoughts swirling around her head, Eliza mentally recapped as she sketched. Darcy’s ancestor had been ruled out as a candidate for the character in Jane Austen’s romantic classic. And Jenny and the others had all marked his trip to England three years before as the beginning of Fitz’s obsession with the writer.

Eliza tried to seriously consider the possibility that her host’s incredible story might actually be true. Closing her eyes, she envisioned once more Darcy’s trancelike expression as he had seemingly relived events for her that, in his mind at least, had taken place two centuries before. Could it all possibly have happened just as he said? Eliza struggled to come up with an alternate explanation, one that could be tested with logic and reason.

She was startled out of her musings by the sound of a light knock. Eliza got up, laid her sketch pad on the bed and went to the door. “Who is it?” she asked softly.

“It’s me, Fitz.”

She opened the door to find him standing in the dark hallway with a tall silver candlestick in his hand. “Nice candle,” she said, smiling. Then, sticking her head out into the corridor, she looked up and down, halfway expecting to see Faith Harrington lurking behind a potted palm. “Where’s Lady Macbeth?” she asked.

“Locked safely away in the dungeon,” Darcy replied with a good-natured smile. “Would you care to go for a walk?”

Eliza returned his smile, realizing that it was almost impossible not to like this man. “A walk!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t this the point in one of those Gothic Romance novels where the master of the house—that’s you—is supposed to force his way into the heroine’s room—I’m the heroine—and rip her bodice?” she asked, feigning disappointment.

Darcy laughed. “Maybe,” he replied, pretending to consider the possibility. “I just usually come by and ask if they’d like to take a walk. However, if your bodice is in need of ripping I can call Harv for you.”

“That’s okay,” she grinned. “I actually only have the one bodice with me this trip anyway.”

Darcy stepped back. “As you wish,” and indicated the broad hallway with a sweeping bow. “Walk this way, then.”

Eliza stepped out into the darkened passage and followed him. “Where are we going?” she whispered.

He turned and winked at her, his finely formed features disturbingly handsome in the flickering light of the candle. “To the one place where we’re almost certain not to be disturbed,” he replied.

After several minutes of walking down narrow back staircases and through the silent house they emerged onto the lawn through a side door.

By the light of a full moon Darcy led Eliza down a worn path to a barnlike wooden structure that loomed ahead in a grove of trees. Darcy grabbed a pull handle and a large wooden door slowly opened with an appropriate horror-movie creaking of iron hinges. Eliza hesitantly followed him into a pitch-black space and stood nervously at his back while he fumbled to light a lantern he removed from a peg inside the door.

“Am I going to like this place?” she asked. “Or are there bats?”

“There might be a few bats living in here,” he replied, peering up into the pools of inky darkness filling the space between the dimly outlined rafters, “but they’re probably all out feeding at this time of night.”

“Oh, thanks,” she replied with a shudder. “Now I feel much better.”

The lantern suddenly flared, illuminating the interior of what appeared to be an ancient barn filled with large, box-like shapes. Eliza blinked in the glare and her mouth fell open as she realized what she was looking at.

For parked along the walls in two neat rows were no fewer than a dozen horse-drawn conveyances, their polished brass and painted woodwork gleaming like new in the lantern light.

“Oh, they’re beautiful!” she gasped.

“Family heirlooms one and all, and all quite comfortable,” Darcy said. He raised the lantern high and walked slowly down the aisle, past racy chaises, heavy traveling coaches, and light buggies with wheels as spindly as cobwebs. “Take your pick,” he told Eliza.

She wandered among the elegant vehicles, pausing from time to time to peer in at soft, hand-stitched leather seats and ran her fingers over shining red and black lacquer and delicately carved sills. At the end of the aisle she stopped before a graceful burgundy traveling coach with glass windows etched in elaborate floral patterns and an interior of spotless dove-gray suede.

“I pick this one,” she announced.

“My personal favorite!” said Darcy sounding pleased. “This coach belonged to the very first mistress of Pemberley Farms—”

Eliza clapped her hands. “Rose, your great-great-whatever-grandmother!”

“The very same,” he said, opening the door with a flourish to admit her to the roomy interior of the coach. “Climb in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Stepping up into the high passenger compartment, Eliza sank luxuriantly into the feather-soft cushions of the forward-facing rear seat and closed her eyes. “Now I know how Cinderella felt,” she uttered into the darkness. “But I’m warning you. I could get used to this.”

When no response was forthcoming she peered out into the barn through the open door, looking for some sign of him. “Hello?”

Darcy suddenly appeared at the window on the opposite side of the coach. He opened the door and climbed in, taking the seat facing hers. In his hands were an open bottle of champagne and two fragile wine glasses.

“Here you are,” he said, handing her a glass.

Eliza watched as he deftly filled first her glass and then his own and placed the bottle on a small wooden shelf. “Are you sure this isn’t a decadent prelude to some wild romance novel hanky-panky?” she asked, gazing at the golden effervescent wine.

“On my honor as a gentleman,” he pledged, touching his glass to hers with a musical ring. “I just thought you might enjoy a little authentic nineteenth-century atmosphere to go along with my tale.”

“A dashing gentleman, champagne and candlelight!” Eliza sipped the chilled golden wine, found it delicious and sipped again. “Every woman’s dream.”

His raised eyebrow made her blush at the exuberance of her reaction to the romantic gesture but his warm smile made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Needing to be in control, she sat up a little straighter in her seat, cocked her head and searched his chiseled features. “Fitz, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Eliza,” he replied, “so far you don’t seem to have asked any questions that haven’t been intensely personal.” There was a pause that made her fear he might say no. “But yes, you may go ahead.”

“Were you falling in love with Jane?”

Darcy’s eyes lit up with a sudden surge of hope that tugged at Eliza’s heart. “Does that question mean you believe my story?” he asked.