Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“Do mind the ground now, sir,” the young groom cautioned as he placed Lord Nelson’s reins in Darcy’s hand. Simmons affectionately patted the black horse’s nose. “Easy for him to step in a hole in the dark.”

Darcy took the reins and placed them over Lord Nelson’s neck. “Thanks, I’ll be careful, Simmons.”

He paused, trying to read the groom’s expression in the dim light. “How did you know I would be going out tonight?”

Simmons grinned, exposing a row of even white teeth. “I guessed you might be off to meet a lady, sir,” the youngster tactfully ventured. “It’s what many gentlemen do of an evening.”

He gave Darcy a knowing wink. “Even my good master sometimes went out riding of a night, when Mrs. Austen was close to her confinement,” Simmons confided. “Master Edward says a gent must not impose too much on the ladies at such times, if you take my meaning, sir.”

Darcy nodded without commenting, amazed at how casually and openly the matter of marital infidelity was treated in this very early part of the nineteenth century. But then, he reminded himself, the sexually repressive Victorian age still lay several decades in the future.

“Your master seems a very good man,” Darcy finally offered by way of a noncommittal reply. For though he was anxious to be on his way, he did not wish to offend the talkative groom, who might easily report this midnight adventure to Edward.

Simmons’s head bobbed enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, sir,” he declared. “All that’s in his service will tell you there’s no kinder gentleman than Mr. Edward. For didn’t he let his two poor sisters have Chawton Cottage for themselves and their old mother,” Simmons went on, obviously reciting a well-worn tidbit of village gossip, “when most men in his position would’ve made the unmarried ones live up here in the Great House where they’d have nothing of their own and never a moment of privacy.”

Simmons hesitated. His canny eyes darted up to the darkened windows of the silent manor house and there was a note of warning in his next words. “Now Captain Austen, he’s a different sort of man altogether from his brothers Edward and Henry,” he continued. “The captain’s very protectful of his sisters, and he’s got a fearful temper, sir.”

Darcy acknowledged the groom’s well-intentioned counsel with a grateful smile. “You don’t miss very much that goes on around here, do you Simmons?”

Simmons winked. “You just leave the horse in his paddock when you return, sir,” he said. “I’ll see to him for you.” He watched Darcy mount Lord Nelson and ride slowly away into the moonlit night.

Keeping to the soft grass at the edge of the drive, Darcy rode silently past the lawns and gardens and out through the gates of Chawton Great House. When the tall chimneys of the mansion had disappeared behind the hedgerows he guided Lord Nelson onto the narrow dirt road and urged the black horse to a brisk canter. Though the ride to Chawton Cottage was a short one, he did not want to keep Jane waiting any longer than necessary.

Jane. Recalling the angry look she had given him when he had placed the note into her hand, Darcy grimaced. He was uneasy with himself for attempting to force her into a meeting that he knew would be distasteful and possibly even dangerous to her and wondered if she would be there. But he was growing more desperate by the hour and hoped that her intelligence and curiosity would win over her sense of propriety. Because, as his encounter this evening with Francis Austen had demonstrated, it was only a matter of time before he would be denounced as a fraud, or perhaps something worse.

“A matter of time!” Darcy spoke the words aloud and was struck by their full irony.

He had to find a way to return to his own time and Jane Austen held the key. Lovely Jane. He closed his eyes and envisioned her once again as he had watched her in the bedroom at Chawton Cottage, her dark eyes gleaming in the candlelight as she leaned over her writing. Something stirred within him as he recalled another, even more powerful image of her: naked behind the thin dressing screen, her slender, full-breasted figure limned in the dancing firelight.

Darcy felt a sharp, sudden pang of regret that he would never embrace that lovely body, nor stay to unlock the secrets hidden behind those brilliantly shining eyes.

Half a mile from Chawton Cottage Darcy guided Lord Nelson off the road and into a long, grassy meadow. Moving at a slow walk across the uneven ground, he rode cautiously toward the line of dark woods at the far end of the field. To his great surprise, as he neared the trees Jane stepped from the shadows and stood waiting for him to dismount.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said when they stood face-to-face. He saw that the hood of a light cloak covered her hair; looking up at him in the cold moonlight, her unsmiling face was even lovelier than he had remembered.

Forcing from her mind the foolish romantic fantasies that she had allowed herself to entertain in Edward’s carriage, she replied abruptly, “Could you not at least have waited for daylight?”

“I’m very sorry but I couldn’t,” he apologized.

Darcy looked around at the empty meadow. “I know this must be very awkward for you—”

Defiantly she said, “The only awkwardness that I feel is for the inconvenience of the hour and the desolation of the place that you have chosen.”

He nodded, stung by her coldness. “I won’t keep you long,” he promised. “I just need to know how to get back to the spot where my horse threw me. Then I’ll be gone.”

“The place is nearby,” she said. “I will happily show you the way…after you have fully explained yourself and your exceedingly odd behavior.”

Darcy cringed, for he had been afraid of something like this. He had insulted Jane by forcing the inappropriate meeting on her and she was not going to cooperate without first saving face, and perhaps in the process satisfying her own curiosity. “Miss Austen, I really can’t explain,” he stammered. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Jane stared at him for a moment and he saw the anger flashing anew in her eyes. “And because you are a man,” she spat, “it is obvious that you think me too stupid to understand.”

She turned abruptly on her heel and walked away, calling back to him over her shoulder. “As you wish, Darcy! You may find the place you seek by riding about in the dark until you come to it.” There was mockery in her tone as she added, “The meadows hereabout can have no more than two score sections of stone wall overhung with trees.”

“Miss Austen…Jane, wait!” he called in near panic.

She turned back and regarded him fiercely.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he said, running to catch up with her at the edge of the wood. “On the contrary, you’re by far the most intelligent woman I have ever met!”

She suspiciously scrutinized his face as he hurried to explain. “I know that you began writing your novels nearly twenty years ago, when you were still a young girl,” Darcy told her. “For years you believed they would never be published, but you were very wrong, Jane. Next year Sense and Sensibility will become one of the most popular books of the year. And even now you are reworking and editing the book you call First Impressions . Your sister is right about the title, though. And that isn’t the title you will ultimately give the book,” he continued breathlessly.

“Jane, one day your name will be known throughout the world and people will be reading your works two hundred years from now. Scholars in great universities will devote entire careers to studying them, to studying you .”