Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

As he spoke those words Darcy saw her head slowly moving from side to side, her eyes darting nervously to the shadowed woods, calculating her chances of escaping from him. “You are mad , sir,” she exhorted, edging away from him. “I cannot account for your intimate knowledge of my past, but I am certain that no one can know the future!”

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “We can only ever know the past.”

Darcy hesitated, for she had left him with no alternative but to reveal the truth. “I have somehow fallen into the past, Jane. That’s my secret.”

Her momentary fear of him turned to outrage. “You insult my intelligence, sir. I will not listen to this nonsense one moment longer,” she cried. “Good night, Mr. Darcy!”

“If what I’ve said is nonsense, then you will have no trouble explaining this.” Left with little choice but to do something he had promised himself he would not do, Darcy raised his left arm to her. He saw the fear return to her eyes as she cringed, anticipating a blow.

Of course he had no intention of striking her—could never have done such a thing.

Instead, he touched the case of his gold watch and pressed a tiny button. The watch beeped. The crystal lighted, casting an eerie green glow onto the lower branches of the trees as a seductive female digital voice announced the time: “Twelve-zero-nine and six seconds, seven seconds, eight seconds…”

Jane stared at the electronic watch in awe. After several seconds of frozen silence, punctuated only by the sound of the tinny, synthetic voice counting off the seconds, she slowly backed away a few paces and sat down hard on a fallen log.

Darcy went to her side, tore the watch from his wrist and pressed it into her trembling hand. He showed her the tiny buttons, quietly explaining their functions.

After a few moments she experimentally pushed a button, making the watch light again and prompting more computerized beeps and voice messages.

“Sorcery!” she said.

Darcy shook his head. “No, Jane, it’s something called electronics. The watch is only a machine, a distant relative of that great clock in your brother’s house, but still just a machine. Nothing more, nothing less. Articles like this watch are as common in my time as horses and carriages are in yours.”

She looked up at him then. The anger had fled and now her shining eyes were filled with wonder.

“Phones, jets…those other things you mentioned in your fever,” she asked, “what are they?”

“More machines,” he replied. “Ways of communicating, of moving about faster—”

“Machines that go from England to Virginia in five hours?” she interrupted.

He nodded. “Yes, we have machines that fly now.”

“Good God!” she exclaimed, gazing into the glowing face of the watch. “And with such machines as this you are able to travel through time itself?”

“No,” Darcy said, “that we can’t do.”

“Yet you are here with this astonishing timepiece,” she said with perfect logic. “And I can think of no other explanation for your presence and the wonders you possess. How, then, is it possible?”

Darcy had been pondering that very question for days and he had come up with only one possible answer. Now he shook his head and wearily sat down beside her on the log. “I’m not a scientist,” he said, “but there is a popular theory that time is not what it appears to be.”

Darcy furrowed his brow, trying to remember details from an article he had recently read in Scientific American while waiting in his dentist’s office.

“The past and the future aren’t separate rooms we occupy only at this moment we call the present,” he explained. “Rather, past, present and future exist together as a winding path that we are constantly moving along, never turning back or running ahead.”

He paused, watching her face for some sign that he had lost her, but Jane was nodding eagerly, her shining eyes urging him to continue expounding the fascinating theory.

“According to some physicists,” he continued, “we could turn back down that path of time, if we only knew how. And these same scientists think that sometimes two parts of the path may curve and touch, and that such points may open portals to other times. I believe I accidentally entered into your time through just such a portal,” Darcy concluded, realizing how incredible his explanation must sound to someone from an era when the concept of human flight was still in the realm of fantasy.

Jane, however, did not disappoint him by discounting his theory out of hand. She considered his explanation for several seconds, and then frowned. “If you are a visitor from another time,” she asked, “who is this man Darcy in Virginia, the person my brother thinks you are?”

Darcy smiled. “My ancestor,” he replied, “the founder of Pemberley Farms, which is the estate I own in my time…two hundred years from now.”

“Your own time… two hundred years into the future…” Jane’s composure finally slipped and she buried her face in her hands. “I am sorry, it is too much to comprehend.”

He gently lifted her chin and looked into those beautiful eyes. “Jane, please,” he whispered, “I need you to tell me how to get back to the exact spot where I was thrown from my horse. Maybe the portal is still open and I can step back through to the world I know.”

“And if you cannot?” she asked.

He threw up his hands helplessly, for hers was a frightening question, and one that he had dared not ask himself. “I don’t know,” he said grimly. “I only know I can’t stay here. I beg you to help me.”

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “I shall, of course.”

Relief washed over him. “Then please tell me how to return to the place where I was found.”

“Tomorrow,” she said haltingly. “I will tell you then.”

Jane saw the sudden confusion in his eyes and felt hot blood rushing to her cheeks. “The men who brought you to me said only that you’d been found about a mile from Chawton, nothing more,” she timidly explained.

“What?” He was staring at her in shock. “But you said you knew the place.”

“I was angry,” she told him. “I wished to force you to reveal your secret to me.” She suddenly turned away, unable to bear his look of bitter disappointment.

She murmured, “Please forgive me. But you were so arrogant and deceitful—”

Darcy leaped to his feet and stared down at her. “Deceitful?” he snorted, cutting off her rationalization.

“You spied on me, eavesdropped on my most private conversations… And you lied to me first,” she accused in a tremulous voice. “Tomorrow I shall send for the men who brought you to me and discover from them the location of the place where you fell,” Jane promised.

“That’s just great!” Darcy groaned. “Let’s hope your brother doesn’t decide to put my head on a spike in the meantime. Or have you English given up that lovely practice yet?” he asked sarcastically.

“Has civilization advanced so much in your time that criminals are no longer executed?” she retorted.

“No, I guess not,” he reluctantly admitted. Then, unexpectedly, he found himself grinning. “But our executions are very much neater than yours,” he added lamely.

Realizing that he had made a joke, though a very poor one, Jane began to laugh. “Lord, what a fine dialogue this will make for a new novel,” she told him. “I must make a start on it right away.”

Suddenly mindful of the extreme jeopardy in which he had placed her, Darcy extended a hand to help her up from her seat. “I’m afraid I’ve kept you here far too long,” he apologized. “Please send word to me the moment you’ve located those men.”