Sally O'Rourke - The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“Yes,” she admitted. “Jenny more or less insisted. Do you think it’s too terribly…Oscarish? I seem to remember you saying at the library that Jane would never have worn anything like this.”

“You’re not Jane,” Darcy replied, dropping the fabric.

“Good point,” Eliza agreed, unwilling to follow that reasoning to its logical conclusion.

Crossing to the bed, Darcy picked up her sketch pad and carefully examined her drawing of Rose Darcy. “This is beautifully done,” he said, glancing up at the life-size matriarchal portrait in the alcove.

“Thank you.” Eliza followed his gaze to the painting of the enchantingly beautiful Rose in her silken gown. “Now that’s a dress I could picture Jane Austen having approved of,” she ventured. “Though it’s actually more revealing than the one that Jenny picked for me, it’s also very classy, don’t you think?”

Darcy nodded thoughtfully. Then he settled himself in an armchair covered with brocaded vines of wild rose.

Sensing that he was tired of conversation and anxious to resume his narrative, Eliza kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the bed to listen.

“I told you about my encounter with Captain Austen in the stables,” Darcy began. “Fortunately, he did not come looking for me again and I finally fell asleep.”

Despite the extraordinary tensions of his first day outside the secure confines of Jane’s bedroom at Chawton Cottage and the unavailability of so much as an aspirin tablet to soothe his throbbing head, the exhausted Darcy had fallen almost immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep upon returning to his luxurious room at Chawton Great House.

He awoke seven hours later to the rumble of heavy wheels on the drive below his window.

As he had every morning since arriving in 1810 Hampshire, Darcy spent his first several minutes of wakefulness with his eyes tightly shut. When he opened them, he tried to convince himself he would discover that he was back in the Cliftons’s rented Edwardian mansion in his own time and his vivid memories of the last four days would turn out to have been nothing more than an interesting dream.

Listening closely to the morning sounds of the household, he strained to pick up the familiar whine of a vacuum cleaner and sniffed the air for the scent of exhaust fumes from the old green Range Rover his friend Clifton kept parked in the drive.

He heard instead the clop of hooves on the drive and the impatient snorting of a horse. The sounds were inconclusive, he told himself, for the horse might have been Lord Nelson out for a morning exercise with his trainer, or one of the handful of gentle saddle nags that the property owners kept on the place for their renters to ride.

Still, he did not have much hope that he had returned.

Opening his eyes at last, Darcy blinked at a bright shaft of sunshine pouring in through the open window. He clambered stiffly out of bed and walked over to peer down onto the drive. A heavy black traveling coach pulled by a team of four horses was just disappearing beyond the gates of Chawton Great House.

It was still 1810.

He had just spent half of the previous night with a beautiful woman named Jane Austen, and part of the remainder with her murderous brother.

Grimacing at the prospect of facing the hostile Captain Austen, whose temper would doubtless not be improved this morning by what must be a monumental hangover, Darcy splashed water on his face from a pitcher on his washstand and looked distastefully at the ivory-handled straight razor that had been laid out for his use.

Picking up the deadly implement, he grimly regarded his gaunt features in the mirror. “Perhaps I should just cut my own throat now and save Frank the trouble,” he murmured.

Twenty minutes later, dressed in yet another of Edward’s uncomfortable suits and badly shaved, Darcy entered the dining room. Edward and several of his guests from last night were nearly finished with breakfast as Darcy was escorted to a seat near the end of the table.

Darcy looked around nervously for some sign of Frank, and decided that the captain must still be recovering abed.

“Morning, Darcy!” Edward stopped chewing long enough to wave his knife in greeting to the guest.

“Good morning, sir.”

Darcy looked around, startled, as a servant leaned over his shoulder and dropped a slab of the same meat his host was enjoying onto Darcy’s plate.

“Got some bad news for you, I’m afraid,” Edward reported between mouthfuls.

Darcy’s stomach turned over as he stared down at the purple chunk of bloody flesh, momentarily forgetting that the modern practice of tinting meat a more appetizing shade of red had yet to be invented. He closed his eyes, waiting for the bad news, which he feared involved the missing captain.

“Frank has been recalled to his squadron at Portsmouth this morning,” Edward said. “I’m very sorry to say that you have just missed him.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Darcy swallowed hard, feeling the tension in his stomach ease and glancing again at his plate. Actually, the slab of rare beef nested in a pool of its own juices didn’t look all that bad, he thought.

Edward, however, seemed to be quite upset by the development of Frank’s unanticipated departure. “Yes,” he grumbled, albeit with an unmistakable note of pride in his voice, “seems my younger brother is being given the temporary rank of admiral and sent out to the West Indies to put a stop to these troublesome arms smugglers.”

Picking up his fork and knife, Darcy cut off a small piece of meat and popped it into his mouth. To his surprise, it was quite good, though unlike any steak he had ever tasted. Of course, he reflected, it contained none of the preservatives, steroids, antibiotics or artificial coloring he was used to. He wondered if that made it safer or more dangerous than USDA-inspected beef and looked around, wondering where the thick slabs of toast that the others were eating had come from.

“It is a shame about Frank,” Edward was saying from the head of the table. “I had hoped to take the two of you out today for some shooting, though it’s not really the season at all.”

Darcy tried to adopt a regretful expression as the servant magically reappeared and placed a rack of fire-singed toast before him. In fact, he was feeling better by the moment, for he couldn’t imagine any enterprise more hazardous than being forced to accompany the volatile Frank on a shooting expedition.

Now, he thought, if only Jane would contact him to report that the farmers had been found and the stone wall located, everything could still be fine.

Jane. Darcy’s pulse quickened as he recalled the touch of her lips on his the night before, felt the urgent trembling of her slender body pressed to his in the moonlit forest.

“Well, it cannot be helped, I suppose.”

Darcy looked up to see Edward gesturing at him with his knife again. “My brother Frank sends you his compliments and begs you to recall your conversation of last night,” Edward said convivially. “I am delighted that you two fellows became such fast friends.”

“Oh, thanks very much.” Darcy lowered his eyes and busied himself with the food. “Your brother is a fascinating man,” he said, hoping they could change the subject.

Edward laughed. “Yes, a fine, brave fellow is our Frank. Bit rough around the edges, though, what?” He swung his knife over his head in imitation of a vigorous sword fight. “Comes from his having seen too much blood and guts on the high seas, I daresay.”

Another servant entered the dining room carrying a small silver salver. The man bent over and whispered something in his ear. Edward smiled and pointed to Darcy.