Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart (9 page)

“I would never expect—”

He stopped me by the simple expedience of placing his thumb against my lips. The gesture was both frustrating and disturbingly sensual. “I know you wouldn’t. That’s one of the reasons I asked you out.”

“Oh.” I had no idea what to say after that. Fortunately, our entrées arrived at just that moment, and I could busy myself with the business of eating while I tried to sort through my churning thoughts and feelings.

We were on a date. He liked that I was independent. And I quivered like a big bowl of Jell-O whenever he touched me. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure I was very coherent.

“So who do you think will volunteer to present tomorrow?” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to a neutral subject.

James chewed for a moment and then swallowed. “Martin, I hope. He should have something more than swooning admiration of Mr. Darcy to contribute to the conversation.”

“I ran into him in the bookstore yesterday. He’s quite the Austen devotee.”

James paused in the act of cutting his food and gave me a strange look. “You don’t know?” He laughed, a little too much at my expense, but he smiled too, and my heart fluttered. “Martin came to Oxford to be a visiting professor in the fall. He’s one of the world’s leading Austen scholars. I don’t know why he ’s part of our seminar, though. He must be bored to tears among such a collection of amateurs.”

“A professor?” But he hadn’t looked bored, I thought with some surprise. In fact, of all the people in the room, he’d seemed the most delighted with Rosie and Louise’s fan video. A new knot formed in my stomach, taking up residence with all the others that had formed there since my arrival at Christ Church. At the rate they were moving in, they’d need to form a homeowner’s association before long.

“He’s an expert? On Jane Austen?” And then it occurred to me that Martin was the very man I needed. He would know if Harriet Dalrymple’s manuscript was the real thing.

The thought came out of nowhere just as I swallowed a bite of lemon sole. I gasped and then started coughing, pressing my napkin against my mouth to keep from spraying James with fish.

“Are you okay?” He was out of his chair and next to mine in an instant. “Claire? What can I do?”

His furrowed brow and the concern in his eyes made it even more difficult to breathe, but I managed. I waved my hand toward his chair and kept the napkin firmly against my lips.

“I’m okay,” I gasped between coughing jags.

He stepped cautiously around the table and took his seat again, but he was eyeing me as if I were a grenade that might detonate at any moment.

“Really. I’m fine now.” My voice was weak but otherwise normal. I took a sip of water. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a scene.”

He looked around. “No one’s watching.” He reached across the table, and his fingers brushed mine where I was clenching the stem of the water goblet. His touch flustered me, and I could barely disguise the fact. I hoped he would attribute my flushed face to the choking incident.

“I can usually eat a meal without requiring medical attention.”

“But you have a doctor on call everywhere you go,” he said with a smile.

“What?”

“You have a doctor wherever you go.” He nodded toward me. And then I caught on. Which almost sent me into another coughing fit.

“Um…yeah,” I said in a strangled voice. “I guess so.” My pulse leaped in my throat, and I could only pray that no one would fall to the ground in need of medical attention before we could finish our dinner and leave.

My misery was my own fault, of course. I was on eggshells in James’s presence, since I had to be on guard not to say anything that might expose me for the liar I was. By the time we arrived back at Christ Church, I just wanted to escape to my room. The pretense of being a completely different person was far more exhausting than I could have ever imagined.

We crossed beneath Tom Gate and came out into the bare quad.

“Well, good night,” I said. I resisted the urge to stick out my right hand for him to shake. “Thank you for dinner. It was wonderful.” My whole body felt as stiff and fragile as the words I was saying.

James looked at me with a curious expression. “Can I walk you to your room?”

“Oh no. It’s four flights up for nothing.” And then I blushed like a teenager. Because of course I’d just told him that any potential good-night kiss at my door was nothing. “I mean—”

“Are you normally this nervous, or is it just around me?” He quirked one eyebrow and smiled.

I melted. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t done this in a long time.”

“Done what? Stood outdoors talking to a man?” His tone was teasing but gentle. He seemed to have so many sides to him—taciturn one moment, charming the next. But which one was the real James Beaufort?

I shook my head. “Dated. I haven’t dated in quite a while.” Which was one of the truest things I’d said all evening. Neil and I either went to one of his softball games or watched some sporting event on television. We hadn’t been out to dinner in months, and I usually ended up cooking something at my apartment and taking it with me to his house.

“Men in Kansas City are idiots.” He lifted a hand and cupped my cheek. “We’ve got all week, Claire. Don’t worry about it.”

Gratitude, relief, and regret swamped me. Gratitude for his understanding. Relief that he didn’t think I was a complete weirdo. And regret that I’d spurned his good-night kiss.

“I’ll see you in the morning?” I said, half statement and half question.

He nodded. “All Jane Austen, all the time.”

I giggled, a sound I hadn’t made in a very long time. And before I could do or say anything else to embarrass myself, I stepped away from him. “Good night.”

“Good night, Claire.” He was so incredibly handsome, standing there in the fading light. Not to mention my heart ache.

An unexpected sob rose in my throat, but I turned and hurried across the quad before it could burst free.

Whatever I was feeling at that moment, I again had only myself to blame. The thought provided no comfort at all as I raced back to my room and a long night with a guilty conscience.

T
he next afternoon found me following the riverside path once more toward Harriet Dalrymple ’s cottage. I had debated going there for most of the morning during Olga’s presentation on Jane Austen’s view of the British navy and then during the cardiologist’s graphically detailed account of Jane Austen’s struggle with Addison’s disease. Both had been fairly interesting, but the appearance of Jane Austen in the flesh wouldn’t have been enough to distract me from my dilemma.

Oddly enough, the dark looks Eleanor Gibbons kept shooting my way finally made the decision for me. If the problem was merely Harriet’s dementia, I didn’t think Eleanor would seem so upset. No, the situation was far more complicated than simply a worried daughter and an ailing mother.

I approached Harriet’s cottage with trepidation. Perhaps she would turn me away after my abrupt and ungracious departure on Sunday. Still, I had to try. I lifted a hand to knock on the blue door, but it opened before I could make contact with the brightly painted wood.

“Claire!” Harriet’s round face glowed, and she smiled at me as if greeting a long-lost friend. “You’ve returned.” Her eyes actually twinkled. “I thought you might, once you’d had time to think it over.”

“I’m sorry if I was rude the other day,” I said as she waved me over the threshold and into the cottage. “It was all just rather—”

“Overwhelming. I know. But now you’ve seen sense and we can proceed.”

“Proceed?” Wariness sent a quick chill down my spine.

“With more of the manuscript. I assume that’s why you’re here. You know what they say about curiosity, my dear.”

“Um, that it’s a leading cause of death among felines?”

Harriet laughed, a scratchy but melodious sound, like a vinyl record that had seen better days but still retained its tune. “Well done, my dear. Well done. Now, come through to the sitting room and let me see if I can find another chunk of that manuscript for you.”

That
manuscript? Were there others? What if Harriet’s cottage held more than one undiscovered treasure? My eyes darted over objects as we made our way down the short hallway and
into the sitting room. Only Harriet knew what all of the cabinets, baskets, and boxes contained, and even she might not still remember what was there.

“Sit here again.” She patted the sofa with the broken springs. “Let me find those pages, and then I’ll make some tea. I set them aside for when you came back.”

I perched with care on the sagging cushion nearest me. “Harriet, would you mind answering a question?”

She was riffling through the desk at the end of the room. She looked back at me over her shoulder. “Not at all, dear. What would you like to know?”

“You said you were left the manuscript. If it’s not too nosy, I was wondering who your benefactor was.”

Her hands paused in the act of searching. She straightened and turned toward me.

“Yes, yes. I suppose this is as good a time to tell you as any. Oh, there it is!” She moved across the room with amazing alacrity for a woman her age. She picked up a pile of yellowed pages from a bookshelf crammed with volumes of every shape, size, and description. “That’s the next bit I wanted you to read.”

She crossed to the sofa and handed me the papers. Then she sat down next to me. “I wasn’t sure whether to tell you before. You seemed so agitated.”

Agitated was an understatement, but I didn’t reply. Instead, I waited for her to speak her piece.

“Very few people have ever seen these,” she began. She
tapped the manuscript in my lap. “It’s an honor, you see, but also a responsibility. A very great responsibility.” She sounded like one of my young nieces when they shared a secret with me, solemn and excited all at the same time.

“I appreciate you including me,” I said, although
appreciate
might not have been quite the right word.

“Mrs. Parrot won’t like that I’ve shown you this,” she said in a softer tone, as if she were afraid someone might be listening to us. I glanced around the gentrified chaos of Harriet’s sitting room. For all I knew, someone might be listening. In Harriet’s cottage, anything seemed possible.

“Mrs. Parrot?”

“Yes. She ’s in charge, you know.”

“No. I didn’t know that.” My shoulders sagged. Eleanor had been telling the truth after all. Harriet clearly wasn’t quite in touch with reality.

Harriet laid a gnarled hand on my forearm. “Yes, well, I had promised her not to act without her sanction. It was one of her conditions.”

“Conditions?”

“For allowing me into the group.”

I wanted to tell her right then that I knew about her dementia. That Eleanor had spilled the beans. That this Mrs. Parrot was probably a figment of her imagination—or rather, her illness. But Harriet was so sweet and harmless, really. Why not humor her some more?

“So this Mrs. Parrot, she calls the shots?”

Harriet nodded. “They’ve kept her secrets for many years, you see. Almost two centuries.”

I paused, confused. “They? Kept secrets? Whose secrets?”

“Why, Jane Austen’s, of course.”

I suppressed the laugh that threatened to escape. “What are you? Part of some secret society?”

“Yes, exactly.” She beamed at me. “We’re called the Formidables.”

I had been joking, but Harriet clearly wasn’t. “The What-ables?”

“The Formidables. It’s the name Jane Austen and her sister, Cassandra, gave themselves in their later years. All the nieces and nephews called them by that name.”

From what I had heard of Austen’s character, I could imagine that she had been a very formidable maiden aunt indeed. “And it’s a secret group?” Perhaps it was best to humor her and then make my escape as quickly as I could.

Harriet smiled. “Very secret. And very exclusive.”

Her disclosure took the wind out of my sails. Harriet’s mind was as charming and disordered as her cottage. Secret society indeed.

“Why would Jane Austen need protection?” I couldn’t help but ask. “What secrets could she possibly have had?”

Harriet pursed her lips just a touch. “You might be surprised, if you knew.” She looked as if she wanted to say more
on the subject, but instead she tapped the manuscript pages in my lap. “The Formidables require absolute discretion.” She looked up and I met her gaze. It was clear as crystal, with no sign of mental deterioration.