My Jane Austen Summer (25 page)

"I must say I'm impressed with your ideas," he said. "I had no idea actresses were so resourceful." In one very smooth gesture he stepped forward and kissed me. A brief and efficient kiss--a husband kissing his wife as he left for the office, as if we'd become a married couple without the work of getting acquainted, without the terrifying exposure of being known. Perhaps he wanted an abridged, intimacy-free version of me:
Lily for Dummies
. It would be much easier that way. But I knew that would be cheating and My Jane Austen knew it, too.

I smiled and tucked my hair behind my ears. "It's all in the plan," I said. We'd been standing there talking long enough for the sky to grow completely dark.

"Let's look at it together," he said. "In fact, come with me. Do you have time?"

"Now?" I imagined Vera's rapture at the news.

"My sister's getting married and there's a party in their honor tonight."

A camera flash reflected off the silver hood like a flare of lightning, illuminating my expression for anyone who was paying attention.
Texas Girl Horrified Outside English Manor.
I wished I could replay his comment to make sure I'd heard correctly. Did he say the wedding was
on
? I wanted to ask Randolph if he'd spoken with Willis
lately.
Are you
sure
they're getting married? He watched me struggle to look normal as my cosmos shifted once again. Willis at society parties in his honor, something he'd never have had with me. Maybe he wanted society parties.

"Could you come to London?" he asked again.

Yes," I said. Although I wasn't stupid; this dinner party didn't
just come up
.

"Excellent."

Color came back and the clock ticked once more.

∗ ∗ ∗

Two hours later, my knees secretly weak, I entered a chic London apartment where people stood in small groups holding wineglasses. No one met us at the door. Randolph winked at me and we walked in, his hand guiding from the small of my back. I searched every face, seeking one person, afraid of finding him. Randolph steered me into the kitchen where we discovered his sister leaning against a granite counter, her wit animating the faces of three enchanted listeners. I felt Randolph's eyes on me, like a protective shield in this foreign place. A caterer shuffled large plates of leftovers into storage containers and a dark-skinned woman in a maid's uniform rinsed plates. Judging from the direction the food was headed and the stack of dirty dishes, we'd missed dinner.

Pippa stopped speaking when she saw me. She looked from me to Randolph and back. "Well, hullo." Her mouth spoke to Randolph but her eyes stuck on me. Her enchanted listeners broke Pippa's gravitational pull to shake Randolph's hand. Then all three peered at me as if I were an alien invader from dark space. I looked to see if I'd remembered to change out of my Regency gown. I had.

"She's agreed to run away with me," Randolph announced to the little group.

"Where are you running away
to
?" asked a man.

"Old novels," Randolph told him. "We'd like to live in one. Preferably Jane Austen."

"Ah," the person said. "Clever. No one would think of looking for you there."

"Although I'd prefer a racy French novel," he whispered
to me as Pippa's moons resumed their orbits. "Austen's so tame," he said, "might get boring for a guy."

I faux frowned. "Well, maybe Forster," I said, lifting a warm glass of champagne off a parked tray, feeling surreal. Randolph's friends made the trek to the kitchen to say hullo, most of whom observed me suspiciously after Randolph tried to pass me off as his evil twin, recently convicted of misshelving books in a Texas library. He told a persistent guest that I wasn't "out" (in society) yet, keeping one hand on my back as I disregarded his conversations to search faces. The open kitchen allowed a view of the room beyond but Willis was not present in the room beyond. How many rooms were there and where was the guest of honor?

"How did he propose?" a woman behind us asked Pippa as Randolph turned to shake another hand.

"You mean the first time?" Pippa asked. "We were sixteen and he chased me into the girls' bathroom at our school." Pippa sighed. "It was so long ago, but I
do
remember reading some gothic novel at the time, or maybe it was
The Thorn Birds
, and agreeing to marry him if he would swear to be a priest when he grew up."

I disengaged Rand's hand and ventured into the next room. A window wall turned out to be a sliding glass door revealing guests on a balcony. A woman stepping into the room from the balcony tossed a remark to the people behind her and I saw Willis, big as life, his head rearing back to laugh at whatever she'd said. How odd to see Willis so exuberant.
My
Willis brooded over his laptop in melancholy confinement on the third floor. As I approached the sliding glass door, the panorama opened up, glamorous London at night. Willis saw me. I stepped onto the balcony, closing the door behind, and my time began elapsing. "Still seeking rooftop perspectives?" I asked.

"What a surprise," he said. "Lily." He extended a hand and I prayed he wouldn't squander our private seconds sorting out my presence at the party.

"No small talk," I said quickly, touching the cross around my neck.

"Never, with you," he said, his face still lit from the last round of levity. My Attic Willis was make-believe; this Society Willis was real.

"How are you?" I asked, meaning the big picture.

He reached for a more serious expression, unable finally to engage either a smile or a frown. "Well, since you asked, I'll tell you." He lifted his glass from the low table, avoiding my eyes. "I've decided to leave my degree program."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not seeking the priesthood." He sipped his wine, relieved, as if he'd finished the thesis and won an award, rather than abandoned his life plan.

"Congratulations," I said. "You've struggled with this. And how is your fiancee taking the decision?"

"It's still new to her." He watched a blinking light make its way across the dark sky.

"So what will you do?" I asked.

"That"--he laughed--"is a more difficult question." He opened his mouth to speak. Certainly his lips formed the word
you
but the unbidden grind of the door, sliding open along its metal track, admitted party chatter onto the balcony and ended our privacy. We'd been a fairy tale with a beginning, middle, and end, and we'd reached the last page sometime in July. Tonight felt more like an epilogue.

"They're looking for you," Randolph said to Willis. "Time for the toasts," he added, offering me a champagne glass, extending a hand to Willis.

"Ah, duty calls," Willis said. "Excuse me." And passing me, he left without a good-bye.

I started to follow Willis back into the noisy room, not sure I could bear to hear tributes to the lovely couple, when Randolph gently tugged my hand. "Let's stay out here," he whispered, nodding at the sparkling skyline, taking my glass and setting it on the rail. Willis had forgotten to take the stars and the moon when he left. Rand's arm found my waist and I gratefully leaned my head on his shoulder.

"So, it's Forster for us," he said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Four days later in my library, I reached up to touch the spines of the old books on the shelves, a light touch, the way Randolph touched my back or my hand. I thought about decoding the shapes of ink, the alphabet blooming into people and places in my mind, regardless of book or page number. But mildewed pages were out of character for an aristocrat's dinner date. Rather, I should brush up on foxhunting and afternoon tea. While staring at the shelves, halfheartedly seeking a book on peerage laws, my cell phone went off, igniting my pulse. But it was Vera again.

"Has he called?" she asked.

"No," I reported once again as I pulled an old encyclopedia off the shelf. "The Eleventh Baron of Weston has priorities and we have to wait." I'd fed Vera's frenzy, sharing Randolph's comments about my interest in making a country house pay its way and the talk about running away in Forster. "Do you think he's really interested?" I asked, purposely imprecise, allowing her to address either question: his interest in keeping Literature Live in his house or his interest in Lily. I faced the bookshelf so my voice wouldn't carry into the room, deceiving myself that My Jane Austen wouldn't hear the question.
I knew which way Vera would go, which made me think she also understood, at least subconsciously, that Literature Live was doomed.

"Of course he's interested. He's always been especially fond of American actresses," Vera said. Her response triggered a memory of something I couldn't place.

∗ ∗ ∗

Omar joined me, throwing books and papers on the table. "What are you reading?" he asked.

"I'm looking up the 1999 House of Lords Act," I said. "Do you know anything about it?"

Omar sat. "It restricted the number of hereditary peers allowed to govern; no more than ninety-two can sit in Lords. The rest are appointees with life terms." He guessed why I asked. "Randolph is not entitled to a seat."

"I see." Like learning that nobody lived in country manors nowadays or had servants. "Speaking of," he said, "how's Lord Randy?"

"I haven't heard from him. I'm a bit worried for Literature Live's future, really."

"You should be." Omar pulled a newspaper from his pile of stuff. Rifling through the pages, he found the section he looked for and tossed it to me. "Have a look."

"What's this?" I scanned photographs of people in evening attire, society types posing for the camera. "What am I looking for?"

"Your Randy Lord." Omar pointed to a picture in the middle of the page and folded his arms across his chest.

There, posing in aristocratic understatement, stood my Randolph with a demure socialite. The caption read,
Lord Weston and Sara Stormont at the Benefit for the Sick Dentists' Trust
. I studied the picture, wondering who she was, how serious their relationship might be; another Someone Else.

Omar wagged a finger at me. "You're not letting Vera use you, are you?"

"I don't think so."

"Good. Don't let her pump you up so you can't think for yourself. You can't save Literature Live for Nigel, so don't let her convince you it all hangs on you snuggling up with the lord of the manor. It doesn't."

"No?"

"Look at Vera. Look at her life. Lonely as can be, married to a gay man, no family to call her own." Omar leaned forward. "I know how charming she is, but you need to
only connect
yourself."

"Let's talk about something else," I said. "When are you leaving?"

He looked at his watch. "Midnight, why?"

"No," I said. "When are you going home--to Michigan?"

"Friday," he said, opening his laptop.

"You're not staying through the end?" I asked.

"It's over," he said.

I sat back and folded my hands.

Omar removed his glasses and asked me, "Why don't you come with me?"

"And do what?"

"Continue your work connecting disjointed personalities; the university is full of them." He smiled. "And spend evenings amusing me with your stories."

I rolled my eyes.

"No, really. Why don't you come to Michigan? Go back to school." Omar leaned back on his chair's hind legs. "Get your MFA."

"No money." I bit my lip.

"You can work on campus. Human resources, isn't it?" He wiped the lens on his shirt.

"I don't remember."

"You can stay with me until you get your act together."

I took a deep breath and looked at him. Without glasses, he appeared younger and more vulnerable. "That's a very tempting offer, Omar."

He rested on all four chair legs. "Think about it," he said.

"I'll think about it."

∗ ∗ ∗

With less than a week of literary festival left to me, I sat on my bed, holding Magda's book, staring at Bets's mattress. I'd stripped her bed, folding the matching bedspread and stuffing it in her closet. The naked ticking satisfied in a mildly punitive ascetic sense. Bets's side of the bureau was bare, as well as her side of the sink and table. I'd removed the things she'd stored under my bed and stuffed all of it in her closet and forced the door shut. I wanted to be completely alone.

I'd spent all day Monday and Tuesday, festival days off, reading in my room. Books accumulated in stacks around my bed. Not novels, but critical essays about Jane Austen and
Mansfield Park
, the type of thing Vera had encouraged me to read back in June. I discovered back issues of
Persuasions
, a scholarly journal published by JASNA, the existence of which blurred my understanding of the distinction between academics and Janeites. Essays about
Mansfield Park
referenced names I'd heard in Nigel's conversations and in lectures, and I worked backward to the primary sources listed in bibliographies. Most books were on our shelves, and the deeper I read, the better I understood what I'd been doing all summer.

I survived by eating Bets's leftover cheese crackers and drinking water from the sink in my room. By Tuesday evening, when I began reading the slavery essays in the book Magda had left me, a week had passed since Randolph said he'd call. So tired, yet unable to sleep, I struggled to under
stand how anyone could believe that Jane Austen was complicit with slave-owning society. No way.

But then I read, and reread, that Jane Austen's father was trustee of a plantation in Antigua. The godfather of Jane's oldest brother owned the plantation, and details of his life bear striking similarity to those of the Bertram family. Jane Austen drew on details from her family to create
Mansfield Park.
This information wasn't in anything else I'd read about her life. Jane Austen had secrets. Or maybe her father had secrets. But she discovered them. And she never told me. I would have told her something that important. I told her everything. Perhaps we weren't as close as I thought. Perhaps the person in my peripheral vision wasn't Jane Austen at all.