Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (14 page)

“Forgive me,” she says, her face bleached of color. I follow her gaze but see nothing out of the ordinary. Not from her perspective, that is. For me, being in a ballroom in Regency-era Bath is about as out of the ordinary as it gets.

“What is it, Mary?”

Mary looks down and shakes her head slightly.

“Some fresh air?” I take her arm and lead her toward the door.

Mary allows me to usher her through the crowd and outside the assembly rooms, where the air is crisp.

After a few minutes, Mary gives me a thin smile. “I am perfectly well again.”

“Then why do you look like you just saw a ghost?”

“I thought I saw Will.”

“Who’s Will?”

Mary’s eyes narrow, and she looks at me as if I’m a stranger, which of course I am. “Such a question. And from you, to whom I have confided everything.”

“I have no memory of it, Mary.”

Mary’s expression softens. “Of course you do not. Forgive me.” She looks off into the distance.

“But I would like to hear about him now. If you would like to tell me.”

“Suffice it to say that Will Templeton was the man I was to marry; that is, until Charles drove him away.”

“Your brother?”

“I was not yet of age, I had not yet the independence I now enjoy.”

“And Will? Was he underage, too?”

Mary shook her head.

“So why didn’t you elope?”

“Will was poor, Charles threatened to cut me off, and it would be three more years until I came into my own money.” Mary fans herself vigorously.

“So Will just left.”

Mary says nothing.

“Did you ever hear from him?”

She looks down at her shoes.

“How long ago?”

Her voice is a raspy whisper. “Six years.”

Mary’s hair is a bit mussed from all the fanning, and I smooth back a long strand from her face.

“Mary. Sweetie. Your brother may have been a tyrant, but your man was, I’m sorry to say, a loser. He didn’t stand up to your brother. He never wrote to you. Don’t you think it’s time you moved on?”

Mary glowers at me. “Jane. You look like my friend, but I have no idea who you are.”

“I’m only trying to help.”

“You are cruel.”

“And you are still in love with a man who deserted you six years ago! If I were in that kind of denial over Frank, I hope my friends would talk me out of it.”

“Frank? Who is Frank?”

Whoops.

“No one. Absolutely no one. I meant Charles. Your brother. He reminds me of someone—a distant cousin named Frank. I did not accuse you of being cruel when you warned me about your brother, did I?” I put my arm around her shoulder, expecting her to repulse me, but she doesn’t.

“Oh, Jane, was I cruel? I did not mean to be.” Her brown eyes are imploring.

“Not at all. You said what you thought was necessary to say. As did I. If I weren’t your friend I wouldn’t talk to you this way. And risk losing your friendship. Which means more to me than you can possibly know.”

Mary looks into my eyes, tears running down her cheeks. “I cannot deny that Will was weak. But I shall never forgive Charles.”

I hug her, and I feel her relax into my embrace. Then she disengages herself with a sigh. “In truth, I hardly ever think about the matter. Charles and I spend little time in each other’s company, and he is invariably civil and attentive to me.” She dabs her eyes with a handkerchief and gives me a mischievous smile. “Which I bear as well as I can.”

There is a light mist in the air, and I shiver.

Mary takes my arm. “Let us go inside, Jane, for I have not forgot my promise to find you a partner.”

I am just about to open my mouth to protest when behind me I hear a familiar voice.

“And I, Miss Mansfield, would be honored to offer my services to you.”

Twenty-four

I wheel around to see Edgeworth, who bows and gazes at me with such warmth in his hazel eyes that my knees turn to water. I’m not sure if my inward gasp is actually audible, but I certainly cannot form a syllable of anything intelligible.

“Charles,” says Mary, displeasure written all over her face. “This is most unexpected. I had thought your business at Hargrove Court would require a longer stay.”

I try not to stare at him in his cream-colored knee breeches and dark blue jacket. I never thought I’d have a crush on a man wearing knee-length white stockings. Actually, before waking up in this place I never imagined seeing a man in any kind of stockings whatsoever. I’m glad he’s looking at Mary now and not me, because I’m sure I look like a slack-jawed idiot.

“I find I have more pressing business here.” Edgeworth meets my eyes, sending a rush of heat to my face. “And since my uncle informs me his affairs are as disentangled as someone in his situation could ever imagine them to be,” he says, lifting an eyebrow, “I passed much of my time being of no more use than a shooting companion to my uncle and a card player for my aunt.”

“And do you plan to stay long in Bath?”

“That depends on how long it takes to conclude my business.” He looks at me pointedly, then turns his eyes back to Mary. “I have taken rooms at the White Hart, but Stevens insists I remove to his father’s house in the Crescent.”

He inclines his head toward a dark-haired, serious-looking man in his late twenties or early thirties, who seems to have been hovering a few steps behind us awaiting his cue.

“You remember Mr. Stevens, do you not, Mary? The younger brother of my old friend Captain Stevens?”

“Of course.” Mary smiles on Edgeworth’s friend with real warmth. “What a pleasure to see you, Mr. Stevens. It has been many years, I believe.”

Stevens bows, stammering something.

Edgeworth turns his face to me, and I notice his smile creates expressive little lines around his eyes. “Miss Mansfield, may I introduce you to my friend, Mr. Stevens?”

Stevens and I dutifully perform our bows and curtseys, and Edgeworth offers me his arm. “Since I collect you are not otherwise engaged, may I have the honor of the next two dances?”

I open my mouth to speak, hoping an excuse will come out, but without waiting for my answer Edgeworth turns to his sister.

“Stevens is most anxious to dance with you, Mary, and only wanted to be assured that you remembered him before he put himself forward.”

At this, Stevens turns almost scarlet and bows again to Mary. “Unless you dislike the idea, Miss Edgeworth.”

“Of course not.” Mary manages a cheerful smile, though I can tell she feels backed into a corner. However, one look at Stevens’s pained expression makes her manners click smoothly into place. She thanks him politely, and with no time for more than a worried glance at me, she allows herself to be led into the ballroom.

Edgeworth extends his hand. “Shall we follow their lead, Miss Mansfield?”

My stomach tightens. How can I possibly imitate the complicated steps and turns of the dancers?

“I can’t dance,” I manage to murmur.

Edgeworth frowns, puzzled.

“I mean, I don’t know how.”

His face relaxes. “And I suppose all the times we danced together are evidence of this deficiency? As well as all the times I marveled at how any creature could move with such grace?”

What the hell. If this body remembers how to sew, it probably remembers how to dance as well. And if it doesn’t, I’ll find out soon enough.

I shrug and give him my hand. As he leads me into the ballroom and across the floor toward the other dancers, the music and conversation and laughter become a soft blur of sounds, and nothing is distinct except the feel of his hand and the beauty of his face as he turns to me and says I have no idea what. It is as if I am an observer of myself as we take our place in the long line of couples.

Then, the music and the conversation and the couples and the room move from the periphery of my consciousness into sharp focus, and I laugh aloud at the realization that I’m dancing as well as anyone around me. I, the most uncoordinated and rhythmically challenged woman in the world, can dance. And not just a freestyle, move-your-body-to-the-music, fake-it sort of dance. But a highly choreographed, stylized sort of dance.

What is even more surprising than the fact that I know how to execute this elegant set of turns and moves is what I feel while performing them with Edgeworth. Every time he faces me, every time he turns me by the hand or crosses shoulders with me or performs any of the figures of the dance with me, it is with an unbroken gaze into my eyes. At first I feel almost too exposed, and I find myself breaking his gaze, only to be drawn into it again. And then I realize this is the way it is supposed to be done, for the gentleman standing diagonally across from me smiles and makes eye contact whenever the dance requires him to turn me or change places with me. But of course it is not the penetrating, I-know-everything-about-you way that Edgeworth looks at me. I can feel him watching me as the other man turns me. I am conscious of displaying the movement of my body as Edgeworth watches. And I observe him with equal intensity as he turns the lady diagonally across from him; she too smiles into his eyes. I am as heated by Edgeworth’s gaze as I am by the exertions of the dance itself.

Here is an unbroken space in which a woman and a man may, with the full sanction of society, practically make love to each other with their eyes, their fleeting touch, and the display of their bodies. Emblem of marriage, indeed.

As I complete a figure-eight and face Edgeworth, he smiles at me admiringly. “No, Miss Mansfield, I see you cannot dance at all.”

That is how Wes looked at me when I told him I was afraid I would never be able to dance at my wedding, that I wanted to take a few lessons to build up my confidence, and that Frank laughed at me for even suggesting it. “I know you can do it,” Wes said, and there was no hint of mockery in his face, only admiration.

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because I have faith in you, Courtney. In fact, I’m taking those lessons with you. And we’ll see who can’t dance.”

“Miss Mansfield?” Edgeworth’s voice and playful smile bring me back to the dance. “Such a faraway look on your face. May I accompany you there?”

He is so beautiful, his hair golden in the candlelight and his cheeks flushed with the dance, that I say, “I wish you could.”

“Ah. A secret place. Perhaps one day you will do me the honor.”

What would he say if I told him the truth? He’d never believe it. Mary doesn’t, and who could blame her. I look over at Mary, who is dancing with Mr. Stevens a few couples down the line from us. She appears to be enjoying talking to Stevens, who actually breaks into a smile that transforms his face into something animated and almost attractive.

“It appears my sister has an admirer,” Edgeworth says, “and I could not hope for a more respectable and good-natured sort of person. Stevens is of a good family, and though he is but a younger son, he has a tolerably handsome income.”

“And I suppose you know better than your sister what sort of man is right for her.”

Edgeworth’s hazel eyes widen. “No more than any caring brother would, I imagine.”

What presumption. “I imagine your sister would see it differently.”

My own anger surprises me, as does the sharpness of his answer.

“I imagine my sister and I differ on a number of matters.”

“Such as her own ability to gauge the worth of the men in her life?”

The look on his face is almost sorrowful as he passes by my shoulder. “Is my sister still nursing the fairy story she told herself six years ago? If so, I am sorry to hear it.”

Then he nearly turns the wrong way. “Good God. Is that what caused you to change toward me?”

He looks at me searchingly, but I tear my eyes away. I have no answers. Only other people’s versions of events and fragments of memories that aren’t even my own. Most especially my borrowed memory of him with the auburn-haired woman at the stables. None of which I can reconcile with how much I want to acquit him of whatever he may have done.

Of course I want to acquit him. Aren’t I always willfully blind when I’m attracted to a man? I want to ask Edgeworth if the scene in question really occurred, but how can I? I/Jane obviously wasn’t supposed to have witnessed that scene, or even to have been where I/she was at the time. Who knows what the circumstances were? It’s so frustrating to not even know if it’s real. Here I am, already existing in some half-life as someone else—how can I get my mind around the idea of trying to verify a half-memory?

The second dance ends, and Edgeworth is still waiting for my answer. All I can say is, “I don’t know.”

“From one minute to the next, you go from friend to executioner.”

Mary and Stevens are walking toward us. Just before they reach us he whispers urgently into my ear, his warm breath sending a tingle down the back of my neck, “For even the kindest and the happiest pair will find occasion to forbear; And something, every day they live, to pity, and perhaps forgive. Do you remember, Jane? Are you not tempted to hear the accused testify before pronouncing your final sentence?”

The kindest and the happiest pair will find occasion to forbear. I know those words. But how?

He holds my gaze so deeply that it is almost unbearable. Of course he must be innocent. Mary herself had no excuse for why Will Templeton deserted her. But there still remains that image of Edgeworth with the woman at the stables. I know what I saw.

And then, all at once, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

Could this memory have any relationship to Mary’s story of Edgeworth’s affair with the servant in her house, a story I initially dismissed as exaggerated prudishness on Mary’s part?

Why didn’t I put the two together before?

Everything in me is shouting a warning, yet it’s all I can do to stop myself from saying that I don’t even want to know what he did, because I don’t want him to be guilty. I can’t remember ever having been so viscerally attracted to anyone in my life, not even to Frank. Not even close. And that makes my stomach turn cold with fear. It’s the same sensation I had after I ran into Wes on Vermont—which was right before I ended up here—that realization of how attracted to him I was. I can still see the pain in his gray-blue eyes as I rushed past him to get out of that store. “Courtney,” he said. “I am so sorry.” I have to get away before Wes—I mean, Edgeworth—turns my powers of reason into mush. As if they aren’t already.

Someone rings a bell, and Mary decides we need tea. I go through the motions of searching with my little group for a table in the tearoom without actually being in my body, which, I must bear in mind, isn’t really my body anyway. For once I find that thought comforting. I need the distance it provides. I nod and smile at all the right moments, or maybe not, because I catch Mary as well as Edgeworth looking at me strangely a couple of times. I just want to get out of here, and though I don’t like the idea of making Mary leave when she’s obviously enjoying being with Mr. Stevens, who’s paying a lot of attention to her, in the end it’s she who suggests, and then insists, that we go home early. As she puts it, I am “too easily knocked up from all the exercise.”

Pursing my lips to keep from laughing, I can’t help but think that only a horizontal type of exercise is likely to render the effect she mentioned. And how unlikely I am to participate in such an activity when I can’t even go to a ball without a chaperone.

Mary whispers to me that we should find Mrs. Randolph and Susan, whose bright red hair I easily spot on the other end of the room. I catch Mrs. Randolph’s eye and wave, and Mary and I make our way to their table, Edgeworth and Stevens in tow. Susan immediately latches on to Edgeworth, hinting broadly that she wants to dance. Edgeworth mumbles something about needing to escort us home if Mrs. Randolph and she are not yet ready to leave, but that he would be honored if she would be so kind as to stand up with him when he returns.

Mrs. Randolph kisses me on the cheek and says into my ear, “Oh, well, my dear. She will have her way, you know. Better to give in to the small things, I always say.”

The ride home in Edgeworth’s carriage is short and silent. He sits opposite Mary and me, and I can barely meet his eyes. I only look into his face for a second when he hands me out of the carriage, and all I want to do is say something, anything that will make him smile at me again and make me feel how I felt when we were dancing, before I ruined everything. Wait a minute. I didn’t ruin anything. I’m only trying to protect myself, which is what any sane person would do in my situation.

On the other hand, the word “sane” coupled with my situation is debatable.

Later, I lie in bed looking out at the stars, the covers balled up on the floor, sleep an elusive concept. And I realize that I might never know the truth about Edgeworth. Even if I confronted him with what I or Jane saw, and even if he came up with the best explanation in the world, it would still be his word against my fears, his promises against my experience with the most accomplished liars and cheaters in the world.