Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (25 page)

As Wes and I queue up for coffees, there is a slight fluttering in my stomach, for this is the first time I am to pay my own way, and I wish not to appear to disadvantage. I have already studied the denominations of all the currency in my purse; now I train my attention on the young men and women in the queue before me. I watch carefully what they do and, in particular, I observe that they put an extra note or a few of the larger coins into the glass bowl next to the money machine—the cash register, I somehow know it is called.

As we approach the front of the queue, the waitress, a lovely, long-limbed girl with pale skin and enormous, light-brown eyes fringed with thick lashes, greets Wes with a sparkling smile.

“Sharon,” he says, and kisses her on the cheek. Her hair, which is a rich chestnut, is piled loosely atop her head and fastened with what looks like an enameled stick.

“And who is this?” she says, favoring me with her smile, and her manner is so engaging that I relinquish the silly impulse I had, for just a moment, to be jealous of Wes’s intimacy with her. Not that I have any right.

Wes introduces us. She puts out a hand and shakes mine warmly, and I am instantly won over by the sweetness of her smile and the genuine friendliness in her eyes. Besides, it is not improper at all in this world for a single man to kiss the cheek of a single woman. And I remember, with an inward smile, how shocked I was that first time I entered The Fortune Bar and Glenn enfolded me in his arms.

“So, Sharon,” says Wes, “I heard you’re giving this all up.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand.

She sighs. “Don’t think I won’t miss the place. Best job I ever had. Really.”

Wes smiles at me. “I swear I didn’t pay her to say that. Sharon here’s off to law school. Gonna be some hotshot attorney.”

Sharon rolls her eyes and then trains her warm smile on me again. “Not exactly. I’m setting my sights on public policy law, which can be decidedly unglamorous, especially when you’re starting out. Anyway, it’s been a few years since I was in a classroom, except for cramming for the LSATs, and I’ve got a lot to do before I start my new life.”

“Sam must be heartbroken,” says Wes.

She laughs. “He’ll live.”

After we order and I proudly pay for our coffees and muffins, adding what I hope is a generous tip to the glass bowl, Wes and I settle into a couple of cushioned armchairs near the window.

Wes sips his coffee and sighs contentedly. “I love this place.”

I lean back into the chair. “It’s very comfortable.”

He looks down into his cup and pauses before meeting my eyes. “Think you could spend four or five days a week here?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sam, the owner, is a good friend. I told him all about you, and the thing is—he’d love to give you Sharon’s job, sight unseen. That’s how much he trusts me. And Sharon. She’d be training you. I know it’s not the most prestigious job in the world, but it’s not a long-term commitment. Sam knows it would only be an interim gig for you. All he asks is that you give him a little notice when you find something else.”

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Think about it. You don’t have to decide right now. Tomorrow would be good, though.”

I, a server of drinks in a coffeehouse. How could I, a gentleman’s daughter, consider for a moment accepting such a situation? Serving drinks for wages. Taking tips. Carrying a tray.

I watch Sharon laughing with a young man as she removes empty cups and plates from his table and stacks them on her little tray.

No. I cannot give it another moment’s consideration. I, stoop to a situation that my own housekeeper would spurn to consider? It would be insupportable. There cannot be two opinions on this matter.

Or can there?

“You’re insulted, aren’t you,” says Wes, a little defensively, and it is then that I realize I have put my head down and am cradling it in my hands.

I meet his eyes. I do not wish to appear ungrateful. But is appearing ungrateful worse than being ungrateful? And who am I, in my penurious state, to reject any sort of paying work?

I can feel the blush spreading from my neck to my cheeks. “I just—I don’t know what to think.”

“Courtney, there’s nothing wrong with working in a café. I did it one summer. And look at Sharon. She’s our age, top of her class, on her way to being a lawyer, but even if she weren’t, she’d have a decent gig here for as long as this place stays in business. What’s wrong with that?”

What could I possibly say that would make any sense to him? That I am not who he thinks I am? That I am a gentleman’s daughter who was educated to believe that such work would be a degradation?

No, he would never understand, even if I could get him to believe that I am not Courtney Stone, that I am someone else from a different world and a different life, a life with inflexible lines between different spheres of society.

“No offense, Courtney,” says Wes, “but is there anything more demeaning than being an assistant to someone like David? I’d rather work here any day. Especially for Sam. Do you know what he told me when he opened a few months ago? That he wanted to feel like he was serving coffee to guests in his own home. And he wanted his employees to feel that way, too. That’s his vision of a workplace.”

Serving coffee to guests in his own home. How many times have I presided over the tea in the drawing room at Mansfield House, making the tea and offering it to our guests, refilling their cups with coffee, and helping them to cake? That was no degradation; it was my duty and honor to show hospitality.

Could I not do the same here, or imagine that I were doing so, even if I am paid a salary to engage in such feats of fancy? Could it be any worse than that endless interval after dinner with the ladies, feigning interest in endless tales of lace trimmings, spoilt children, and petty gossip? Is there any real shame in earning my bread in such a manner? What could truly be undignified about honest labor?

Wes is right; serving coffee and tea and muffins to strangers in this coffeehouse—this café—is no less dignified than catering to the whims of that David creature. Far more dignified, I’ll vow.

“Yes,” I hear myself saying almost before I realize I have decided to say it. “I’ll do it. And I thank you for offering it to me.”

Wes nearly chokes on his coffee, but he quickly recovers and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin.

“Are you all right?”

“You sure you want to do this? You’re not obligated to take this job. Or any job, for that matter. You’re under no obligation to me. Do you hear me, Courtney? Because that’s the very last thing I’d want. You’re not to sacrifice yourself to some sort of servitude to pay me back.”

I try to laugh it off, but his serious manner stops me. “It is the right thing to do.”

“I mean it, Courtney.”

I smile at him. “As do I. And I am happy to accept your offer.”

I realize that Sharon is watching us, and it occurs to me that she might, like Mrs. Jennings of
Sense and Sensibility,
put her own construction on the word “offer.” Which instantly makes me blush. Again.

There is a bit of an awkward silence in Wes’s car on the way back to my apartment. I keep hearing myself say
I am happy to accept your offer
and blushing to the roots of my hair like a raw schoolgirl. As for his silence, I cannot imagine why he should feel awkward, unless perhaps he wonders whether he advocated too warmly on behalf of the position.

“Here’s Sam’s number,” he says, handing me a card when we reach my house. “You should call him tonight and firm things up. He may want you to start as early as tomorrow, if you can swing it. Oh, and before I forget.” He smiles. “Call me if you need directions. I know you never pay attention when you’re not behind the wheel. Good news is, it’s only a five-minute drive.”

And that is when I realize I am expected to drive my car.

For a moment I cannot find my tongue.

“I . . . I prefer to walk.”

“You. Walk.” Wes stifles a laugh.

“I don’t see why that’s funny.”

“You’d take your car down the block if no one were watching you.”

I smile sweetly at him. “But walking is beneficial exercise, is it not?”

Wes attempts to keep his countenance. “Indeed, madam.”

“Well, then. It’s all settled.”

“How hard
did
you hit your head, Courtney?” He reaches over and brushes a stray strand of hair from my eyes, and the very tips of his fingers graze my forehead.

I am so stunned by his touch, by the sweetness of his gaze, that I must catch my breath.

Is this the gentle affection of a friend, or is there something more in his eyes?

I laugh to cover my confusion. “You happen to be the second person to ask me that question today.”

He has parked the car in front of my house but isn’t making any move to open his door; in fact, he hasn’t even turned off the car.

Should I ask him inside, or would it be too . . . Oh, blast it to—“Would you like to come in?”

He smiles at me, and it feels as if a warm space has opened inside my heart. “I wish I could. But I’ve got a deadline. Going home to work. Probably an all-nighter.” He sighs heavily.

Deadline. Whatever that might be, it certainly sounds disagreeable. “Well, then.” I put my hand on the door handle, wishing he would touch my hair again. Or my hand. Or . . .

“What are you up to tonight?” he says.

“I think I’ll read and watch my movie.”

He laughs. “
My
movie. Of course. Only one movie exists in your world.”

I almost cannot form words. “You mean there are more?” I realize how stupid that sounds; of course there are more; I saw one with Paula and Anna.

“Believe it or not. A whole drawerful of them, in your case.”

A whole drawerful of movies. I start to laugh. What are men to books and movies? Perhaps I shall never leave the house. Except to my place of business, that is.

Twenty-two

I
t is eleven in the morning, and I am at my station behind the counter at Home, which is the name of the café. Sam, the big, burly bear of a man who owns the café, whom I met briefly this morning, put me quite at my ease, and Sharon is now schooling me in the finer points of making coffee, no simple task at this establishment. The coffee machine, she proudly informs me, is one of only a couple of hundred in the country, which sounds to me like a great number of machines until she tells me it represents less than 1 percent of cafés.

“Of course, it’s a ten-thousand-dollar machine,” she says. “Put it this way: What would you say is the most luxurious ride?”

“Ride?”

“You know, wheels.”

“Let me see . . . a barouche-landau?”

“Don’t know that one, but to me, cars are like major appliances on wheels. . . . I know, a Maserati. This is the Maserati of coffee machines.”

She hands me the cup she has just brewed. “But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.”

My first sip is so exquisite that I can hardly put it into words. Light and delicate and at the same time bracing. A hint of chocolate. And the scent; is it cherries or blackberries or something else?

Sharon beams her pleasure. “I know. Definitely not your mother’s coffee.”

I laugh. And as I make my very first espresso, carefully supervised by Sharon, whom I like more and more, I am very well pleased with myself. For there is something positively gratifying about earning my own money with my own two hands. Even if they are my two borrowed hands. And now I know I can afford to pay for the groceries I bought this morning with my credit card. Amazing how I merely handed over the card, and the purchases were mine.

Clearly, Sharon too takes great pride in her work, this young woman about to embark upon a study of the law. She has no airs about her newly elevated situation, no disgust for her business. It appears that I have landed in a world guided by work and merit, rather than blood or rank. And I must say I like it very well indeed.

At the end of the day, after Sharon schools me in closing up the café and I bid her good-bye, I carefully reverse the directions that Wes was so kind as to give me. And as I make my way down the bustling streets lighting up in the dusk of summer, I wonder if perhaps I am lacking in sensibility, for I find that I am not pining for my privileged position as a gentleman’s daughter, for the richly furnished rooms and the hovering servants that were as much a part of home as the air I breathed. Of course it would be lovely to awaken and have breakfast prepared for me and not have to think about washing the clothes, but in truth, I lived in a state of the most confining dignity. No one ever asked me what I wished to do above choosing a dish at table or deciding between embroidery and reading for an evening’s amusement. Everything else was set out for me—filial duty, feminine accomplishments, marriage, children—as inflexibly as the blue gown on the bed that I was to wear for dinner, and woe betide me if I dared refuse. And I did refuse. Not the accomplishments and the blue gown, but the marriage and children. Until I almost succumbed. Almost.

What I do long for are my friends. I long for my father and for Mary and for Barnes. I long for the greenery and freshness of the country; the air here is hot and close and tinged with soot, like a London winter. And while the brush-headed trees are wondrous, there is a decided lack of lawns and plants.

I even think of my mother in wistful moments, but I know I am wishing for the mother I longed for, the mother I fashioned in my mind, rather than for the mother she was. Still, she was my mother, and there is an empty place in my life where she should be.

I do think of Edgeworth, though those moments are fleeting, and with every passing day the pain dims in memory. Mostly, he visits my thoughts as I drift off to sleep. That is when his face and form appear in my mind’s eye most clearly; that is when it is almost sweet to think of him. It is when I see him as I loved him best, my shining man, my great reader of poetry and plays, my champion of all that was good and clever in my world.

But last night, as I floated between the sleeping and waking worlds, his countenance became that of Wes, and it comforted me to know that
he
was here, that I could look upon his face again. I wonder if I am so inconstant that I can go from wanting to be Edgeworth’s wife to finding myself drawn to Wes, a man I have known but a week. And when Frank flits across my mind, it is even more disquieting. Much as I have no wish to see him, I fear to test my resolve in his presence. For I do not trust myself to keep those disturbing memories of him at bay. Which is why I have not returned the two messages from him that were waiting for me last night.