Attempting Elizabeth (9 page)

“I am surprised,” he admitted. “And I am very glad that I know your plans. And, Mrs. Younge,” he turned his head finally to look at my soon-to-be-former companion. “I expect this is the first time you are hearing about Georgiana’s engagement?” The sarcasm was fairly dripping off of his voice. I had a moment of absolute admiration for his ability to conjure up such a dry tone when he was so upset.

I figured if I was turning knives, I might as well help turn the one in Mrs. Younge’s career as a companion. So I laughed gaily, as if I hadn’t noticed the tension in the room. “Oh, no, Mrs. Younge has been helping me pack. She is quite friendly with Mr. Wickham.”

“Is she?” Darcy’s voice was suddenly very soft. Soft, and lethal sounding. It sent shivers down my spine. From the look on Mrs. Younge’s face it was sending shivers down hers too, but of an entirely different variety. “Georgiana, I think it would be best if I spoke to Mrs. Younge alone. Why don’t you go up to your room for a bit.”

I allowed a confused and worried expression to flit over Georgiana’s features. “Is something wrong? Have I done something I should not have?”

Darcy turned back to me and sent me what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile. “No. You have not done anything wrong, but I do need to speak with Mrs. Younge.”

I stood up, actually relieved to be done with the awkward situation for now. Darcy stood up as well and escorted me to the door of the sitting room. As soon as I was out of sight of Darcy and Mrs. Younge I dropped the lady-like gait I had started out with and ran as fast as I could up the stairs and to Georgiana’s room.

As I waited in the room, I could hear the maids scrambling up and down the hall, and a raised voice that I knew was Mrs. Younge’s. They were helping her pack her things. Darcy had tossed her out on her ear and had made quick work of it. Not even forty-five minutes after he’d first set foot across the threshold I heard a carriage pull up in front of the townhouse to take Mrs. Younge away.

About thirty minutes later, the maid named Sarah came to my room to let me know that my brother wanted to see me in the study. I honestly wasn’t sure how to proceed from here, but luckily Darcy was everything that was kind and solicitous. I could tell he really cared for Georgiana’s feelings as he explained to me that he was taking me back to London with him until a new companion could be found for me.

I nodded demurely when he told me we would leave Ramsgate in a few days. I knew that from London that Darcy would eventually go to visit Bingley at Netherfield and the actual timeline of
Pride and Prejudice
would commence. I was stuck living as Georgiana for the time being, but I’d always wanted to visit London. And now I got to visit London in the 1800s. I was about to live every geeky literature major’s dream.

She did not shut it properly because she knew that it is very silly to shut oneself into a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one.

Three weeks later
I’d finally had enough.

I had to get out. I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought if I could just wait through the year and the half left in the story, it might just pop me out of the novel and back into my life once I reached “The End.” But being stuck as a literary character who spends almost the entire time “off-screen” ended up being dreadfully boring. I suppose that if I was a character that had more freedom—like someone who had already been introduced to society—I would have more to do. But Georgiana’s options were really limited.

If I could have been Lizzy I’m sure I would have found something to employ my time. Well, first of all, she has a lot more “on-screen” time, being the main character of the novel, but even one of her sisters—okay, honestly, Jane was the only one who seemed palatable as a character—had more freedom at Longbourn than Georgiana had. They were all “out” and therefore could go to parties and dances. Not only that, but they weren’t rich heiresses, so they had freedoms I didn’t. Georgiana couldn’t set foot outside without her companion, but the Bennet girls frequently walked by themselves into the village of Meryton, or went shopping, or visited with their aunt.

I felt like I could kill someone just for a walk outside by myself. I’d off them and stuff them in a closet just for twenty-minutes of productive, breathable, alone time. But it wasn’t going to happen.

I spent almost all of my time in the London townhouse practicing piano or painting. Luckily for me, these were activities that Georgiana’s body remembered how to do and if I could make my mind blank enough as I had done with the sewing I could accomplish a lot. Painting, playing piano, dancing with the instructor. Repeat. Unfortunately for me this meant I was spending a lot of time with my mind blank. It was starting to scare me. I had never been so purposefully unproductive in my life. I also began to freak out about the amount of time I’d been in the book. Where was I in the real world? Was I still lying there on the couch in some kind of weird comatose state? Was time passing there like it was here?

And I couldn’t handle living in the same house as Darcy anymore. He’d come to the sitting room where Mrs. Annesley, my new companion, and I spent most of our afternoons. I’d pour tea and we’d chit-chat about nothing. I think it was probably training for Georgiana to become a hostess, and her brother was nice enough to act as the guinea pig. I usually saw him at dinner too, though often he dined with the Bingleys and I knew soon he would be headed to Netherfield with them and the novel would actually begin.

It kind of felt like being back stage before a production was going to start. Sort of that heightened waiting for the action to begin. But I was the only one who knew we were actors and that there were scenes to be played.

And so after three weeks in the London townhouse I finally snapped. Like a twig. I had to try to get out of the novel. All of my previous attempts had been spectacularly unsuccessful. They’d resulted only in me having to repeat the odious day of Wickham’s proposal over and over. What if I tried something again and I got bumped back to that scene? The previous three weeks would have been a total waste of my time.

And what, exactly, was I going to do? The only thing I could think of that I hadn’t tried was announcing to another character that I was not, in fact, Georgiana, but Kelsey Edmundson, real person, from the twenty-first century.

Which is how I found myself sitting in Darcy’s study—it was much nicer and more homey feeling than the one in Ramsgate—preparing to inform him that he was a fictional character. If I didn’t get out of the novel, I expected one of two other things to happen. Either I would be bounced back to the sitting room in Ramsgate and forced to play everything over again, or the timeline would continue as normal, but Darcy would be convinced that Georgiana was completely around the bend. I didn’t think he’d be the type to stuff her away in an asylum. More likely that he’d bring in the best private physicians to examine my poor noggin and try to fix me. It would definitely mean even more restrictions on what I was able to do during the day.

I was actually leaning toward the first option. I was pretty sure the rest of the day would be highly uncomfortable, and then at midnight I’d find myself back setting that same dratted row of stitches. The thought was making me physically ill. But I was desperate.

I was smart enough to not tell Darcy I wanted to talk to him privately until the very end of dinner. I figured the closer to midnight it was the better.

“What did you want to see me about, Georgie?” Darcy asked as he sat in the leather chair opposite me.

“I have something to tell you that is not going to make a lot of sense to you, but I need you to keep an open mind.”

Darcy looked a little startled at my direct tone but nodded. He leaned forward in his chair, his forehead furrowed in concern.

I took a deep breath. When push came to shove, this was harder to say than I’d thought. “There is a novelist—a woman—her name is Jane Austen. She is writing a book that will be published in a few years. It’s called
Pride and Prejudice
and it’s going to become a huge sensation. In two hundred years it will be considered a classic and studied in universities all over the world.”

Darcy raised his eyebrows in surprise. I suppose he had been expecting me to confess I was secretly corresponding with Wickham or something.

“In fact, two hundred years from now,
I
will be studying it in a university. I know this is going to sound completely insane, but my name is Kelsey Edmundson. I’m trapped in Georgiana’s body, but I am a twenty-three year old university student from America. From the future. Well, not even the future, because you see, we are actually
in
that novel. In
Pride and Prejudice
. You’re the hero of the novel. You’re going to meet and fall in love with the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, and the two of you will become one the most beloved couples in all of literature.”

There was a pregnant pause after this announcement. Darcy was looking at me in shock and concern. I was holding my breath waiting for something—
anything
—to happen. I don’t know what I’d been hoping for. Maybe for the walls of the study to be ripped apart and the entire novel to disintegrate around me. Or for me to be whooshed and pushed and pulled and open my eyes on my own couch, none the worse for wear. Anything would have been preferable to the absolute nothing that was happening.

“Georgiana,” Darcy said in a carefully neutral voice. I looked back at him. At least he didn’t look like he was going to immediately consign me to Bedlam. “I think you have let your imagination run away with you, and perhaps the wine at dinner did not help.”

I sighed. It didn’t really matter if he believed me or not. My theory had been that telling another character that we were all fictional would jar me out of the book. That hadn’t happened.

“I know you don’t believe me. But it’s true. I’m just tired of being stuck here. I want to go home. I want to see my friends. I’m running out of theories, and I don’t think I can make it through to the end of this book.” I stood up and curtsied. “Goodnight, Darcy. I hope you sleep well.”

He didn’t try to stop me. I walked slowly to Georgiana’s room. A small part of me hoping that the effects of my breaking the fourth wall and saying out loud that we were all just characters in a book were just somehow delayed. But I made it safely to Georgiana’s room.

I sat, on the edge of Georgiana’s bed still wearing the dress I’d worn to dinner, once again watching the clock tick down to midnight. I swear to God, if I ended up in the sitting room with that cursed sampler in my hands once again I was going to meltdown right then and there.

The clock hit 11:59 and I realized that my fingers were hurting from how tightly I was twisting them together in my lap. I tried to tell myself to relax, but I couldn’t. I was too freaked out. I thought the ticking of the clock might actually drive me insane. Maybe I would end up in Bedlam after all.

The hands of the clock moved to twelve and I let out a huge sigh of relief. Although this probably meant that I’d spend the foreseeable future being poked and prodded to figure out why I was convinced that all the people around me were fictional characters and I was a novel-jumping, time-traveling girl from the future. Honestly, it was preferable to being back with Mrs. Younge and Wickham.

I wondered if it meant I could try other ways to get out of the story without facing the repercussion of being bumped back to the sitting room.

I finally fell asleep, fully clothed, and utterly exhausted.

~

I woke up late, but late was normal here. Breakfast wasn’t usually available until at least ten. I’d found that I could wander in any time between ten and noon and expect food in the breakfast room. I’d gotten into the habit of eating right at ten. Mrs. Annesley and I usually met in the breakfast room about that time so when I didn’t manage to get dressed and down before eleven I felt bad for keeping her waiting. However, I was sure that she’d heard about my little conversation with Darcy last night and probably was more concerned with my mental state than my tardiness for breakfast.

Mrs. Annesley had obviously been in the breakfast room for some time as her plate was almost empty. She looked up as I entered.

“Good morning, Georgiana, how are you feeling this morning?” She smiled at me warmly and if there was a hidden meaning behind her words I couldn’t detect one. I smiled back, rather unsure of the footing I was on. She wasn’t looking at me like she thought I was nuts, she was looking at me just like she had every morning for the last three weeks.

“I am sorry I am late. I overslept a bit,” I finally answered.

“That is quite all right.”

I stood there awkwardly for a few moments, waiting for the other shoe to fall, for her to mention something about what I’d told Darcy last night. Honestly, there was no way he wouldn’t have told her, right? The woman would have to be warned that her charge was patently insane.

Mrs. Annesley quirked one eyebrow, obviously not sure why I was still hovering just a few steps into the room. “The eggs are especially good this morning,” she finally offered tilting her head toward the sideboard.

“Yes. I am sorry. I find myself still a bit tired,” I said apologetically and headed toward the sideboard. If Mrs. Annesley wasn’t concerned about my mental state, I surely wasn’t going to let it interfere with my breakfast.

Mrs. Annesley chatted comfortably while I ate. After a few moments of idle chitchat I finally got up the nerve to ask about Darcy.

“I have not seen your brother since dinner last night,” was the answer.

“You did not see him after I, um, spoke with him in his study, then?”

Mrs. Annesley looked at me curiously. “Did you speak with him in his study? When was that?”

“Last night.” She looked so surprised that I added weakly. “Did not I? Perhaps I am confusing my days?”

“You must be muddled, Miss Darcy, for directly after dinner last night your brother went out with Mr. Bingley and you and I stayed up and read that new novel, the horrific one.”

I stared at her blankly for a moment. She wasn’t describing what had happened last night but what we had done the night
before
last. Could it be possible that I’d been bumped back in the timeline but not all the way to the sitting room in Ramsgate but only one day?

I wasn’t quite sure what to think about that.

“Oh, yes, I do remember now. I had trouble sleeping last night and was thinking of something I wanted to discuss with my brother, I must have dreamed that I actually did speak with him.”

Mrs. Annesley nodded as if my explanation made sense. It didn’t really, but she was too polite to actually say anything.

“I expect we shall see him this afternoon, perhaps you can speak with him then” was all she offered before tactfully changing the subject to some dress patterns we had seen in a magazine.

I didn’t ask to speak with Darcy that evening at dinner. I’d tried that and it had obviously not worked. I was grateful that I hadn’t been forced back to when I first entered the novel, but I would have been even happier to have awakened as myself. Something
had
happened, though. When I was talking to Darcy about being Kelsey—when I had said my full name—I’d felt more like myself than I had in weeks. As if the real world was somehow just a little bit closer and more reachable than it had been before. I just didn’t know how to get to it.

Mrs. Annesley and I continued our reading again after dinner. It was kind of weird to be reading a novel when I knew myself to be in a novel. I wondered briefly if I could jump from
Pride and Prejudice
into
The Mysteries of Udolpho
. Like an infinite regression of novel jumping. Somehow I doubted I’d be able to jump into
The Mysteries of Udolpho
from Georgiana. I’m not sure why, but I just felt like the story wouldn’t be strong enough to pull me out.

Why would Austen’s story be stronger than Mrs. Radcliffe’s? My first answer was “well, because it’s a better story, of course.” And because I know it better. Perhaps that is why I fell into it, because it’s a story that I know.

And for some reason, that is when the idea hit me.

Of all of my theories, and there had been plenty, this one made the most sense to me. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it before.

I had to write myself out.

I was so excited to try it that I could hardly contain myself. As soon as Mrs. Annesley got to the end of a chapter I pleaded tiredness and managed to escape up to my room.

As far as I could tell Georgiana had never kept a diary or anything, but there was a desk in her room stocked with pen and paper. She was a very good student, that much I could discern from her neat little stacks of paper full of French verbs conjugated every which way to Sunday. I’d attempted to be as good a student. I figured since I was stuck here I should take advantage of the situation and at least try to learn something. But French consistently evaded my grasp.