The Dashwood Sisters Tell All (11 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
imi was still in my room when I got back. She’d clearly made herself at home. The bed was scattered with fashion magazines and the wrappers from the complimentary chocolates that the hotel had left on my pillow.

“Some things never change.” I laughed as I scooped up the wrappers from the bed.

“Forget the chocolate.” Mimi scrambled to her knees on the bed, her eyes shining like a child's at Christmas. “I want details.”

I shouldn't have smiled. Mimi let out a whoop of laughter. “I knew it!”

“
Shh!
” It was late, and no doubt some of our fellow hikers were sound asleep.

“Only if you give me a detailed description of every single thing you ate, said, and did.” She was like a kid in a candy store, but it wasn't because of the chocolates.

“We don't have time for that,” I said, reaching for my daypack. “It's late. Let's get through as much of the diary as we can.”

Mimi sighed. “You’re such a party pooper. I want the scoop, not some dreary old diary entries about how many pence per yard muslin costs.”

“You never know. There might be juicy, salacious gossip in here. It might be like a Regency version of the
National Enquirer
.”

“I’d still rather hear about Daniel.”

I rolled my eyes and joined her on the bed. “Do you want to read first, or should I?”

Mimi shook her head. “You start. I’ll try to stay awake.” She yawned.

“C’mon, Meems. We have to get through this. There may be something in here that Mom wanted us to see or to know. We have to figure out why she sent it to us.”

“She sent it to you. You should figure it out.”

“Just keep your eyes open and listen.” I began to read.

Jane is too young to know her own mind. Why can she not see that? Jack has intelligence and manners to recommend him, but he is wild still and not to be relied upon. She will surely come to grief if she persists in this folly.

As we read, we found Cassandra's thoughts about Tom Lefroy, the man many people believed to be the love of Jane Austen's life. Cassandra, though, clearly thought otherwise.

There were more
couples
in the
crowd
ed room than space
to dance
, but
in time
the furniture was removed. Jane wore
a flower
in her hair,
thus
signaling her desire to dance. She
may
regret this
last
decision, but not more than the one to ask Tom Lefroy
for
a lock of his hair. I am sure it will not be her last effort to shock, for she has many
years
ahead of her to wreak havoc upon my nerves.

Jane must behave with discretion or her reputation will be ruined. Tom Lefroy may age like
a
fine
wine
, but at present he is a care-for-nothing flirt. He
must
mean her no harm, but at her
age
…If only sisters could be allowed the management of one another's hearts. This is not
to be
the first time I have persuaded her to favor the
sublime
over the ridiculous.
But
Jack Smith is not forgotten, for
first
love never is, though she never mentions him. Tom Lefroy is a distraction from the loss of Jack, but I warned her to be careful that he does not become more.

The
newest fashion in hats is for
grapes
, which
must
oblige us to
run
to the village for fresh trimmings for our hats. I am
quite
appalled at the quantity of fruit required, but Jane's plan for refurbishment of her straw bonnet is quite
clear
…

There was Cassandra's own sorrow, too, when we came to the passage about the death of her fiancé.

Jane is my comfort in these dark hours. She offers no advice, no recriminations against my dear Tom, only handkerchiefs and a glass of wine for my relief. My father feels the loss keenly, for now I am once more a burden he must discharge. But how shall I bring myself to think of marriage again? How could I forget my dearest Tom and accept a lesser man? For when set against his memory, they are all lesser men. Jane must be the one to marry, for I cannot.

We learned from an entry written several years later that Jane's affection for the mysterious Jack Smith had fared no better than Cassandra's love for Tom Fowle.

Jane has written from London with unexpected news. Jack's ship went down off Portsmouth. She had written to renew her affection for him, much against my advice. I was right to persuade her to refuse his offer when it was made. What other advice could I have given? They would have had nothing to live on and no certainty for their future.

So that was what had happened to the mysterious Jack Smith, the man Jane Austen had loved. He had died young, and Jane had been left to her regrets. I wondered if she had resented Cassandra for her well-meant, if somewhat tragic, advice. Would Jane rather have been poor and married than single with only the prospect of one day marrying someone wealthy?

“Wait a minute,” Mimi said. “Turn back to where we started.”

I did as she said. “What's the matter?”

She squinted at the faded writing. “Why are there words underlined in that part about Tom Lefroy?” Mimi pointed to a faint mark under one of the words. I fought back the impulse to snatch her finger away from the page. We ought to have been handling the diary with gloves on as it was.

“Careful.” I contented myself with gently easing the diary out of her reach.

Cassandra Austen's handwriting, like most Georgian penmanship, held enough similarities to modern writing to make it readable, but it was quirky too. The
s
's looked more like
f
's, and some of the spellings were strange. But Mimi was right. Here and there, Cassandra had continued to underline random words. I flipped back to the beginning of the diary and leafed through the pages one by one.

I looked at Mimi. “Why would she do that?”

“Maybe it's some sort of a secret code?” Mimi said with mischief in her eyes. “So she could keep things from her nosy little sister.”

I smiled at that, at the shared memory her words provoked. When I was twelve and Mimi was ten, I’d gone to extraordinary lengths to keep her from reading my diary, and she had gone to even more extraordinary lengths to thwart my efforts at secrecy.

“Mom always said they could have used you to help break the Enigma Code during World War II,” I said, teasing her and enjoying it.

“You liked the challenge,” she replied, flopping back on the bed pillows. “You loved to prove you were smarter than me.”

“Prove? Prove?” I grabbed a pillow and tossed it at her. “My superior intelligence was self-evident. No proof necessary.”

Mimi grasped the pillow and hugged it to her midsection. “I admit you’re the smart one, except when it comes to being devious. You never were any good at that.”

I should have continued to laugh, but her words caught me up short. If I had been a more devious person, I would have tried to undermine Daniel's relationship with Melissa all those years ago. I would have made a play for him, exploited his feelings for me. But I was my mother's daughter and, in a way, Jane Austen's too. Honor mattered more than anything, and stealing a man from another woman…well, it wasn't something an honorable woman, an Austen woman, would ever do.

“Ellen? Are you okay?” Mimi levered herself to a sitting position. “I didn't mean to offend you.”

“What? Oh, I’m not offended. I just thought of something.”

“What?”

I began flipping through the diary again. “The words…What if Cassandra didn't underline them as she went along?” I paused at a page where three random words had been heavily underscored. “Look. The ink where she drew the lines is darker than the words. Like it's newer, not as faded.”

Mimi studied the page for a long moment. “We should make a list of the underlined words. From the beginning. In order.” She took the diary from me. “If Cassandra went back afterward, maybe she really was trying to communicate with someone. A secret or something.”

I reached for the pen and pad of hotel notepaper on the nightstand. “You call them out. I’ll write them down.”

“Okay. Ready?”

“Shoot.”

Mimi flipped back to the first entry and began to scan the writing. “
Along. The.
Narrow
.” She paused. “I think this one's underlined.
Way
.” She looked up at me. “
Along the narrow way
?”

Our eyes met, and I shivered despite the still summer warmth of the room.

“It
is
on purpose.” I said the words so softly that I barely breathed them. A strange mixture of anxiety and excitement twisted in my stomach. We hadn't just been given a secret diary. We’d been given a diary with a secret.

“Keep reading,” I commanded Mimi, who was only too happy to comply. She searched and I scribbled, and a few minutes later, we had this:

Along the narrow way it goes
From house to house and back again
A carpet for a traveler's woes
That always brings one home again.

I read it out loud, but once I had, the sparks of excitement I’d felt began to fizzle.

“That's it?” Mimi said, crestfallen. “It's just a riddle. And not even a very good one.”

I shared her disappointment. “Mrs. Parrot said the Austen family liked riddles. Jane used them in
Emma
. It was probably just Cassandra's way of testing Jane to see if she was reading her diary. Nosy little sisters can't resist showing off when they figure something out.”

Mimi sighed and closed the diary. “I’d argue with you, but it's true.”

“So it's just a diary after all,” I said.

“It's still Cassandra's diary,” Mimi reminded me. “It's worth a fortune.”

“No, it's an important literary artifact that will be donated to a museum.” I could practically see the dollar signs in my sister's eyes.

Mimi wasn't to be persuaded. “If a museum wants it, they can buy it at auction.”

“Mimi—”

“Mom gave it to us. She must have wanted us to benefit from it somehow. She knew I needed the money.”

“How do you even know it belonged to Mom?” I hadn't wanted to put the thought into words, but with Mimi ready to hightail it for the nearest auction house, I had to offer some kind of reality check.

“You think she stole it?”

“I think we don't have any way of knowing. Not at the moment, anyway. We need time, Meems. Time to figure it all out.” I paused. “You realize, don't you, that it's most likely a fake.”

“No, it's real.” Mimi crossed her arms and adopted that mulish expression that signaled her determination not to be persuaded. It seemed like a good time to change the subject.

“The riddle…What do you think it means?” I asked.

“How do you mean?”

“The riddle. There has to be an answer.” I read it out loud again. “Probably a word or something. Jane used riddles in
Emma
, and they all led to a word.”

Mimi shrugged. “Sounds like it's talking about a road or something.”

“It's late. We’re not going to solve this tonight. We should get some sleep. Start again in the morning.” I picked up the diary and looked around for a new hiding place.

“I still think you should put it in the safe at the reception desk,” Mimi said.

“I don't want anyone but you and me to know about this.” I studied the room until I spotted the chintz skirt of the dressing table beneath the window. “Perfect.” I rolled off the bed, reached over to lift the flowered material, and spied a drawer. “That will work.”

“Not if someone really searches the room.”

“The front desk will be closed by now, so I couldn't put it in the safe anyway. I’ll leave a twenty-pound note on the nightstand. If anyone does come in looking for something to steal, I’ll make it easy for them.”

Mimi still looked uncomfortable, but she didn't object when I put the diary in the drawer and smoothed the fabric back down.

Mimi moved toward the door, but then paused with her hand on the knob. “Ellen?”