Undressing Mr. Darcy (32 page)

A redcoat handed Vanessa his replica sword with a wink.

“I’m not going to need it,” Vanessa said.

Within no time, and without any protocol, Chase and Julian began to spar, the room went abuzz, and Vanessa watched as the two incredibly agile and athletic men went at it with their fake swords, their arms bared and straining.

Half the room chanted “Dar-cy” while the other half chanted “clans-man,” and just as Vanessa caught a glimpse of Chase’s kilt flapping up above his muscular, tanned legs, a glint appeared out of the corner of her eye.

It was Allison, pointing a blunted sword in her direction. “You slept with my fiancé.”

Allison had a very pale English complexion compared to Vanessa’s dash of Italian. And now, rage had brought red splotches to Allison’s face as she raised her sword toward Vanessa.

“Allison, you don’t really want to fight, do you?” Vanessa put the tip of her sword on the ground and leaned on it, putting her emotions aside to appear cavalier. “I don’t even know how to fight.”

“You slept with him!”

“I didn’t know he was engaged! How long have you two been engaged?”

“Almost a year.” Allison spoke through bared teeth. As if this were Vanessa’s fault! “He thought it would be best to keep the engagement secret to help book sales. To capture the female market.”

“Well, he sure captured the female market, didn’t he?”

Allison narrowed her hazel-brownish-greenish-whatever eyes. Vanessa didn’t like her. Not at all.

“When’s the wedding?”

“It’s a Christmas wedding at Chawton House Library.”

The very place, of course, where Julian had made eye contact with Vanessa about a wedding. The gorgeous, completely romantic estate once owned by Edward Austen Knight appeared in her brain, covered in a glistening blanket of snow.

Vanessa glared at Julian, who, she saw happily, seemed to be getting beaten pretty solidly by Chase. It was all Julian could do to defend himself against Chase’s consistent and powerful attacks. A swelling, overpowering feeling of gratitude came over her. Never in her life had a man defended her in any way.

But Julian! Ugh. She looked away from him in disgust. How he could be engaged to this, this simpering woman and lure Vanessa into bed at the same time? Could two women be more different? Could the man be more of a jerk? “I wish I’d never even met the guy! Your fiancé’s an ass.”

With one fell swoop, Allison swung her sword, knocking away the sword Vanessa had been leaning on and sending her off-kilter.

“You’re not going to take that, are you, Vanessa?” It was Lexi.

The crowd laughed and smiled, clasping their gloved hands together and fluttering their fans, still thinking all this had been staged. Vanessa noticed, however, that more men had taken up their own replica swords and were fighting their own fake duels in various corners of the dance floor. A fistfight had started in jest. Camera-phone flashes gave the room a strobe-light glare, and the old seventies song “The Ballroom Blitz” by the Sweet ran through her head.
Everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz . . . ballroom blitz . . .
The entire room broke out in chaos and noise beneath the glittering chandeliers.

Festival organizers scrambled to regain order.

It was an event planner’s nightmare but a PR person’s dream. This would make the papers, the radio, the Bath TV news, if not the BBC itself. It could even go viral.

“Va-nessa, Va-nessa!” Sherry chanted and pumped her fist.

Allison stood ready, her sword in the attack stance.

Vanessa raised her sword in defense, and that was it: Allison went on the attack.

Allison proved to be a better, more animated fighter than Vanessa expected. Vanessa did her best to keep her form, adapting what she could from the choreography she learned with Chase during the swording workshop.

TV cameras were on them now, from what Vanessa could tell, and in a moment of inspired action, she went on the attack, practically knocking the sword out of Allison’s hands. But she lunged a little too far forward, and the seam that Chase had sewn ripped, and then ripped a little more, revealing her garter and threatening to reveal more.

Various “gentlemen” in the crowd whooped with delight. Ladies pointed their white-gloved fingers at her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Vanessa saw the string quartet, with their expensive violins and cello, sneak out. The dance caller asked them all to “stop before someone gets hurt” but nobody listened.

Vanessa had to get out of here, but how? She went into defense mode and back-stepped, her sword crossing and intercepting Allison’s at every turn until Allison clumsily swung at Vanessa’s ankle with full force, throwing her anklebone into a fit of pain. Vanessa dropped her sword, clasped her ankle, and fell back onto the wooden counter at the fountain, sending half-full glasses of spa water crashing to the wooden floor.

She nearly fainted with the sound of shattered glass. Her ankle throbbed with pain. The room grew blurry. Allison seemed frozen, unable to move, her eyes buggier than usual.

Then, focus and calm overcame Vanessa. She sneered. “This little jousting game is over. You’re fighting the wrong person. You need to kick his ass, not mine.” She grabbed the ripped seam at her thigh and sauntered, as best as she could with a wobbly ankle, out the front door. TV cameras were on her; a reporter with a mike was asking her all kinds of questions.

She could bring Allison down on national TV, and Julian, too, for that matter. She was not afraid to speak to the press, into video cams—she had spent most of her adult life doing it. She could call him a fraud, a phony, an ass. But then she thought of that home of his, and of her aunt.

She pursed her lips and looked into the cameras. “No comment.”

When she went through the front door of the Pump Room to the street, rain pelted down on her, and she hurried through the dark cobblestone streets of Bath, landing in puddles with her flats, hobbling every now and then on her ankle. At the door to the flat, as she turned the key in the lock, she saw that the rain had soaked through her entire gown and her stockings, and her gloves had gone translucent on her quivering hands.

She’d been to a ball in Bath but hadn’t been asked to dance. Jane Austen may very well have been in the same situation. Austen, though, had never been in a sword fight in the Pump Room.

* * *

W
hen Vanessa got up to the flat and caught a glimpse of plastic Colin Firth with her thong draped on his head, his once-friendly smile seemed smug to her now. She went straight to the bathroom, where she stripped off her torn gown, which did seem to be stained with six inches of dirt. She wrapped her shivering self in a towel and soaked her ankle under cold running water in the bath.

Allison had hit her on her tattoo and a purple bruise appeared right over the heart. She’d put herself out there and gotten hit—hard.

Had she mistaken proximity for intimacy? Sex for connection? Had she ever known this kind of humiliation? She’d been a fool for thinking there might have been a spark of something between her and Julian.

After her shower, Vanessa promised herself she wouldn’t check the social networking sites, which she knew would be blowing up with amateur videos of the night. And she had a ton of texts that she didn’t want to see, either. But when her phone rang and Paul’s number appeared, she had to answer.

Had Aunt Ella gotten hold of the car keys? Vanessa’s mind raced.

Paul spoke clearly, with authority and calm, but his words meant only one thing, and even as she spoke with him on the phone, she flung her suitcase to the bed and tossed her stuff in. She called a cab to take her to the train station, where her plan was to take the last train to London and get the first possible plane back home.

Aunt Ella had burned both hands on the electric stove, not remembering the burners were on. Her hands had been bandaged and she’d been released from the burn unit.

So that was it.

Vanessa was going home now. She wouldn’t be attending Julian’s
Undressing Mr. Darcy
show the next day—well, she wouldn’t have been doing that regardless. She left her torn, wet, and dirtied gown hanging in the shower and rushed out to the cab in the rain. On the way to the train station, the cab drove past George Bayntun’s bookstore. She’d never even gone in.

This Side of the Pond (Again)

Chap
ter 21

T
here happened to be a Starbucks at Heathrow and, after a week of darting in and out of quaint and quirky English tearooms, she stood in line for the familiar, the predictable, the safe. Safe coffee, safe everything. It wasn’t so much giving up as it was giving in.

Once in Chicago she didn’t stop at her condo but went straight to visit Aunt Ella at Paul’s.

Her aunt on the sofa covered in a blanket, reading another new scholarly tome about Jane Austen, looked thinner and more frail than when Vanessa had left her. The bandages on both her hands sent a shiver through Vanessa, but seeing her aunt’s smiling face proved a comfort beyond compare.

Aunt Ella hugged her as she whispered in Vanessa’s ear, “You are loved,” she said.

“I know. I’m lucky. Just like Edward Austen Knight.” She could see, in her mind’s eye, a horseshoe nail pointing toward her peep-toed heels.

She pulled up a chair to Aunt Ella’s side.

“Chase called and told us everything. Please don’t be upset with him. He really has your best interests at heart.”

“I know he does. It took me a while to see that. I’m a little slow on the uptake.” Vanessa smiled.

And so did her aunt.

Vanessa had taken a chance, gone after Julian on a whim, based on something she had thought was there, but she had learned, now, to be more in touch and grounded. Eight hours on the plane without her electronics had given her time to think. Her plan now included being more a part of the human world and less susceptible to the distractions of the bright, shiny, and beeping cyber world.

“Here, my dear, I want you to have this.”

In the palm of Ella’s bandaged hand sat a reproduction of Jane Austen’s turquoise ring, a bright blue stone with a gold band, the one Kelly Clarkson had bought.

“Oh, no, I can’t—” Vanessa pulled up the blanket and tucked it around her aunt.

“I want you to have it.”

“Thank you. I really just want to thank you—for everything.” She kissed her aunt on the forehead, her soft, slightly wrinkled forehead.

“My pleasure. So I don’t need to ask how it went, but how do you feel?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m so sorry I brought him into your life.”

“I’m not. Not at all. The whole thing resulted in my
finally
appreciating Jane Austen—and that, as you know, is for life.”

“There’s a scene in
Pride and Prejudice
where Elizabeth sees Pemberley from a distance for the first time. Darcy’s estate, you know, is very much like him. Symmetrical, balanced; the grounds are natural, Elizabeth notices, without blatant artifice. Julian needs work. Just like his estate.”

“I needed work, too,” Vanessa said.

“Not anymore.”

“You’re right.”

For the first time in a long while, she felt unbroken.

“I’m so thrilled you had an opportunity to really get to know Jane Austen, her work, and . . . yourself. It happened at the right time for you.”

Vanessa smiled. “I’m a late bloomer.”

“It’s okay. Austen’s Anne Elliot was a late bloomer, too. And in some ways Austen herself never had a chance to bloom.”

“She died so young, too. Just a few years older than I am. What happened?”

“There are a few theories. She might have had Addison’s disease, an autoimmune disorder, something we could easily cure today. Lindsay Ashford, author of
The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen
, has proposed she died of arsenic poisoning.”

“Who would poison Jane Austen? I realize she wasn’t the prim-and-proper type I’d assumed she was, but I’m sure she didn’t say—or write—anything scathing enough to incite murder!”

“It’s very likely the medicine she took for her illness contained arsenic, and over time, it poisoned her.”

“Poor Jane!”

“Poor Cassandra. Sometimes, when two people are so close, what’s worse is to be the one left behind.”

Vanessa bit her bottom lip.

“Cassandra lived to be seventy-two. Did you see the letter she wrote to their niece Fanny after Jane’s death? It’s hung on the wall upstairs at their cottage in Chawton.”

“I saw a lot of things, Auntie E, but I didn’t see that, no.”

Aunt Ella closed her eyes, and Vanessa braced herself for hearing a quote, but this time, she took it in, like nourishment.

“‘I
have
lost a treasure,’ Cassandra wrote. ‘Such a Sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed,—She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, & it is as if I had lost a part of myself.’”

“They loved each other very much.”

“They did.”

Vanessa smoothed a lock of hair from her aunt’s face. “I’m going to read all of Jane Austen’s letters—Chase bought a volume of them for me when we were in Bath.”

“Chase. Such a nice young—well, I’m done meddling. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson from Emma Woodhouse! You’re on your own, my dear.”

“We’ll see how that goes!” Vanessa laughed.

“But you must be jet-lagged and tired.”

Vanessa looked at her watch. It was ten at night in England. She rolled her watch back six hours to Chicago time.

“By the way, during my move, some of your books, including one of your old high school yearbooks, ended up in my library. They’re on the table there. Don’t forget to take them with you when you go.”

“Of course. I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you all about the trip!” Vanessa said.

“I look forward to it.”

When she arrived at her condo, yearbook and suitcase in hand, she knew right away something was amiss because when she opened her door, the hall light was on.

Her desk drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the couch. Her jewelry armoire stood open and empty. Her flat-screen had been ripped from the wall and even her old DVD player was gone.

Julian had been right, damn it.

She’d been too cavalier about her whereabouts on social media, and she’d been robbed.

* * *

W
hile the police took photos of the scene and dusted for fingerprints, Vanessa stared at her photo albums, which, happily, were not stolen and remained intact. It turned out the only things she really cared about were her memories. Memories of a happy childhood, both with her parents and with her aunt; a happy young adulthood with Lexi and a wide circle of friends; a happy several years with various boyfriends and later a fiancé, all of whom had left their own indelible fingerprints on her.

The jewelry didn’t matter; the TV didn’t matter; alerting all her credit cards to watch for potential suspicious activity and making a list of to-dos such as changing the locks and calling her bank to report possible stolen bank account numbers and checks—none of it mattered.

Above all, she still had her aunt.

After the cops questioned her, she absentmindedly picked up her high school yearbook from Aunt Ella’s and flipped through the pages. It happened to be from her senior year, and once she hit the back cover, there were the signatures and well-wishes from tertiary friends, the ones who weren’t so close, because they hadn’t signed it first, on the opening pages.

Some people she still happened to be in touch with—often thanks to social media. Others not. Most had led full lives with marriages, kids, divorces, cancer, coming out of the closet, striking it rich, losing it all; one had even become a celebrated opera singer while another had landed in jail for embezzlement. Someone in the class had even committed suicide, and there was her name with a smiley face after her signature.

The very last thing she read was written in the bottom right corner, and clearly, the person had been pressed for space and wrote in a cramped, slanted hand.

Dear Vanessa,

Will miss you now that you’re graduating. Without you as president, why go to student council meetings? Wish you much happiness & success in college & life. I wrote you in as Sexiest Senior, but who listens to juniors? I’ll be looking for you in your bikini on the beach! Wink wink . . .

Love,

Chase (MacClane)

Wow.

Here was a seventeen-year-old boy reaching beyond the pages of a yearbook, and across the decades, to make a thirty-five-year-old woman who had just been robbed crack a smile.

Then she laughed at the thought of it. If he only knew.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked one of the cops.

“Yes. Yes.”

It was a simple formula, too. He praised her for brains and lusted for her openly, but in a fun, teasing way. What more could a girl want? Or, at least, a girl of eighteen?

So he had gone to her high school. She paged to the junior class, and there he was, Chase MacClane, adorable as hell, but she still didn’t remember him.

A sad commentary on her lack of awareness.

Maybe she should answer the texts he kept sending her since she’d left England.

* * *

B
ut busyness set in and, after being tossed together for her aunt and Paul’s wedding, she didn’t text him back anything beyond a few polite answers to his questions and kind rejections to his offers to meet for dinner. Weeks later, Lexi roped Vanessa into going to a Halloween costume party hosted by a friend at some Scottish-themed place in the city.

Vanessa resisted at first. “I don’t want to have women in halter tops, mini-kilts, and kneesocks serve me drinks.”

But she’d already decided she would go, with the vague hope that Chase would be there in his kilt.

“Just promise me you’ll wear a costume,” said Lexi.

She decided to dress as a pirate girl and went to the party.

Lexi was soon going to be leaving the States and moving in with David. They’d set a date for their wedding already. But that was Lexi; she moved fast in every facet of her life. “Look, he’s the One. It took one-fifth of a second for me to realize I wanted to sleep with him—because that’s how long it takes to decide that, it’s been documented—and about twenty-four hours for me to decide I not only wanted to sleep with him every night but wake up with him every morning. Why waste any more time?”

Indeed.

David the journalist had turned out to be quite the English gentleman, and Vanessa was really happy for Lexi.

“Visit us?”

“I will.”

“Be my maid of honor?”

“Of course. You’re not going to put me in a hideous dress, are you?”

“You wouldn’t expect any less of me, would you? It’s the bridesmaids’ job to make their bride look good.”

Lexi had even thought to bring home the torn gown that Vanessa had left in the shower stall in England, and now it hung in Vanessa’s closet, dry-cleaned and repaired.

Vanessa had moved on from the whole Julian thing. Like a wave, it receded as quickly as it came in. What remained, like glistening gems on the shore, was nothing but fond memories of England and an interest in all things Austen.

Sherry, too, had just gotten a promotion and was now happily dating a local philanthropist. She had bought him a T-shirt that said,
I
am
Mr. Darcy
. It had been determined that she would inherit plastic Colin Firth, and all seemed right with the world once Colin had been installed in her apartment as the centerpiece of her shrine to Darcy.

Aunt Ella had a gorgeous little wedding, and she and Paul lived happily and quietly up north while he drove her around on little day trips and they made memories visiting and enjoying as many places as they could.

Julian’s book had broken into the bestseller lists, and yes, they all had their fifteen minutes of fame when the BBC picked up the footage of the duel at the ball. Newspaper headlines read:
DUEL AND FISTICUFFS MAKE FOR GREAT JANE AUSTEN FAYRE
and
THIS BALLROOM BELLE HAS . . . BALLS!
and
BALLROOM BABES BRANDISHING BLADES
. The video went viral.

Kai had gotten his first screenplay optioned.

Vanessa had gone in for the third interview for an advertising account executive position, and it looked like she’d get it, too, at a great company, where she’d spend less time behind the computer and on social media and more time with people—and products like salad dressing—but hey.

Could their success have been attributed to the restorative waters in Bath?

Who knew?

But some guy dressed as Satan at this party wouldn’t leave Vanessa alone. He gave a whole new meaning to “horny devil.”

The sense of relief and the surge of joy she felt when she saw, across the room, Captain Jack Sparrow, she couldn’t begin to measure. She went right up to him and put her arm around him. But it wasn’t Chase of course, and with her heart sinking into the depths of disappointment, she found herself having to explain to the man—and his wife—that she thought he was someone else.

When the one you wish for isn’t in the room, no matter how many other people are, you know it. You feel it. It can make a crowded room seem vacant. She missed him; she needed to see his goofy grin. That had to have been the moment she admitted, finally, that she felt more for Chase than she’d let on to even herself.

She’d felt it happen to her several times before, like when he had left her on the beach to go amuse the kids at the birthday party, or when he’d turned his back on her and walked away in Trafalgar Square and then again in front of the British Library. Something deflated and dissipated once he’d gone. Everything deflated and dissipated once he’d gone.