Austenland

The day was gray, and patchy rain nudged the carriage roof. Jane watched the hilly country bounce by, a row of river trees huddling in a line. The fresh landscape encouraged her artist’s eye to see in paint colors—leaves of sap green, the distant roofs of a small town in burnt umber and cadmium red, the sky cerulean blue.

“My dear Jane, you are very welcome!” A woman of perhaps fifty years approached the carriage on the arm of a red-cheeked, chubby man. Her blue dress and red umbrella were bright and inviting against the dreary backdrop of servants and rain.
“I am your aunt Saffronia, though of course you do not remember me as I haven’t kissed your cheeks since you were two and your widowed mother married that American and took you off to the New World,” she said neatly in one breath. “How we mourned your loss! My, but it is so good of you to come and visit at last. This is my husband, Sir Templeton. He is near expiring in the anticipation of your arrival.”
Sir Templeton blew up his cheeks and chewed on some invisible cud.

These last three days, she had been seesawing between giddy headlong rush into fantasyland and existential terror, but sometimes when she slipped into a new dress, the only word that really applied was huzzah.

After Martin’s room, life in the drawing room seemed dulled and fuzzy—waiting for the gentlemen while chatting about nothing, welcoming the gentlemen and continuing to chat about nothing, every topic harmless and dry, everyone holding themselves a careful arm’s distance away.

What a crock, she thought. What absolute boredom and inanity. It can’t really have been like this. And if it was, why didn’t all those Regency women go insane?
After a painfully long hour pressed into playing speculation, she declared she would retire and sneaked out to the servants’ quarters.

Jane was curious to see how he changed once Wattlesbrook ordered him to charm Miss Charming. And that would be fine by Jane. So what that he’d come (needlessly) running to her rescue in his shirttails? The way he’d said, “Don’t be a fool, Miss Erstwhile,” made her want to poke him in the eye. He was supposed to be Darcy-adorable, not teethgrindingly maddening.

The whole scene was rather Hester Prynne, and Jane imagined herself on a scaffold with a scarlet C for “cell phone” on her chest.

She thought to wonder what instinct made her body rigid when shocked. Was she prey by nature? A rabbit afraid to move when a hawk wheels overhead? Mrs. Wattlesbrook had not moved either, not even to blink. A silent minute limped forward as everyone waited.

The light gushing through the window was just right, afternoon coming at them with the perfect slant, the sun grazing the horizon of her window, yellow light spilling in. She saw Henry clearly, noticed a chicken pox scar on his forehead, read in the turn down of his upper lip how he must have looked as a pouty little boy and in the faint lines tracing away from the corners of his eyes the old man he’d one day become. Her imagination expanded. She had seen her life like an intricate puzzle, all the boyfriends like dominoes, knocking the next one and the next, an endless succession of falling down. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. She’d been thinking so much about endings, she’d forgotten to allow for the possibility of a last one, one that might stay standing.
Jane pried his right hand off the armrest, placed it on the back of her neck and held it there. She lifted the armrest so nothing was between them and held his face with her other hand. It was a fine face, a jaw that fit in her palm. She could feel the whiskers growing back that he’d shaved that morning. He was looking at her again, though his expression couldn’t shake off the terror, which made Jane laugh.

“This is a bit far to go, even for Mrs. Wattlesbrook.”
“She didn’t send me,” said Nobley-Henry. “Not before, not now. I sent myself, or rather I came because I ... I had to try it. Look, I know this is crazy, but the ticket was nonrefundable. Could I at least accompany you home?”
“This is hardly a stroll through the park.”
“I’m tired of parks.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Tell Mrs. Wattlesbrook I said tallyho.”
She sauntered away without looking back. She could hear the men calling after her protesting, reaffirming their sincerity. Jane ignored them, smiling all the way back through security, to the gate, down the jetway. Though pure fantasy, it was exactly the finale she’d hoped for.
She liked the way it had ended, had enjoyed her last line. Tallyho. What did that mean, anyway? Wasn’t it like, the hunt is on, or something? Tallyho. A beginning of something. She was the predator. The fox had been sighted. It was time to run it down.