Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (10 page)

"I've read it. Believe me." That one, more than any of her others, had put me on the path to my recent destruction.

"No, my dear, I don't mean merely enjoy it. I mean for you to read it with a careful eye." She paused and looked at me intently. "And when you have finished"--she handed me the envelope she'd taken from the sideboard--"you may open this."

My heartbeat picked up its pace. Another letter.

"But first," she said, "I'll need you to return the one I gave you before."

I'd known this moment was coming and dreaded it. I'd followed her instructions faithfully. I'd resisted the enormous temptation to photocopy it or transcribe it for myself, because I was sure that when Mrs. Parrot swore me to secrecy, it meant not doing anything other than reading the letters with my own eyes. Why I felt so honor-bound to that promise, I had no idea, except that somehow Mrs. Parrot seemed to belong to another time, an older time, when a person's word had meant a great deal, and breaking it had been a cardinal sin.

I reached into my purse and retrieved the envelope. "Here it is."

Mrs. Parrot took it from me without pausing to look inside. I was flattered at her faith in me. I would never have been so trusting.

"Excellent." She sat back down in her chair. "Now we shall finish our lunch. Thank goodness it's only sandwiches. If I'd given you hot food, it would be cold as a stone by now."

I suppressed a smile. She was certainly quirky. But still, for some reason, I believed she was telling me the truth. Or at least
I believed that
she
believed the letters were authentic. Time would tell.

In the meantime, I had a sandwich to finish. And then a roguish Hemingway professor to meet in Kensington Gardens at the Round Pond. Followed by a trip to Hatchards on Piccadilly. And then, with any luck, a long, uninterrupted indulgence with a brand-spanking-new copy of
Emma
.

The unseasonably warm weather had brought Londoners out to the park in droves. I'd hoped to find a spot on one of the benches circling the pond in the heart of Kensington Gardens. I could have a brief conversation with Barry and then make my excuses. Despite the zing I'd felt when I'd met him in Hampstead the night before, I was having second thoughts. After what I'd been through, I needed a man in my life, even a casual flirtation with a man, like I needed another hole in my head.

The Round Pond sat in the midst of the open space of Kensington Gardens--a strange name, I thought, since it was really a large lawn with paved trails running through it, not a garden like I'd always thought of them. The widest of the paths cut from South Kensington northward across the park to Bayswater Road. The pond lay about equidistant from the two park entrances. In-line skaters, dog walkers, and teenagers chatting on cell phones thronged the path, and since there was no hope of getting a bench, I found an open patch of grass and settled in to wait for Barry.

Sitting there, I felt the tension that had been humming through me for the past six months ease a bit. Maybe my quest wasn't so crazy after all. I'd just spent two hours with Mrs. Parrot, and she seemed perfectly sane, or at least mostly sane. I let myself daydream about the what-ifs. What if I completed all of her tasks satisfactorily ... What if she let me have access to the letters ... What if I convinced her to let me publish them ... I could envision my triumphant return to academia. Not to the university where I'd worked with Edward, but somewhere else. A fresh start. My reputation restored. My integrity no longer questioned.

The only thing was, I realized as I sat there, staring at the ducks in the pond, that what I truly wanted back, I could never regain. I wanted to believe in happy endings again. I wanted to believe that I could trust a man. I wanted to believe there was a hero out there for me, worthy of the title of Darcy or Knightley, Wentworth or Tilney.

"Emma. There you are." I jumped at the sound of Barry's voice. "I thought you stood me up." His long stride carried him swiftly across the grass.

"I'm not exactly hiding," I said, trying to sound lighthearted. "Just a little low to the ground."

Barry plopped down beside me. "I wasn't expecting hordes of people." He leaned back, gave me a long look. "You're upset."

I forced myself to adopt a benign expression. "I'm not. Just thinking."

"About me?" He grinned in a charming boyish way that immediately lightened my heart.

"Sorry, but no." I softened my words with a smile, though.

"I've been thinking about you." His blue eyes really were something. Something that could get me into a lot of trouble.

"How's Sophie?" I asked with false brightness. "What's she up to today?"

He shrugged, not dismissive but clearly not caught up in his colleague's schedule. "Shopping, I guess. I can't convince her there's a big difference between a dollar sign and a pound sign. She doesn't quite get the concept of translating currency values."

"Ouch."

"Exactly." He leaned forward and reached out to take my hand. I let him, mostly because the moment he touched me, I felt that zing again. Straight up my arm and then down my spine.

It had been a long time, I said to myself, trying to rationalize allowing him the liberty. It was just like what had happened with Adam, when he put his hand on my knee during our picnic at Kenwood. I simply needed a little human contact. It didn't mean anything more than that. But then I'd always been good at rationalizing mistakes when it came to men.

"So you're free to travel until classes start in the fall?" he asked.

I really didn't want to answer that question, but I couldn't see how I could avoid it now.

"Actually, I've left the university." No need to give him all the details. "I'm trying to figure out what to do next." I looked toward the pond, studying the ducks and avoiding Barry's eyes.

"Everybody needs a change now and then. What will you do?"

I shrugged. "I have no idea."

His thumb stroked my palm, and I started to regret letting him take my hand. It felt far too good.

"If you could do anything, what would you do?" he asked, looking intently into my eyes.

"Anything?" It had been so long since I'd considered that question.

"Didn't you have a childhood dream? A teenage ambition?" I looked down at his hand holding mine, and memories flared to life. "Yes. I was going to be a world-famous author." I stopped, gave a rather hollow laugh. "I was forever scribbling away with whatever was handy. Pen, pencil. Crayon."

"And what happened to all your scribblings?" Barry asked.

I couldn't believe he was that interested in my innermost thoughts, but his focused gaze and concerted attention seemed to suggest otherwise.

"My scribblings?" I was always diving for a notebook or a napkin or whatever was handy. "I guess I just grew out of it." Although it was only after I met Edward that I gave up writing entirely. "At some point, you have to realize you're not going to write the Great American Novel."

Or maybe I'd learned to block out my desire to write. So many things changed after I married Edward. He'd somehow guided me into merging my priorities with his. Or, to tell the truth, he'd managed to subsume my priorities under his, and I'd let him. I had thought that was the way it was supposed to work. After all, he was much more established in his career at the time, and I was just starting out.

"So you never wrote that novel?"

"What?" I'd been lost in thought, so it took me a moment to process his question. "Oh, no. It was just a passing fancy." But I knew that I was lying even as I uttered the words.

Once upon a time, I had wanted to be a writer with youthful ferocity, but my parents had pushed me to get a graduate degree so that I could teach on the college level. There was no security in trying to be an author, they'd said. "You should have a back-up plan."

And Edward had shrugged off my ambition when I plucked up the courage to share it with him. "You're a good scholar, Emma. Don't waste your energy chasing some pipe dream."

I'd believed them, of course, Edward and my parents. Why shouldn't I have? Doing the right thing meant doing the safe thing, even if I did have my doubts about my abilities as a scholar. I was good at giving lectures, and I could process and present material so that even the most vacuous undergraduate student could understand the Romantic poets or the importance of Renaissance drama.

I wrote my lectures ahead of time and followed the manuscript closely. That was the best use of my writing ability, Edward had reminded me time and time again. Until the day my teaching assistant, his lover, managed to take a paper I'd written on her laptop, which I borrowed while she was on vacation, and turned it into evidence that I'd stolen it from her. She hadn't needed a lot of technical skill to make it look as if she'd been the original author of the work. And as is so often the case, my peers had believed what they wanted to believe, which was that the only reason I'd ever been given a teaching position at such a prestigious university was because I shared a bed with Edward.

"You're a special woman, Emma," Barry said now, jerking me back to the present. While I was lost in thought, he'd somehow edged closer.

"Um, well, that's nice of you to say." I didn't know whether to shove him away or lean in and let him kiss me. At least the latter course would take my mind off my troubles, although I had a feeling I'd regret it later.

"Maybe we're star-crossed lovers," he said with a smile. "Just like in one of your Austen novels. Destined to meet in this time and place."

"Austen didn't have any star-crossed lovers," I said, leaning closer. He was attractive, smart, and seemed interested in me. Why should I resist?

"Maybe she should have," he murmured. Then he leaned in the final few inches and kissed me.

I hadn't been kissed in a long time. Not really kissed. And to be honest, I hadn't been really and truly kissed by Edward for months before the kitchen-table incident. I had chalked it up to overwork on both our parts. A temporary situation that would resolve itself at some point. It had never occurred to me that he was too busy kissing someone else to pay that kind of attention to me.

"Definitely star-crossed," Barry said after he pulled his lips away from mine.

I was glad he ended the kiss, because I wasn't sure I had the strength to do it. That thought set an alarm bell ringing in my head. Physical intimacy was only a temporary fix, I tried to remind myself, but I wasn't really listening.

"Spend the rest of the day with me," Barry said in a low voice.

How easy, how comforting it would have been to fall back into the familiar pattern of relying on a man to solve my problems. It would also have been very dangerous.

I wanted to give in to his persuasions. I knew I could use him to assuage the wounds to my ego and my psyche that Edward had inflicted, but I would have been doing just that-- using him.

"I can't." I knew that I had to get away before he talked me into following my baser instincts. The only thing I had left now was my integrity.

Until you betray Mrs. Parrot and publish those letters
, the voice inside my head whispered.

"Barry"--I pulled away--"I've got to go."

"But--"

"I'm very sorry." I stumbled to my feet. Taking up with another man wouldn't make the hurt go away. "I've got to go."

"Emma--" Barry lurched to his feet and followed me as I started walking. "Just give me a chance."

I stopped, turned to face him. "I can't."

"You mean you won't." He ran his fingers through his blond hair in frustration.

I paused. "I can't. I'm sorry."

This time when I turned and walked away, he didn't try to stop me. I resisted the urge to turn around, to see if he was still watching me. I resisted because I wasn't sure I was as strong as I wanted to be, as strong as I needed to be.

At that moment, a vacation romance seemed a lot more tempting than an uncertain future, so I forced myself to keep moving, keep walking, and ignore the familiar pang of loneliness that I was afraid was now permanently, indelibly lodged in the vicinity of my heart.