Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (21 page)

"Whichever one is decaffeinated," I said, because unlike
Anne-Elise, I wasn't going to need tea to keep me up all night. My own bad judgment would do the trick very nicely.

"So what's going on between you and Adam?" Anne-Elise was nothing if not direct. We had settled in at the table, tea at the ready.

"What do you mean?" She might be straightforward, but I had vague down to an art form.

"Don't play dumb, Emma. It doesn't suit you, especially since you got your PhD."

"It's nothing. Just a misunderstanding--"

"You snogged him, didn't you?" Anne-Elise leaned forward, her forearms braced against the table, a teasing light in her catlike green eyes.

"What?" I attempted to feign innocence.

"You know, snogged him. Kissed him." Her eyes sparkled now. She'd always enjoyed teasing me.

"I don't think--"

"Good."

"What do you mean, good? It's a disaster." I gripped my mug of tea too tightly, and the heat burned my fingers.

"Hah! So you did snog him."

"Will you quit calling it that?" I cast a nervous glance toward the door, even though Adam was long gone.

"I was hoping this would happen."

"What do you mean you were hoping it would happen?"

"When I invited you both to stay here." Now she was smiling with satisfaction.

"But Adam and I hadn't spoken in ten years. Why in the world would you think that we would--"

"Because I have eyes. And precisely because you haven't spoken in ten years. He was furious when you married Edward."

I shook my head. "He was just mad because I didn't listen to his advice."

"You're kidding, right? You think he disappeared from your life because his ego was bruised?"

"Wasn't it?"

He'd been irrationally angry with me, which had made me angry too. The last time I'd seen Adam ten years before, he'd been walking away from me after our massive argument in the middle of the Student Life Center.

"It wasn't his ego, Emma. For someone who's supposed to be a scholar, you're not very observant."

"Maybe that's why I don't have a job anymore." And then it hit me, the import of what Anne-Elise had said. "You mean you invited me to stay here so you could fix me up with Adam?"

"Why not?" There was the Frenchwoman in her. The little shrug, the smile that said,
But of course
. "Someone had to resurrect your love life."

"My love life did not need ..." Okay, I couldn't finish that one with a straight face.

"You and Edward were never a good match."

"And you couldn't be bothered to mention that when you were my maid of honor?"

"Would you have listened?"

I paused. Swallowed. Took another sip of my tea. She wasn't the first person to ask me that very question.

"That's what I thought." Anne-Elise refilled her cup from the teapot. "No one could have talked you out of it. You were determined that Edward was your Mr. Sprightly."

"Mr. Knightley."

"Whatever." A dismissive wave of the hand. I would have to practice that a hundred times in front of a mirror to achieve the same elan. "You were so certain that you had to have a hero that you forgot to look for a man."

"What?"

"Who could measure up to your Jane Austen fantasies? No mere mortal could satisfy you."

"We were happy." My voice was softer now, and I could feel the sting of tears. My lower lip quivered. "At least, I was."

"That is all in the past," Anne-Elise said. She nodded toward my cup. "More?"

"No. I think I've drunk enough tea to float a ship since I crossed the pond."

"Only one ship? Then you definitely need to keep going." Anne-Elise splashed more tea into my cup. "Edward is the past. Another man, even if you don't want Adam, will be your future. What could be simpler?"

"Simple? You think this is simple?"

"Emma, you always did make your own complications."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Well-meaning cousinly advice was one thing, but I was starting to feel like a bug under a microscope.

"Your obsession with a happy ending. Life can't be like that."

But it could, I wanted to say. Look at my parents' marriage. After almost forty years together, my mother and father still loved each other deeply. Maybe not in the same way they had when they'd married, and it wasn't always sunshine and roses, but they loved each other, and it was still true and real. Anne-Elise's parents, on the other hand, had split up when she was ten. She'd never understood my perspective because her own life had been so different.

"I don't think there's anything complicated about finding your man with another woman," I said morosely into my teacup, but the statement, which previously had always pierced my heart with grief, now felt like more of a familiar ache, an old injury that hurt but didn't burn.

I looked up at Anne-Elise. "Oh, shoot, honey. I forgot."

Now her eyes were the ones filling with tears. "I suppose that our hearts get broken whether or not we believe in happy endings," she said with a sniff.

I went scurrying for a box of tissues. By the time I returned with them in hand, Anne-Elise had recovered her composure.

"So, you're not interested in Adam at all?" she asked, a measured look in her eye.

I froze for a moment, debating. I'd just told her Adam wasn't in the cards for me. I couldn't back down now.

"No. We're just friends."

"Then you wouldn't mind if I ..." Her voice trailed off in that French way that suggested without actually stating.

"
Um
, well, no. I guess not. I mean, of course not." What was I saying? But I couldn't stop myself, and I couldn't tell her to stay away from Adam without revealing that I was struggling with my own feelings.

"As long as you're okay with it," she said and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

"But Etienne--" I said, hoping to remind her that she was grieving, not on the lookout for a new boyfriend.

"Is in the past." The firm set of her jaw brooked no argument. "Time to move forward. And Adam always was ..." More shrugging and trailing off. "If you're sure you don't mind?"

And then I saw the knowing look in her eyes. I wasn't fooling anyone. Certainly not Anne-Elise, and most definitely not myself. The thought of Adam with another woman was as painful as it had been with Edward.

By the time I climbed the stairs to my room that night, it was almost three o'clock in the morning. Adam's door was shut, and no light showed beneath the door. Exhausted, I slipped on
my nightgown and climbed into bed, but Anne-Elise's words kept coming back to me, holding sleep at bay.

Had I really been so busy looking for a hero that I had neglected to look too closely at the man? If I had, then it was definitely Jane Austen's fault. She had sucked me in, with her Darcys and Wentworths and Knightleys. She had tricked me into believing that such men existed.

That woman has a lot to answer for
was my last thought before I succumbed to exhaustion.

D
espite my troubled sleep, I was awake by seven o'clock the next morning. Or, to be more accurate, I woke up when I heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside my bedroom. Adam was up and moving.

I don't know what instinct made me climb out of bed and throw on some clothes. I slipped into the bathroom to wash my face, brush my teeth, and try to brush my hair into some sort of order. I could only hope Adam was in the kitchen, fixing breakfast.

A few moments later, though, just as I was pulling on my tennis shoes, I heard the sound of the front door closing. Without really thinking it through, I grabbed my purse and headed after him.

I'd never stalked anyone before, either openly or in the clandestine manner I employed as I followed Adam toward the
tube station. Fortunately, there was a small throng of workers heading in the same direction.

The elevators proved a bit tricky, but I managed to catch the one after his and even to lose myself in the crowd on the platform while we waited for the train. Things got easier after that. He changed at Leicester Square Station, and here the crowds made it difficult to keep up with him. Adam was tall, so I could see his head as it bobbed toward the Piccadilly line, the one that went to South Kensington, and I felt my pulse start to throb in my throat.

We boarded that train, me one car behind him, and by the time he exited at the Gloucester Road Station, I knew exactly where he was going. And when he made a beeline for Mrs. Parrot's door, I fervently wished I'd stayed in bed. Sometimes, ignorance is indeed bliss.

I couldn't very well stand on Mrs. Parrot's doorstep and wait for Adam to emerge. Besides, I needed some time to think, so I kept walking, circling the block, and then finally decided to head back toward the tube station and the anonymity of a coffee shop or sidewalk cafe. I could keep an eye out for Adam, because he'd have to return that way to catch the tube. At least, that was my excuse. I wasn't ready to confront either him or Mrs. Parrot, not until I knew more than I did at that moment.

The tickets to
The Rivals
hadn't been a coincidence, obviously. Whatever else Adam and I might have been after the
previous night, we were now competitors, and academic competition was as cutthroat as any you would find in professional sports or among Wall Street suits. Conventional wisdom said that academics were so fiercely competitive because what they fought about was so unimportant to normal people. But then, no one had ever said that academic types were normal.

How much did Adam know about my dealings with Mrs. Parrot? That thought beat in my brain like a drum. Had his interest in me the night before been real, or was he playing me, just as Edward had?

I didn't have to linger very long over my cafe au lait. From inside a nondescript chain coffee shop on Gloucester Road, I watched him pass by. He was indeed headed for the tube. I studied his face as best as I could in the few seconds I had him in view. Lines etched the corners of his mouth and his shoulders looked tight. Adam was normally an easygoing guy. I might not have seen him in the past ten years, but some things you don't forget. He was very unhappy about something.

I stood up, threw my cup in the trash as I exited the coffee shop, and then I faltered. What should I do? Go after Adam?

Or head for Mrs. Parrot's house? The dichotomy between my personal and professional selves was never so clear to me as in that moment. I had to choose one of them. I also knew what each choice would cost me.

With a deep breath, I set out down the sidewalk, determined, this time, to do what was best for me, and not for someone else. To grab hold of my future and wrest my destiny from it.

Or, failing that, to at least figure out what in the world was going on.