Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (23 page)

I had slept so late that it was almost noon when I set out for the Cobb. I made my way down the Marine Parade, the beach cluttered with families and hearty individuals out for a bracing dip in the sea.

At last, I reached the harbour and made my way out onto the massive stone wall that jutted into the sea, creating a safe basin for the local boats. The long stone wall was the setting for one of Austen's most famous scenes, when Louisa Musgrove
of
Persuasion
jumps from the higher level of Cobb instead of using the steps, expecting Captain Wentworth to catch her. His failure to do so, and her resulting injury, binds him to her as surely as if he'd offered a proposal of marriage. And it kills the hopes of the novel's long-suffering heroine, Anne Elliott, who had been persuaded eight years before to refuse the marriage offer of the very same promising but impecunious captain.

Now, two centuries later, sea spray splashed against the stone, and the bracing salt air filled my lungs until they almost burned. Seagulls, hoping for a few morsels from the tourists, circled overhead.

I walked out a good fifty yards, until there was nothing around me but the sea and the wind and the sun. I could easily imagine Jane Austen walking there during one of her family's seaside stays, filled as I was with a sense of peace and magnificence and even freedom. Two of her brothers had been navy men. From the descriptive passages in her novels, especially
Persuasion
, I knew she shared their love of the ocean. Perhaps it was on this very spot she had first imagined Captain Frederick Wentworth, the hero of her final novel.

The barren rock didn't offer a place to sit, so I took the letter out of my purse and clutched it in the face of the rather stiff breeze. I was about to unfold it when I heard a voice calling my name.

"Emma!"

I turned, and my heart leaped into my throat. The last place
I had expected to encounter Edward again was on the Cobb at Lyme Regis.

"I can't believe you're here." My feet rooted themselves in the stone beneath my feet.

Edward was smiling from ear to ear, his salt-and-pepper hair ruffled by the sea breeze. He was a handsome man, and despite everything, I felt that old tug of attraction. I'd always found him compelling. That hadn't changed.

"Adam told me where to find you. I saw you go past on the Parade, but I couldn't catch you in time." He stood there like something out of a dream, dressed in khakis and a lightweight anorak, just as I'd seen him a thousand times before.

But Adam had sent him? How had he known where I was, unless Anne-Elise had broken her word? I wasn't sure how to interpret this strange turn of events. Adam could have sent Edward as a sign that I should try to repair my marriage. Or he could have sent him to find me so I could put the past to rest and move forward.

"What do you want?"

His smile faded, and I was pretty sure I understood the lines of contrition that marked his face. For whatever reason, he had come to try and reinstate himself in my good graces. He had a sheepish look about him that was distinctly un-Edward.

"I made a mistake, Emma. A number of them, to be honest."

The water pounded against the Cobb, sending a fine spray into the air that covered us without drenching hair or clothing.

"Yes, I'm aware of that." I could keep the irony out of my voice but not out of my words. It was strange how calm I felt, in spite of the adrenaline pouring through my body.

"I'd like to try again. I want to make it up to you." He reached for my hand, and I let him take it. "Chalk it up to a midlife crisis, or male stupidity, but I'm over that now. I see things much more clearly. I know what a fool I've been."

"So do I, Edward."

A few months earlier, I would have received his apology very differently. Now I withdrew my hand from his grasp. Another wave, this one even larger, crashed against the stone, nature's innate attack on human intrusion. Now the spray was much stronger, misting my shirt and dampening my hair. "The problem is much more than our marriage."

"But if we can go back to the way we were--"

"You helped ruin my career," I snapped. "I'm not sure my better nature stretches to forgiving you for ruining me both personally and professionally."

He had the good grace to blush. That red stain across his cheek looked pretty strange, but I found it somewhat satisfying. I wanted him to feel the kind of shame he'd inflicted on me.

"I honestly thought--"

"You're a liar, Edward. You always were."

My barb struck home. Edward bristled. "I said that I was
sorry, Emma. And I'll take my punishment, but I won't stand here and let you browbeat me."

"Are you serious?" I stepped back. My hands landed on my hips. "Are you in any way serious?"

"I don't see how demeaning me will make up for the damage that's been done to you," he said. He moved forward, trying to draw me back into the circle of his charm. "What good can come of exposing my lapse in judgment?"

"So your idea of atonement is that I take you back, don't demand that you clear my good name, and what? What else, Edward? Would you like the moon and the stars as well as the sun?"

"It's not like you were the picture of perfection, Emma. You contributed to the difficulties in our marriage as much as I did." He wiped his tousled hair out of his eyes.

The longer hairstyle should have been one of the first signs that Edward's affections had strayed. That and his sudden need to do sit-ups every night to flatten his stomach.

"My shortcomings?" I gasped.

Evidently, loving the man you married and trusting him beyond anyone else was now a character flaw. Although, to be fair, when it came to my faith in Edward, that had been a critical error of judgment on my part, indeed.

"Emma, just forget this foolishness and come home with me. We'll sort it all out." He paused. "I love you."

I looked at him, the sun exposing every wrinkle and age
spot on his face. One upon a time, I'd thought him handsome in a mature, worldly way. Now, he just looked old.

"Why are you here?" Suspicion, my constant companion since the fateful kitchen-table incident, made herself known. "Why now?" Red flags were popping up in my mind's eye like poppies after rain.

"I know I've given you plenty of reason not to trust me--"

"Someone's uncovered your lie, haven't they? Or at least your part in it?"

He blanched, the color draining from his face as suddenly as it had come over him, and I knew I was right.

I laughed, not out of joy but out of vindication. "Someone caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. How much trouble are you in, Edward, for championing a lying teaching assistant over your own wife?"

He paused, swallowed, licked his lips. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a sheaf of folded papers.

"I need your signature on this," he said, and I could tell he was trying to muster his dignity.

My hand shook when I took the papers from him, but I wasn't sure whether the trembling came from trepidation or satisfaction. I had dreamed of this moment, even though I'd known there was little chance of it ever happening. But when I opened the folded papers and saw the university logo on the
letterhead, I knew that Edward had met his match. I might not have been able to bring him down on my own, but you could never underestimate the power of a university that wanted to avoid public embarrassment.

"They want you to sign this, saying that you won't sue for defamation of character, or libel or slander or anything along those lines." He paused. "They've also offered to admit their error publicly and reinstate you on the faculty. With an increase in salary, of course."

Such an offer could only have meant one thing--the university knew I had a successful legal claim on my hands. I didn't need to read the pages themselves. Edward's demeanor told me all I needed to know. I refolded the papers and slipped them into my purse before draping the strap back over my shoulder.

"I'll look them over. Consult an attorney."

Edward shook his head. "I promised I would bring those back with me tomorrow. Signed."

"You're leaving? So soon?" I wanted to mock him, to pour out the malice I was feeling like a poisonous fountain, but then I stopped myself. Because stooping to Edward's level would only mean that I had stooped to Edward's level. And that was one place I refused to go.

"I'll let you know," I said instead, and I took a step to move past him. He caught my shoulder.

"Don't be a fool, Emma. We can both come out of this
okay. But you have to cooperate. If you bring me down, I'll take you with me."

I laughed, because, honestly, he sounded like the villain in an old Vaudeville sketch.

"Be my guest," I said. Because in that moment, I knew how I could extricate myself from the entire mess. The answer was right there, in my purse. Everyone around me was relentlessly pursuing their own self-serving agendas. Who was I to fight city hall?

"Good-bye, Edward," I said, and I walked past him with my head, if not my heart, held high.

"You're being ridiculous!" he called after me, but I let his words slide away on the wind. "You'll regret this."

I'd come to England for a reason. I wanted to vindicate myself and expose Jane Austen for the fraud she was. But now that I knew she'd had true love in her grasp, and for whatever reason, she'd turned it away, I knew what I had to do. It was time the world knew the truth. It was time I learned the truth. And it was time I gave up my foolish, romantic notions of happily-ever-afters. Barry had been right. Women never thought beyond the happy ending. We'd been taught to believe that our world revolved around securing a commitment from a man.

Edward, Adam, Mrs. Parrot, Jane Austen--anyone who stood in my way would have to understand that I wasn't going to be a patsy anymore. The time had come to stand on my own
two feet. The world deserved to know the truth about Jane Austen, just as it deserved to know the truth about Edward.

I marched across the length of the Cobb toward the beach. If I was in the right, I could claim the moral high ground, but if I had vindication and validation at my fingertips, I wondered how I could still feel so desperately unhappy.

I
had wanted to read the letter on the Cobb as Mrs. Parrot instructed, but the nearby beach would have to suffice. At least I could find a bit more shelter from the wind than I could out on the pier. I made my way across the sand and found a place to sit in the midst of the tourists. At least this way I would blend into the crowd. If Edward returned, I would be difficult to spot.

My hands were surprisingly steady, given what I'd just gone through. This letter was longer than the others, I noted-- two full pages of Austen's even script. And as with the others, the photocopies were a bit fuzzy in places, but I puzzled my way through.

The letter had been written by Jane from London to Cassandra, who was at Godmersham in Kent on one of her many missions of mercy to help her brother Edward and his wife, Elizabeth, with their growing brood of children. The letter
contained no pleasantries. Instead, Austen presented the news in a straightforward and immediate manner. Certain phrases, though, leaped off the page and set my pulse to thrumming.

My heart in my throat, I continued reading.

I looked up toward the sea and the dark blue line of the horizon, and then I glanced at the date at the top of the page. September of 1801. Austen had written it during the early part of the long gap in her letters, the beginning of a silence of almost four years. This letter, then, explained the disappearance of the others, for if indeed Austen's relationship with Jack Smith had been known only by Cassandra, her sister would have excised all references to him and to Jane's loss. And she
had been so thorough that none of the letters had been seen by any eyes but her own, until she created the Formidables.