Jane and Austen (21 page)

I was officially stuck in not one, but almost all of Jane Austen’s novels!

Jerking from the doorway, I ran down the hallway for the lobby. After Colin had dropped by this afternoon, I had avoided the checkout counter, knowing that Austen would eventually go there to look over the rest of the accounts. I’d wanted nothing to do with him or his plot to give away North Abbey. Now I needed Austen like I needed my own breath. He’d better not ditch me now.

“Austen!” I called. “Austen!”

Chapter 18

“Sense will always have attractions for me.”

—Jane Austen,
Sense and Sensibility

I didn’t feel real.
I felt like I was in a novel where every girl hated me except my besties. And every man loved me—secretly, openly—villain and hero alike. It felt wrong. I needed something real. I needed Austen. I pushed open the door to the lobby and saw him right where I hoped he’d be. He was at his laptop, wearing earbuds, muttering to the music. Yeah. Ultra-normal.

“Austen!” I slammed into the counter in front of him.

He gave a helpless yelp and took out his earbuds. “Jane, you’re talking to me again?”

He’d noticed that I had been avoiding him? It didn’t matter right now. “Help me!”

“
You
want my help? Sorry, that’s not gonna happen.” He put his earbuds back in.

I reached over and tugged them out. He wasn’t escaping me that easily. “Give me that guest list, Austen!”

“You are really controlling today.” But he reached under the desk and slid it over to me. Meanwhile I shifted his laptop closer to me, minimized the document meant to destroy my world, and opened a word document so I could type furiously:

Ms. Taylor

Henry Crawford

Maria Bertram Rushworth

Charles Bingley

Mister Collins

Fitzwilliam Darcy

Mary Musgrove

“You want to see a cool trick?” I asked Austen. My voice dripped with sarcasm. “Compare these names to our guest list.”

He looked confused, but he set the list next to the screen. “Fine, I’ll play,”

“Okay.” I started out my explanation, knowing this would sound crazy. “The names I just typed in are all characters in Jane Austen novels. I’ll do the most obvious ones first.”

“You told me this before,” Austen complained. “Dancey is Darcy. Bigley and Colin are something. I can’t remember.”

“Yeah, no! Hey, I’m really freaking out here. Just look at the guests’ full names!”

“Will Dancey, Chuck Bigley . . .” he read, “and Colin isn’t on here.”

“He’s Mr. Collins—Colin Minster? It’s opposite.” I noticed Austen’s confused look, “—I mean, it isn’t perfectly the same, but it’s still weird. And Dancey and Bigley just have different versions of the same first name. See? Chuck is really Charles in
Pride and Prejudice
. Fitzwilliam is like . . . Willard.”

“Fascinating.” His tone said differently. “Are you feeling okay?”

“No! You’re not getting how crazy this is,” I said. He smirked, and I waved my hands over each other. “No,
I’m
not crazy. Okay, maybe I am, but all their names are like the characters in Jane Austen novels. It’s just creepy. You want to see the weirdest one of all?” I tried to find Bertie’s name on the guest list. “Taylor’s maid of honor is just scary. Bertie’s nickname is her last name shortened. Her husband’s last name is Rush. The character in
Mansfield Park
is Maria Bertram Rushworth because she married a man with the last name Rushworth. Bertie’s real name is . . .” I skimmed through the list, “It’s really Mariah Bertram-Rush.” My knees buckled at how close they were, and I had to sit down.

“I wish I knew what you were trying to say,” Austen said.

Now I knew that he was trying to be difficult. I took a deep breath. “Bertie’s real name is almost exactly the same as the character in the novel.”

He studied it. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, that is weird.”

Good. I was getting somewhere. “Figure out Harry Crawley’s now.”

Austen turned to the word document, kind of laughing. “He’s . . . Henry Crawford.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, yes!” Maybe now he’d believe me that the characters from Jane Austen novels were coming to life around me. “And then Taylor isn’t on the guest list, but it doesn’t matter because we all know that she’s Ms. Taylor!”

“Taylor Weston?” he asked doubtfully. “It’s kind of a stretch.”

I cried out as soon as I realized another uncanny resemblance. “Ms. Taylor married Mr. Weston in
Emma
.”

He finally cracked that smile that had threatened over his lips since I came in. “So you can take anyone’s name and twist it like that? How many books did Jane Austen write anyway?”

“Only six. Well, seven if you count the one . . . . It doesn’t matter. It’s not just some weird coincidence that happened because she wrote a million books and has a million characters, okay? And there are more matches, too. Junie is Jane Fairfax. Mary Musswood is Mary Musgrove. And she acts like Mary from the book, too. She’s a complete snob and always sick. Mary even says that she has . . .”

 “. . . a major case of hypochondria,” Austen answered for me.

“No, but yes. Yes! And Captain Redd Wortham is Captain Frederick Wentworth.”

Austen mimicked a buzzer sound at the captain’s name. “Another stretch.”

“It’s not. Fred is Redd. They’re both captains. Last names have ‘worth’ in them. Oh!” I pointed to the guest list. “Here’s another one! We’ve got a character from
Northanger Abbey
!” I underlined Bella Thorne’s last name with my finger then typed in “Isabella Thorpe” to add her to the list of matches. “She’s the beautiful, flirty one who gets into trouble with the men.”

“In the book or real life?”

“Both.”

He laughed. “I can’t keep track of the real people, let alone the people they’re supposed to be.” He studied the guest list then looked triumphant. “You’re missing two—the pastor and his wife.”

Ed and Elly McFarey. In a moment, I had it: “Edward Ferrars—he’s the clergyman who married Elinor in
Sense and Sensibility
. And that’s all the guests at North Abbey!” I realized what I had just said and snapped by fingers when I found another Jane Austen reference. “Northanger Abbey!”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” He could only handle one thing at a time. “It’s just really creepy, Austen. I feel like I’m in a novel. I think you really did curse me with all that talk about how our lives are not romances.”

“Hey!” He held his hands up in mock defensiveness. “It goes both ways. We cursed each other. I said that you wouldn’t enjoy a Jane Austen courtship and you said that
I
would.”

“Well?” I asked. “Are you enjoying it?”

He laughed. “Seeing you like this? Enormously.” Studying me—likely to see how serious I was about all of this—Austen dug his elbow against the counter and leaned closer to me. “Look, Jane. Do you realize things like this can’t happen? Not really. These people aren’t named the way they are because we cursed ourselves somehow. You think this is like some Christmas miracle story and all you have to do is a good deed and they’ll just disappear? Because if so, you’d have a very angry Taylor on your hands. These people were named this way before you ever met them.”

“But don’t you think that it’s such a coincidence . . . ?”

“That our friend Taylor has friends who have names that fit in a Jane Austen novel? Yeah. It’s hilarious, but for all of her friends that do, I’m sure most of them don’t. C’mon, Jane, you can’t really be serious about what you’re saying.”

“Okay,” I hedged. I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Explain why all her friends act like the characters?”

“Simple. It’s like a horoscope. Anyone can fit any profile if you twist it around enough.”

 “Colin totally pulled a Mr. Collins earlier,” I pointed out. “He crashed the bridal shower and then went into the game room and played pool in the middle of someone else’s game.”

Austen stilled. “He did what?”

“I know, bad for business . . . not that you care. And then Bertie told me to act my place or she’d send me to my room in the attic. That is so Maria Bertram-Rush. Dancey wrote me a super long text after our misunderstanding.”

“Are you kidding me?” he sounded angry. “Wait, what misunderstanding did you have with Dancey?”

I waved his concern aside. “You’re missing the point.”

“I don’t think so.”

That was because Austen lacked imagination. He always did. It was partly why I had come to him. I needed his logic. I knew that I was being crazy—and it was his job to talk some sense into me. Noticing the angry glint that touched his eyes, I realized that he was actually livid on my behalf because of everything I’d been through. I was touched. I hadn’t expected that.

Freddy pushed open the lobby doors from outside and strutted past the counter. Even as our bellhop-valet, he had the air that he was too good for us.

“Who’s he?” Austen asked in a lowered voice.

I had it immediately. “Frederick Tilney . . . from
Northanger Abbey
. An arrogant rogue.”

Austen would know the employee’s full name: Freddy Tiney was a family friend. Austen went quiet and I knew he was right. This didn’t mean anything . . . but if it did, at least I had saved Bella from Freddy this time around, because the book version of Isabella Thorpe had ruined herself with Frederick Tilney. Now Bella was going after Crawley. Thankfully, my Crawford wasn’t as bad as the original one.

No, he wasn’t bad at all. I straightened. My imagination had completely run away from me this time. I really had been guilty of taking my theory too far. I breathed a sigh of relief that none of it was actually true.

“It’s like playing
Where’s Waldo
with Jane Austen,” Austen muttered.

I laughed. Trust Austen to put this all into perspective.

Ann-Marie threw open the door to the lobby, holding Bertie’s little teacup puppy. “Hi, Austen, I thought I heard you in here. I had a dream about you. Oh, Jane, you’re in here too. Have you seen Will Dancey!” It came out a shriek.

“Willard,” Austen corrected.

Dancey’s first name didn’t affect Ann-Marie like it did me. She practiced it over her lips. “Willard Dancey. You’re so lucky that he likes you, Jane! He . . . is so hot! He just got back from LA. I saw him. He came by the bridal shower looking all brooding and sullen. You didn’t make up yet after your fight, have you? How romantic. I know you love those kinds of guys in your movies, Jane, but he’s real. I mean, he’s a total . . . a total hunk! If I could get him alone for just a minute, I’d get him to write a whole crapload of happy songs. Yummy! We’d sing duets and kiss all day long.”

Austen winced. “We’ve got a foosball table in here, Ann-Marie. That’s the real secret to his heart—you heard what he told Taylor. Go at it.”

Ann-Marie laughed and hugged Bertie’s little rat-bear to her chest. “You could plan our wedding, Jane.” She turned thoughtful. “No, forget that. Vegas is only five hours away. Do you know how easy it would be just to slip away with a guy like that and make it legal? All you’d have to do is convince him that he can’t live without you. So easy. He’s all over you. Did you see that car he’s driving? You’d be saying, ‘I do’ before you knew it.” She sighed. “Anyway, he asked about you, Jane.”

Austen scowled.

Bertie’s little rat-bear shifted in her hands and she shrieked again. “This puppy just keeps getting cuter and cuter! Don’t you, puppy?”

I hid a smile. “Don’t forget to return it to the owner.”

She nuzzled her nose into the puppy’s belly and then set her on the counter to dance her over to Austen. The puppy sniffed at his hands. “The boy smells good, huh?” Ann-Marie asked.

Austen patted the puppy’s head. Between the rat-bear and Taylor’s cat, we could start an animal shelter. “What’s puppy’s name?” Austen asked.

“Rat-bear,” I said.

“No!” Ann-Marie screamed out. “I was thinking of naming her after you, Austen.”

He looked uneasy. “That just wouldn’t be right.”

She giggled. “Oh, I forgot to tell you about my dream, Austen . . .” She went on for fifteen minutes about how Austen had saved her from bandits in an apocalyptic world and he was a vampire, and then it turned confusing from there because her mother forced her to clean North Abbey—but wow, Austen could kiss. She ended her long soliloquy by staring up into his eyes. “But wouldn’t it be nice to kiss me?”

Austen looked dumbfounded. “I . . .”

When he couldn’t finish that, she straightened. “Because someone told me that I should give you another chance.”

I froze, knowing that I was guilty of that. Austen watched her helplessly. “I don’t know if you should,” he said. “Was I a good vampire or a bad one?”

Ann-Marie threw back her shoulders in a sigh. “Bad. Very bad—you couldn’t even pull off a low V-neck.” Her eyes went from me to him, and they took on a frustrated gleam. “Yeah, I get it. See you in my dreams, Austen.” Balancing the puppy in her hands, she left.

Picking up his jaw from off the ground, Austen turned to me. “Who is she?” At my confused look, he clarified. “Who is she in a Jane Austen book?”

“Oh.” It hardly mattered now. “Well, her name backwards is Marianne.
Sense and Sensibility
. Only . . .” I smiled, “Ann-Marie’s like Marianne on speed.”

He gulped. “Cool party trick.” His fingers played a rhythm across the counter until he broke our silence to ask, “Okay, me? Who am I?”

That would be difficult. I put my fingers up like I was framing him with a camera and screwed up my eyes to see him as a character. “Well, you’re a churchgoer—and Jane Austen had a lot of cute clergyman in her novels, so . . .”

“Stop.” He held up his hand. “Don’t hurt yourself. I changed my mind. Don’t make me into a character. I honestly don’t want a character.”

“I can’t think of one for you anyway.”

“That’s a relief.”

Now my mind was obsessed with finding the answer. “You’re too goofy to be Mr. Knightley.”

“Wait, who?”

“The love interest in
Emma
. You’re too young to be the colonel in
Sense and Sensibility
. Maybe Frank Churchill?” I considered another rakish suitor in
Emma
. “Loved him, but no, you’re way too independent. He wanted his aunt’s money. That made him a complete jerk. You’re nice. Still, not as nice as Henry Tilney. Plus, you’d never put up with Henry’s dad.”