Midnight in Austenland (23 page)

He withdrew his lips but left his fingertips on her face. “I know why you made me nervous, Mrs. Cordial. To yearn for you, and yet be forbidden to touch you.”

“Your character was scripted to love me,” she whispered, almost feeling sorry for him. He sounded heartfelt. “None of that is real.”

“It is all real, Mrs. Cordial. All.”

“Charlotte?” Eddie called, his voice still faint but perhaps closer.

Charlotte saw a flicker of light. There must be a small hole in the bookcase for spying out, she thought. Eddie was probably in the sitting room, for the moment anyway.

“Eddie—” Charlotte breathed.

Mallery kissed her again, longer, his arms wrapping around her. It is such an awkward thing to be the recipient of an unsolicited kiss. She didn't want to kiss him back, and yet she was afraid he'd feel bad.

Had she really just thought that?

She put a hand on his cheek and pushed him away. “You need to turn yourself in now.”

He pulled her to her feet and stood behind her with one arm tight across her diaphragm.

“You know how much it grieves me that I hurt you,” he whispered in her ear. “You will not put me through that again, and I will not hurt you so long as you don't hurt me, Mrs. Cordial. I cannot stay here any longer.” His voice cracked at that. “You will accompany me off Pembrook property, and then I will set you free. Unless you wish to stay with me.”

He listened by the hole in the bookcase. All was silent.

“Now behave yourself,” he whispered and pushed the wall, opening the bookcase like a swinging door into the sitting room. The bookcase clicked closed behind them.

Behave herself, huh? Absolutely. Charlotte elbowed Mallery in the gut, right where she was pretty sure she'd previously bruised his ribs. He let go.

“Bloody murder!” she screamed.

“Halt!” Eddie shouted, rushing into the room and pointing the tip of the foil at Mallery's chest. Charlotte leapt to the side.

Mallery eyeballed the blunt tip and knocked the blade away impatiently. Eddie whipped him with it on the top of his head.

“Ow,” said Mallery.

He took a menacing step forward, but Eddie whipped him again on the shoulder.

“Stop that!” said Mallery.

The two men stared each other down.

“I have a knife,” said Mallery, pulling one from his belt.

“Mine is longer,” said Eddie.

Boys, Charlotte thought, with an internal roll of her eyes.

He whipped Mallery's hand, and Mallery dropped his knife. They stared again. Charlotte found it all very dramatic. Mallery faked as if to pick up the knife but ran instead, dodging Eddie to get down the hall and out the charred front door. He didn't look quite so menacing when he ran.

Eddie and Charlotte chased after him, leaping over debris and coughing on the ash his flight kicked up. Car headlights met them outside, coming from the direction of the house. The police! Mallery swerved and made toward the wood.

“That's him! That's him!” Charlotte yelled.

The detective's car left the drive and crossed the lawn, the tires churning up the grass.

“Mrs. Wattlesbrook is not going to like that,” Charlotte said.

Police scrambled forward, shouting, a couple of them pulling out guns. More guns! Weren't they supposed to just use billy clubs in England? Where had she been getting her information? The detective's car cut off Mallery's route to the woods, and he stopped, hands in the air.

Eddie was beside her.

“Are you happy you got to use your foil?” she asked.

He smiled, his dimples like full moons.

“I think I owe you some kind of an apology,” she said, “about how I misjudged your prowess with a weapon and how you really are dangerous.”

His arm went around her waist.

“I am officially the happiest man alive.”

After questions and explanations, the police sent Charlotte and Eddie back up to the big house. It was silent, most of its inhabitants asleep and clueless about the happenings at the cottage down the lane.

Soon Charlotte found herself once again in bed, in a room without a lock, awake long after midnight. But something was different tonight. Something was missing. She looked around her room, patted herself as if searching for lost keys, ran her fingers through her hair. Something large, something usually present, was just gone.

I'm not afraid, she realized. I don't feel the least bit afraid.

She thought of the dead body in the secret room. Nothing. She imagined her brother in a mask chasing her through a dark house. Nada. She thought of Mallery trying to kill her, and Mary in her room with a gun, and murdered nuns and ghosts and a house that might eat corpses alive …

She sighed, rolled onto her side, and fell asleep.

Home, thirty-one years before

“Let's play castle,” said Charlotte's loud and bespectacled friend Olga. “I'll be the princess, and you be the lady-in-waiting.”

“Okay,” said Charlotte.

She watched Olga traipse about with Charlotte's plastic tiara on her head and felt a mild ache that her lot was to sit on the basement carpet and pretend to weave a tapestry. But Olga looked really happy, and being the lady-in-waiting wasn't so bad. She still got to be a part of the story. Even if she wasn't the heroine.

Austenland, day 13

Charlotte poured milk in her tea, dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin, and said, “Last night Eddie and I found Mallery hiding in Pembrook Cottage.”

The sounds of chewing, tinkling utensils on plates, and subdued breakfast conversations hushed at once. Even Neville, just entering the dining room from the kitchen with a plate of sausages, gaped openly.

“The police arrived,” said Eddie, “but not before Charlotte was nearly taken hostage.”

“What happened?” Miss Gardenside asked.

“Oh, you know,” she said, waving her hand as if it were all so typical. “He was hiding behind a trick bookcase in a secret alcove. Or was it a nook? Anyway, he pulled me in. He apparently had been dying to apologize for almost killing me. Then he kissed me.”

Eddie stood up, rattling the table and knocking over a glass of orange juice. “He what?!”

“He kissed me?” she said, more apprehensively this time. She hadn't expected a table-rattling, juice-spilling reaction to that news.

“Did you let him?”

“Yeah. NO! It wasn't … it was … well, he needed closure, I guess. He's like those old heroes—or villains, maybe—those tragic princes and tortured Heathcliffs and Rochesters. At least,
he
sees himself that way. He wouldn't have lasted long in that little cubbyhole, and I think he was waiting for a finale of sorts before he left this old world behind. He was still calling me ‘Mrs. Cordial.' After everything that's happened—
Mrs. Cordial
. He's that far gone. But he wanted that final moment, right? He wanted to end it with a kiss. And now that he's in jail, his last free action wasn't trying to kill the lady, it was kissing the lady, and he can live with that. You know?”

Miss Charming rested her cheek on her hand. “What was the kiss like?” she asked.

“Well, it was very dark, I couldn't see him, and suddenly—”

Miss Charming put her hands over her mouth and squealed with delight. Eddie slammed down the empty juice glass he'd just picked up. Colonel Andrews and Miss Gardenside were looking back and forth from Charlotte's fumbling to Eddie's fuming.

“Never mind,” said Charlotte. “It was just a kiss. It doesn't matter. I just wanted to tell you all, so you knew that Mallery is no longer a threat.”

Charlotte gave Eddie a stern look, warning him to calm down. He sat and reached for a piece of bread, then tore it apart over a plate.

“I just don't like that he took such a liberty. I should have been there to prevent it.”

“It's really okay, Eddie. I'm okay. Mallery tried to kill me, but I still feel sorry for him. It's not easy to be him in this world. He doesn't deserve much, but maybe he did deserve his final moment.”

Eddie laughed, and Charlotte shrugged.

“I know,” she said. “But I'm nice. It's what I do.”

It was the heroine's prerogative to give the villain a final kiss, and she had decided to be the heroine after all. Jane Austen had created six heroines, each quite different, and that gave Charlotte courage. There wasn't just one kind of woman to be. She wasn't afraid anymore. She was feeling at home at last in Austenland, and she meant to enshroud herself with that boldness and take it home with her.

And she meant, quite specifically, to damn the torpedoes and fall very much in love with Eddie, even if it was temporary, even if she didn't quite know what she meant to him.

They weren't alone for the rest of the day. Miss Gardenside, Colonel Andrews, and Miss Charming were always hovering nearby. Eddie didn't say anything significant to her, such as “I love you,” or “Please stay forever,” or even “I'm going to go brush my teeth—meet me in your room in ten.” He stood near her, his attention on Miss Gardenside.

Evening drew close. Mrs. Wattlesbrook chased the last of the police away and the guests to their rooms. The ball would be starting soon, and Charlotte could hear musicians tuning and smell pastries baking. She had no expectations. That made her feel a little bit lonely, but a little bit lonely was nicer than a whole lot numb.

Eddie would be back in character and dancing with Miss Gardenside tonight. Charlotte didn't feel much motivation to spruce up, but her ball gown lay neatly on her bed. She'd been measured for the gown on her first day, and it must have just arrived from the seamstress. Its newness seemed to make it glow, as if a magic wand had only just zapped it together from rags. She held it up. The length from high waist to low hem was longer than her everyday dresses, accentuating her height. The cream-colored organza was delicately embroidered in a pattern of flowers and curlicues and embellished with beads that winked in the window light. Seventeen years of fashion changes had rendered her wedding dress laughable, but two hundred years hadn't hurt this style. The gown was beautiful.

Mary was no more, but Charlotte was certain that if she pulled her bell cord, some downstairs maid would come help her dress. No matter. Charlotte had been doing her best to dress herself for the past week. She could ask Miss Charming to do up the unreachable buttons and help her with her hair. Or maybe Colonel Andrews. Something told her he'd be a whiz at an updo.

There was a knock at the door. No one had ever knocked at her door besides Mary, and the last time Mary had come around, she'd been exercising the right to bear arms.

Eddie's voice asked, “May I come in?”

“Sure,” she said.

He entered, still exercising his own right to tote a practice foil.

“Here's my bodyguard.”

“You've proved to need one.”

“Do you think you'll have another chance to use that?”

“A chap can dream.”

“It's got a blunt tip.”

“In my dream it's sharp as a tack. Also, I get to keep whipping Mallery's face with it till he cries like a baby.”

“Quite a detailed dream.”

“And I haven't even gotten to the part where I'm a racing driver.”

He stood by the door as she touched up her makeup in the bathroom and turned his back when she pulled off her robe and slid into the ball gown.

“Um … I could use some help with the doing-up,” she said.

He sighed. “Truly?”

His reluctance made her blink. “I can ask Miss Charming if you're busy.”

He trudged over, showing unwillingness in every movement. Like a big brother annoyed with his pesky sister? She bit her lip as he fumbled with the gown's many buttons, determined not to speak and annoy him further.

“You drive me mad.”

“Sorry, brother of mine,” she said flatly.

His hands paused. “Please don't call me that.” She felt his fingers continue up her back. “Since our outing to the abbey, when you were concerned you were letting me down by not being clever enough, you have kept me laughing and longing too. Your kindness is genuine. Do you know how rare that is? Your presence absorbs me, and yet I'm not supposed to notice. It was hard enough to pretend indifference when you were bathing in the pond. Loosening your corset about undid me. And yet here I am again, so near you yet unable to carry you off to be my own. I must be a masochist.”

She remembered to empty her lungs, but after she could only inhale in quick, shallow breaths.

“So you'd prefer I didn't call you ‘brother'?”

“Not in private, please.” She felt him rest his forehead against her neck, and his exhale raised goose bumps on her back. “Please. I don't know how to have you here, when I am not me. I don't know …”

She nodded. He put his arms around her waist, holding her from behind. She put her arms over his and they stood there in a silent embrace. Her heart was beating so hard she could see her bodice shake, yet she felt oddly calm.

This would have killed me when I was fourteen, she thought with sudden insight. I remember
that
much of my younger self.

The romance and awkwardness and sublime uncertainty would have broken her heart and driven her crazy.
What next, what then, what should I say, what if I turned around, what will we do?
But age gave her the peace, at least, to live inside that moment like a poet—to not sacrifice the beauty to the anxiety of What Next, but to just observe. The warmth of his hands under hers. His heartbeat against her back. The moment he adjusted his head to the side, as if he wanted to feel her skin against his cheek. The way his arms subtly tightened—conscious of her waist, feeling her there, enjoying her. How she felt from inside her throat down her middle toward her legs—all zingy and cold and light too. This was why she'd come here. Nothing else ever need happen again. She'd had her moment in Austenland, and even unfulfilled and uncertain, it was perfect. She leaned her head back till it touched his own, and she heard him sigh.

“I will be dancing with Miss Gardenside tonight,” he said.

“It's okay.”

“It's not okay.”

“It's why you're here. Why she's here. It's supposed to happen this way.”

“I wish it weren't.”

Charlotte was about to say what she wished when her door opened. She moved out of Eddie's embrace, and he whipped out his foil.

Miss Charming screamed, raising her hands in the air. “Don't shoot, don't shoot!”

Eddie lowered the weapon, his face flushed. “Sorry. I—sorry.”

“He's standing guard in case there's yet another person in this house who wants to kill me,” Charlotte said.

“Good thing I want you alive, then, so you can do up my back,” said Miss Charming. “Don't want to ring for a maid. Don't trust any of them anymore, crazy-eyed, trigger-happy lot.”

She turned her back to Charlotte and submitted to the buttoning, then fixed up the mismatched mess Eddie had made of Charlotte's buttons, chatting all the while of past balls and favorite dances and the squelchy excitement she always got in her tummy whenever the music started. Her faux-British accent had taken a holiday ever since Mallery had tried to murder Charlotte.

Miss Charming volunteered to do Charlotte's hair and dragged her to her own room. Through the open door, Charlotte could see Eddie in the hallway, holding his foil uncertainly.

“Go get dressed, Eddie,” she called out. “If any hopeful murderers attack us, Lizzy has promised to beat them with her curling iron.”

Charlotte thought it a reasonable threat, and Eddie must have agreed, for while he hesitated for a moment, he soon nodded and left.

“You really are more beautiful than you seem at first,” Miss Charming was saying, sticking a plastic Bumpit under Charlotte's hair to add volume.

“Thanks?” said Charlotte.

“You've got a look that a person's got to get used to, then after a while,
voilà
, you're beautiful. My Bobby totally would have tested out a mattress sample with you.”

“Okay.”

“ 'Course, not that you woulda. You're not one of those dangerous women, Charlotte. You're nice.”

Charlotte heard the ball before she saw it. Music floated upstairs and lured her out to the landing. It was remarkable how different she felt in a ball gown—like someone special, someone princessy.

Miss Charming and Miss Gardenside met her on the landing. Strangers in formalwear swirled through the front door, handing cloaks and hats to servants, laughing as they made their way to the great hall. Charlotte had to wonder where Mrs. Wattlesbrook found them all. A casting agency? The local YMCA? There must have been three dozen fresh bodies in Regency clothing. From this vantage, Charlotte couldn't see the police tape on Mallery's door or the bullet hole in the wall. Austenland was primped and pretty.

“Each time it's like the first time,” Miss Charming whispered. “Each time, I think, This is the ball when everything changes.”

“Does it change?” Miss Gardenside asked.

“Sort of. But maybe … not quite enough.”

Colonel Andrews strode to the bottom of the stairs. Like all the men that night, he wore a black jacket and breeches, white shirt and cravat, the Regency version of the tuxedo. He put one hand behind his back and lifted the other up, an invitation.

“Do not require me to grovel, Miss Elizabeth, for you know I will. Come to me and make me the happiest man in the world, or I will grieve to the heavens of the injustice. I will tantrum until the gods take pity and strike me dead to save me the agony of a broken heart. I beg you, be my lady!”

Miss Charming pressed her gloved hands to her chest and gasped with delight, then jogged down the stairs with much roiling and shaking in her upper regions. Colonel Andrews flew up the stairs to meet her halfway, as if he could not wait another moment to touch her.

He took her hand, kissed it, then sighed to the ceiling. “She is a goddess, I say. A goddess!”

Miss Charming's eyes sparkled, and she seemed about to cry but giggled instead as he led her away.

Before Charlotte and Miss Gardenside could descend the staircase, Eddie appeared, waiting at the bottom. He did not look at Charlotte.

“Miss Gardenside, I must speak out. I, for one, find your behavior this evening abominable.”

“I beg your pardon?” Miss Gardenside asked with mock offense.

“As you should. Think on the other ladies, Miss Gardenside. Think on their delicate natures, their wounded vanities. It is not enough for you to be merely attractive, but must you outshine your entire sex so egregiously? I say, for shame.”