The Dashwood Sisters Tell All (13 page)

I might not be able to pull anyone else's weight, but I could sure as shooting pull my own.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
fter the pub lunch that I was coming to know and love, I opted out of the afternoon walk along the river. It was the perfect excuse to spend more time deciphering the riddles in Cassandra's diary. Mimi was determined to keep walking, and she seemed so fragile after Ethan disappeared that I didn't push her to return to the hotel with me. I ignored the pitying looks the others sent her way. It had been a long time since I’d had to witness one of her romantic dramas firsthand. That was the beauty of living three states apart. But to see her like this, to watch her scheme to catch Ethan unravel in front of God and everybody—it was more painful than I could have ever imagined.

I tried to turn my thoughts to something else. I tried to focus on the novel experience of being driven on what was, to me, the wrong side of the road. I tried to pay attention to the wind blowing through the open passenger window of the van, the cottages clustered here and there so close to the edge of the road that it was a wonder we didn't sideswipe any of them. Mrs. Parrot drove the van as if she were Admiral Nelson bent on conquering the French navy at the Battle of Trafalgar. I was sure she would settle for nothing less than total domination of the British roads.

The heat had abated somewhat by the time we arrived at the hotel. I took a shower and sat on the bed, thinking about Cassandra's diary. The chintz skirt of the dressing table still provided protective cover to my secret. I leaned over, lifted the skirt, and reached for the diary.

It wasn't there.

I whirled around. The twenty-pound note was still on the bedside table. Nothing else appeared to have been touched. Just the diary.

I flicked back the chintz again, my heart in my throat, but the diary definitely wasn't there.

A random thief wouldn't have taken the time to find such an obscure and, on the surface, worthless object. He or she would have grabbed the money on my bedside table and made a dash for it.

I sank down on the bed.

The diary was gone.

Mrs. Parrot hadn't been with us that morning. No, she’d only met up with us at the pub for lunch. She could have looted the entire hotel with all the time she’d had.

Then I remembered that I hadn't been the last one at the van that morning. Daniel had come out of the hotel behind me.

No, it had to be Mrs. Parrot. Of course it was her. Hadn't I suspected from the beginning that she knew about the diary?

Anger lodged in my throat, a thick knot that burned. I could hardly confront her. She’d deny everything, and I would look like an idiot. Or a crazy person. I needed Mimi. For the first time in years, I felt a desperate longing for my sister. Well, that wasn't strictly true. I had felt that longing fairly recently. Every time I’d driven my mother to the hospital for her chemotherapy. Oh, I’d disguised my need for her as anger. Anger that she couldn't be bothered to fly in from Atlanta and shoulder her share of the burden. But what I’d really needed every time I’d made that drive from my mother's house to the hospital was my sister.

I didn't know if Mrs. Parrot wanted the diary for its monetary value or merely for its own sake. I suspected she wanted it simply for the thrill of possessing it, given her devotion to Jane Austen. If that was the case, I thought, rising from the bed in sudden agitation, then it might still be somewhere in the hotel. Most likely in her room.

How was I going to get into her room though? I happened to know which one it was because she’d been in line in front of me when we checked in the night before. Her room was on the floor above mine, but at the back of the hotel. It would be locked, of course, and besides, she had driven me back to Langrish Hall. She was probably in there right now.

I heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel drive outside my window. When I looked outside, I spied the familiar tweed jacket and Day-Glo orange hair heading toward a walking trail at the side of the hotel.

Perhaps my luck wasn't completely disastrous.

I tiptoed from the room—at least my version of tiptoeing—and made my way upstairs. As it turned out, it wasn't locked. It was, however, occupied by the maid, who was cleaning.

“I’ll just be a moment,” she said with a smile and a glance at the old-fashioned room key I had clutched in my hand. “If you don't mind.”

“Oh no. No trouble.” I wasn't about to correct her mistaken assumption that I was the occupant of the room. “I’ll just wait out here.”

It was a dangerous game, I knew, because Mrs. Parrot could return at any moment, but I wasn't looking to steal anything. Just the opposite. I was only interested in getting back what belonged to me.

Thankfully, the young woman finished almost immediately. She moved away with her small cart, and I slipped inside and closed the door behind me.

I didn't know it was possible to shake quite so much. My hands trembled as I pulled open drawers, lifted bed pillows, and explored under the mattress. The bathroom offered no concealment whatsoever. I stood in the middle of the room and slowly surveyed its contents. Really, there was no other place to hide something like the diary, except…

I disliked doing it, but I reached for Mrs. Parrot's suitcase. It looked like one that would have belonged to my mother, an ancient piece of hard-sided luggage that could probably withstand nuclear winter. I picked it up off the floor, set it on the bed, and pulled at the latches.

Nothing happened. It was obviously locked. The old-fashioned way, with a key that no doubt hung at this very moment around Mrs. Parrot's neck.

I noticed how heavy the suitcase was when I returned it to its place on the floor beside the bed. From the weight of it and the dull thuds it made, I guessed that it was full of books. Definitely more than one. But whether it contained Cassandra's diary…well, that was only conjecture on my part.

I was ready to flee the scene of my near-crime when the door opened, and Mrs. Parrot stood there in the doorway.

“Pardon?” She looked as flustered as I felt.

“I’m sorry. I—” What? What could I possibly say? “I mean, I came to see you, and the maid was here, cleaning. She said I should just wait for you in here.” I resisted the urge to cross my fingers behind my back. That would have been childish. As if worming my way into someone's hotel room under false pretenses wasn’t.

“How extraordinary.” Mrs. Parrot came into the room and shut the door behind her. Obviously she didn't believe me.

“I know. Isn't it?” I decided to play dumb. “Your room has a much better view than mine.” I nodded toward the window. “Plus, you don't have to listen to people and cars crunching across the gravel at all hours of the day and night.”

“If it's a problem, I could see about a different—”

“Oh no. It's fine.”

A long moment of silence reigned. Finally, Mrs. Parrot cleared her throat. “You said you wanted to speak to me?”

“Oh, um, yes. That is…” What on earth was I going to say? “It's, um, well, it's about the Austens again.”

“What about the Austens?”

“I was asking you about them the other day, and I just wondered…that is…my mother mentioned something once called
Elinor and Marianne
. Is that a lost Jane Austen novel or something?”

Mrs. Parrot frowned. “Actually, that was the first version of
Sense and Sensibility
. It was originally a novel in letters.”

“I’ve never seen it in a bookstore.”

“No, well, you wouldn’t, because there are no existing manuscripts. She wrote it first as a teenager, but later, after the Austen ladies settled at Chawton, she revised it into the novel that we know.”

“Oh.” And because of the diary, I knew why she had gone back to rework that particular story.

“Is that all you wanted to know?”

“What? Oh, um, yes. Thank you.” I edged toward the door. “Sorry to have disturbed you. And sorry about…” I looked around at the room. “Sorry about being in here. Really, if the maid hadn't insisted…” Poor girl. But I doubted Mrs. Parrot would pursue the matter, because I was pretty sure she didn't believe me.

“I shall see you at dinner then.”

“Yes. I’ll see you then.”

I couldn't have seemed any guiltier if I’d confessed on the spot. I scurried from the room in shame and frustration. If Mrs. Parrot did have the diary, we were never going to get it back. She would make sure of that.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

E
llen and Daniel looked very happy sitting together at dinner, and I tried to give them some space. My sister kept darting nervous glances at me, and I knew that she was worried that her happiness might be difficult for me to handle in light of Ethan's defection. No one had seen him since he’d disappeared in the taxi after the train ride.

After dinner I wandered into the garden in front of the hotel with my copy of
Sense and Sensibility
. Now that I knew how closely the book was connected to the actual experience of the Austen sisters, I’d begun to find it more interesting. I’d been reading the book in odd spare moments and had, both to my delight and embarrassment, quickly become engrossed. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood’s similarity to Ellen and me was just short of eerie, but what intrigued me more was the similarity between the Austen sisters and the fictional Dashwood girls. Were all sisters the same?

Enough daylight lingered in the English summer that I could get another chapter of the book in before darkness fell. If you discounted the occasional power line or cell tower in the dusky, surrounding hills, you could imagine that the house and the scenery looked very much like it might have in Jane Austen's time. In the quiet countryside, past and present blurred, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Part of me longed to go to Ellen's room, curl up on her bed, and have her tell me that everything was going to be okay. That had been our pattern for years. Or at least it had been our pattern until I moved to Atlanta. I thought of our house in Dallas, where Ellen still lived. I’d only ever seen it through jaded eyes. Too small, too plain, too ordinary. But after the day's events, I almost longed for its shelter and for the simplicity of the life I’d had when I lived there.

I wondered if Jane Austen had felt that way, too, about her father's rectory at Steventon. Tom had told us she was never happy when she lived in Bath, and that it was only after several years of moving from place to place, when she, Cassandra, and their mother moved to the cottage at Chawton, that she found contentment again.

I’d had that contentment in our little house in Dallas with my mother and my sister, only I’d been too young and foolish to realize it.

I settled onto a wooden bench tucked into a corner of the garden. Whoever had cornered the market on these benches must have made a fortune. Everywhere you turned in England, there was a strategically placed bench like this. Usually they said something like “For Ethel, who loved this garden.” They gave you such a sense of place, those plaques. That was what I lacked, I realized. A sense of place. Of belonging.

Footsteps crunched across the gravel on the other side of the hedge that separated my bench from a direct view of the hotel. I hoped it was someone headed to the parking lot and not into the little sanctuary I’d found.

“Mimi?”

It was Tom. I bit back a sigh of exasperation. I wasn't sure I was strong enough to bear being comforted at the moment.

“Over here.” I could tell him, politely of course, that I wanted to be alone, and he would make himself scarce, but even I had a hard time being that rude.

“Am I intruding?” I appreciated that he asked. Ethan, who should have been more courtly by nature and nurture, would simply have assumed it was his right to join me.

That thought didn't make his defection any easier to bear.

“It's okay.” I gestured to the bench beside me. “I’m just enjoying the evening.”

“Much better now that the sun's gone down.” He sat beside me. Not too close, but not at the other end of the bench either. “I don't mean to bother you, but you were in rough shape this afternoon.”

“Yes. I was.” To my exasperation, tears stung my eyes. Again. I was tired of springing a leak every time I turned around. “I’m okay though. Thanks for checking.”

“I don't think you are okay.” Tom placed an arm along the back of the bench so that his hand was near, but not touching, my shoulder. He didn't look at me though. Instead, he gazed out into the dusk. “You can admit it.”

“Easy for you to say.”

He chuckled, and we sat in silence for a long time. Tom Braddock was comfortable company, I’d give him that. With most men, I would feel the need to charm or entertain them. With Tom, I could just…be.

“Are you happy with how the tour's going?” I asked him. Time to move the focus away from my man troubles. “I know you said it was your first time doing this walk.”

“We’ve hit a few snags, but on the whole, I’m pleased.”

“It's too bad that whoever thought up the tour couldn't participate. They must have been pretty special to get to choose everything.”

“I believe she was special,” Tom said softly. “The owner of the tour company went to school with her.”

“But you had to find all the daily routes. Figure out where to house us all, feed us.”

“It's not that much different from the Air Force.” He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Except that I can't yell at the recruits.”

“I doubt you had to do much yelling.” While he was not an intimidating man, he was definitely an authoritative one.

“No.” Even in the dusk I could see his smile. It was a nice smile. “Not much.”

I had the sudden urge to slide closer to him on the bench. To lean against him and let my head rest against his shoulder. The feeling startled me, and it brought back the memory of his kiss the day before. I forced myself to stay right where I was.

“Do you miss it?” I asked. “The service?”

“I miss the camaraderie, but, no, I don't miss that way of life. I was ready to settle down.” His shoulders tensed. “I should have done that sooner.”

He was referring to his late wife, of course. “It's hard to know, though, isn't it, when it's time to move on? To do something different?” I’d felt that way myself almost every day for the past three years. My dream of owning my own store was within reach, but not without a hefty amount of risk. I hadn't had the courage to gamble everything I had on my dream. At least, not yet.

“What about you?” Tom asked. “Are you happy in the life you’re leading?”

He might as well have been reading my mind. “Yes. And no.”

“Ah.”

“What does that mean?
Ah
?”

“Just
ah
.” I could hear the smile in his voice. Darkness had fallen, and I could no longer make out his expression. The anonymity of the night made confession all that much easier.

“I want to go into business for myself,” I said.

“What kind of business?”

“A clothing store. A boutique. Something trendy but not too edgy.”

“In Atlanta?”

“I was thinking about going back home to Dallas.”

Wait a minute! What was I saying? Hadn't I been thinking about New York every spare moment?

“Why Dallas?”

His question surprised me. “Well, I guess because it's my home.”

“When we first met and I asked you about Texas, you didn't sound very enthusiastic.”

I thought about it for a moment. “I guess if I’m going to put down roots somewhere, it might as well be a place that feels familiar.”

“Would you ever consider living anywhere else?”

“I guess it depends.”

“On what?”

“What the other place had to offer.”

“Yes. I guess it would.”

I thought he might make a move then, but he stayed where he was, still relaxed, still a comforting presence. My eyelids grew heavy, and my body felt so languid. I didn't know if it was all the walking, the heavy meal, or the company. My eyes must have drifted closed, because the next thing I knew, I felt Tom's hand on my shoulder.

“Mimi?”

“
Hmm?
”

“I think we’d better get you inside. Otherwise they’ll find you here in the morning, sound asleep on the lawn.”

“You say that like it's a bad thing.”

He laughed then, and the sound of it warmed me. “Come on.” He took my hand in the dark and tugged me off the bench. We started toward the hotel, and to my surprise, he kept my hand in his. His grip was warm and firm without being controlling. We crunched across the driveway, and he opened the door for me. At the foot of the stairs, he squeezed my hand.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“What time is breakfast?”

“They start serving at seven. Do you need a wake-up call?”

“No.” Now that we were inside under the glare of electric lights, I didn't feel quite so comfortable with him. I pulled my hand from his. “I have a travel alarm.”

“Okay then. Good night.”

He turned toward the hallway a few steps away, and I watched him go with regret. I was surprised he hadn't walked me to my door, but maybe I had misinterpreted his interest. Maybe he was just being a good tour leader by following me into the garden. A few days ago, I would have wanted that to be the case. Now, though, as I made my way wearily up the stairs, I felt quite differently about Tom Braddock.

Which was a bigger discovery, in a way, than the riddles in Cassandra's diary—and just as puzzling.