The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen (5 page)

“It’s possible. I don’t know if it’s a full-length book or what. It could be a shorter work, or even an unfinished one. But she clearly lost
something
—and she lost it at Greenbriar.”

He handed me back the letter, seemingly astounded. “This is beyond belief. To even think that it might be possible…Jane Austen!”

By now, our main courses had arrived. I savored my lamb chops, which were delicious. Anthony dug into his meal, deep
in thought for a long moment. Then he darted me a slightly self-conscious glance. “May I be honest about something?”

“Please.”

“I know the world adores her. But I’ve only read one Jane Austen novel in my life. Will you forgive me if I say that I didn’t like it?”

“Which book did you read?”

“I don’t remember the title. I only read it because it was forced on me in school. It was about a spoiled brat who lived in a tiny village full of dull people, who never did anything or went anywhere. As I recall, she spent the whole book trying to match up people who didn’t belong together.”

My lips twitched with the effort to hide my smile. “
Emma.
How old were you when you read it?”

“Maybe fifteen or sixteen.”

“Your reaction is totally understandable. Unless presented in the right way,
Emma
might not be all that accessible to a teenage boy. In fact, it’s a truly extraordinary book. If you read it again now, you might feel differently.”

He shrugged. “I doubt it. I’m more of a mystery novel fan myself. For the classics, I enjoy Dumas, Defoe, and Dickens…Tolstoy, Tolkien, and Twain.”

“I see you’ve named only male authors.”

“Have I? That was not by design.”

“There are lots of brilliant female authors—and the best of them is Austen.”

“Many millions of people seem to agree with you. But honestly—and forgive me again, I don’t in any way mean to denigrate what you do, or to disparage Austen’s legacy—but I’m baffled as to how she became such a phenomenon. She wrote, what, four or five novels?”

“Six.”

“Six romantic novels. And everyone treats her with this uncanny reverence, as if she were Shakespeare. What is it about her? What am I missing?”

I patiently replied:

“Austen’s works have endured because she had a superb narrative technique and a gift for creating characters who feel as real as life itself. She didn’t just write about romance. She covered subjects and social and emotional struggles that are still very relevant today. She could pull at your heartstrings, but she could also make you laugh and cry. At the end of her books, if you’re paying attention, you come away feeling a little wiser about yourself and about what’s important in life.”

“Interesting. I’ve never heard it put quite that way before.” He smiled at me across the table. “I admit, I’m intrigued—and not just because she might have paid a visit to my family house.” We ate in silence for a while, then he added: “So what are you thinking? That if you can prove Jane Austen was at Greenbriar, however briefly, it’s the first clue to this missing manuscript?”

“Yes.”

“You’d want to have a look around the house, I suppose?”

Excitement spread through me. “Yes. I thought: maybe there’s a guest registry or something stashed there, that dates back to 1802.”

“I don’t remember my mum and dad ever mentioning anything about a guest registry.” He frowned. “If such a thing exists, I’d wager it’ll be in the library. Why don’t you stop by tomorrow morning, about nine o’clock, and we’ll have a look.”

“
We?
” My pulse quickened. “Fantastic! Thank you! So you’ll help me?”

“Why not? I told you, I like mysteries. And God knows, it’ll be more fun than weeding.”

We both laughed.

Over dessert and coffee, we talked of other things. Anthony told me he’d graduated from Oxford a few years before I was there. He had been divorced for twelve years, and was still single. He’d married right out of college, but he and his wife had been too young, and had wanted different things. His mother had passed away about five years before. They’d been close. He’d been estranged from his father for decades, which I thought was sad. My own dad died when I was in high school, and I admitted that I missed both of my parents every day.

I told him about Stephen. “My mother used to look at me with a little smile and say, ‘You should marry that doctor.’”

“Are you going to?” he asked, and seemed very interested in my reply.

I suddenly felt a little awkward. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve thought about it.”

When I asked what he did for a living, Anthony told me he was a vice president at a venture capital firm.

“I coordinate the financing to help start-up companies get up and running, and help established corporations get the money they need to expand,” he explained.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Very much. I like to say that I get people the money they need to follow their dreams. How about you? I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you…love books?”

I laughed. “I’ve been in love with books ever since I was a little girl and read
Charlotte’s Web
and
The Secret Garden
. Later, I graduated to Austen, Dickens, and the Brontës, with Austen my hands-down favorite. I wanted to live inside an Austen novel!
When I was a freshman in college, I took an intro to literature class and realized that you could read good books, write about them, and talk about them, and actually get a degree in that. I was sold! My goal at the time was to be a college English teacher. And I did teach for two years at the community-college level, but it was a nightmare.”

“Why?”

“I could never get enough classes at one location to make it a full-time job. I had to commute between three different schools, and one of them was sixty miles away. There’s a glut of MA’s on the market, and so many teachers are stuck in that position, there’s a name for them: Freeway Flyers. It’s mind-numbingly exhausting, and the pay is atrocious. When I took into account how much time I was spending in the car, prepping for classes, teaching, and reading students’ papers, I was earning less than minimum wage.”

“Good God.”

“I did enjoy the
teaching
part, though—very much. I loved working with students and sharing my love of literature. So I decided I wanted to teach at the university level, which meant going back to school and getting my doctorate.”

“Which you pursued at Oxford.”

“Yes. Studying here in England—land of Austen—was like a dream come true for me. But then my mom got sick. I had to drop everything, go home, and take care of her. I needed a job, fast, to help pay my mom’s medical bills. I had worked in the Special Collections department of my university library for years as an undergrad, and I spent a lot of time in the Bodleian Library while I was at Oxford. When I came back, there was an opening for a Library Assistant at Chamberlain University, and they took me in. When the Special Collections
Librarian retired, I started filling in for her. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but then the budget got cut. They couldn’t afford two positions, and they couldn’t hire anyone new, so they offered me the job permanently.”

“Was that a difficult switch to make—from teacher to librarian?”

“It was—at first. But I really enjoy it now.”

“Have you thought about going back to Oxford?”

“No. That ship has sailed. It’s a sticky subject among some of my colleagues that I don’t have a degree in Library Science—so I’ve been taking some online courses to earn my MLS.”

He nodded. There was a warm, appreciative twinkle in his blue eyes as he looked at me, and I couldn’t help feeling a tingle of attraction toward him. Immediately, I closed down that particular corner of my brain. I was already involved with a man I cared about very much. I had no business thinking about Anthony Whitaker that way. Quickly, I glanced at my watch, commenting on how late it was. We were both surprised to discover that we’d been talking for nearly three hours. I offered to split the bill, but Anthony wouldn’t hear of it.

As I walked with him to the inn’s front lobby to say good night, he said, “I’ll see you in the morning?”

“You bet.”

“I should probably warn you: my father was living in only one small part of the house. The rest is not very presentable. But the library was his pride and joy, so thankfully he kept it heated and clean.”

“I look forward to seeing it.”

He paused, then added cautiously, “You do realize it’s been more than two hundred years since this hypothetical ‘visit’ by Austen took place, right?”

“Right.”

“And even if we can prove she was there—if there ever
was
a manuscript, it’s probably long gone. So the likelihood of us actually finding anything at all is basically slim to none.”

“I know.” I grinned. “But we have to try, don’t we?”

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK TO MY ROOM
, I
CALLED
L
AUREL
Ann and told her everything that had happened. She was agog.

“You’re going to hang out with him at his fabulous Georgian mansion?” In a teasing but affectionate tone, she added, “I was jealous before, but now I think I hate you.”

I was just climbing into bed when my phone rang. Happily, it was Stephen. I gave him a complete update.

“Sounds great. But just remember, Sam, you’re on vacation. You’re not supposed to be working. You’re supposed to be having a good time.”

“I
am
having a good time,” I assured him. “I haven’t been this excited about anything in years.” Realizing how that sounded, I added, “I mean, come on, it’s a Jane Austen treasure hunt!”

“Who’s this guy again—the one who owns the house?”

“Anthony Whitaker. He’s a venture capitalist.”

“Okay.” There was an odd tone in his voice. “Well, I wish you luck.”
Stephen reminded me that his conference was over on Monday at one o’clock and that we’d planned to spend the afternoon and evening together before flying home the following day.

“I’ll be back Monday afternoon. Don’t worry.”

I awoke early the next morning, breakfasted at the inn, and arrived at Greenbriar at nine sharp. It was a grey, misty morning and there was a slight chill in the air, so I dressed in jeans and a lightweight blue pullover. When Anthony answered the massive front door, to our mutual amusement, he was clad in a similar ensemble.

“I’m glad you got the memo about the dress code,” he said with a grin.

I laughed and followed him into the house.

“Welcome to the humble Whitaker abode,” he added.

If I’d thought the outside was imposing, the inside was even more spectacular. He’d warned that the place wasn’t presentable—it was falling apart, he said—but it didn’t look that bad to me. Yes, the walls needed paint, the oak floors were scuffed and worn, and the carpets, drapes, and furniture were dusty and a bit threadbare—but the rooms were massive in scale, and retained many of their period features and charm. As we passed through the entrance hall and into the drawing room, I marveled at the high, plasterwork ceilings, carved- marble fireplace, mahogany doors with gilded handles, and wide, arched doorways. Elaborately framed portraits of Whitaker ancestors graced walls that were a foot deep.

“Wow,” I said.

“It
is
big. Would you like tea or coffee, Samantha?”

“No thank you, I’m fine. Just eager to get started.”

“This way, then.”

Our footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor as we
proceeded down a long passage. “From what I can tell, my father only lived on this side of the house. He kept a couple of bedrooms habitable upstairs, and seems to have spent the rest of his time in the kitchen, or here in the library.”

We entered, and I gasped in wonder. It was immense—a library worthy of the finest ancestral homes in England—and it seemed to be the best-preserved room in the house. It was outfitted with ancient, comfortable-looking couches and chairs and an antique desk, and was lined with bookcases filled with thousands upon thousands of beautiful old books that stretched to the lofty ceiling.

“Since you work in a library,” he said, “I don’t suppose you’ll find this all that extraordinary. But my father was proud of it.”

“Are you kidding? This is amazing.” The volumes, protectively stored behind tall glass doors, were all bound in leather in a variety of colors. A pair of large portraits hung above the massive hearth, featuring a man who was perhaps in his early forties and a demure young woman, about a decade younger, who were both elegantly attired in eighteenth-century dress. The woman wore an exquisite ruby necklace and matching earrings. “Who are they?”

“The first owner of the house, Lawrence Whitaker, and his wife Alice. Apparently she loved to read, and died rather young. It’s said that he was very much in love with her, and so bereft at her passing, that he filled the library with books in her honor. Every generation after him seems to have added to the collection.”

“It’s truly outstanding.”

“I suppose it is.” He glanced around, as if really seeing it for the first time. “I’ve never spent much time in here.”