Undressing Mr. Darcy (17 page)

Vanessa smiled. “Okay, Lexi. You can get off your soapbox now.” She knew her well enough to know that this was her way of apologizing, of making up. It was Lexi, offering advice, showing she cared. But was Vanessa ready to forgive her? She wasn’t sure.

“I’m not finished yet. You don’t want to think of him as a boyfriend or husband or the father of your child—in fact, don’t think of him as a person at all.”

Vanessa laughed. “Let me make sure I heard you right: he is not a person. I can see all of this advice has worked out well for you.”

“It has! Listen, it takes less than one-fifth of a second to fall in love.”

“You mean to fall in—lust.”

“Never underestimate lust! Without lust there isn’t love. The medial prefrontal cortex makes a snap judgment whether a person is attractive to you, while the rostromedial prefrontal cortex decides whether the person is compatible with you.”

“Chemistry,” Vanessa said. Had she just said that out loud? She and Julian had chemistry, all right—PhD-level chemistry.

“Once the decision’s made,” Lexi said, “the floodgates open and the sudden rush of stimulation to twelve centers of the brain works like cocaine.”

“It’s a turn-on. I get it.”

“Exactly. And you want more.”

Vanessa didn’t say a word.

“You can become an addict.”

“I’m not addicted to anything,” Vanessa said as she updated her personal statuses. “I don’t have an addictive personality.”

“Right!” Lexi pulled the phone out of Vanessa’s hands. “Here’s my theory—”

“Here we go,” said Vanessa as she took her phone back.

“Men look for sex and accidently find love. Women look for love and find sex. You want to objectify him. Picture him naked. Think the way a man would.”

“Uh-huh.” Vanessa refreshed her e-mail in-box.

“Okay, if you can’t picture him naked—”

“I didn’t say I
can’t
picture him naked.”

“Well, if you
won’t
picture him naked, then picture him in very sexy underwear. I have just the thing.” She slid off her archery gloves, pulled out her phone, and, after a couple of clicks, showed her phone to Vanessa. “Picture him in these.”

Vanessa had to laugh. There on Lexi’s phone was a photo of two male acrobats, shirtless, in English bowler hats and tight, tiny, Speedo-style pants with the British flag printed on them.

Sherry leaned in to look and cracked her bubble gum very loudly once she got a peek. “Wow. I need to get me some of
that
!”

Vanessa looked away from the phone and toward the boxing ring. She found herself rooting for the boxer pinned to the ground, struggling to flip his competitor.

“These two British guys at the burlesque show did the most amazing acrobatic act to ‘God Save the Queen’ in nothing but their patriotic skivvies.” Lexi sighed. “It was enough to make a girl relinquish her United States passport, I’m telling you. Anyway, Vanessa, can you picture him in these? Because I sure can. I can see him—in and out of them. Your turn.”

Vanessa could picture him in the British flag barely-there pants, yes, she could.

“See?” Lexi asked. “See how good it feels to let go of all those complicated, emotional snares and just live in the world of the physical? It’s liberating.”

Sherry now had her back turned to the boxing green. “Next time you go to a show like that, call me, okay?”

“Will do. Just remember, my friends, there are three stages of love: lust, romantic love, and attachment. You want to stay in the lust stage. You don’t want romantic love and you certainly don’t want attachment.”

Vanessa laughed. “Who would want attachment, right?”

“Attachment is a very dangerous thing when you’re attached to the wrong man.”

The dark-haired boxer, the one Vanessa had been rooting for, stood, took a serious hit, and fell to the ground while the referee started the count. Evidently, in Regency boxing matches, a man had thirty seconds to get up. “Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six . . .”

Lexi clapped and cheered. “Hurrah! My man’s going to win!”

Lexi happened to be, of course, rooting for the winner.

The ref raised Lexi’s champion’s hand in victory while the crowd clapped, cheered, and began to disperse.

“And another thing—” Lexi wanted to continue her lecture.

“Lexi, my number-one priority right now is my aunt. I have my hands full. I’m not even checking the messages in my eBelieve in-box. I don’t have the time.”

Lexi looked confused.

Vanessa could only feel sorry for her. Lexi had never known such love, never known the ultimate joy of putting someone else first once in a while, never known the satisfaction that came with mature adult compromise and with having to, for once, accommodate someone else’s needs. She might never know the happiness of give-and-take.

But this kind of relationship that Vanessa had with her aunt, it primed a person for a real partnership, and she had been practicing for decades. Now that her aunt had chosen to marry, and once she was married to Paul, maybe Vanessa could put herself first again. But only after she had this Alzheimer’s thing covered.

“Shall we visit the Shoppes at Meryton and sashay by the Naval Encampment?” asked Lexi.

“Let’s see what my Ask Mr. Darcy app has to say,” Sherry said as she shook her phone and read it aloud: “‘Indeed I do not dare.’”

They laughed, and the Meryton “shoppes,” under their white canvas tents, like peaks of meringue, beckoned from across the lawn. Here, smiling, costumed people sold everything from tea to Regency shoes to antique books. The breeze rippled through the trees, and children, many in Regency garb, ran past them from the shadow puppet show to the children’s tea. Surely this was part of the appeal of the cult of Jane Austen: a netherworld that us moderns could step back into, if only for a day or two. Vanessa got it now.

Her phone pinged with a text. It was from Chase, and somehow she just knew it would be about Aunt Ella.

Like the boxer in the ring, she’d been sucker-punched.

All is fine—but wanted u 2 know Paul let ur aunt go for all of an hour . . . but she locked her keys in the car @ the grocery store. She was confused. She & Paul chose not to alarm u, but I thought u should know. I’ll stay w them as much as I can <3 Chase

She thanked Chase and sent an e-mail off to Aunt Ella’s doctor informing him of the situation and asking if there were anything she could be doing for her aunt . . . from Louisville.

Lexi and Sherry laughed with some of the naval officers at the encampment. Vanessa’s fingertips hovered over the call button. Should she call her aunt? Or would that only exacerbate the situation?

She noticed a new e-mail had come in, and it could be from the doctor, but no, it was from Aunt Ella.

Dearest Vanessa,

(Because of course Aunt Ella wrote an e-mail as if it were a letter.)

I have tried to call you, but you are no doubt in the countryside and aren’t getting reception as my calls went to voice mail. Or perhaps you are becoming less dependent on your electronic devices and have shut your ringer off? I will have to thank Jane myself if this is the case.

Regardless, darling, I have been in touch with the doctor today after an incident involving my locking myself out of my own car. Imagine! I wanted you to be the first to know that as a result Paul and I have decided to be married by the end of the month. Save the 30th of September for the wedding! It will be a small affair, very small, but I will need you there, my dear.

Carry on!

Much love,

Auntie Ella & Paul

A quartet began to play Regency-era music as Vanessa wrestled with this bittersweet news. She checked her e-calendar for September 30, and of course it was stacked with obligations, most of them client related. One of her retail clients would be celebrating a fiftieth birthday that day.

When she thought of “birthday,” it hit her that the surprise party she had so meticulously planned for Aunt Ella’s eightieth at the Drake Hotel might be—too late. She leaned against a tree.

She needed to move up the surprise eightieth birthday party and take the surprise out of it. Or could she combine the party with the upcoming wedding? Her aunt’s birthday wasn’t until the end of December, and she’d made elaborate plans for it, but she had to move it up. Would her aunt approve of a birthday-wedding combo? Vanessa knew the answer to that. An emphatic no.

Aunt Ella never combined birthdays and holidays, much less a birthday and a wedding. Besides, Vanessa knew her aunt wanted a small, quiet wedding. Meanwhile, Vanessa wanted a big, elegant blowout of an eightieth birthday party for her aunt.

She’d have to move up the big party—and fast. To avoid putting the emphasis on birthdays and her aunt’s illness, she wouldn’t call it a birthday party anymore. She’d turn it into . . . an impromptu engagement party. It would still be the blowout she wanted, but with a better spin.

She’d have to pull some serious strings to get this off the ground. She cranked out a few e-mails, one of them to the special events coordinator at the Drake, and a text to a party-planner friend. And she had to figure out something really special for entertainment. But what?

Just beyond her phone screen, two black leather boots with a brown flap folded down on each came into view. She had seen a lot of gentlemen’s boots in the past few days, but none compared to the authenticity of—Julian’s.

Her phone flipped from vertical to horizontal texting mode.

Her eyes trailed up from the boots to the muscular legs in tight breeches to the tailored coat, the cravat, the strong jawline, the smiling mouth, the squared-off sideburns, and the dark eyes, sparkling despite the hangover.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Now I am.”

She got another e-mail; this time it happened to be a message from an eBelieve prospect. “Do you remember what you said last night, or is it rather fuzzy?”

“I meant everything I said, Vanessa.”

He did? People began to recognize him. They stopped and looked at him. Others pointed at him from across the green and walked over.

She snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute. You’re exactly what I need . . .”

“I thought you’d never realize it, my dear. You’ve finally agreed you need a bit of Mr. Darcy in your life?”

“No, really, Julian. What time is your flight to New York again this Thursday?”

Her party-planner friend texted her back. The Drake had had a last-minute cancellation, and a smaller room had become available Thursday, from six to eight thirty.
I’ll take it!
Vanessa texted back.

“My flight departs at noon.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“No matter. I’m bumping up a party to celebrate Aunt Ella’s engagement to Thursday evening, and I thought if you were in town, you might make an appearance—”

“I will simply change my flight.”

“You would do that for her?”

“I would do that for
you
.”

Vanessa tried not to read anything into this.

“Consider it done. I don’t have to be in New York until teatime on Friday for an
Undressing
show and book signing . . .”

“Could you dance with her—and her friends? I will pay you, naturally.”

“Of course. I’d be honored. No remuneration necessary. It’s the least I can do for you after all you have done for me.”

She wanted to jump into his arms, wrap her legs around him, and hug him—and that wasn’t all. Instead she simply smiled and said, “Thank you, Julian.”

He bowed. He bowed?

But then she remembered he was on Mr. Darcy autopilot. Soon, fans engulfed him, and that was what she wanted, right? For women to swoon over him at every turn? She handed out postcards touting his appearance that night to everyone around. He had made her day by deciding to change his flight.

“Vanessa.” Lexi motioned her over to the shoppes under the white canvas tents. “You have to see this. What an opportunity missed.”

Lexi and Sherry led Vanessa past a shoppe that never, until a few days ago, would have tempted her. But she had to stop at Bingley’s Teas. There, amid the aroma of tea, stood a tower of boxes of tea, cleverly crafted to look like books, and there on the cover of one, in a font Vanessa now knew to be a replica of Austen’s handwriting, she read:

Jane Austen Tea Series

Mr. Darcy

A Mr. Darcy tea? She flipped over the back of the box:
Like the man himself, this elegant, dark tea, grown in rich soil, with a bold beginning, yet a smooth finish, has a complexity of character that will leave you wishing to know more . . .

Lexi nudged her. “Let’s go.”

Vanessa laughed. “Look at this. Coffee? Tea? Or Mr. Darcy? How about two of the three?”

Lexi nodded. “It’s all part of the marketing machine that is the Jane Austen brand. But look over here.” Lexi dragged her toward the next tent. “It’s Lizzie’s Lingerie. Only they haven’t taken full—advantage.”

This shoppe sold Regency-inspired corsets and modern lingerie. Vanessa looked at the camis, boy shorts, and nighties.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Lexi asked.

This was what Vanessa had missed. She and Lexi had an eye for marketing, and just for fun, they would bandy about product ideas. This was what made them a great team back when they had their own business.

“Yes. They need someone to come up with slogans for these—thongs.” Lexi held up a pink silk thong.

Vanessa lowered her voice to a whisper. “How about:
Mr. Darcy was here
printed on the crotch panel?”

Sherry laughed.

“Yes!” Lexi agreed.

Lexi pointed to a baby blue cami with a built-in bra. “The cami should say,
We Support Team Darcy
across the boobs.” She actually bought the cami she loved her idea so much.

Vanessa smiled and picked up some white cotton boy shorts and held them up to her waist. “How about,
Mr. Darcy Likes Dirty Petticoats
.”

“I’m surprised you know about the muddied petticoats,” Lexi said.

“I know all about the significance of six inches of mud on a lady’s petticoat,” said Vanessa.

Lexi pulled a sheer white nightie tank top from a clothes rack. “This nightie needs to say,
The Lake Scene Made Me Wet
.”