Undressing Mr. Darcy (8 page)

Aunt Ella laughed and blushed and beamed.

People in the audience began standing and clapping.

“Let us all take a moment to honor and thank Ella Morgan.” Julian bowed and handed her the flowers.

Soon the entire room stood to clap and shout.

Aunt Ella was tearing up, Vanessa could see that.

Vanessa dabbed the corners of her eyes. More than the overwhelming feeling of guilt over missing that moment came the undeniable feeling that she would never again meet a man like Julian.

But he was a client, he would be gone in just over a week, and worse, he was, at the moment, surrounded by a throng of women and Lexi, leather-clad warrior princess.

“Let’s edit this and get it uploaded as quickly as we can, Kai,” she said.

She pulled a business card out of her wallet. “I have a mantua maker to see.”

“A what?”

“I’m going to have a gown made.”

* * *

T
he mantua maker, it turned out, was no fairy godmother.

“I’m not a fairy godmother,” she said when Vanessa asked about a gown for the following night. She didn’t laugh so much as she actually cackled along with her assistant. Her green eyes turned into little half-moons and her cheeks grew red with laughter. “These gowns are not off-the-rack. They’re custom-made, just as they would’ve been in the Regency era.”

Vanessa looked around, hoping the crowd in the Emporium, and especially Julian, who stood across the room, mixing and mingling at the Jane Austen Books stall as she’d instructed, didn’t hear the dressmaker laughing at her.

The room buzzed with people, and the vendors on either side of the mantua maker were busy. On the left stood a table dedicated to Jane Austen Christmas ornaments, and on the right a woman sold Regency “reticules,” silk drawstring purses.

Vanessa found herself drawn to one of them—for Aunt Ella, of course.

“If you need the gown for tomorrow night, you’re best off going to a costume shop and renting one,” the mantua maker said.

Vanessa made a mental note to look up costume shops.

The mantua maker eyed Vanessa up and down. “Although, a rental will look like a gunnysack on you, you’re such a thin thing. Although you are well endowed . . .”

Vanessa blushed. She hadn’t been—sized up like this ever. She leaned in and whispered, “What if I paid you overtime?”

The mantua maker folded her arms. “What kind of a gown are we talking about?”

Vanessa pulled out a pen and began sketching on the conference program. Her graphic skills were marginal at best, but she narrated as she went along. “There’s this woman. She gave me your card, and she’s petite, with brown hair? She had on a white gown—muslin, she called it—and it had a low, square neckline like this and off-the-shoulder sleeves like this, see? And—”

The mantua maker ripped the mediocre drawing out from under Vanessa’s pen. “You’re describing Jane Austen’s gown.”

“What? No. It was someone here, someone at the conference—”

“Yes. That’s our Jane Austen. She’s a Jane Austen actress—she plays Jane Austen. Her name is Deb Miller.”

She had spoken to—Jane Austen? And Jane Austen had advised her to get a corset?

The mantua maker raised her voice. “That’s a custom creation. You can’t have Jane Austen’s gown!”

The customers at the surrounding booths looked sideways at Vanessa.

This time
she
was causing a ruckus at the Jane Austen conference.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she feared it would be Julian, but then she recognized the rings. It was Aunt Ella.

“Vanessa, my child, whatever are you doing here with Martha?”

“She wants a gown,” the mantua maker said. “Not just any gown, but our Jane Austen’s gown. And she wants it ready by tomorrow night.”

Vanessa hadn’t realized a group of customers had formed behind her.

“Never mind. I’m sorry. Please. Let your other customers go first—”

Aunt Ella held fast to Vanessa. “Wait. You want a gown? For yourself?”

Vanessa stepped back.

Aunt Ella smiled. “Answer me. Do you want a gown?”

Vanessa looked down until, just like when she was a little girl, Aunt Ella’s hand lifted her chin. “You want to go to the ball in costume?”

“Yes.”

Aunt Ella turned to the mantua maker. “Martha, my niece Vanessa needs a gown for tomorrow night. I have some ideas on how we could make it work.”

“She’s your niece? Why didn’t she say so to begin with? Of course we can make something work!”

The two women conferred while the Emporium swelled with people buying their Jane Austen paraphernalia. Julian could be heard talking to a gaggle of women, and Vanessa leaned against the dressmaker’s table for sheer strength.

She had wanted to keep this gown thing on the down low and see if she still felt as strongly about dressing up for the ball tomorrow, but now with Aunt Ella in the know, there was no going back. Her going to the ball in costume, though, might soften the blow of the doctor’s appointment . . .

A quick check on her phone confirmed she already had two hundred and eleven women hoping to open the ball with Julian. Two hundred and eleven!

“It’s all ‘sorted,’ as the English would say.” Aunt Ella smiled. “We shall have a fitting tonight at my place. By the way, thank you, Vanessa dear, for the lovely tribute from our Mr. Darcy at the opening of the conference. How very thoughtful of you.”

If only she
had
thought of it. She had Julian to thank, that was for sure.

She looked over toward the bookstore stall, but he had vanished. If he was following the schedule she had drawn up for him, the schedule that maximized his exposure for the sake of his book, he should be on his way to the Cravat Tying 101 Workshop.

“Auntie E, would you and Paul like to join me for Cravat Tying 101?”

“I thought I’d never hear you ask such a thing,” she said. “What’s happening to you? Let’s hurry before you change your mind!”

Vanessa linked her arm in her aunt’s. “Although I think it would be much more useful to learn how to
untie
a cravat, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re really getting my hopes up, darling.”

“I’m just kidding. Whatever you’re thinking—don’t.”

She couldn’t spoil this moment by telling her about the doctor’s appointment. It would have to wait.

* * *

A
s she sat in Cravat Tying 101, the message she sent out to the Internet floated around the cell phones and tech devices of Janeites the world over:

Want to tie the knot with Mr. Darcy? He’s in Cravat Tying 101 right now. #JASNAagm #UndressingMrDarcy #OrDressingMrDarcy?

“To best learn how to tie a cravat,” Julian said to Vanessa, “one must put one’s phone down and actually interact with the neck cloth.”

He gently took the phone from her hands, their fingers brushing against each other, and set it facedown on the table.

Vanessa laughed. She had been struggling with the swath of white fabric and the wooden post in front of her while fielding messages from her clients
and
tweeting on his behalf! She sat squarely between him and Aunt Ella. Paul sat on the other side of Aunt Ella, while Lexi flanked Julian, and Sherry sat behind them all.

“I’m doing my best,” Vanessa said as she once again pulled the fabric over the knot she’d made on her post. But something wasn’t working. She figured the faster she went, the better.

“It’s a dying art, but it’s also an exercise in patience.”

“What are you implying, Mr. Darcy?”

He smiled. “It’s a skill best acquired slowly, through practice. After all . . . one never knows. You may one day find that the gentleman in your life needs a hand.”

Was it getting hot in here or was it just her?

She whispered to Aunt Ella, “I’ve often found that men in my life have needed a hand, but not, alas, with their cravats.”

“Vanessa!” Aunt Ella whispered with a giggle.

Really, her aunt was still as sharp as her hatpins, and she had tied her cravat impeccably. How could Vanessa reconcile it with the dementia diagnosis?

Paul laughed.

She hadn’t thought Paul could hear her. She’d only wanted to amuse her aunt.

“Perhaps you haven’t met a true gentleman yet,” Julian said.

Hmmm. She could say a lot of things, but he was a client, so she chose silence.

“Allow me,” he said.

He stood and, from behind her, reached over, his arms brushing against hers, and unwound the fabric she had just carefully wrapped around the pole in front of her.

“It looks like I’ve pushed your patience to the limit,” she said as she watched his hands deftly wrap the cravat around the pole.

He laughed. “You have, I’m afraid. You must keep one end of the neck cloth longer than the other, you see. You’ll need the extra length to create the ‘waterfall’ effect the instructor was referring to for this particular knot. There.” He sat down and Vanessa felt a blast of air-conditioning on her back. “Now try tying it.”

“I’m sure I’ll have just as much trouble
tying the knot
,” Vanessa whispered to Aunt Ella.

Her aunt laughed. “It’s not as if nobody ever asked you, either. The trouble’s all yours, dear.”

These were the moments with her aunt she wanted to remember. This conference, time like this spent with her aunt, it might never happen again.

She brought the long end over to hide the knot and made a picture-perfect waterfall over it.

“There,” she said as she shook off her wistfulness. “Does it pass muster, Mr. Darcy?”

“Well done. Well done.” Julian smiled.

Lexi began whining from the other side of Julian, no doubt because Vanessa was getting too much of his attention. Her cravat, though, looked perfect.

“What do you think of mine, Mr. Darcy? I’m quite good at tying things up, aren’t I?”

More than one bonneted head turned around in front of them and then turned back.

“Quite,” Julian said.

Aunt Ella nudged Vanessa and whispered, “See what you’ve started. You’ve gone and provoked Caroline Bingley again.”

Vanessa sighed. “What have I done?”

Lexi continued to chat with, or rather, chat up, Julian.

“You’d best let her have Julian’s attention. There are friends of mine from all over the country in this room, and if Lexi causes a scene, I know it will be due to the fact that you took something she wants. It’s always been this way with her, Vanessa. Now, just share your toys and play nicely.”

“He’s not mine to share, you know. He’s a client.”

Aunt Ella looked disappointed. “You always let work spill into your leisure time—why not mix business with pleasure in the man department?”

Vanessa laughed and reached for her phone, but her aunt’s purple-veined hand gently stopped her.

The instructor, Jake Laney—a historian and an expert on cravats, snuff, and firearms—stepped back up to the front of the room after checking on his students’ progress and continued his lecture.

“You may untie your waterfall knot and we’ll do the mathematical knot,” Jake said. “It’s a simple but elegant knot and reveals much about the gentleman who chooses it. He is, of course, an upstanding gentleman, proud to express his individuality, but not overly fussy about his outward appearance, unlike dandies such as Beau Brummell.

“Beau Brummell, after all, came up with the idea of starching one’s cravat, much to the chagrin of the laundresses, and he would often be found knee-deep in discarded cravats, trying to get it just right.”

Vanessa methodically followed Jake’s instructions as to how to tie the mathematical. First she spread the neck cloth on the front of the pole, or, as he liked to call it, the “neck.” Then she made a crease coming down from under each “ear” toward where the knot would be. She made a horizontal crease above the ear creases, brought the ends to the back, crossed them, continued around to the front, and then tied them in a knot.

She did it. Her cravat looked as perfect as the one on Jake’s PowerPoint presentation. She smoothed it down, and, for some reason, she felt as if it were the smartest, sexiest thing she had seen in a while. Why, then, did it look familiar?

Then it hit her. Julian wore his cravat in the mathematical style.

He was the elegant, upstanding gentleman Jake was talking about.

Upstanding?

Julian moved his chair slightly away from Lexi and closer to Vanessa.

Yes, upstanding.

“Time to untie your cravats,” Jake said. “We’re moving on to what our gentleman would wear to the ball: the ballroom knot.”

Vanessa very slowly slid her fingers through the mathematical knot, pulling it apart, letting the cloth spill into her hands, keeping her thoughts from spilling into choppy waters.

Suddenly she wondered: wasn’t the modern tie a bit of a letdown? It didn’t take any skill or creativity whatsoever to put one on and didn’t reveal as much about the individual as these knots did.

After the ballroom knot everyone stood to go to the next session, and Lexi needed to dart back over to Hero Con. Vanessa found herself face-to-face with Julian, and, for a moment, they seemed all alone in a sea of untied cravats.

“Julian, I have to thank you, belatedly, for honoring my aunt the way you did this morning. I saw it all on video and it was fabulous.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “It was rather an impromptu decision, and I shouldn’t have assumed you’d be in the room.”

“I’m so sorry I missed it.”

“I am as well. Most sorry.”

“The flowers were so gorgeous. How did you manage—?”

“Hotel concierges are quite obliging.” He smiled. “By the by, I am very much looking forward to the plan tonight.”

Images of them out to dinner at a candlelit restaurant and swimming in her condo’s rooftop pool in the moonlight flashed through her mind. Holy cravat! She rubbed her forehead. “The plan? What plan?”

“The PR plan. I am quite anxious to see it.”

Conference attendees closed in on him now, and she stepped backward.

“Oh! Yes, the plan. Yes.”

He turned his attention to his fans and Aunt Ella arched a penciled-in eyebrow at Vanessa. “It looks as if he may be coming to the table with a plan of his own,” she said.