Page 11 of The Austen Affair

For a moment, I am lying face down on the carpet, a smug smile creeping across my lips as I hear the flurry of shrieks from the other dinner guests.

When I went down, I’d expected Dr. Goddard to rouse me—he is, after all, the medical professional here.

But consider me shocked when the first person to leap up from the table and kneel beside me is Hugh Balfour.

I feel the firm (but surprisingly gentle) touch of his large hands against my shoulder and the small of my back as he rolls me over.

My eyes flutter open just long enough to catch Hugh peering down at me—his brows furrowed in concern—before I snap them shut again to keep up the ruse.

Meanwhile, he must have taken some sort of emergency-response training (probably for a role on a hospital drama he took just as seriously as Henry Tilney), because he’s rattling off instructions to the other people in the room.

“We shouldn’t move her immediately. Can someone fetch a pillow?

You’re supposed to lift the legs, to help regain blood flow to the head. ”

His diligent hands are now raising my legs by the knees, laying them across a decorative pillow that Mrs. Campbell has scooped off the seat of my vacated chair.

I hear the watery voice of the elderly Mr. Balfour, sweetly distressed on my behalf. “Doctor, Doctor! What can be done?”

Only at this point does Dr. Goddard take the initiative to handle the situation.

He hastens to my side, and within a split second, my nose is assaulted by a smell both acrid and pungent.

I shudder in involuntary disgust, eyes popping open to see everyone (save Mr. Balfour, who presumably cannot rise from his wheelchair) huddled around me in concern.

Dr. Goddard snaps an object that resembles a small silver clamshell shut, looking tremendously pleased with himself.

“The vinaigrette never fails to rouse a lady,” he says.

I realize that this vinaigrette is the equivalent of smelling salts—a sponge that, based on the absolutely disgusting scent, had to be soaked in vinegar.

I’m quite disappointed in this turn of events, actually.

Somehow, when books talked about smelling salts, I’d always imagined women being drawn back to consciousness with the scent of something more pleasant: lavender or roses or truly anything that didn’t make you throw up a little in your own mouth.

The smell clinging to the inside of my nostrils is so nauseating that I start doing deep-breathing exercises, hoping that will expel the scent faster.

I realize, too late, only by seeing the intense expression on Hugh’s face—he’s still kneeling over me—that in this Regency costume, deep-breathing exercises really make it look like I’m trying to call attention to my breasts.

This is what a romance-novel narrator would refer to as “heaving,” I believe.

Hugh must be horrified, because he is staring down at my chest like a deer in the headlights. Mrs. Campbell catches him staring as well. She snaps her fingers at her alleged nephew in gentle reproach. “Hugh, dear. Focus. We must get Mrs. Bright to her bed.”

An unfortunate turn of events. This is definitely not what I’d intended when I fell—I really just wanted to derail the marriage conversation as long as possible—but on his aunt’s orders, Hugh is soon scooping me up into his arms. It only heightens the aura of romance around us, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something appealing about how easily he lifts me, like I’m a bird with hollow bones.

I catch the faintest whiff of his modern cologne: notes of citrus and sandalwood, as crisp as his accent. I remain limp and unmoving, except for my eyelashes fluttering weakly, until I am laid down in my guest bed. Mrs. Campbell shoos the Goddards, who followed us up the stairs, from the room

“She will be fine!” I hear Mrs. Campbell saying. I imagine her batting the Goddards away from the doorway with a folding fan. “It is nothing serious. Her fiancé will care for her well, I am sure of it.”

I groan again, this time more in realization that my plan has backfired magnificently than to sell the state of my weakened condition.

The door clicks shut, and I realize that Mrs. Campbell has gone.

I wonder if Hugh’s gone, too. But I won’t check. I won’t.

Instead, I hide my face in the eiderdown pillow, refusing to face reality. I knock my ankles together beneath the linen sheets, muttering to myself, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.…”

Someone prods me, none too gently, in the shoulder. “Wake up, Judy Garland. How long exactly are you going to make me wait before you admit that was a farce?”

It’s him. He stayed behind.

I open my eyes to see that I am alone in a room with Hugh Balfour. He’s seated on a delicate wooden chair and would be the very image of a concerned partner at my sickbed except for the fact that his brow is furrowed in deep ridges of annoyance.

“Don’t act like you didn’t believe it for a few seconds,” I tell him. It’s a hushed accusation. “You were the first out of your seat.”

Hugh’s face looks a little pale at that. “Fine,” he says, voice clipped. “You threw yourself quite enthusiastically into the fall. I was… momentarily concerned.”

I let out a bleating laugh. “Who’s the terrible actor now?”

Hugh snorts. “It was a bit of a melodramatic choice, but fine. Yes, I thought you despised me so much the mere thought of our approaching union rendered you unconscious.”

That reminder slaps me back to the problem at hand. “I can’t believe they left you alone with me. That can’t be a good sign.”

I know what he’s going to say before he even says it, as his face is shadowed with dismay. “It was a valiant effort, but I don’t think one swoon will get us out of this engagement.”

My stomach twists into an Auntie Anne’s pretzel. I catapult upright. “ We have got to get out of here. What should we do? Get electrocuted again? Could it be a Gilligan’s Island, second-bonk-on-the-head-with-a-coconut thing? Do you think if we got zapped twice we’d be back to the present?”

If it’s even possible, Hugh’s scowl deepens. “Oh, so this isn’t a miracle anymore? The universe doesn’t have some kind of woo-woo, Hollyweird plan for us, after all?”

I shake my head from side to side, like a dog trying to get water out of its ears. “Of course not! They’re trying to make us get married. The universe would never plan up something as sick as this!”

Hugh pulls his chair a few inches closer to me, the legs screeching against the hardwood.

His jaw is clenched so tight I worry he might crack a molar.

I tense for a volley of shouting, certain he’s about to lose his temper, but then he exhales, his eyes closing as he slowly deflates before me.

His lips—it’s genuinely hard not to stare at them—move very slightly, and he appears to be counting down from ten.

After he’s done collecting himself, he finally reopens those fathomless brown eyes and asks me, “Then what do you propose we do about it?”

I straighten up against my pile of pillows, dread dancing down my spine. “Again,” I say, since no other suggestion springs to mind, “I bring up the electrocution idea.”

Hugh huffs. “And that would be great, if electrical fixtures in any way existed in this time period. We’re deep in candle territory, Miss Bright, if you hadn’t noticed. Even the wealthy lit their homes with gas.”

Panic grips me as I register the truth of his statement. “Well, that’s not good!” I shriek, as if Hugh is somehow to blame by virtue of pointing this out. “Then what are we supposed to do?”

Hugh lets out a derisive laugh. “That’s exactly my point, Miss Bright! Thanks for catching up.”

“Oh my God,” I mutter. “We are so fucked. I wish this was as easy as time travel on Chuck Brown. ”

This comment throws Hugh for an obvious loop. “ What? There’s time travel on your teen soap opera?”

I sigh heavily, irritated to be explaining this for the thousandth time in my life. The folks on the fourth-season press tour certainly couldn’t stop asking about it. “They introduced a magical doghouse in Season Four. We used it to go back in time to prevent the Manson murders.”

This revelation is so idiotic that anger flashes across Hugh’s face. “You—you…”

“Don’t ask me for more details. I literally don’t know.”

“How much cocaine were your writers snorting?”

I throw up my hands. “I don’t know, man! Probably a lot! But it’s your turn to come up with a plan to get home! If you’re going to nitpick my ideas, you damn sure better have one of your own.”

He doesn’t have a rebuttal. I watch him lace the fingers of those large—really, distractingly large, square—hands and for a moment am transfixed by the way his right knee bounces up and down in irritation.

The situation is about as far from ideal as you could get, and it’s clear to me that Hugh Balfour is a clockwork man wound very, very tight, even under the best of circumstances.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t know. But I know we cannot, under any circumstances, stay here and get married.”

And even though I agree with that assessment, I don’t turn up my nose at the opportunity to let out an abused, “Gee, thanks.”

Hugh scowls. “It’s not about you. It’s about this place. If indeed we have traveled backward in time, as I suspect we have, there could be dire consequences. Have you put any thought into what our presence here could be doing to threaten the integrity of historical events?”

“No,” I respond, deadpan. “Because I was popular in high school.”