Page 21 of The Austen Affair

The sensation of pure joy ripping its way up my esophagus is all too familiar.

I am forced to pull my hand out from under Hugh’s—as little as I want to—so I can cover my mouth.

I twist in my seat, staring sideways at her.

Her, her, her. The one person, living or dead, my mother would have most wanted to invite to a dinner party.

The person I’d want to invite to a dinner party? Well, my pick was Jane Austen once, too. Since Mom passed, Jane got bumped out of the top slot.

I concentrate with all my might on calming myself down and keeping the dinner and drink inside my stomach where it belongs. After a few deep breaths, I feel safe enough to uncover my mouth. I shoot out of my seat, and Hugh stands with me, watching my face intently.

My hand unconsciously travels up Hugh’s arm for support, and I find myself clinging to his surprisingly firm bicep beneath that comely fitted jacket of his. How is he not freaking out? How?

“She’s here,” I whisper to him, so far under my breath it’s almost a wheeze.

“I know,” he says, face determinedly fixed forward, on Phoebe. “But don’t crane your head looking at her. We mustn’t be obvious.”

“How can you be so calm?” I ask him. “That’s her !”

“I know,” he says again.

“I’ve got to talk to her!” I say. “I’ve got to talk to her now! What are we wasting time for?”

Hugh’s lip curls. “You’re just going to barrel in there? You don’t want to plan out what to say?”

“Who needs a plan?” I scoff. “I’ve got instinct.

” I hitch up my skirts past my ankles and hurry around the back of the assembled chairs so that I can slide into a seat beside Jane, who eyes me curiously.

I can feel Hugh skulking a few feet behind me, like a judgmental shadow.

He clearly doesn’t trust me to handle anything on my own.

“Hello, Miss Austen,” I tell her, voice low so that I don’t interrupt anyone’s enjoyment of Phoebe’s recital. “I am so glad you could join us this evening. I’m a big fan.”

Jane Austen’s eyebrow shoots up as she adjusts her spectacles. “You’re a what, exactly?”

I blush. So soon to be messing up. What is the etymology of the word “fan” anyway? “A fanatic,” I correct myself smoothly. “A devotee of your work.”

If anything, Jane looks even more shocked at that. “Are you indeed? And what, my dear, do you consider ‘my work’ to be?”

“Your—your books,” I stammer, “ Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility…” I stop, collecting myself.

I remember at least two of her books were published posthumously, Northanger Abbey being one of them.

But I don’t remember which were definitely published in her lifetime, either, so I don’t want to dig myself into a deeper hole.

Jane Austen looks so shocked that she sinks into the chair next to me, looking quite as flabbergasted as if I’d told her outright that I had come to her direct from the year 2025.

It’s awesome for the canon of literature that Jane Austen had a quick mind, but less awesome for me, because she quickly recovers from her shock.

She leans forward, speaking to me in a harsh whisper.

“And who told you they were mine? I published anonymously and had hoped that my close circle could be trusted to be discreet with my private confidences.”

Oh my God. I’ve offended Jane Austen. I’ve made Jane Austen think that there’s been a leak from one of her nearest and dearest.

Goddamn it. Could I be more of a screwup?

“It’s not that,” I assure her, heat rising in my cheeks as I become more and more flustered. “It’s—it’s—”

There’s a creaking sound as Hugh lowers his enormous frame into the seat beside me, his patented scowl etched on his face. I almost melt in relief.

“Hugh,” I say, gripping his elbow like it’s the last life vest on the Titanic. “I accidentally let Miss Austen know that I am aware of her writing career.”

Jane’s sharp eyes flash behind her spectacles as she notes Hugh’s stiff body language, the nervous sweat beading on my neck.

“And now,” I continue, tugging breathlessly on Hugh’s arm as I urge him to bail me out, “Miss Austen is concerned that I learned from one of her close confidantes, which of course I did not. ”

I am praying that Hugh’s research into the Regency period would include any fragment of information about Jane’s publication history that can help me out of this goof.

He shoots me a furious look, his dark brows knitted together in agitation. I feel suddenly sick under his disapproving gaze. This is why he told me to make a plan. But typical messy me, I refused.

Is he going to leave me twisting in the wind?

Hugh gives Jane Austen the warm, winning smile he used as Henry Tilney back in our first chemistry read.

It’s a smile I’ve never seen grace his features when he’s not acting.

“We have an acquaintance who is in turn an acquaintance of the Prince Regent. He mentioned that as a patron of the arts, you would be dedicating your next book to him. I’m afraid he was liberal with the use of your true name, and word is getting around. ”

Jane Austen removes her glasses to polish them with her handkerchief, an action that speaks to an irritation so great she needs to fidget with something.

“I might have known,” she grumbles. “His Highness isn’t good for much, least of all keeping his royal mouth shut.

” She replaces the spectacles on the bridge of her nose and confides to us, “My next book is publishing this year, and I’m afraid its humble dedication to the Prince of Wales is profoundly insincere.

One would be excused in thinking it is perhaps the most strained sentence ever to be put to print. ”

I can breathe again. I lean in to Jane Austen, trying to regain some of my dignity with a charming rejoinder. “Even if you have perjured yourself most severely, Miss Austen, you can be assured that Mr. Balfour and I will keep it to ourselves.”

Jane’s hazel eyes twinkle as she leans in toward me. “Dislike of His Highness is far from a controversial opinion these days.”

“Surely not,” I agree. My mouth hangs slightly open on an indecisive precipice, wishing I could add anything else to the conversation. Leave her thinking well of me. But I cannot risk screwing up again. I need to quit while I’m ahead.

“Excuse me,” I say, shooting to my feet. “I suddenly feel quite faint. I require a spot of fresh air.” I don’t glance back to see if Jane looks concerned or perhaps relieved that such an odd person as myself will be leaving her alone.

As I scurry from the room, I hear Dr. Goddard remarking to the Fosters, “She’s a frail one, that girl. Treated her for swooning the night they arrived.”

I explode through the hall and out the back door to the garden, where the autumn air hits my face, refreshing and cool as a wet towel across a fevered forehead.

I had hoped the outdoors would calm me, but somehow my breathing is only becoming shallower, more gasping.

There is an unreality in which I find myself that is not helped by the nighttime glory of the rose garden.

The sky is a hazy midnight blue, with only a sliver of yellow moon hanging overhead, and yet the world around me is by no means dark.

I suddenly realize I have never gazed up at the arc of the heavens in a place without light pollution, and this new reality feels utterly alien and overwhelming.

Swirls of winking stars blaze above me, too innumerable to comprehend.

I feel impossibly small and alone, pressed down by the weight of an unknowable universe far grander and more important than little old me. A universe so random and chaotic, it would happily send a girl hurtling back in time as nothing more than a cosmic joke.

Purposeful, steady footsteps sound behind me.

I turn to find Hugh looking down at me with concern.

I try to explain myself—how my joy at seeing Jane had transmuted so suddenly to shame—but now the tears are coming so fast and hard that I can’t speak.

I press myself against the stone wall of the house, desperate for something stable I can lean against.

Hugh doesn’t stand at a safe distance, the way I might expect him to. He places a hand on either side of my face and says, “Don’t try to talk. Just breathe with me.”

I nod ferociously, letting out hideous, gasping breaths.

“In,” he counts off, “and out. In and out. Just like that. You’re doing splendidly.”

I don’t want him to let go of my face, so I slide my hands up to rest on top of his, holding them in position.

After several minutes of nothing but deep breathing, I feel my frantic heartbeat slow.

Whatever physical symptoms of my distress Hugh was observing must be lessening, because he asks, “Are you feeling better now?”

I nod.

“Good enough to talk?”

I nod again. “I think so.”

“I thought you were happy to meet her,” Hugh says, his brow furrowed in confusion. “But now you’re upset?”

“I’m not upset!” I try to assure him, but my voice still carries a tinge of the hysterical.

“I’m not upset! I was so, so, so happy I couldn’t think straight.

And then I just blew it. I had a great opportunity and I blew it.

So typical. So totally typical. But you fixed it, so—so I shouldn’t be upset. ”

“Are you aware that you’re crying?” Hugh observes, gently. “If you’re upset, be upset, Tess. It’s not logical to shove your emotions down.”

“Well, I’m not logical!” I remind him, swiping the wetness from my cheeks.

“You know that better than anyone. You had the measure of me from day one. If I was logical, I would have prepared something sensible to say, like you said I ought to. I mean, she’s a literary genius, after all, and I barely graduated high school.

I can’t believe I’ve fallen two hundred years backward through time only to make a fool of myself—”

“You didn’t make a fool of yourself,” he tells me. “You couldn’t look a fool if you tried. You’re one of those people, Tess.”

“What kind of people?” I sniffle.

Hugh sighs. “The kind of person everyone likes. I don’t think someone could truly dislike you, even if they tried.” He sucks on his teeth, breaking our extended eye contact to glance out at the garden. “And trust me, I’ve tried.”

I burst out into a new flood of tears, accompanied by explosive laughter.

“Lord.” Hugh flinches but doesn’t remove his hands from my face. “I didn’t mean to make you cry again. I swear, I don’t know—I don’t know how to comfort people. But I’d like to get it right one of these days.”

I blink up at him, tear droplets clinging to my eyelashes. “These aren’t sad tears, Hugh. You actually managed to say something funny.”

Hugh looks baffled but relieved. A tremendous warmth blooms in my chest for him.

To think that after being cast alongside the person who I thought was the most disagreeable man in England that now I could be standing here under the satin-blue moonlight with him in a verdant garden and find my feelings are entirely different than before.

He is strange and often off-putting. But he is not unkind. Nor is he ill-meaning.

“You could try to talk to her again,” Hugh gently suggests to me, his forehead now tilted against mine. We haven’t moved from our pose against the wall for nearly five minutes now. “If it matters that much to you.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell him, my eyes on his lips.

“Not tonight, anyway. We’ve got something more important to do.

” I think I’m about to make another mistake.

A big, bold, glorious mistake. But the mistake I’m considering making—kissing Hugh Balfour so hard that it makes him see stars—might just be worth it.

But then Hugh’s expression tightens. “Of course,” he mutters.

“The electricity machine. We had a task for this evening. Thank you for reminding me of it.” He sounds genuine in his gratitude.

But I’m dismayed. We aren’t on the same page at all.

Hugh drops his hands from my face and steps backward.

He’s fretting at a mile a minute, which rather ruins the romantic mood.

“I haven’t gotten very far with it, I’m afraid.

I did my best to wheedle information out of my dinner partners, but the moment I realized the reverend was an Austen, I felt lost… completely off script.”

The idea that Hugh didn’t get any leads encourages me.

If I couldn’t get a kiss right now, I could at least get kudos.

Not one to be a gracious winner, I drape my hand carelessly over his shoulder, leaning back into Hugh’s airspace to whisper to him.

“Now, I know you’re already thinking that I’m the most accomplished young lady of your acquaintance, but save your praise, because I found us a lead on an electrical machine. ”

A look of wonder transforms his face. I’ve never seen Hugh wearing such a broad, beaming smile.

It instantly blurs his sharp edges—and makes my heart explode into a million billion pieces of rainbow confetti.

Because I made him smile that way. I finally broke through to my stubborn, aloof costar and made his face light up like a sky without light pollution.

Suddenly, this strange and brilliant sky above us is no longer foreign and terrifying to me. With Hugh at my side, it’s another miracle in a long line of miracles.

“That’s incredible,” Hugh says, his voice thick with meaning. “And a tremendous relief.”

I’m so smug it should be illegal. “Mrs. Foster says that Lieutenant Dereham attended an electricity party in London. So he either knows how to get one or he knows somebody who does!”

Hugh almost seems to collapse under the weight of his gratitude.

Before I know what’s happening, Hugh’s hand slides down to my waist, a precursor to an embrace.

Just one touch from him is enough to send my internal compass going haywire.

He leans in so close to me that his breath, for the second time tonight, tickles the baby hairs next to my ear.

I close my eyes, in full longing, and imagine that he might dip down another half inch and drag his mouth against my earlobe.

The door behind us bursts open, and several members of our party appear.

I do the only thing that makes any sense for me to do. A simple explanation for our long absence from the party. An easy cover for us talking electricity machines and time travel out here.

I shove myself upward on my tiptoes to bring my mouth up hard against Hugh Balfour’s.