Page 23 of The Austen Affair

The guests depart a few hours past midnight, trundling off in their respective carriages to the warmth and welcome of their beds.

However, we don’t escape the evening totally unscathed.

The Dixons start agitating for the young and able-bodied members of the party to rejoin soon to make a picnic day trip at Beacon Hill.

I personally don’t want to be in the company of the Dixons again anytime soon, but I don’t know how to decline politely, and a silent Hugh does nothing to help me.

While I try to round out the evening with simple pleasantries, Hugh backs away from the party, withdrawing into himself. He seems agitated. A faint sheen of sweat has developed on his forehead.

When the front door finally shuts, I move to him, concerned.

He tries to turn away from me as I approach, his arms crossed defensively, but I place the tips of my fingers lightly on the crook of his elbow.

He lurches to a stop as if I’ve handcuffed him, and I can see the confines of his jacket straining against clenched shoulder muscles.

“So… mission accomplished, or no?” I ask him, hoping he can fill me in on the status of his conversation with Mr. Dereham. I’m a little worried that his moodiness means we’ve hit a dead end.

Hugh’s dark eyes cut to the window as the carriage containing the militia men trundles away. “I could ask you the same question.”

This throws me for a loop. “You’re the one who was smoking cigars and sipping brandy with Dereham, not me. Did he not know anything?”

“He knew plenty,” Hugh says curtly. “You need not worry on that account. He gave me a name and address for the inventor. I shall send a letter in the post as early as tomorrow morning.”

“Then what’s wrong?” I ask him, my voice so quiet it’s barely audible.

His answer hisses past his front teeth, an obvious lie. “Nothing whatsoever.”

I immediately start losing patience. “Oh really? Nothing has happened to upset you?”

He snorts derisively, ripping away from me and striding into the parlor, where a fire still burns in the hearth. “Nothing at all.”

I pursue him, quickening my pace to catch up, which makes me feel ridiculous, like a purebred dachshund scurrying to catch up to a Great Dane on its impossibly little legs.

“Well, that’s funny,” I say, the English accent I’ve perfected dropping off my words in the heat of my flaring anger.

“Because as a scholar of human behavior, I’d say that your stiff posture, clipped tone, and refusal to make eye contact all adds up to the very strong possibility that you’re pissed off about something.

” I narrow my eyes as I try to hone in on what exactly has his panties in a bunch.

“What is it? Are you mad I taught the ladies to play Go Fish?”

Hugh does a double take, almost choking on his own spit. “You did what ?”

I scoff. “Please. It’ll hardly change the course of human history. And it was fun!”

He tears his eyes away from me, jaw clenched in rigid fury as he strips off his gloves. His hands are visibly shaking.

I feel my own resentment and confusion choking me.

How did this all go so wrong? A few hours ago, we’d been wrapped in a passionate kiss—and now he won’t look me in the eye.

I’m no stranger to messing things up, but not this fast. And usually I can pinpoint what I’ve done to disappoint someone else.

I start prodding him repeatedly in the shoulder with my index finger, a deliberate attempt to annoy him into answering. “Well, if you’re not pissed, I’ll just assume that at some point during the party, Dr. Goddard, as our resident physician, surgically reinserted the stick back up your ass.”

He whirls on me now, a livid vein jumping in his temple like an extra heartbeat.

“That’s my problem! You. The way you speak.

Your illiberal behavior. Your recklessness.

” He glances at the doorway—I assume to check for Aunt Fanny or Mr. Balfour—and then carefully lowers his voice to a whisper that still cannot disguise his fury.

“It’s as if you are actively endeavoring to have us both be found out for who we truly are.

You are as anachronistic as you are uncouth. ”

With a painful lurch in my stomach, I remember what he said to Florence on the phone that day.

Attach yourself to someone like Tess Bright, and the mess creeps in.

I haven’t disappointed him. You can’t be disappointed in someone you never held in esteem.

It’s himself who’s let him down, by allowing someone as unworthy as me to inch closer to him.

Hurt blossoms in my chest, spreading from the heart and rippling outward.

I’d thought I was finally getting through to Hugh.

That the battering ram of my intense desire to be liked had finally broken through his walls.

But not only does this man not like me in the romantic way I’d hoped, he doesn’t seem to like me at all.

How could I be so stupid? Just when I was really starting to feel something for this man, in spite of all good sense.

My voice drops a half octave, as if caught in my throat.

“And here I thought you were angry about the kiss.”

Hugh breaks eye contact with me again. “You live to cross lines, don’t you?

” he asks, staring determinedly at the portrait of baby George by the doorway.

“It gives you some sort of sick rush to introduce chaos into what should be simple. Don’t pretend that kiss wasn’t just another improvisation to screw with me. ”

My jaw hardens. Tears burn the edges of my eyes, but I will not give Hugh the satisfaction of letting them fall. “You seemed to like it well enough in the moment.”

He gives a hard laugh, then goes for the pain. “Well, I’m an actor. It’s my job to make things look convincing.”

I sweep away from him, knowing that if I stay, I’m going to lose the battle against my tears.

The taffeta of my skirt hem rustles against the floor, like leaves whispering in a destructive Santa Ana wind.

But I get in my parting shot, even if my voice croaks as I do it.

“Believe me, Hugh. I’ll never screw with you by putting my mouth on yours again. ”

I curl up in my bed beneath the damask blankets, gripping my knees like I am ready to squeeze back into my mother’s womb.

Hot tears sting my cheeks. How could I have been so off base?

I thought that Hugh and I were moving forward, but I’d offended—no, “offended” wasn’t a strong enough word—I’d repulsed him.

I’m not saying that I thought that kiss was the first step in a swoony, Austen-esque romance. But I’d felt an undeniable heat between us. And I thought he did, too.

But obviously not, or Hugh would never have spoken to me like he did tonight.

A knot of anger and grief and loneliness tightens in my chest. It feels like I’m choking.

I would give literally anything to talk to my mom right now.

All I want is to call her up and tell her what’s happening.

She’d roundly abuse Hugh, and we’d get to laughing, and before I knew it, I wouldn’t remember what I was so upset about in the first place.

Mom always had a way of making my problems shrink into silliness. Without her, they feel insurmountable.

Tonight was complete shit, Mom, I think.

All of it? I hear her asking.

This line of questioning, supplied by my own imagination, still manages to surprise me. Well, not all of it, I admit. I saw Jane Austen with my own eyes. I wore a gorgeous dress like Emma Woodhouse, and got drunk at a party with a pineapple on the table.

So you’re telling me, imaginary Mom says, that space and time have folded for you in an unimaginable miracle, you met the greatest literary genius the world has ever known, and lived out the grandest dress-up fantasies of your childhood. What could possibly be bad enough to ruin all that?

I make a wrenching sound from the back of my throat that sounds like a drain unclogging. There’s this boy.

A boy? Mom asks. “Boy” sounds like the key word. And what do we say about crying over boys?

“‘Never cry over boys,’” I recite under my breath, wiping my eyes with the pad of my thumb. “We only cry over men, and a real man wouldn’t make you cry.”

You’re living out our dreams, baby, Mom reminds me. If you have to be stuck here for a little while, there are worse places to get stuck. Enjoy what you’ve got while you’ve got it.