Page 26 of The Austen Affair
We fall into a stony silence. In the rest of the hour’s drive up to Beacon Hill, I try to admire the view. The long grass lining the roads, rustling cheerfully in the breeze. Butterflies darting overhead. The scene-stealing leaves of the nearby trees, which have begun to turn fiery.
But in truth, we just had our own personal Waterloo in this curricle, and I doubt that any amount of beauty can make up for that.
After a bit, I begin to see our destination, a great chalk hill rising up from the nearby surroundings.
Damn it. This is so Austen. This is just like Emma, visiting Box Hill (and so far my day trip has been almost as dramatic and mortifying as hers).
“It’s lovely,” I say, accidentally speaking my opinion aloud.
Hugh glances over at me, his tight, furrowed brow softening at my expression.
“It is,” he says.
I give a fretful sigh. “Good to know we can agree on something.”
After climbing down from our respective vehicles, Hugh and Mr. Dereham took their horses by the reins and tied them securely to a nearby tree.
I suppose I’d expected we’d ride the horses a bit farther, but it seemed getting in some healthy exercise was the whole point of the activity, and we began to make our way up Beacon Hill on foot.
It felt a bit mean to leave the horses behind, though.
Would they feel abandoned? I thought wistfully of a hiking trail in LA, where you could just park your car in the front lot and not worry about its feelings until you returned.
I personally consider myself a fairly athletic person—I did most of my own stunts on Chuck Brown in that Season Three arc where my character learned kickboxing in order to become a crime-fighting vigilante.
In sneakers and Fabletics, I figure it wouldn’t have been so bad.
But climbing up that hill in an ankle-length dress and heavy traveling coat quickly becomes more difficult than I anticipated.
Sweat almost immediately starts beading beneath my bonnet, dripping down the back of my neck.
“Mrs. Bright,” Armstrong says, his voice as slick as pomade, “might I be so bold as to offer you the lend of my elbow? I shouldn’t want to see a lady slip amid the climb.
” He hovers close to me, and I eye his outstretched hand suspiciously.
I’m a little worried he’s going to use this closeness to do whatever the Regency equivalent of copping a feel is.
“No thank you!” I say, swerving farther from Mr. Armstrong’s outstretched hand. Luckily, Hugh slows his pace at exactly this moment, cutting his strides down by half and putting himself directly between me and Mr. Armstrong.
Wordlessly, Hugh offers me his own elbow, and I take it. At least if I’m physically attached to Hugh, Mr. Armstrong can’t make any more overtures. But though chivalry has been extended, I don’t delude myself into imagining our tiff is over.
The farther we go up the dirt path, worn into the grass by hundreds of hikers’ footsteps before us, the more my steps fall into rhythm with Hugh’s.
I remember how easy it was for him to outpace me back on the movie set when he wanted to avoid me, so I’ll give him the credit of acknowledging that he is thoughtfully going no faster than I can easily manage.
It takes perhaps an hour to reach the top of the hill, at which point my limited breath is sucked from my body as I take in the glorious view.
The familiar patchwork of farmland stretches out below us as far as the eye can see, dotted here and there with herds of ant-sized sheep.
But there is also a ruggedness that was not visible from Highground—the rocky touch of the sublime as white limestone quarries split the civilized land open.
The sky above us is slate gray, stark and cool against the vivid gold and scarlet of the seasonal wilderness below. I turn in a stupefied circle, taking in the view in another direction. Now, in the distance, I spot a magnificent estate with hundreds of windows set into a yellow-brown facade.
“I’m rapturous!” Isabella Dixon cries, clasping her hands to her heart. “I’m simply rapturous! The view defies words, does it not? It’s splendid, delightful, inspirational!”
Phoebe stands beside her sister, wearing a grade-A stink face. “For a view that defies words, you certainly are searching valiantly for them, sister.”
Armstrong lets out a tittering, almost girlish laugh at Phoebe’s witticism. She glows at the attention, but Isabella falls silent, obviously hurt.
“Isabella,” I say, inching toward her hesitantly, “might I venture to call you that? I shall not if it’s overly familiar. You may call me Tess, if you like.”
Isabella blinks in confusion at me for a moment but then nods. “I should like you to call me Isabella very much.”
“I think it’s admirable to search for words that describe the indescribable. That is why we look to poets and authors, is it not? To seek out words that capture emotions that are otherwise beyond us?”
Isabella gives me a weak smile. “I do love stories about nature. Have you ever read The Romance of the Forest ?”
“No, but I think I have heard the name,” I tell her. “Why don’t you describe it a bit?”
And Isabella is off to the races—chattering away about the novel, and as she paints a loving picture, her expression is transformed with radiant happiness. I don’t think people often ask Isabella anything about her opinions. Not with Phoebe sucking up all the air.
I’m not the only one to notice the physical change that accompanies Isabella’s emotional one. Good-natured Dereham takes up my mission, asking her follow-up questions and openly admiring how the fine exercise of the day has heightened the brilliance of her complexion.
As Isabella and Dereham drift closer together, Hugh jerks his head for me to wander farther away from the group alongside him. He points out the beautiful estate below us. “Does that house look familiar to you at all?”
I shake my head, surprised he’s speaking to me at all. I keep my voice cool as I respond, not trying to ruin the armistice but not trying to look too eager for it, either. “All fancy English houses look pretty much the same to me. Is it famous?”
A slight smile crinkles the corners of Hugh’s eyes, softening everything about his sharp features in much the same way his happiness did last night, before it all unraveled. “Not quite yet, but it will be someday. That’s Highclere Castle. You know, the Downton Abbey house?”
Douchebag. I punch him in the shoulder. “Stop making fun of me!” I demand.
Hugh puts up his hands—I notice suddenly how very large they are—in surrender. “I’m not joking! It really is. I think somebody’s going to put an addition on it in the next fifty years, but that’s the very place.”
“Oh!” I gasp. “Wow, I just thought you were being a jerk.”
Hugh’s dark eyes sparkle. “Yes, I believe you’ve assumed that about me many times before.”
“And I probably will again,” I assure him, still prickly.
Hugh casts his voice very low, so no one else can overhear. “I had a long walk up the mountain to think about it, and you were right.”
I bite my lower lip. “I didn’t mean it. About the robot thing. That was not very kind of me.”
Hugh brushes past my comment. “Not about that. About me being jealous. I was. I let my insecurities fly away with me. Clearly I’m not over what happened with Charlotte.
I saw you with Armstrong and I acted like a—how would you phrase it?
—a real dick about it. Not everything I said was true. Some things I just said to hurt you.”
I look up at him through my eyelashes, actually bashful. “You’re not the only one who says things just to hurt people.”
Hugh grimaces. “And clearly you’re not the only one who brings their baggage to work sometimes. I sincerely apologize and only hope you can forgive me.”
Somehow, we’ve traveled two hundred years back in time, and the fact that Hugh Balfour is giving me a sincere apology feels like the most unbelievable part of my week.
I wouldn’t have thought the guy in 2025 who shouted at me for touching his cravat would be capable of that.
But then, maybe the girl in 2025 who slapped him didn’t really deserve an apology.
I lay my fingertips on his elbow again. “I will forgive you, if you’ll return the favor.”
He inclines his head graciously to me. “Done.”
At this point, Phoebe loudly calls everyone’s attention to the picnic lunch she packed for us, a selection of bread, apples, and cheeses, which admittedly hits the spot.
We have a leisurely meal, sitting on a quilted blanket that Isabella brought along.
Afterward, I lie out longways on the blanket, my hands resting behind my head, watching the thick clouds roll by.
“Should we be worried about that?” Hugh asks, one eyebrow raised and indicating the gathering clouds. They are fat and gray but not quite promising rain yet, as far as I can tell.
“Worried?” Phoebe asks. “Mercy me, I think we should be grateful to them. We ladies cannot risk our delicate complexions, and a clouded sky quite removes that fear.”
“I think that one looks a bit like a rabbit,” Isabella muses, pointing out a particular arrangement to Mr. Dereham. “Or perhaps it’s rather more to the point that rabbits tend to look like clouds.”
“Yes,” Hugh says, “but if it does rain, we really ought to be making our way back down. It was difficult enough trekking up here when everything was quite dry. I don’t want to see the ladies stumbling in the mud.”
Mr. Armstrong takes a long swig from a bottle of wine. “Don’t be so deucedly chickenhearted, Balfour. If the women are not intimidated by the threat of a little rain, I don’t see why a military man should be.”