Page 27 of The Austen Affair

Hugh’s nostrils flare in irritation. I can see him opening his mouth, and though I’m rather enjoying our time atop the hill, I decide to be a good scene partner and “yes and” Hugh’s suggestion.

“I actually wouldn’t mind heading down sooner rather than later.

Better safe than sorry, I suppose. And I should hate to think of the horses caught in a storm without us, becoming distressed.

” Hugh inclines his head gratefully to me.

Luckily, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Dereham—though, frankly, he’s not calling the shots here—could brook no argument with a lady, so with some mild foot-dragging from our companions, they agree that we should gather our belongings and depart.

On our way down the hill, however, we take our sweet time, enjoying the views rather more than we did while struggling our way up.

“Faith! Isn’t that the loveliest view you’ve ever beheld?

” Phoebe asks, pointing south. For once, I don’t have any critique for Phoebe, because she’s made an excellent point.

She’s indicated a long, graceful slope into a valley-like indentation in the earth, with the peak of the incline only a hundred yards from where we stand.

“Why, it looks like—” I think Isabella might be a little tipsy from the wine, because she giggles to herself. “—it looks just like a—a punch bowl!”

A visible ripple of excitement works its way through Phoebe’s whole body as she grips her older sister’s hands. “Oh la, Isabella, do you know what we must do?”

Isabella lets out another high-pitched peal of laughter. “But we couldn’t!”

Phoebe sets her jaw, glowing with excitement, and declares, “Watch me.” Then Phoebe unlaces the ribbon of her bonnet, throws the pink headwear aside, and sprints for the edge of the slope.

“I say,” Mr. Dereham shouts after her, “what are you doing there?”

But there’s no time for questions, because Phoebe has thrown herself onto her side, her arms pulled up over her face, and is rolling herself down the great hill.

Isabella shrieks with delight, applauding and running after her little sister.

We all follow; Hugh and Dereham have gone pale with concern.

But I am not worried. I’m jealous. I can hear Phoebe laughing all the way down.

Even with all the Austen content I’ve consumed in my lifetime, I never imagined seeing a buttoned-up Regency lady do something so silly and uninhibited and downright carefree as catapulting herself down a grassy knoll like a small child at recess.

I want to be part of it. And Isabella obviously does, too, because she’s already torn off her own bonnet, and down she goes.

Her movements are so natural and easy I can tell that she and Phoebe must have regularly done some variation of this game throughout childhood.

She goes spinning down the hill without hesitation, fearless and free.

Mr. Armstrong doesn’t need a third example.

Cheering heartily, he throws himself from the peak with the grace of an Olympic diver.

Mr. Dereham, however, is dithering, a nervous smile gracing his round face.

“Shall I?” he asks us. “I think I shall. But ought I? Oh, hell.” And he’s off, too, with rather less agility but even more enthusiasm.

I start scrambling for the ribbon of my own bonnet. “Oh, I am so there. ”

Hugh grabs my wrist, his features warped with incredulity. “Are you absolutely out of your mind, woman? That must be a hundred feet down. You could get a concussion. You could split your skull open.”

I nod gravely. “Yes, I might be in very serious danger of having some fun.”

Hugh snorts, staring down the long stretch of earth to our companions, waving to us cheerfully from below. “Well, I certainly won’t be participating.”

“Perfect,” I say, raising my eyebrow in a taunting challenge. “Then you can stay behind and guard the hats.” My next comment is a stage mutter, carefully designed to make him indignant. Reverse psychology is fair play. “It’s not like anyone expected you to do it anyway.”

Hugh’s voice comes out hitched, like an adolescent boy’s. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not a problem,” I say, winking at him as I drop my bonnet to the ground. “You just stay up here while we have all the fun.”

“No.” Hugh seizes the top hat from his own head, and with the furious determination of someone who can’t believe what he’s doing, flicks it to the side. The fluidity of the motion is actually pretty hot; I lick my lips reflexively.

Hugh is backing away from me, gesticulating furiously with those distractingly big hands.

“I will not bear you always insisting that I’m some kind of stick-in-the-mud, when actually, I’m practical—” And that’s when I put my palms against his solid chest and give him just the slightest, most playful of shoves.

Honestly, I didn’t expect him to lose his balance so easily.

But apparently he’d retreated pretty close to the edge while chewing me out, and immediately toppled backward down the hill.

Hugh does not fall with the purposeful dignity of everyone else. He lets out an animallike humph of surprise as he lurches backward, hits the ground, and tumbles down in somersaults.

All the blood in my body freezes as I realize what I’ve done. “Oh, shit. Hugh, I’m coming!”

And I throw myself down after him.

For a second, he’s so still I’m terrified that he’s dead.

But then he starts—absurdly, flying in the face of every law and rule I know about how Hugh Balfour typically behaves—to laugh. Not just any laugh: an obscene, wild, freewheeling laugh that must start from deep in his gut.

That’s gotta be a bad sign. Nothing less than breaking his brain could possibly make Hugh laugh that much! He’s like that railroad worker we learned about in high-school psych class who changed his whole personality after severe head trauma.

I drop down to my knees beside him, still lying flat on his back. I run my fingers across his forehead, and the back of his skull, checking for blood or any sign of serious injury. My heart is pounding so fast that I think it might explode.

“Hugh?” I raise two fingers to check his vision. “How many fingers am I holding up?”’

Hugh squints up at me, a blossoming grin transforming his entire face into something warm, open, and rapturous. He looks like someone going through a religious experience. “Luminous…” he mutters.

“Hugh!” I want to hit him and bring him back to earth—but additional violence rarely improves a broken brain. I shake my hand at him again. “ How many fingers? ”

“Two fingers,” Hugh sighs. The dreamy quality behind his eyes seems to melt away as a certain canniness creeps back in. “And by the way, I’ll assume in good faith that you believe that gesture is a peace sign, but you should know that in Britain it actually means ‘fuck off.’”

Every tensed muscle in my body melts to liquid, as an intense relief that he’s unharmed sweeps over me. If he can be a dick, then he’s all right. I drop down on top of him, throwing my arms jubilantly around his neck.

“Oh, thank God!” I whisper breathlessly. “I thought I’d killed you. I could never bear it if I killed you.”

“Well,” Hugh says, his voice half-muffled (causing me to realize with some humiliation that my embrace is basically smothering him against my C cups), “you still could.”

“I couldn’t!” I say, releasing him instantly before the situation gets any more awkward. “The guilt. I’m mean, I’m not saying I’d stop eating or sleeping over it, but let’s just say I’d become one of those joggers who needs music blasting to avoid being alone with my thoughts.”

I’ve accused Hugh of being a robot before—though I won’t say it to his face again—but his twitching expression now implies that he’s malfunctioning. Suddenly, he’s howling with mirth all over again. This time, I join him. “Why are we even laughing?” I ask him, breathless.

Hugh struggles to rise into a sitting position.

“For you, you revel in my pain. But I’m personally laughing that I am so keen to catastrophize every little thing, and yet somehow an incident that had every right to kill me leaves me totally unscathed.

Perhaps you’re not wrong and it would do me well to unclench the slightest bit. ”

I grin helplessly at him until something wet and cool hits the back of my neck. Hugh glances upward at the growing thicket of deepest-gray clouds above us. They’re swirling so much closer overhead than before that I half expect lightning to strike.

“Deuces!” Mr. Armstrong curses.

“Oh, no!” Phoebe wails. “Mr. Balfour’s storm!”

Hugh rolls his eyes at that, then catches my gaze, muttering, “So I have ownership of the storm now, do I?”

I grin slyly at him. “Yes, you certainly do. It’s Hurricane Hugh.”

“We have to go!” Mr. Dereham shouts over the first boom of thunder. You don’t need to tell Mr. Armstrong twice: he seizes Phoebe by the wrist and starts dragging her to the edge of the indent. Lightning cracks, briefly turning the world white.

“But the hats!” Phoebe cries, the curls blown back from her face in the wind, gesturing meekly back to the way we had come. “We have to go back for the hats!”

“Damn the hats!” Mr. Armstrong roars. “They’ve probably flown away anyway!”

Hugh places his hand lightly on my lower back, his palm sliding forward to cup my waist. “We have to go,” he urges me.

I nod, and we both jump to our feet. Our comrades in arms are fleeing (so much for the bravery of militia men). The storm is fierce but short. After only five minutes, the clouds lighten and disperse, yellow sunlight slanting down on our sopping-wet hair and clothes.

“I warned you all we ought to have set off sooner!” Mr. Armstrong snaps.

My anger hits full force, like the storm we just survived.

“ What? ” I shout, whirling on Mr. Armstrong and gesturing to Hugh with the full length of my arm.

“You said nothing of the kind! Only Mr. Balfour did!” Again Hugh bursts out laughing and ends up physically steering me away from Armstrong to prevent the throwing of hands.

A few seconds later, Isabella falters in the mud, going down on one knee. Apart from a new splash of mud on her skirt, she’s totally fine, but Dereham insists upon taking the injured woman up in his arms and carrying her the rest of the way down the mountain.

Immediately, Phoebe seizes on her chance. She yawns dramatically and pretends to veer off to one side from weakness. “Oh, goodness, I’m awfully worn out from all this mud!”

Mr. Armstrong is unmoved by her plea, stomping petulantly forward. “I can hardly control the weather, can I, Miss Dixon?”

At that, I’m forced to redouble my grip on Hugh’s arm. I push my mouth against the fabric of his jacket sleeve, the better to muffle the sound of my unbidden fit of cackling.

It takes us nearly twice as long to reach the bottom of the hill as it took us to reach the top. By the time we finally untie our horses and ready them for the journey back, I can see the clouds re-forming and I know the ride home is going to be very chilly and wet indeed.

Hugh lends me a hand to help me up into the curricle, and when he joins me on the seat, he finds me anxiously wringing the ribbons of my powder-blue bonnet.

“Look at that!” Hugh remarks. “You still have your bonnet.” I’m the only one of our number who still has my hat. After Hugh tripped down the hill, I didn’t want to waste one second in throwing it aside.

“Well, I have to take good care of it! This belongs to the costume department. I know how much Katie values shot continuity.”

“Yes,” Hugh teases, “I’ve overheard her lecturing you on spillage enough to know that’s true.”

I smirk, but after our new bonding experience, I am not as offended as I might have once been. I’m just glad he’s still gracing me with one of those rare smiles. “Look, Balfour, I know you think I’m a walking catastrophe, but I can be careful with things when I try.”

Icy raindrops begin to sting our few inches of exposed skin all over again, and I quickly slap my bonnet on, fumbling with numb fingers as I try to knot the ribbons beneath my chin.

Brown eyes deep and intense, Hugh reaches up and does it for me, the pads of his fingers briefly grazing the chilled skin of my throat. “You’re freezing,” he tells me.

“I’ve got goose bumps,” I admit, eyes lingering on those large but nimble hands.

Hugh draws his hands back, flushing. I wouldn’t have minded one bit if he’d tilted my head up for another kiss in that moment.

But the moment’s gone.

Hugh seizes the reins and clicks for the horses to set off again. “It’s going to be a long drive home in the rain,” he comments, as if nothing just happened. “We’re going to be damnably late. This is what happens when we veer from the plan. Everything goes… screwy.”

I study Hugh with puckered, skeptical lips. “Are you really going to pretend you didn’t have fun back there? I’ve never seen you laugh that much.”

He makes a noncommittal sound.

“Is that what you do?” I ask. “You have fun and then you feel guilty about it, so you rationalize that you didn’t enjoy yourself nearly as much as you first thought. Then you double down on plans and schedules. ” I pronounce “schedules” in a cartoonishly posh manner, with a soft, mocking sh.

Hugh bites back a laugh but seems to find it difficult to meet my eyes. “Schedules aren’t the worst thing in the world. They keep everything on the right track, in the proper place. I’ve never liked… mess.”

I place my fingers gently on his wrist, tilting my head to examine his tumultuous expression more closely. I try to speak tenderly, kindly to him as I offer him a tiny piece of advice. “Oh, but Hugh… Mess is where the good stuff lives.”