Page 28 of The Austen Affair

The rain is pelting down on us as we reach the long drive outside Highground Park. Another flash of lightning raises the hair on the back of my neck. “Say,” I tell Hugh, “ought we have stayed behind at Beacon Hill?”

Hugh’s thick, dark eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What for?”

I gesture up at the booming sky. “For that! For the lightning. Maybe if we’d been struck, that would have done the trick and we’d be home right now.”

Hugh chews thoughtfully on his bottom lip, and my eyes linger there. Even though I’m freezing cold, a tiny bloom of warmth materializes between my legs.

“It’s an awfully big risk,” Hugh finally says. “Now, I’m not saying it wouldn’t have worked, but it just as easily might have killed us. My letter is on the way to Mr. Dereham’s scientist friend now. We should have a much safer machine to test our theory on soon.”

I nod, then squint ahead as I notice a small figure standing alone on the drive, letting the rain soak him through. “Is that George? What’s he doing out here in this weather?”

My question is instantly answered when we trot to a stop in front of the house and George loses his mind in excitement. “They’re back! They’re back at last!”

Hugh leaps down from the curricle and scoops his tiny ancestor up in his arms. “You’re going to catch your death of cold!” he scolds.

But George has thrown his skinny arms around Hugh’s neck. “You said you would be back by supper and you weren’t!”

I hurry to make myself useful and throw the front door open for Hugh to carry the boy back inside.

“George!” Aunt Fanny cries out, shaking a finger at him.

“I told you that you were allowed to watch from the window, not go outside and drench yourself!” Then Fanny raises a white eyebrow to us.

“And what time do you call this? We were all worried sick about you.”

Hugh and I exchange guilty grins, but I say, “I promise you, Auntie, if your nephew’s advice had been listened to, we would’ve been home on time.” I crouch down to squeeze little George’s shoulder and point him toward the stairs. “Now, you need to go take a hot bath and get into dry clothes.”

George immediately whines that he wants to stay downstairs with all of us.

“For certain”—Aunt Fanny smiles—“you should all get into something dry. But there are guests here that would like to see you when—”

She is cut off by the sound of someone entering the foyer from the dining room.

Two someones, in fact. The first is a fit, solid-looking young man with caramel-colored hair slicked back from his face.

He’s wearing a very fine wool jacket in a deep-cranberry shade that gives him a healthy glow.

His companion is a woman in a lavender evening dress.

It is not lost on me that this is a color of quasi mourning.

Unspoken tension electrifies the room from the moment she enters.

Confused, I move to greet the visitors, but when I try to introduce myself, the woman’s eyes don’t stray from Hugh’s face. Her expression looks… I don’t know. Like a half-drowned woman finally crawling her way onto dry land.

“Mr. Balfour,” she says, her voice choked with emotion, “you’re alive.”

And in an instant, it all snaps into place. Whoever this woman was, she loved Hugh’s deceased uncle. And now she believes he is standing in front of her, hale and whole. We have deceived yet another innocent.

If Hugh has connected the dots yet, I don’t know. His eyes dart to Fanny, as if hoping for an introduction. Some clue as to who these people are.

“Of course,” Fanny says, sliding smoothly into her role.

“I’ve been remiss. Mrs. Bright, Hugh dear, these are the children of my husband’s sister.

Mr. William Crawford and his youngest sister, Miss Cecelia Crawford.

I believe you may have crossed paths in London once or twice before you joined the army, Hugh. …”

Understanding dawns on Hugh’s face, a few beats adorably late. “Oh!” he says, then drops into a polite bow. “I apologize most profoundly. It may have been mentioned that my memory is not what it used to be. Please don’t attribute my lapse to any intentional disrespect.”

Cecelia Crawford’s face is pale as white flame.

She stands stiffly, like someone in shock.

Apart from her looking almost ill from the drama of it all, I can’t help but notice her unassuming beauty.

High cheekbones and unblemished skin, with long, pale eyelashes.

She is quite tall, with a frame so willowy she might just blow over.

Her ginger hair is pinned in neat curls at the nape of her neck.

If Cecelia Crawford lived in modern-day LA, she’d probably be making a killing as a lifestyle influencer, hawking her green smoothies and branded running apparel.

William Crawford steps forward, casually giving his sister the lend of his arm, as if he, too, is worried she might topple over.

“My aunt wrote to us to share the miraculous news of your return, and the moment we read her letter, we just knew we had to rush down here from town and see you for ourselves.” His smile is stiff, practiced.

“Well done on escaping the Frenchman’s bullet, old boy. ”

A violent quiver runs through me. William is angry, though I’m not quite sure why. He’s doing his best to hide it, but there is an energy here I can’t ignore.

Hugh’s head swivels toward me, as if he noticed my shivering. “I do apologize. Have you met my fiancée, Mrs. Tess Bright?”

“Your fiancée?” Cecelia’s voice is strained, but a wide smile is plastered on her face.

“Yes.” Hugh nods, and I get the impression he is blissfully unaware of the unspoken tension in the room. “It is a recent development, but a happy one. Of course, now we are soaked through to the bone, so will you excuse us as we head upstairs?”

Cecelia’s ice-blue eyes track to the floor as she curtsies. “Please, don’t let us detain you.”

William is studying his sister’s face as we hurry away. I linger close to Hugh and whisper, “Did that feel very odd to you?”

Hugh looks blankly back at me. “No, they were perfectly polite. Didn’t you think?”

I’m baffled by him, truly. But as this is all a hunch of mine, I decide to let it go for now and wait until further observations lend me hard evidence. “Okay, then,” I say, forced-cheery.

“It is unsettling, though…” Hugh says, musing.

“What’s unsettling?” I ask, thinking he’s finally caught up to the subtext of the interaction downstairs.

“Pale skin, ginger hair,” he says. “That woman is a dead ringer for Charlotte.”

My stomach does a flip-flop. Drop-dead-gorgeous Cecelia looks like his cheating almost-fiancée. But I brush the brief sting of jealousy away, hoping very earnestly that fact repels him from her more than it attracts.

Back in my room, it’s heaven to run a warm washcloth over my skin, numb from cold, coaxing it back to life.

Gooseflesh disappears, and my fingers reawaken.

And if my newly warmed hand lingers briefly between my legs, thinking of the moment when Hugh Balfour’s hand had brushed against the bare skin of my throat, shooting sparks along my jawline and downward along the full length of my body? That is a lady’s private business.

In my dreams, I’m back at the base of the chalk hill, and I’m once again cradling Hugh’s head in my arms. But this time, a wicked grin crosses his face, and he smoothly flips me over on the grass beneath him.

I’m breathing heavily as he straddles me, full weight pressing invitingly down on my pelvis, his persuasive lips leaving a trail of heat from my clavicle to my left ear.

A pleasant suction at my earlobe suggests that events are escalating.

I moan as my vision blurs to only oversaturated color—

I wake up with a sharp sense of disappointment as I hear the padding of footsteps outside my door. I haven’t been a deep sleeper for a long time—not since Mom’s diagnosis, since her grueling months of chemo, when I’d leap up from bed to check on her at the slightest noise.

The world is an inky black. I’m shocked that anyone would be up this late, creeping around the house.

I slip out of bed and move to the door, nudging it open as quietly as possible.

I peer down the hall and almost startle at the sight of a woman in a long white nightgown, practically glowing with an eerie luminescence in the darkness.

I fully give myself over to the character of Catherine Morland as for a few heart-pounding seconds I am absolutely convinced this ancient, gothic house is haunted.

But then a cooler head prevails, my eyes adjust to the dimness, and I recognize Miss Crawford as the figure in white.

A gnawing dread eats at me. What would a proper Regency young lady possibly be doing up at this hour? She’s already passed by the state-of-the-art indoor bathroom.

Then she answers my question with the answer I most feared: rapping sharply on Hugh’s bedroom door.

I should go back into my room now. I should.

I shouldn’t linger here and spy. But… I guess Hugh’s Method acting has rubbed off on me, because I do exactly what Catherine Morland would do and I stay right where I am, watching silently from the shadows.

There is a very long pause between the knock and when Hugh opens his door a crack, wearing a silk banyan and peering out, bleary-eyed.

He murmurs something to her that I cannot make out from this far down the hall. There is a brief exchange, and then Miss Crawford puts her palm on his exposed chest and firmly, confidently pushes Hugh backward into the room, following him, and closing the door behind her.

Vomit rises in my throat like fire. A flurry of vengeful options present themselves to me, none appropriate or forgivable.

I could rush down the hall and start banging on the door.

I could faux-innocently alert Aunt Fanny to her niece being missing from her bed.

I could sink to my knees and scream until my voice breaks, rousing the entire house.

But I don’t. Instead I grip the fabric of my nightgown until my fingers go numb and wait for Hugh to eject her from his room.

But after sixty seconds, two minutes, and then five interminably long, torturous minutes, I don’t see Cecelia Crawford reemerge.

Then it becomes too painful to wait. I snap my door shut, throw up delicately in my chamber pot, bury my face in my pillow and let out the scream I’d been repressing.