Page 34 of The Austen Affair

I’ve been watching Hugh quite a bit when he thinks no one is looking.

Not in a creepy stalker way (okay, maybe a bit in a creepy stalker way) but mostly because he is such a different person when he believes he’s unobserved.

Hugh is obviously an introvert—when I am standing in the garden and I spy him striding toward the house from the stables, he has an easy, comfortable manner.

He is self-assured in an unassuming way.

But when eyes are on him, that self-assurance calcifies into rigidity.

He comes across snobbish, robotic, overly controlled.

But that is not how he behaves when alone, or even one-on-one with people he values.

He’s stayed true to his word about participating in the theatrics as little as possible, instead electing to stay by Mr. Balfour’s side, listening to the old man reminisce about the figures from his past, now mostly long gone.

With his ancestor, Hugh operates on a completely different frequency.

He doesn’t hold his limbs tight to his body, like he’s afraid to touch another soul.

He springs to action whenever Mr. Balfour needs assistance, and casual, familial touches to the hands and shoulders are almost second nature.

He is like this with George, too. Perhaps not quite as organically—I think George’s whimsical, Wednesday Addams–esque streak baffles him—but I can see Hugh making an energetic effort to understand the kid.

I suspect that Hugh’s sister, Florence, was blessed with a particularly attentive and kind big brother.

It drives me to distraction during our scattered Twelfth Night rehearsals.

I find myself staring through the archway from our parlor to the room in which Hugh converses with Mr. Balfour, his broad shoulders hunched as he leans down to get on the elderly man’s eye level.

My fingers brush against my smiling lips as, in a daze, I watch him from my armchair, which I’ve tilted toward the door.

I cannot hear anything Hugh and Mr. Balfour are saying over the endless chatter of the crowd invited to join our acting party: Mr. Crawford, Miss Crawford, the hateful Mr. Armstrong, lovely Mr. Dereham, delightful Kitty Foster, and the Dixon sisters.

At least once, I am certain that taciturn Cecelia Crawford catches me staring at Hugh.

The pale oval of her face is determinedly impenetrable, but her hands grip the book in her lap far too tightly.

Blushing furiously, I redouble my attention to the rehearsals and on our companions.

Most everyone else is bubbling with the amateurish enthusiasm of a high-school drama club, and the flirtatiousness of—well—a high-school drama club.

Mr. Dereham and Isabella are inseparable, while Kitty, despite being married, is enraptured in open-mouthed lust for Mr. Armstrong when he declaims as Malvolio, even though I don’t think that role is meant to be sexy.

Mr. Armstrong, for his part, continually pesters me, but when I don’t match energy, he reluctantly returns to flirting with Phoebe Dixon in the corner.

Mr. Crawford is the surprisingly charismatic engine that drives the whole train—I don’t doubt that he could have held his own as a guest star on Chuck Brown if he’d been born in my time.

Before long, I’m swept up in the camaraderie of the acting scheme. This is what I enjoy most, after all. I just let my sadness leech all the joy out of it in these torturous past few years. Today, it’s fun again. I’m laughing.

And if I glance every so often through the archway to see if Hugh watches me like I’m watching him… what of it?

When we break for lunch, I notice that Cecelia gathers a few scraps of food in a handkerchief and exits toward the garden. I catch Hugh’s eyes as I pass the parlor, indicating that I’m embarking on another (likely fruitless) attempt in our “Make Miss Crawford Feel Better” scheme.

My own selection of wrapped food in hand, I spot Cecelia among the roses and race out to join her.

I wave cheerily at her from a distance, calling, “Oh, Miss Crawford! You were so very good in our scene today. I thought perhaps we could eat together and run the lines again. You know them ever so much better—”

As I approach, however, I see at once I have massively miscalculated. Cecelia stands among the roses with her thumb and index finger pinching the bridge of her nose, and when I near she whirls upon me. “Why are you forever buzzing about me, like the most persistent fly?”

I freeze where I stand.

“And not incidentally,” Cecelia continues, her face pale with fury, “I read your book. ” She waves the leather-bound book that had occupied her throughout rehearsals this morning, and I see that it is my recommendation: Sense and Sensibility.

My heart lurches in confusion. Cecelia has picked up the book on my suggestion, but it has made her furious.

“I find that I am most sympathetic to the situation of dear, virtuous Elinor Dashwood,” Cecelia tells me, drawing herself up to her full height.

“And not at all forgiving to young women whose nature and behavior align with that of Miss Lucy Steele.”

My stomach instantly plummets as I realize what I’ve done: encouraged her to read a story that closely mirrors our own.

She sees me as the Lucy to her Elinor, heartlessly stealing her love away.

It makes my skin crawl to think I could remind anyone of one of the most hateable villains in Austen’s rogues gallery.

“Miss Crawford, I—”

“No,” she cuts me off decisively. “I don’t want to hear anything more from you. I just want to be left alone ! Can you possibly manage that?”

I nod once, humiliation and shame heating my cheeks, and turn on my heel and run. I know I’m doing as she asked—but I’ve never felt more like a coward.

I’ve said it before, but in my time, I don’t have a great Rolodex of close friends.

I had many people I was on friendly terms with, of course, but none that were constants.

And those friendships I had managed to maintain over several years, especially with my castmates on Chuck Brown, were strained in the months of catastrophic grieving that followed Mom’s death.

I think of Nikki bringing me chicken soup.

I poured it down the kitchen drain, untouched, and ran the garbage disposal to hear the whirring of the blades.

Leighton, who played Chuck’s nonbinary little sibling, S.B.

, sending me regular checkup texts. I ignored them all and they gradually dwindled away.

I understand completely why Cecelia’s lashing out.

In many ways, we deserve it… at least from her perspective.

I just wish there was a way I could get past her walls and let her see that she is a victim of grief and not betrayal.

They are both deep wounds, but I have to hope that she has a better chance of recovering from the true one.

After all, if she doesn’t have a chance at recovery, do I?

Do any of us who lose the person they love?

As I enter from the garden, I pace down the hall to the doorway that leads to the foyer, and as I open the door, I hear it creak.

This must be the same door that Hugh had been behind the night he heard me conversing with Armstrong.

And like a stroke of fate, I think I hear Armstrong’s voice in the foyer again.

“Quite the unpleasant character, isn’t she? ” he muses.

I quickly maneuver the door into a merely ajar position so that I can eavesdrop unseen. Surely he’s discussing chilly Miss Crawford. She has her reasons to be upset, and I feel just dreadful that Mr. Armstrong means to make merry with Mr. Dereham at her expense.

But Mr. Dereham isn’t the person who responds to Mr. Armstrong. It’s Mr. Crawford. “I don’t find her unpleasant in the least.”

That doesn’t make any sense. No one would insult Cecelia to her brother’s face.

Mr. Armstrong scoffs. “You haven’t known her long enough. She makes a good first impression, I’ll grant you. But beauty conveys many virtues that do not exist. And to my mind, Mrs. Bright has only one virtue to recommend her.”

I suck in my breath, humiliation bringing a blush to my face for the second time in two minutes.

“You cannot make such a damning accusation by half measures,” Mr. Crawford chuckles. “Proceed. Tell me what is Mrs. Bright’s singular virtue.”

“Why, she is rich,” Armstrong answers smoothly.

“Absurdly rich, if everyone in town has it the right way. They’re saying she’s the sole inheritor of her first husband’s estate.

There is no other reason to account for such a hurried engagement.

Balfour obviously saw means to vastly enrich himself by marrying his friend’s widow and didn’t want to miss his window of opportunity. ”

Mr. Crawford, I suppose, has reason to think ill of me—assuming that his sister has filled him in on her supposedly broken engagement, which is almost beyond a doubt at this point.

But his next words are thoughtful and their venom is aimed at Hugh.

“If that is the case, it is Mr. Balfour we should revile for his mercenary nature. And yet I suppose the theory makes some measure of sense.”

“ Some measure!” Mr. Armstrong crows. “You insult me! It makes all the sense in the world. I tell you, I cannot conceive of a single other reason to yoke oneself to such a disagreeable, uppity, worn-out dowager. At her age, she’d be a spinster by now if she wasn’t already widowed, and she looks it, when you give it half a moment’s consideration.

I have never seen someone who compares so ill against her first impression.

Her complexion has no brilliancy, her manners no refinement.

She is vulgar. Too free with her own thoughts and opinions in a way that is most unbecoming in a woman.

Disregarding that, Balfour could easily marry someone who hasn’t already been touched.

Hell, he doesn’t even know where she’s been in the time since her husband’s death.

For all we know, she’ll give him the clap in their wedding bed. ”

I throw the door open, revealing myself, ready to throw hands—society be damned.

But I do not get there in time. All I see is the navy blur from the parlor doorway as Hugh crosses the room in two strides.

His fist connects with Armstrong’s eye with a satisfying crunch.

Perhaps it was the element of surprise, or maybe it’s just that Mr. Armstrong is not a particularly large man, but he goes down against the marble parquet like a sack of grain.

But Hugh does not leave it there. He is not the measured, restrained man I’ve come to know.

He goes down on his knees, straddling Armstrong like a wrestler on a mat, and lays another punch to his jaw.

Armstrong bleats like a goat, while Hugh mutters incomprehensible insults.

Shouts emanate from the dining room along with a flurry of movement as the rest of the party comes to investigate the commotion.

The presence of additional witnesses brings me back to myself, as if I’d been having an out-of-body experience. I am gasping for air as I watch Hugh lurch unsteadily to his feet.

Hugh’s back is to me as he stands over Armstrong, shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath.

“You are a damned fool, Armstrong, to look at that woman and see anything less than radiance. Would you also look at art and not be moved?” His eyes dart quickly to Mr. Crawford and then back down to his victim.

“It is one thing to insult my character, that is perfectly forgivable, but Mrs. Bright is beyond reproach.”

Just then, he looks down at his own hand, as if shocked to find it speckled in ruby blood.

Phoebe Dixon shrieks and falters backward, threatening to swoon.

However, no one moves to catch her, so she aborts the gambit and regains her footing at the last moment.

“God almighty!” Mr. Dereham swears. Isabella Dixon turns her head, burying it in Mr. Dereham’s shoulder to avoid the sight of any further potential bloodshed.

Kitty Foster looks flushed with excitement, as if she’s in attendance at Ascot, watching a particularly thrilling race.

I cross to Hugh’s side, taking his bloodied hand. He startles at my arrival. I’m quite certain he hadn’t noticed me before launching into this impulsive behavior.

“I’m sure he deserved it,” I tell him, tone conspicuously light as I pretend I heard less than I did. “I’m more worried about you.”

Hugh looks utterly tongue-tied as he ultimately admits, “I’ve—I’ve never been in a fight outside of a rugby match before.”

Mr. Crawford’s tongue, however, is quick to the point as he massages the situation.

“Dick Armstrong here is proving himself to be unworthy of anything but the abbreviation of his name. Mr. Balfour’s actions were entirely justified, I assure you.

In fact, I would have found myself quite moved to jump in and join the fray were not so many lovely ladies so immediately in attendance. ”

Mr. Armstrong stirs from his position on the floor.

He sits up with some difficulty, only to spit some blood-tinged saliva onto the marble and massage his jaw.

He looks up at Hugh with eyes that burn with hatred.

“And here I thought you were some straitlaced gentleman coward, afraid of everything, even of the meat on your plate. When in fact, I learn today, you are a thug.”

Something dark snaps into place in Hugh’s expression, and his poisonous response falls from his lips like drops of mercury.

“If I am a thug, sir, you are something far worse. Now, get out of my home, and don’t presume to darken this doorway again.

You’re right: I don’t approve of slaughtering pigs, but for you I’ll make an exception. ”