Page 43 of The Austen Affair

Somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock chimes the midnight hour. My bones are a jelly of pleasure, and I am not quite up to being fully conscious yet. Halfway between sleep and waking, I’m not entirely sure where I am, but I do know that I am blissfully happy.

I feel the mattress shift beneath me, as someone leans down to lay a light kiss on my temple. I stir at Hugh’s touch, eyelids fluttering, a smile crinkling the corners of my mouth.

Hugh brushes at the soft baby curls of my hairline, caressing my face so gently that I wish we could stay in this moment forever.

As my eyes adjust to the dim candlelight, however, I see the troubled expression on Hugh’s face.

My stomach immediately jumps into my throat.

Oh, God. It’s happening again. The part where he leaves.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. Feeling vulnerable, I seize the end of the sheets and pull them up to cover myself.

“I can tell something’s wrong. Is it me? ”

“No!” Hugh says. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re… perfect. A theoretical ideal previously undiscovered in human history.”

A wave of nausea-induced uncertainty rolls through me. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take you at your word.”

Hugh sets his palm against my knee, and skin to skin, I can feel our connection again, as strong and sure as ever. His confession comes out almost tender, like an admission of love. “It’s not you, Tess. It’s me. I’m afraid I’m going to ruin this.”

I close my eyes, tilting my head to one side in contemplation. A nagging, persistent voice says, He’s lying to you. He doesn’t want to be with you. This is just his way out.

But Hugh continues, the words pouring out of him. “I don’t know how, and I don’t when, but I will ruin this. I always do. It’s not always on purpose. I likely won’t even know I’m doing it. But I will ruin us, and this will end.”

I don’t answer immediately. “You’re not the ruiner in this bed.

” I draw closer to him, laying my hand against the stubble on his neck.

I can feel the frantic pulse of his heartbeat beneath my palm, and I feel my own aching heart steady.

I know in this moment that Hugh Balfour would absolutely baffle a lie detector.

His pulse goes wild when he’s telling the truth.

“Tess, I know your life hasn’t been perfect lately,” Hugh says, cupping my hand against his neck within his own, “but if you’ve ruined something, it’s because you felt too deeply.

Which is hardly a sin at all. I ruin things because I’m paralyzed with indecision or I don’t feel enough—or—or—I’m generally oblivious and forget to tell people how much I care about them.

It is inevitable that any good thing that comes into my life won’t be destroyed with a bang but with a truly depressing whimper. ”

“That’s awfully pessimistic,” I say.

Hugh shrugs, one corner of his mouth raised in a sardonic half laugh. “Or realistic. Practical, even.”

My thumb caresses against the angle of Hugh’s throat. “Honey, I say this with very great fondness. You should probably see a therapist.”

“Oh, I have one,” Hugh laughs. “Dr. Laghari. But unfortunately I haven’t been to see her for a while for… obvious reasons. I’m about a month off my anxiety medication.”

I imagine Hugh sitting down for a telehealth conference through the veil of time and space and immediately burst into giggles.

I raise my lips to his and give a gentle peck.

“Yes, I can see how free-falling through time might make scheduling difficult.” My hands thread deep in Hugh’s hair as his expression softens.

“But you’re not going to ruin anything. I won’t let you. ”

“You say that,” he tells me, frustrated, “but eventually I will be too inflexible, too stiff, too stodgy. I won’t open up the way you want me to, you’ll get bored or—or exhausted—”

“You’re opening up now,” I remind him, my hand running suggestively beneath the sheets to rest in his lap. “And I don’t mind a bit of stiffness.”

He snorts, a genuine smile coming to life against his best efforts. “I’m quite in awe of you. I wish for all the world I could be half as free, as confident, as open with my heart.… Tess, you glow. You are radiant, and I am terribly dull by comparison.”

I bite my lower lip, hardly believing anyone could think all these wonderful things about me, and still not see what is so incredibly wonderful about himself.

I glance around the room that has become his over these past few weeks and see that it bears echoes of the trailer I’d snooped on back in our century.

I note the right angles and parallel lines of every object’s placement in the room.

Everything is not just scrupulously neat but carefully arranged—all except our clothes that were thrown about the floor in our rush to get undressed.

And somehow, I know that this cleanliness was primarily Hugh’s doing, not a servant’s.

That he is a man who can’t bear to sit with a mess for even an instant.

There would be nothing for a servant to clean up when he was done with it.

He is so deeply different from me in every way; I’m the kind of woman who creates a mess on purpose and nests in it.

Perhaps that is for the best. Perhaps we are so different because we are meant to meet each other in the middle.

“So you’re not Mr. Spontaneous,” I say. “So what? Where does spontaneity get you? It gets Phoebe on a whirlwind trip to Gretna Green with Mr. Armstrong, who’ll get bored and treat her badly.

Spontaneity has given me nothing but a string of bad Raya dates with men who barely recognize I have feelings and ditch me after one hookup.

” My lips pucker in a pout. “I trust you won’t do that? ”

Hugh’s voice comes out hoarse. “Never. I can’t imagine why anyone would. But Charlotte said—”

Hatred zings through my body for this woman who taught Hugh that he wasn’t worth anything. If I could bottle the electric heat of this loathing, the charge could send us hurtling through time, easy.

“Bugger what Charlotte says!” I say, stealing an oath from his lexicon.

“She didn’t know what she was talking about!

Because, Hugh, it is so obvious to me, just from having known you a few weeks, that you don’t stay on script because you’re dull or uncaring.

You do it because you want so badly to get everything right.

And that’s not a fucking crime, and it’s certainly not a sign that you don’t feel enough. ”

Hugh’s eyes go glassy with unshed tears.

“You,” I say, my throat constricting as I fight for the words that capture what this dear, confused man means to me, “are the biggest person I ever met. I mean, you’re all substance.

And maybe you aren’t an open book, but I feel I have earned something when you let me read a single page.

I would have hoped, for your sake, that anyone who was with you for five years could have figured that out and given you some grace. Because that’s what you deserve.”

“Tess—” His voice breaks.

My hand slides down his neck, down the clavicle to linger against his chest. “I like your steadiness,” I promise him. “I like that you plan. Someone has to. We can’t all go through the world flying by the seat of our pants.”

He bites back a laugh. “But you’re so very good at it.”

“But there’s so much more about you to—to love,” I say, my throat dry.

I hope against hope I’m not scaring him off with that word choice.

I said there are lovable things, after all.

Not that I loved him. Surely that was not coming on too strong?

“You are so intelligent. You’re kind. You’re thoughtful.

You feel things so much more deeply than you show on the surface.

Anyone who gets bored of your company isn’t seeing you for who you are. ”

Hugh wraps his strong fingers around my wrist, holding my hand in place against his heart. He blushes, ducking his head. “You can’t talk like that to an Englishman. We don’t have the constitution for it.”

I grin at him, but my happiness is bittersweet, edged with fear.

“I haven’t thought about the future for a very long time,” I admit to him.

My mother’s face flashes in my head. The future I’d planned for us in the house in Thousand Oaks that would now never be.

“Not since I lost her. I like… I like having someone to picture as part of my future again. I hope that’s all right with you, that I picture you that way? ”

I see naked emotion stinging the corner of Hugh’s eyes, and he can’t seem to nod his head fast enough.

He grabs me by the back of the head and pulls me close, deepening a kiss.

When we break for breath, he manages to get out a few sparse words, voice croaky.

“I’m honored you’d include me in your future. ”

I let out a deep exhale of relief, a knot of anxiety in my stomach loosening. “I’ve never liked anyone the way I’ve liked you before,” I whisper. “I’ve always fallen for these hotshot assholes.”

“Cads?” Hugh asks me, eyes twinkling at the use of this Jane-ish word.

I nod, emphatic. “And when I say I’ve fallen, I mean, I fell.

I’d go up like a parasailer and then… crunch.

Broken on impact. It is really easy to get your heart ripped out when you wear it on your sleeve.

” I lick my lips, mulling my words over.

It’s so hard to verbalize what this man has come to mean to me—but I really want to get it right.

“With you, I don’t feel out of control like that.

I feel certain. If I’m a helium balloon, you’re gravity.

And now we’re floating along in tandem. I push, you pull.

It’s different… but it also feels right. ”

“We fit together well,” he tells me, wrapping an arm around my waist and encouraging me to rest with my head notched beneath his chin.

I hum my approval, and we hold each other in the dim light of the room.

My senses devolve to solely touch and smell: the warmth of his body and the sweet scent of citrus that still clings to the curve of his neck.

I could stay here forever like this: the threat of the future, the pain of the past, both fading into the mindless, blissful embrace of the present.

Until we hear the sound of horses and a carriage trundling up the front drive.

“Bugger!”

“ Fuck! ”

We fling ourselves up from the mattress, searching for our clothing strewn across the floor. “It seems only chivalrous for me to be the one to make a run for it,” Hugh says, grabbing a wad of his clothes and holding it in front of his private parts before throwing the door open.

“Wait!” I hiss.

Hugh knocks his too-tall head hard against the frame of the door.

“What is it?” he asks me, eyes flicking out into the hall. “We’re losing time!”

“We’re in your room!” I remind him.

He hits himself in the face.

With a last kiss against his stubbled cheek, I quickly wrap the length of my silk gown around myself like the world’s tiniest towel and make a break for it down the hall.

Hugh probably should snap the door immediately shut behind me, but I glance over my shoulder as I run—and he is watching me go.

I hope that I will have occasion to see that dopey grin on his face every day for the rest of my life.