Page 46 of The Austen Affair

“You’re a fraud,” Aunt Fanny repeats. She’s waiting for us to respond to her accusation, but I can’t think of a single way to deny it.

To my relief, I finally must have successfully modeled the rules of improv for Hugh, because he doesn’t try to deny it. He executes a “yes and.” He pulls himself together, looks directly at his scene partner in Aunt Fanny, and confesses.

“Yes,” he tells Aunt Fanny. “And we couldn’t be more sorry for what we’ve put you all through.”

Now it’s Aunt Fanny’s turn to be dumbfounded. “You’re sorry ? But then, who the devil are you?”

Hugh raises his palms in surrender. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” Aunt Fanny says. “Because from where I’m standing you are practically identical to my nephew, and yet you are not him. You have the Balfour ears, the same dark curls as George, the unusual height my nephew possessed, even the same quiet laugh as my brother.”

Hugh gives a sardonic smile. “It’s quite incredible what can be passed down through generations of genetic code.”

“I don’t know what on earth that means,” Aunt Fanny blusters. “But if you aren’t kin, then what are you?”

My eyes meet Hugh’s. A smile crinkles the corner of his mouth.

And with the same electric chemistry I felt in our first scene reading—way back before the feud and the fucking and the time travel—I know where he’s going to take this.

There’s nothing left but to tell the truth, as insane as it might sound.

“My name is Hugh Balfour,” he admits, voice hitched slightly higher with anxiety. “But I’m not your nephew. Or rather, I am. Just a few generations removed.”

Aunt Fanny shakes her head so very slightly it’s almost imperceptible. Her lips move soundlessly.

Hugh tries again to make this easier on her. “I’m not from this time, Auntie. I’m a traveler. I was born almost two hundred years from now.”

Aunt Fanny gives a chirp-like laugh. “Ridiculous,” she protests weakly. But then she starts to wobble.

I leap forward to hold her upright and steer her into a chair before her knees give out.

“I didn’t expect anything quite so fanciful,” she mutters. “I thought perhaps you were a third cousin, down on his luck.”

“But… you believe me?” Hugh asks.

In the chair below me, Aunt Fanny’s eyes—the Balfour eyes—flick up at my face.

I search her expression for any signs of distrust or skepticism, but I find none.

Aunt Fanny doesn’t shrink from me, and she shows no interest in ringing a bell and calling for a servant to drag us out of her brother’s home.

In fact, she turns her gaze back to Hugh and reaches up to pat his cheek.

“Dear, since the moment you’ve arrived, you’ve been odd.

Ill at ease, not like the heir of the house.

You don’t even eat animals, so I doubt you’re a violent criminal.

Besides, I’ve watched you with my brother.

You’re tender to him. Even if he isn’t your father.

You treat him like he is, and that’s all I need to know about your character. ”

The intensity of the relief in Hugh’s face takes my breath away. His hands shake, and he seats himself beside Aunt Fanny, these relatives staring at each other in utter silence, just processing. It feels so intimate that I turn my back to them, giving them a few moments to adjust.

“It was an accident,” Hugh tells her. “Coming here. Or perhaps fate. I was… struck by electricity and woke up in a field not too far from here. It’s just coincidence that I had family nearby and I knew a lot about you. I’d studied my father’s family, you see. Our history.”

“When were you born?” Aunt Fanny asks him.

“1996.”

Aunt Fanny coughs, like a cat expunging a hair ball, and I can’t help but turn back around then, if only to see the baffled expression on her face. It takes a lot to throw a woman like Fanny Campbell off her game, and it’s a little funny when it happens.

“And what is our world like by then?” Aunt Fanny raises her hands, instantly changing her mind. “No, no, do not tell me. I’ll have no knowledge of the future. It would only disrupt my dreams.”

“I think that’s wise,” Hugh says, chuckling.

“But I will,” she continues, poking him in the chest with a sturdy finger, “know of the past. What happened to my nephew? What happened to the original Hugh?”

How quickly we have come to the part that will hurt Fanny most.

Hugh ducks his head, a sigh that is both mournful and relieved issuing from his lungs.

“He did die at Waterloo, I’m afraid,” he says, taking Aunt Fanny’s hands gently.

“It’s strange, but I’m intensely relieved to finally get to tell someone.

That my uncle gets his glorious fate back, the hero’s death he earned.

It has been my greatest regret to have tainted his memory. ”

Aunt Fanny nods, closing her eyes to hold back tears. “I assumed as much, but it remains difficult to hear. Especially as this means Cecelia will be forever disappointed.”

“But that also means,” I add, crouching to be eye to eye with Aunt Fanny and interjecting for the first time, “that your nephew never abandoned Cecelia. We rather think he loved her very much.”

Hugh sends me a grateful look. I try not to blush, as this probably isn’t the time.

Fanny reopens her eyes, her face smoothing out as she becomes master of her emotions again.

“There is a deep comfort in that. One that cannot be underestimated.” Then she fixes me with an eagle’s shrewd attention, asking, “And then, of course, the lucid mind must jump to the next logical question: Who is Mrs. Bright?”

I find I don’t really know how to answer that.

Who is Tess Bright anymore? Should I answer for the Tess Bright I’ve been in the last three miserable years of fighting and losing and mourning?

The Tess I was before my world came crashing down?

Or the Tess I am now, who feels distinct from both, somehow sadder and wiser, and also more complete in an odd way?

Kindly, Hugh answers for me, softness crinkling his eyes as he looks at me. “She is… a friend. From the future.”

“Or perhaps more,” Aunt Fanny observes. She nods at me, appraisingly. “I should have known it. There are women of singular character who find their voices as young as you have, but you have shown the spirit of a widow twice your age. It seems women grow wiser faster where you come from.”

“Even if that is true,” Hugh assures her, “Tess is still singular.”

Their praise makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Tears itch at the back of my eyes, and I throw myself at Aunt Fanny. She returns my hug with a maternal fierceness.

As I finally pull away, Fanny grins at us both. I can tell she thinks Hugh is a miracle again, even if it’s not the resurrection kind.

“I feel lighter,” Hugh enthuses. “Deception is much too heavy to be carried, especially when you’re lying to people you love. But the good news is, Tess and I will not be trespassing on your lives or your hospitality much longer.”

Aunt Fanny scowls. “What do you mean?”

“We’re going home,” Hugh says, indicating the half-assembled machine on the table. “An electrical accident brought us here, logic dictates another one will bring us home again.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she splutters. “You can’t leave.”

On some level, my heart cries, She’s right, Hugh. See sense!

“Of course we can,” Hugh says, visibly wrong-footed. “We have to.”

“Absolutely not,” Aunt Fanny says, shooting to her feet. “I forbid it. Your place is here.”

“No,” Hugh says, his voice rising to match hers. “My place is not here. George’s place is here. My place is over two hundred years hence.”

“Don’t be absurd!” Fanny repeats. “You were brought here for a reason! Be it God or a miracle, you were brought here, and here is where you’ll stay!”

My heartbeat picks up speed. I feel almost sick with excitement. Fanny sees it was a miracle—why can’t Hugh?

Hugh puts his hands up behind his head, a livid red vein jumping in his forehead. “We certainly will not. Tess and I are going home.”

“ You’ll break your father’s heart. ” Fanny’s words come out low, almost disturbingly quiet, for all their ferocity. “He just got his son back. If you leave again, it will kill him.”

Hugh’s face is rocked with emotion. So much for that British stiff upper lip.

He grips the side of the table until his knuckles go white.

“That’s the last thing I want, Auntie. But my father, from my time, is sick.

His memory is fading. He doesn’t have much time left.

If I don’t go back, I won’t get a chance to say goodbye. ”

That strikes Fanny wordless. They stand ten feet apart on the carpet, two duelists who have both fired their best shots and missed.

I put my hand to my stomach, a wave of nausea reminding me that I am a heartless beast. This return weighs so much more heavily on Hugh than on me. If we can go home, we must. If the universe wanted us to stay forever, it would send us a sign.

And that’s when I hear Mr. Crawford speaking to George on the other side of the dining-room doors. “And what’s all this then, little man?”

The doors to the dining room fly open again as Mr. Crawford moves to enter, but George streaks back in before the older man manages to take even a few steps.

He is a hurricane—a one-child cacophony of motion and sound.

I barely have time to process the incoherent rage of his tantrum before he has seized the base of the electrical machine off the dining-room table and flung it as hard as he can.

It happens in slow motion: the machine hitting the wall with a sickening crunch.

Part of the metal has folded in on itself. My hands fly to my mouth as I stare down at the wreckage of the machine that was our only way home.