Page 9 of The Austen Affair

Through all this, the elderly Mr. Balfour is watching Hugh in a wide-eyed daze. I feel my heart call out to him. I suppose that this is how I would react if someone who looked exactly like Mom knocked on our door in Thousand Oaks one day.

Then guilt crashes into me—which I do my best to brush away.

He’s happy, isn’t he? And Hugh is technically a relative.

What I wouldn’t give for my mom to come back to me, after all.

Or even an aunt or a cousin I didn’t know about.

I’d be grateful for any coincidence that gave me a family again, even something along the lines of the melodramatic, soap-opera twists on Chuck Brown.

(If I had a nickel for the number of times an allegedly dead family member returned from the grave on that show, I’d have seven nickels.)

“I hardly know what to say,” Mr. Balfour says, his voice thick with emotion.

“Except that I am sure you are tired from your long journey. We must help you both recover.” He glances to the footman who gave us entry.

“Finch, would you escort these two to suitable rooms? Let them get cleaned up and rest before supper.”

Now, sharp-eyed Mrs. Campbell peers around the room. “Where is your luggage, my dears?”

Mrs. Goddard immediately launches into explaining our tale of highway robbery. She doesn’t appear to notice that the idea of his only just-resurrected son being held at gunpoint seems to distress Mr. Balfour, who gasps and wrings his hands with agitation.

“Heavens,” Mrs. Campbell says, her hand to her heart. She looks between Hugh and me. “Was anyone killed?”

Hugh shakes his head, quick to assure her. “No, of course not.”

Mrs. Campbell arches an eyebrow, looking to me. “Or injured?”

I shake my head, trying to give her a warm, comforting smile. “No, we’re very lucky to have escaped with no more damage than mud stains.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Campbell clucks. “But then what has happened to your chaperone?”

My mouth opens to respond, but any idea I had dies in my throat. I glance toward Hugh, who seems sweatier than he was a second ago.

“Mrs. Bright is a widow, at the age of six-and-twenty,” he protests. I suppose the extensive research he did into the time period has to come in handy sometime. “She doesn’t need a chaperone.”

Hugh’s “aunt” gives a wry chuckle. “That might be true for an old hen like me, dear, but for a young, pretty woman like this one? I am not so sure.” She jerks her head up the stairs.

“But don’t either of you worry about that just yet.

We’ll get it all sorted out. Finch, I believe we have an extra morning dress in a closet upstairs, from when my niece last visited.

Do let Mrs. Bright wear that until we find her a more appropriate wardrobe.

She may have the lend of one of my nightgowns tonight.

And of course”—she nods toward Hugh—“all of Mr. Balfour’s old things are still as he left them. ”

Mr. Finch leads us up the grand stairs, which are thickly carpeted, with brass poles holding the decoration secure against each step.

As we ascend, my heart races with the same anticipation I feel when I’m watching a movie for the first time and I realize that it’s about to become one of my favorites.

This house is so magnificent—and being here feels, in an odd way, like coming home.

After all those years with our apartment’s tiny television set as a window to the past, I feel like I’ve stepped through to a world just as familiar as my own. The ultimate comfort watch.

The footman leads me, the guest, to my bedroom door first. He inclines his head as he enters. “Madam, for your use. I will send along Mrs. Campbell’s maid to help you change.”

The room is spectacular, if there was any doubt it could be otherwise.

I flip through my Rolodex of Austen homes.

This grand house is not so nouveau riche as Fanny Price’s Mansfield Park, not so stuffy as Lady Catherine’s Rosings, and certainly much less humble than the Bennet family’s Longbourn.

This has to be what Austen had in mind for something like Mr. Knightley’s Donwell Abbey.

Gothic country style updated here and there with flashy, then-modern improvements.

The mahogany bed is four-postered, with thick, blue-striped curtains dangling from them.

The teal wallpaper is patterned with asymmetrical but graceful branches, all dotted with pale-green leaves and pink blossoms—another example of the Regency’s obsession with chinoiserie.

The nightstand carries a porcelain bowl and pitcher, along with a fluffy white towel.

The wide, show-offy glass windows look out onto a garden blooming with roses.

I want to lift my head to the ceiling and twirl like Maria von Trapp in the Austrian hills. But I restrain myself.

Instead, I turn back as the footman leads Hugh away, and I catch another flicker of panic cross his handsome face. He looks almost feverish. His eyes dart to mine, as if to say, Don’t leave me alone with these people. But I just raise my hand to him and wiggle my fingers in a wave as he departs.

Hugh Balfour, of the intricate Method-acting process, has to know better than anybody that a proper Regency woman would never follow an unmarried man to his bedroom.

“Oh, please, Mr. Balfour,” I call after him, thinking of his phone conversation in the beauty trailer.

“The very last thing you need is someone like me around to overcomplicate your life.”

He is so flustered by my taunting goodbye—perhaps he realizes he was overheard back in the twenty-first century—that Hugh strikes his forehead hard on the door lintel as he goes. He curses under his breath. “Bugger. Fuck. Bugger.”

He really is much too tall for a place like this, with its low ceilings and inhabitants of small stature. It is funny to imagine an adult man well above six feet discovering for perhaps the first time that someplace was not made for him. That the world will not bend to his comfort.

I am left alone in paradise. My first inclination is to throw myself down on the inviting-looking bed—after all, I am still very sore from our electrocution incident—but I remember at the last moment that I am covered in mud and that it probably wouldn’t be the best idea for me to dirty up the duvet.

After Hugh’s recent crack about my “hoarder’s nest” trailer, I hardly want to prove him right by making a big mess of a historical artifact.

After all, you can’t just throw things in the washer-dryer here.

So without recourse, I stand very still, afraid to draw too close to anything. I do have a habit of ruining anything I touch. And seeing as this all feels too good to be true, I don’t want to ruin anything just yet.

I pinch myself to see if I’ll wake up, more than a little afraid that I will.

But I don’t. In fact, it stings the tiniest bit. Not enough to be conclusive, but enough to be reassuring. The dreamlike haze of this Regency fantasy won’t be disappearing on me just yet.