Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (27 page)

"For a woman who wanted to be a writer, that's a pretty cliched excuse."

"Please don't be angry."

"Don't be angry? Man, Emma, you really are a piece of work."

I'd known this would be a painful undertaking, but still, it hurt even more than I'd imagined.

"I'm going to leave London in a day or two," I said. "Until then, maybe it would be better if we, I don't know, went our own ways." Then I wouldn't have to sneak out of the house or worry that he would follow me to Mrs. Parrot's. And I wouldn't be tempted to follow him to her house either.

"Emma--"

I held up a hand. "I don't see a lot of reason to drag this out. I've made my decision."

Adam flopped against the driver's seat. "You've taken me for granted just like always." He put his hands on the steering wheel. "As long as I've known you, our relationship has been all about you. Your love life. Your happy ending. Your angst over being good enough. And I've listened and supported and walked through all of it with you. Until Edward."

"And then because you didn't like him, you abandoned me." I jabbed back at him, because there was enough truth in his assertion to make me very uncomfortable.

"That's what you think? That I gave up on our friendship because I didn't like Edward?"

"It's true, isn't it?"

"Of course it's true. But if you think that was the reason, you're an idiot."

"I don't understand."

"No, you don't. You never did, Em. You never did."

"Adam--"

"The thing about obsessing about a happy ending, Emma, is that you forget to enjoy the journey along the way. You forget to appreciate the people alongside you."

"I always appreciated you."

"You appreciated my focusing on you, and when you fell for Edward, you made it clear you didn't need me anymore."

That one hit home. "I'm sorry. I know I got caught up in the moment--"

"No you didn't." He looked at me, his gaze piercing me like an arrow. "You made a clear choice, Em, between me and Edward."

"You just didn't approve because he was our adviser."

"I reiterate my assertion that you're an idiot."

"Adam--"

"Emma, do you not have sense enough to know when a man's in love with you?"

A single solitary pin dropping would have sounded like a cannon at that moment.

"You weren't--"

"Of course I was."

"But we were friends--"

"Your choice. Not mine. I wasn't brooding enough to be your Darcy, or condescending enough to be Mr. Knightley."

I didn't want to feel the surge of regret and shame that washed through me like the sea at high tide.

"Not once, until today, have you asked me what I'm doing in London. Really asked me about it, beyond the superficial," he said.

"You wouldn't have told me the truth." I bristled, thinking of Mrs. Parrot.

"How do you know? You never gave me the chance."

"Then why are you here in London?" I sounded like a petulant child, but I didn't care.

"I've been offered a job."

That was the last thing in the world I'd expected to hear. I clutched my hands together in my lap. "Where?"

"University of London. King's College."

"Oh." I had no idea what else to say. Finally, I summoned up a wobbly "Congratulations."

"I was doing something else, too, while I was here. Something to do with you."

"Me? You came to London for me?"

"No, but I received a strange phone call at Anne-Elise's house a couple of weeks ago. From a Mrs. Parrot. She said she
was a friend of yours. She summoned me on a matter of life and death. Your life and death, at least figuratively speaking."

"A couple of weeks ago?"

"I don't know how she knew," Adam said. "Maybe she worked for MI5 or 6, or whatever they call it here, during the Cold War. But that woman could give lessons to the CIA in espionage."

"How she knew what?" My heart was pounding in my throat.

"How she knew how I felt about you. About our past. She must have a dossier on you three inches thick."

I swear that at that moment, time stood still. I know people are always saying that, and I've always thought it was an exaggeration, but right then I knew it to be true.

"But you and me ... that was a long time ago." My voice was weak, just like my knees.

"For you, maybe." That was all he said. But it was enough to make me feel as if my lungs were being squeezed in my chest.

"Are you saying Mrs. Parrot has been meeting with you for romantic purposes?" I hadn't considered this sort of possibility at all.

"Yes. She's been counseling me, I guess you'd say. Helping me figure out how to get back in your life."

"So that's why you were--" I stopped myself just in time. I wasn't ready to tell Adam that I'd followed him two days before to South Kensington.

"At the theater? Yes. She called me after she gave you the tickets and asked if you'd invited me to go with you. When I said no, she told me to pick up the ticket she had for me at the box office and find you there. She didn't mention, though, that you'd be bringing a date."

"She didn't know about Barry." My head was spinning. "Adam, how did you know that she wasn't just some random crazy person?"

"Are you kidding? Don't you know who she is?"

I gave him what I'm sure was a blank look. "Who is she?"

He sighed. "Emma, what in the world have you been talking with her about on all these visits? Don't you know she's one of the greatest living experts on nineteenth-century British women writers?"

"That can't be. I've never heard of her in my life."

"Not under her current name, Parrot. No. She uses her first husband's name. You've heard of Gwendolyn Garnet-Jones."

It was a good thing I was sitting in the car seat. Gwendolyn Garnet-Jones was a world-renowned scholar. Many women in academia used the names they'd first published under as their professional names, but this was too much.

"You're kidding. I thought she was a recluse."

"She's not exactly hitting the conference circuit now, is she?"

"Why?" I shook my head. "Why would she care?"

"I suppose she had her own reasons." Adam shrugged.

It was all too much. "Adam, I want to go home."

"But we haven't finished--"

"Yes, we have." I steeled myself to do what was necessary. "I'm sorry Mrs. Parrot dragged you into this, and I appreciate how sweet you've been to me. But like I said, I'm ready to put the past in the past and move on."

"Just like that?"

I nodded, because I couldn't speak past the lump in my throat anymore.

"Fine." He was truly angry now. "Fine. You want it, Emma, you got it."

He thrust the gearshift into drive and took off across the parking lot. I held on for dear life.

"You're worth more than what you're settling for, Em," he said as we whizzed down the road toward Anne-Elise's house. "Much more."

But I'm not
, I wanted to say. I guess I'd known that all along, and my weakness now simply proved it. I could blame my lack of a happy ending on Edward all day long, but the truth was that my own dissatisfaction with my life wasn't anybody's fault but mine. I'd been looking for a man to sweep me off my feet when I should have been looking for one who was willing to pick up the pieces. Not some fictional hero, but a real flesh-and-blood man. Someone who would love me for the long haul. Someone like Adam.

I didn't say anything more, just closed my eyes and prayed that we'd get to Anne-Elise's quickly, before I dissolved into
a puddle right there in the car and told Adam the truth--that although I hadn't been in love with him all those years ago, I was most definitely in love with him now, and the idea terrified me more than if he'd turned over the steering wheel at that very moment and demanded that I drive on the wrong side of the road.

I
n November of 1802, a year after Jack Smith's death, Jane Austen accepted that now infamous marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, the brother of two of her closest friends. As the son of a landed family, Harris inherited a large fortune and a great deal of property. If Austen had married him, she would have lived in ease and comfort for the rest of her life. She would have been able to provide quite generously for her mother and sister. And she would have been completely, utterly miserable.

As Austen wrote in
Pride and Prejudice
, "Do anything rather than marry without affection." But even Austen's strong principles sometimes wavered.

The morning after she accepted the proposal, Austen withdrew her consent to the marriage. The consequent awkwardness and embarrassment led her to flee from Manydown, the Bigg-Withers' stately home in Hampshire. So Austen not only knew
the agony of turning down an offer of marriage prompted by love, as she had with Jack Smith, but she had also experienced the enormous temptation of marrying for money without it.

The morning after my fateful picnic with Adam, the skies opened and poured forth enough rain to launch a fleet of arks. I joined the throng of commuters tramping through the puddles on the streets of London. For the last time, I made my way to South Kensington and Mrs. Parrot's home on Stanhope Gardens.

"Come in out of the rain, my dear," Mrs. Parrot said, taking my wet umbrella from me and plunking it down into the elephant's-foot stand. "Let me take your jacket."

My old anorak had seen better days, but she treated it as if it were finest mink, placing it on a satin-padded hanger in the hall closet. Shame burned my cheeks. I couldn't remember ever having set out to deceive someone like this, and I couldn't allow myself to think about it or I would lose my nerve.

"So you've been to Chawton," she said as I followed her into the lounge. "How was your journey?"

"Fine." Guilt had my tongue in a vise.

"And were you able to complete your task?" She settled into her customary chair, and I took my place on the sofa at her left hand.

"Yes, but I'm not sure of its purpose." Touching a table was not exactly an endeavor worthy of Hercules.

"But I'm sure you felt it, didn't you, dear?"

"Felt it?"

She shook her head. "You're not a very good liar, Miss Grant. I can see it in your eyes that you sensed the presence there. The peace."

I sagged against the sofa cushions and nodded. "Yes. Yes, I did."

"And what did you think of her letter?"

"I thought it made everything quite clear."

"Yes, it does. Her wishes were explicit. She was afraid, rightly so, that because she was a woman, the minutiae of her life would be used to discredit her work. After all, look at what's happened to those poor Brontes."

"She must have trusted her sister a great deal." I couldn't imagine allowing myself to rely on someone like that, not after what had happened with Edward.

"She did, indeed, and as it turned out, her trust was well founded."

"When did Cassandra form the Formidables?" I kept my voice calm, not allowing the trembling in my limbs to infect it. I had this one last chance to gather information before I exposed Mrs. Parrot and her compatriots to the world.

"Near the end of her life, although she must have been cultivating her choices long before."

"And how did you come to be part of the group?"

She shook her head. "That's something we don't share with outsiders."

"Then how do you know someone is a bona-fide member? Couldn't just anyone turn up on your doorstep claiming to be a Formidable?"

Mrs. Parrot paused and pursed her lips, as if struggling with a decision. Finally, she said, "Very well. I can share this much with you. There are only a handful of us at any given time. Never more than five, certainly. We would know if someone was an impostor."

"So you and Miss Golightly and ..." I trailed off in hopes that she would supply the other names, but I should have known better than to try such a ham-handed approach.

"That remains our secret," Mrs. Parrot said.

"Then why tell me?" I had asked her before but had never received a satisfactory answer. "Luring me here, interfering in my personal life--"

"It was your personal life, in addition to your professional credentials, that brought you to our notice," Mrs. Parrot said.