Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend Page 5

  The fat lady, however, immediately got to her feet and shouted out of the window to the driver to hand in her small travelling bag to her.

  That was a nuisance, as the four horses had to be pulled up and the bag retrieved from the luggage basket at the back of the coach, but it was very funny to watch the fat lady, her side turned firmly towards us, rummaging in her bag and stowing things into secret pockets inside her travelling cloak and poking something else down into her boots.

  ‘Terrible times, ma’am,’ she said to Eliza, as Mrs Austen had firmly shut her eyes to distance herself from her embarrassing daughter.

  ‘Terrrrible,’ said Eliza, giving the word its French pronunciation. ‘You would not believe the scenes that I have witnessed. The mob! The riots! The burnings!’

  ‘What?!’ screamed the lady. ‘In Andover!’

  ‘Doesn’t seem possible, does it,’ commented Jane gravely. Eliza, by the look on her face, was trying not to laugh.

  Mrs Austen opened one weary eye, looked from Eliza’s animated face to Jane’s, and then closed it again. I think she had decided to disown us all.

  ‘These people are animals,’ pronounced the stout lady.

  ‘Oh la, the paysans! The . . . how you say it? The peasants – they say they are starving!’ was Eliza’s next contribution.

  I thought that would put a stop to the conversation, but the stout lady was just getting into her stride.

  ‘Animals, that’s what I call them, greedy animals. Always wanting more. Never content with what was plenty for their fathers and their grandfathers before them. I could tell you such a story . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jane sharply, sticking her head out of the coach window. ‘Not a highwayman, I hope!’

  ‘What!’ screamed our travelling companion and she also put her head out of her window.

  ‘We are being followed, ‘ announced Jane, pulling her head in. ‘No, really. I’ve been listening to the sound of horse hoofs for the past five minutes. They’ve been getting nearer and nearer.’

  ‘Coachman, there’s a man following us!’ The scream was enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood and we were now passing through a town.

  ‘We’re at Devizes now,’ said Mrs Austen calmly, opening her eyes. ‘Did I ever tell you that I stopped at this very inn on the day of my wedding? Myself and Mr Austen rode all the way from Bath to Devizes and then on to Steventon, did you know? I was married in a red riding habit and jumped on to the horse straight after the ceremony. Did I tell you about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane bluntly, and Eliza smiled faintly and peered hopefully from the window. For someone so easily bored as Eliza, a highwayman seemed a better prospect than the thousandth repetition of Mrs Austen’s story of her honeymoon ride and of the fate of her red riding gown . . .

  I felt a little worried though. Who was this man who was following us?

  The coach now swung sharply to the right, toppling the stout lady over on to me, and me on to Jane. We were entering the inn yard. The ostlers were running forward to catch the reins of the four horses, hens scattered with indignant squawks and the landlady came out with a welcoming face and a clean white apron, but there was no fuss, no exclamations of horror . . .

  ‘It’s Harry Digweed,’ whispered Jane, sticking her bonnet into mine, the deep rims making a private little screen between us and the others in the coach. ‘He must have a letter for you!’

  I looked at her wide-eyed, but Mrs Austen had already pushed open the coach door and was clambering heavily out.

  ‘Harry Digweed!’ she exclaimed. ‘What in the world are you doing here?’

  ‘Hallo, ma’am, this is a surprise,’ said Harry in such artificial tones that I was sure that Mrs Austen must suspect something. ‘I’m on my way to Bristol to see about some new seed for my father.’ He laboured on with his prepared speech and then turned to us with relief. ‘Had a good trip?’ he asked. His words seemed directed at Jane, but his eyes were on me, and they were so full of meaning that I blushed a little.

  ‘Are you staying the night, Harry? You must join us for supper, mustn’t he, Mama? We’ll go with you while you see to the stabling of your horse. It will be good to get moving after sitting in that coach for six hours.’

  ‘That is a good idea.’ He said each word separately like a child learning to read. It was a good job that James had not given him a part in the play. He certainly couldn’t act.

  Once in the stable, though, he relaxed. I rather admired the easy way that he gave instructions about his horse to the ostler and how he gave the horse an affectionate pat as it was being led away. I saw Jane smiling – a small, private smile. She put a hand on his arm as we stood there in the warm-smelling dimness of the inn stables. Harry beamed his gorgeous smile down at her . . .

  ‘Here’s your letter, Miss Jenny,’ he said. He had my letter carefully carried inside his inner pocket and he had even put a piece of stiff cardboard with it so that it wouldn’t be crumpled.

  ‘Oh, Harry, you don’t know how grateful I am to you.’ In my excitement at the appearance of Thomas’s letter with the neatly drawn anchor on it, I called him Harry, just as Jane did.

  ‘URGENT’, read Jane over my shoulder.

  ‘That’s why I thought I should ride after you,’ explained Harry. I felt like kissing him. I turned slightly aside, broke the wax seal and unfolded the sheet of paper. I expected to find a long letter and I could hear Jane engage Harry in conversation.

  But the letter had only six words on it. I’ve stuck it in here.

  And tomorrow is Thursday!

  But why didn’t he say something loving? I still worry that he might have decided that it was too much trouble to marry me. Perhaps instead of Jane’s brigands, he had been captured by a beautiful girl – I could just picture her, very tall, with an aquiline nose and glossy black hair.

  I showed it to Jane, looking at her doubtfully, ready to see her make a face at the lack of expressions of love, but she hugged me.

  ‘Oh, I just adore Thomas,’ she breathed. ‘He is such a man of action.’

  I laughed then. I was being stupid, and straight away I put the tall, raven-haired, aquiline-nosed girl out of my mind. Thomas was just in a hurry; perhaps there were men standing there by him, waiting for his orders while he scribbled the note. The important thing was that he was coming to Bath.

  ‘We’ll be in Bath by tonight, Harry,’ said Jane. ‘What do you think about that?’

  ‘Wish I was going on a holiday,’ said Harry. There was something almost lonely in his voice and I felt sorry for him.

  Harry is such a nice young man. He has a kind face, already bronzed with the sun, blue eyes the colour of the cornflowers that will soon speckle the fields of wheat, his blond hair well-brushed back from his tanned forehead. I thought that he and Jane looked a lovely couple standing there side by side – she so dark-haired and lively, he so blond and dependable.

  ‘Couldn’t you come to Bath for a few days, Harry?’ I asked impulsively. Again I had called him Harry, but I didn’t care. I thought of him almost as one of my cousins.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Jane supported me, but in a calm, slightly indifferent manner. ‘When does your father expect you back?’

  Harry blushed at that innocent question. I suspect that he had just gone off as soon as the letter arrived, leaving a message for his father.

  ‘Oh, I . . . I don’t think he would care,’ he stuttered after a minute. ‘In our house one or other of the four of us boys is always missing. I’ve done my share of the work this spring. I’ve been working as hard as any of the labourers. The lambs are all born, the seed has been sown . . . this is a quiet time for us now until the hay is ready for cutting.’

  ‘Where would you stay?’ I was so full of gratitude to Harry for actually riding all the way after us that I wanted to help. How terrible it would be if I had not got Thomas’s letter and had not known that he wanted to meet me.

  ‘Well, I know the landlord at the Gr
eyhound Inn; he’s very interested in farming and always glad of a chat; he’d give me a bed for a night or two, I dare say.’ Harry sounded cheerful and I smiled encouragingly at him. It occurred to me that I had never seen Harry at the Assembly Rooms at Basingstoke, although he was often at the Austens’ place and always joined in the dancing there.

  ‘And you’ll come to the Assembly Rooms on Friday, won’t you, Harry?’

  Jane had said nothing, which was not like her, but she was smiling so I thought that was enough. ‘Come, let’s go and have supper now.’ And once I saw that they both followed me obediently I made sure not to glance over my shoulder at them. Jane was different with Harry to the way that she was with Tom Chute or Newton Wallop, I thought as I made my way into the inn. With Newton and Tom, she flirted continuously, but with Harry she did not say much. As soon as we entered the inn, she abandoned him and went over to Eliza, signalling me to follow her with a quick jerk of her head.

  ‘Show your letter to Eliza, Jenny,’ she murmured. I cast a quick glance at Mrs Austen, who was telling Harry that we were about to have a supper of a neck of venison, but with no oyster sauce, which she would have preferred. While she was in full flow I took the letter from my reticule.

  Eliza’s eyes widened as she read the few words. ‘La, la, what a man this captain is, n’est-ce pas?’ She sighed heavily. ‘Such a man, mes petites, such a man I could have loved in my youth. He does not sit back, does he? Say nothing, Jenny dear. Your aunt is not against this match, but she has to pretend to obey her husband. Leave it all to me. It will be my idea, and I will be getting up a little party to go to the Assembly Rooms on Friday – after all, I have my cousin, Philadelphia Walters, coming to stay with me and I must entertain her, n’est-ce pas? You will be very surprised to see your captain on Friday, Jenny, ma chérie, will you not?’

  And then Eliza took out her fan and waved away the everyday smells of farmyard poultry and sweating horses and set it in the position of ‘if only I were free . . .’ Jane and I, remembering Eliza’s lessons on how to send messages with a fan, found it hard to stop giggling.

  After our meal, when Jane was chatting to Harry on the window seat and her mother was dozing by the fire, I whispered to Eliza my guess about Harry being fond of Jane. She gave him one perfunctory glance and then shook her head. ‘No prospects,’ she whispered back. ‘I know the family: a good family, birth and breeding, but there is no money there. He’s not even the eldest son. What money there is will go to John, the eldest brother. He is to inherit his uncle’s fortune.’

  I hate the way everything comes down to money. Why can’t people live their lives and fall in love, without money always coming into it?

  That night when we were going to bed in the inn I told Jane how grateful I was to Harry and how wonderful it was of him to just ride after us as soon as the letter arrived. Then, very carefully, I asked her what she felt about him.

  Jane opened her eyes very wide. ‘But I adore him!’ she exclaimed. I was not fooled. This was Jane acting the part of a romantic heroine.

  ‘Do you like him as well as you like Tom Chute or Newton Wallop or any of the other boys that you dance with?’ I asked.

  Jane didn’t answer immediately. There was a shout of laughter from the taproom in the inn downstairs and a creak on the stairs outside our room, which sounded like Mrs Austen and Eliza making their way into the room beyond ours. I wondered where Harry was sleeping. He had been very quiet during supper, and both Mrs Austen and Eliza had given up trying to talk to him and had busied themselves gossiping about the Prince of Wales and about the King. Judging by the giggles we heard outside our door, Eliza was still relaying the latest stories about the prince to her aunt.

  I tried again. ‘Could you imagine marrying him?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s different,’ said Jane eventually.

  I didn’t rush her. I remembered all the times that Jane had allowed me to think about things and eventually to bring out my feelings. Her eyes were on the fire and I waited patiently until she turned towards me.

  ‘I’d like something romantic,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I think that my ideal man would be someone like that French revolutionary Eliza was telling us about. Very daring, very dashing. Involved in undercover missions. Or else . . . someone rescuing an innocent maiden from the clutches of a dastardly baronet. Galloping after them on his noble black stallion.’

  ‘Sounds like something out of a novel.’ I laughed, but Jane shook her head.

  ‘Look at yourself, Jenny,’ she pointed out. ‘Your love affair with Captain Williams was so romantic. There you were, in terrible danger, alone, and he protected you. You think you will never meet again and then he turns up at the Assembly Rooms at Basingstoke. He dances with you; you fall in love with him. You meet again at the Portsmouths’ ball. You are even more in love. He comes to visit you. Then there is a misunderstanding. You write him an angry letter. He comes to see you and behaves like a hero, rescuing us all. And then you learn that he is blameless. He offers marriage and you accept.’

  I was smiling to myself, thinking about how very romantic the story between myself and Thomas sounded. And then I felt selfish for thinking of myself and I looked at Jane who had been silent for a moment, and I tried to smile at her. She didn’t smile back. She looked more serious than usual.

  ‘That’s what I call a romantic story, Jenny,’ she said. ‘I’ve known Harry Digweed since I was a baby in short frocks. I’ve known him all my life. Nothing remotely romantic has ever happened between us. I don’t really think that I can fall in love with him now.’

  She stopped for a moment, running the comb through her hair absent-mindedly and staring at her reflection in the mirror. ‘I’d like to marry a man who is a hero, a man who loves me wildly, passionately, who would gallop through a raging torrent to be at my side, a man that I adore and worship.’

  ‘But you like Harry, don’t you?’ I was beginning to feel out of my depth. ‘Or perhaps Newton is the one. Could you imagine marrying Newton?’

  Jane looked unsure. ‘He is the son of an earl, of course. We can’t forget that, can we? Earls are romantic. They come into all the novels.’

  ‘Well, marry him, then. He seems to like you a lot. You and he are always chattering and you make the same kinds of jokes. It would be so exciting if you married him, Jane. What would Lavinia say?’

  ‘His hair is a bit long,’ said Jane doubtfully, pursing up her lips, ‘and a bit too curly. Perhaps I should marry a man with blond hair, since my hair is dark. Heaven forbid that I should be mistaken for my husband.’ She looked shocked at that thought.

  ‘Well, Harry, then,’ I said. ‘He’s blond.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ agreed Jane. ‘But you couldn’t call him very romantic, could you? Can you imagine him fighting a duel with pistols at dawn? Or rescuing a maiden from a watery grave?’

  ‘Frank says that Harry is a very good swimmer and a very good shot,’ I pointed out. ‘And you do like him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I like him . . .’ Jane hesitated and then she got up and stretched. She had a wicked grin on her face. ‘I was thinking that if he would kiss me, I might be able to decide. What do you think? Should I ask him to kiss me?’

  I thought about that; I felt a bit horrified.

  ‘Jane,’ I said, ‘I don’t really think that you can ask a man to kiss you. You might ruin your reputation. I think that you must wait for him to kiss you of his own accord. And . . .’ I could hear my voice sounding doubtful as I continued. It was usually Jane who was the expert on love affairs. However, I finished by saying, ‘Properly speaking, he should offer to marry you before he kisses you.’

  ‘The trouble is that Harry is so accustomed to my telling him what to do,’ confessed Jane. ‘I don’t think that he will suddenly rush up to me and kiss me unless I tell him to.’

  ‘Do you think that he would make a suitable husband though?’ I was beginning to regret that I had got myself involved in this affair. Jane was right; it d
idn’t seem very romantic.

  ‘I feel . . . I feel . . . that I won’t know until I kiss him,’ said Jane lightly, looking at me with big innocent eyes. I was quite taken aback and told her firmly that I was sure that she couldn’t kiss a man until she was sure that she loved him, but Jane just smiled mischievously and asked me what it felt like when Thomas kissed me. I told her that I couldn’t describe it, but that I knew I loved him even before he kissed me.

  ‘What about Newton, then?’ I asked.

  Jane’s face changed and she put on a yearning look.

  ‘Oh, Newton is just so gorgeous, with his handsome face and lovely long curly hair,’ she said. ‘I do declare that I feel weak at the knees when I think of . . .’ She stopped and then added mischievously, ‘. . . his fortune.’

  And then she got into bed and I said no more.

  I’m really not sure what to think.

  Thursday, 21 April 1791

  Yesterday was spent travelling and we arrived very late. When I woke up, for a moment I hardly knew where I was as I lay there squinting against the bright light. And then, instead of the chirping of swallows and the two-tone call of the cuckoo, I heard the clip-clop of horseshoes on the paved road outside. My first thought was for Thomas – I am going to see him tomorrow! I jumped out of bed.

  ‘Wake up, Jane,’ I said urgently.

  There was no answer, and I looked behind Jane’s curtains to see whether she was still asleep but there was no one there. She must have dressed earlier and gone downstairs.

  At that moment there was a tap on the door and in came the chambermaid with a can of hot water.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Jenny,’ she said with a quick bob of a curtsy. ‘I’m Rosalie. Here is your hot water.’

  ‘Do you know where Miss Jane is, Rosalie?’ I felt rather grand as I took the can from her.

  ‘Lord, miss, no. Isn’t she still in bed?’ She seemed a bit shocked when she peered behind the curtains, but by now I guessed that Jane had got up early, washed in cold water and had gone downstairs, or even outside. I told Rosalie not to worry as Jane had probably gone to talk to my uncle.