Omar joined me in the library one week after the memorial service. We sat at the table we'd occupied two months ago. I lost myself in Bronte while Omar read books on Shaw, working on his dissertation. I spent all my time in the library now. As soon as I was free, I retreated to the east wing, traveling the same worn planks, passing Nigel at his desk discarding papers into a large metal waste bin, passing Vera calmly typing schedule revisions. Only cloistered in the library, reading from the endless supply of mind-altering smelly books, did I find peace. Any page of any book would do.
"Omar?" I asked.
He looked up, obviously straining to return to England and place me. "Yes?" he said, turning a page.
"I owe you an apology," I said.
He looked up again with less effort. "For what?"
"For avoiding you after the follies."
Omar waved a hand, dismissing the sentiment, although he had been cool and distant since that evening almost three weeks ago.
"I know you were trying to help," I said, routing a cuticle on my left hand, "and I appreciate your concern."
Omar closed his book and removed his glasses. "You're crushed, aren't you?"
"Yes." I pressed my lips as tears filled my eyes.
"That was pretty brutal of him," Omar said.
I couldn't speak.
"I don't know what his problem is." Omar took my hand. "Willis did not treat you well, Lily. If this were the olden days, you'd be a ruined woman."
"I don't think he meant to mislead me," I said.
"Right." Omar smiled and shook his head.
We looked up as Vera opened our door and stuck her head in. "Randolph's here," she said. "Come quickly." She gestured with one hand, glancing behind her as if he were in the hallway. I scooted my chair out, noting Omar's disapproval. "He's in the front," she said, leading the way.
Randolph's silver Jaguar sat parked outside, just beyond the window where Vera and I watched through the swirly glass and pouring rain. Like Sheila, he'd crashed the gates, passing horse-drawn carriages to park outside our door. His door. "Look at his car," Vera whispered, her head suddenly next to mine.
"Hmm," I said.
"Why isn't he getting out?"
"It's raining." My breath fogged the window.
"Perhaps we should take him an umbrella."
"That would be awkward," I said, awkward being my new favorite word since Willis used it on me.
"Or maybe he's on the phone." Vera grabbed my hand and we both gazed at the silver auto against the majestic landscape, dreamlike through the distorted glass. Lately, as things seemed more desperate, the adrenaline from her ideas had been going straight to her mouth. "You could hold your wedding at Newton Priors," Vera said. "Your children could grow up playing on this lawn."
I said, "This is a business meeting." She'd become so inflamed by her hope of saving the organization that the line between business and self-delusion blurred.
Vera whispered, "You made an impression on him. And, as the book says, 'A young man in possession of a fortune...'" She looked at me earnestly. "The world needs a new Lady Weston."
"He probably has me mixed up with someone else he met in the hospital that day. He must meet many people. If his face falls when he meets me, we'll know it was a mix-up," I whispered back.
"Nonsense." She smiled insanely, confident I would save Literature Live, congratulating herself on having brought me to England in spite of the Lost Letters embarrassment.
Randolph's door opened.
He had arranged that, after a tour of the festival and a meeting with Nigel, we would discuss my ideas for Newton Priors. His visit provided the incentive necessary to force the business plan into existence. Pages had been finalized that morning in a panic as Vera flitted like a nervous moth, contributing helpful remarks such as, "Randolph must produce an heir; they say the House of Lords will be extinct by the year 2047."
Randolph stepped out of his car. There was no turning back. The unlikely social phenomenon—me mixing with an English lord—was about to happen, plausible or not. And Vera blanched as if it suddenly occurred to her that she might have been wrong. Maybe he did have me mixed up with someone else. "An English lord, for God's sake. In a silver Jaguar," she said, touching my hand.
He locked the car and then ran toward our door. "He's taller than I remember," I said. His hairline had receded since I last saw him and his shirt looked like something my father would wear bowling. Must be really expensive. My hand flew to my mouth as he ran through raindrops. Suddenly, I was in over my head.
"Go." Vera pushed me.
Randolph approached, his gaze lowered and a faint smile graced his lips. He appeared far away in thought. Near the door, he looked up; his brow arched mildly, a peer of the realm coming for me. I grasped the doorknob as our eyes met through the window; his warm smile encouraged me, but the knob left its socket and fell out of my hand. I pointed to the floor. Randolph looked down. I knew then that Jane Austen would never eat me for lunch for the simple reason there would be nothing left to eat after I finished with myself; she'd starve to death if she were counting on me for a meal.
"Oh, the door." Vera rushed over. "Lord Weston, welcome," she said through the glass. "If you don't mind, just pushing on the frame will open the door from your side."
Randolph pushed and the door cooperated.
"These old doors," Vera explained.
"House is full of them." Randolph's easy smile calmed me. "Lily." He reached for me and I gave him both hands, too late to bow or curtsy. I had been right in expecting strong aftershave; it seemed to go with first dates, even when they were business meetings with peers of the realm.
"Vera," he said, extending both hands and kissing her cheeks.
Nigel joined us and quietly offered condolences while I studied Randolph's confident manner, his polished exterior, a man who knew life's secret rules. I slid my eyes sideways to enjoy Vera's reaction. Randolph's face had not fallen when he first saw me.
Vera guided Randolph on a tour of Newton Priors, his ancestral home, engaging the usual suspects, all of whom had been prepped. Although Randolph had grown up around Literature Live, it was his project now, and Vera wanted him to see it in a fresh light. Randolph leered at a volunteer wearing a flimsy, almost see-through gown. Vera dismissed his blatant behavior later, saying, "Their clear understanding of the changing world in 1890 caused the Westons to divert investments to overseas equities and save the family from early extinction. Randolph descended from people who evaluated opportunities; of course he's going to leer at provocative volunteers."
Vera served us to Sixby, who appeared to be leading a last-minute rehearsal of several cast members in the Freezer, something he'd never done. We watched Alex pretend not to know how to deliver his line, and Sixby coach him. "Place the emphasis here," Sixby said, pointing to the script. We watched, in the room where Magda and Archie's unquiet spirits felt especially strong to me, until Vera decided Randolph had seen enough "behind the scenes."
The ballroom appeared to be buzzing with patrons when I recognized people from the volunteer staff posing as tourists. Mrs. Russell had wisely joined her considerable resources with Vera's to save the house. Their partnership implied the obvious truth: no house, no ball. And the ball remained the ultimate goal, in spite of undead Jane Austen's admonitions to the contrary. The appearance of a new male volunteer, conspicuously uncomfortable in period attire, did not escape my notice. Mr. Russell had taken to working the ticket desk on Wednesdays.
Randolph touched my arm, leaning in to speak to me. He treated me gallantly and I grew to expect opening of doors and the pressure of his hand on my back as we entered a room. He couldn't possibly be interested in me—a girl totally lacking in artifice chaperoned by her prickly Jane Austen—but pretending he was made me feel better, even temporarily. "You're not on stage today?" he asked.
I couldn't remember if we had decided on a response to that question when we scripted the afternoon, but Vera, hovering nearby, said, "We recast the scene today to free Lily for meetings." Then she added, "But you'll see her perform Amelia in the tea-theatre."
Randolph winked at me and I began to see a way out of missing Willis. But when the actors took the familiar stage and spoke the familiar lines, I couldn't concentrate because, for one thing, I sat next to the owner of Newton Priors, and for another thing, he was not paying attention. Almost immediately, he began jiggling his knee. He stopped jiggling to shift position, but he started again and completely missed the line when Henry Crawford says: "I will not be tricked on the south side of Everingham any more than on the north; I will be master of my own property."
Two full hours past the time we'd set to discuss my business plan, Vera summoned me to Nigel's conference room where Randolph and Nigel were sharing a bottle of wine. They had not attended the tea-theatre.
"I was hopeful the numbers would look better," Randolph said as he swirled his wine.
I accepted the glass Nigel poured for me and took the chair next to Randolph. While they met, I'd rehearsed the basic premise of my business plan: the idea was tourists living in a Jane Austen novel. I ignored my gnawing anxiety he'd not been interested in the festival. Now, Randolph looked at his watch and shoved papers into his portfolio. "I'm afraid we've gone a bit long. And now something's come up in London." He looked at me.
Something had changed while he met with Nigel; the ground had shifted.
"Could I persuade you to join me for dinner another night this week to go over your plan?" he asked.
"That would be fine." I smiled, knowing it would never happen, ripping off a cuticle.
"I expect you're rather busy now," I said as we walked to his car in the gathering dusk, warm and humid after the rain. I couldn't imagine how he spent his days. Vera said people like Randolph sat in the House of Lords, observing august traditions far older than anything in Texas.
"Yes, quite busy."
"Will you take up politics?" I asked, imagining Randolph inheriting a robe, the pesky hairline problem concealed beneath a wig.
"Can't," he said, folding his arms.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Tony Blair. House of Lords Act, 1999." He smiled.
I would have to look it up.
"But I can reserve an excellent table at just about any restaurant." He looked at me as if he noticed my presence for the first time that evening, causing me to wonder where he stood on girls without artifice. "Right now I'd like to take up acting."
"Did you have a chance to look at my plan?" I asked.
"Not yet." He patted his portfolio. "But I will, before we meet again."
Just then, a tourist snapped our photo: Aristocrat and Texas Girl Outside English Manor House with Jaguar.
"Good," I said, "because I have some marketing ideas that might be lucrative for Newton Priors."
"I'm glad to hear that, because I'm quite torn actually," he said as he threw his portfolio on the seat. He looked past me into the evening air where I imagined pieces of torn Randolph floating out of order. "Quite simply, I find I'm the steward of a burdensome asset in which I have no real interest."
My Jane Austen smiled knowingly as I sighed over the unwelcome piece of information. "But it's such a magnificent house," I said.
"So I'm told." Randolph leaned against his car as if we had all the time in the world.
"Do you ever think about living in Newton Priors?" I asked, wondering what the house looked like to someone who'd known it from birth.
"Not a chance," he said, frowning, as if I should have known better. "Nobody lives in these houses."
"Your grandmother was quite fond of it," I said.
"Oh yes, sentimental really. In her backward thinking, the economics would reverse, and all of England would return to an agrarian economy, with servants."
I'd assumed he had servants.
"I don't subscribe to that cult of country house nostalgia," he said.
I didn't hold out much hope that Pippa did, either. "But you said you were torn."
He paused, choosing his words carefully, his hands supporting his weight on the car. "Regardless of my personal inclination, I must be mindful of my stewardship," he said, "to both past and future."
I imagined him at the deathbed, accepting a golden orb from his failing grandmother, while the past—Newton Priors—and the future—equities in Prague—waited nervously, to see what sort of steward he would be.
"I must hold up my end." He smiled. "That is, not let the house and its content go on my watch."
"Yes," I said, nodding.
"Nor let the house and its content deplete the trust."
Odd, he had so much time to talk while London waited on hold.
"At any rate, the house must support itself; that much is certain." Randolph squinted in a thoughtful way that reminded me of Willis, a welcome contrast to his earlier jiggling knee. "And from the look of things, Literature Live can't begin to pay the bills."
Vera had not thought to cook the books. She had done a lot of maneuvering in preparation for Randolph's visit, but she had not, as far as I knew, played with the numbers. We were off the script again. "Well." I swallowed. "Perhaps you'll think differently after you read my plan."
Randolph nodded and looked at me carefully. He asked, "Is this the sort of thing you're interested in?" His arms gestured big and at first I thought he was referring to himself. Was I interested in him. But then he added, "Making a country house pay its way?"
I remembered my mother asking me, as a child, if I wanted a toy badly enough to spend my own money on it. Couched in those terms, my interest always faded. "Of course," I said. "I believe there is a market for escape vacations; a place where people can go to live in a novel. And the premise of my business plan is: tourists living in a Jane Austen novel." My Jane Austen would not be a good hostess. She'd hide the extra pillows and run out of coffee and then feign disappointment at early departures, "Leaving my novel already?" She'd install locks on all her books, like diaries, and hide all the keys.
"I must say I'm impressed with your ideas," he said. "I had no idea actresses were so resourceful." In one very smooth gesture he stepped forward and kissed me. A brief and efficient kiss—a husband kissing his wife as he left for the office, as if we'd become a married couple without the work of getting acquainted, without the terrifying exposure of being known. Perhaps he wanted an abridged, intimacy-free version of me: Lily for Dummies. It would be much easier that way. But I knew that would be cheating and My Jane Austen knew it, too.
I smiled and tucked my hair behind my ears. "It's all in the plan," I said. We'd been standing there talking long enough for the sky to grow completely dark.
"Let's look at it together," he said. "In fact, come with me. Do you have time?"
"Now?" I imagined Vera's rapture at the news.
"My sister's getting married and there's a party in their honor tonight."
A camera flash reflected off the silver hood like a flare of lightning, illuminating my expression for anyone who was paying attention. Texas Girl Horrified Outside English Manor. I wished I could replay his comment to make sure I'd heard correctly. Did he say the wedding was on? I wanted to ask Randolph if he'd spoken with Willis lately. Are you sure they're getting married? He watched me struggle to look normal as my cosmos shifted once again. Willis at society parties in his honor, something he'd never have had with me. Maybe he wanted society parties.
"Could you come to London?" he asked again.
"Yes," I said. Although I wasn't stupid; this dinner party didn't just come up.
"Excellent."
Color came back and the clock ticked once more.
Two hours later, my knees secretly weak, I entered a chic London apartment where people stood in small groups holding wineglasses. No one met us at the door. Randolph winked at me and we walked in, his hand guiding from the small of my back. I searched every face, seeking one person, afraid of finding him. Randolph steered me into the kitchen where we discovered his sister leaning against a granite counter, her wit animating the faces of three enchanted listeners. I felt Randolph's eyes on me, like a protective shield in this foreign place. A caterer shuffled large plates of leftovers into storage containers and a dark-skinned woman in a maid's uniform rinsed plates. Judging from the direction the food was headed and the stack of dirty dishes, we'd missed dinner.
Pippa stopped speaking when she saw me. She looked from me to Randolph and back. "Well, hullo." Her mouth spoke to Randolph but her eyes stuck on me. Her enchanted listeners broke Pippa's gravitational pull to shake Randolph's hand. Then all three peered at me as if I were an alien invader from dark space. I looked to see if I'd remembered to change out of my Regency gown. I had.
"She's agreed to run away with me," Randolph announced to the little group.
"Where are you running away to?" asked a man.
"Old novels," Randolph told him. "We'd like to live in one. Preferably Jane Austen."
"Ah," the person said. "Clever. No one would think of looking for you there."
"Although I'd prefer a racy French novel," he whispered to me as Pippa's moons resumed their orbits. "Austen's so tame," he said, "might get boring for a guy."
I faux frowned. "Well, maybe Forster," I said, lifting a warm glass of champagne off a parked tray, feeling surreal. Randolph's friends made the trek to the kitchen to say hullo, most of whom observed me suspiciously after Randolph tried to pass me off as his evil twin, recently convicted of misshelving books in a Texas library. He told a persistent guest that I wasn't "out" (in society) yet, keeping one hand on my back as I disregarded his conversations to search faces. The open kitchen allowed a view of the room beyond but Willis was not present in the room beyond. How many rooms were there and where was the guest of honor?
"How did he propose?" a woman behind us asked Pippa as Randolph turned to shake another hand.
"You mean the first time?" Pippa asked. "We were sixteen and he chased me into the girls' bathroom at our school." Pippa sighed. "It was so long ago, but I do remember reading some gothic novel at the time, or maybe it was The Thorn Birds, and agreeing to marry him if he would swear to be a priest when he grew up."
I disengaged Rand's hand and ventured into the next room. A window wall turned out to be a sliding glass door revealing guests on a balcony. A woman stepping into the room from the balcony tossed a remark to the people behind her and I saw Willis, big as life, his head rearing back to laugh at whatever she'd said. How odd to see Willis so exuberant. My Willis brooded over his laptop in melancholy confinement on the third floor. As I approached the sliding glass door, the panorama opened up, glamorous London at night. Willis saw me. I stepped onto the balcony, closing the door behind, and my time began elapsing. "Still seeking rooftop perspectives?" I asked.
"What a surprise," he said. "Lily." He extended a hand and I prayed he wouldn't squander our private seconds sorting out my presence at the party.
"No small talk," I said quickly, touching the cross around my neck.
"Never, with you," he said, his face still lit from the last round of levity. My Attic Willis was make-believe; this Society Willis was real.
"How are you?" I asked, meaning the big picture.
He reached for a more serious expression, unable finally to engage either a smile or a frown. "Well, since you asked, I'll tell you." He lifted his glass from the low table, avoiding my eyes. "I've decided to leave my degree program."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm not seeking the priesthood." He sipped his wine, relieved, as if he'd finished the thesis and won an award, rather than abandoned his life plan.
"Congratulations," I said. "You've struggled with this. And how is your fiancée taking the decision?"
"It's still new to her." He watched a blinking light make its way across the dark sky.
"So what will you do?" I asked.
"That"—he laughed—"is a more difficult question." He opened his mouth to speak. Certainly his lips formed the word you but the unbidden grind of the door, sliding open along its metal track, admitted party chatter onto the balcony and ended our privacy. We'd been a fairy tale with a beginning, middle, and end, and we'd reached the last page sometime in July. Tonight felt more like an epilogue.
"They're looking for you," Randolph said to Willis. "Time for the toasts," he added, offering me a champagne glass, extending a hand to Willis.
"Ah, duty calls," Willis said. "Excuse me." And passing me, he left without a good-bye.
I started to follow Willis back into the noisy room, not sure I could bear to hear tributes to the lovely couple, when Randolph gently tugged my hand. "Let's stay out here," he whispered, nodding at the sparkling skyline, taking my glass and setting it on the rail. Willis had forgotten to take the stars and the moon when he left. Rand's arm found my waist and I gratefully leaned my head on his shoulder.
"So, it's Forster for us," he said.
Four days later in my library, I reached up to touch the spines of the old books on the shelves, a light touch, the way Randolph touched my back or my hand. I thought about decoding the shapes of ink, the alphabet blooming into people and places in my mind, regardless of book or page number. But mildewed pages were out of character for an aristocrat's dinner date. Rather, I should brush up on foxhunting and afternoon tea. While staring at the shelves, halfheartedly seeking a book on peerage laws, my cell phone went off, igniting my pulse. But it was Vera again.
"Has he called?" she asked.
"No," I reported once again as I pulled an old encyclopedia off the shelf. "The Eleventh Baron of Weston has priorities and we have to wait." I'd fed Vera's frenzy, sharing Randolph's comments about my interest in making a country house pay its way and the talk about running away in Forster. "Do you think he's really interested?" I asked, purposely imprecise, allowing her to address either question: his interest in keeping Literature Live in his house or his interest in Lily. I faced the bookshelf so my voice wouldn't carry into the room, deceiving myself that My Jane Austen wouldn't hear the question. I knew which way Vera would go, which made me think she also understood, at least subconsciously, that Literature Live was doomed.
"Of course he's interested. He's always been especially fond of American actresses," Vera said. Her response triggered a memory of something I couldn't place.
Omar joined me, throwing books and papers on the table. "What are you reading?" he asked.
"I'm looking up the 1999 House of Lords Act," I said. "Do you know anything about it?"
Omar sat. "It restricted the number of hereditary peers allowed to govern; no more than ninety-two can sit in Lords. The rest are appointees with life terms." He guessed why I asked. "Randolph is not entitled to a seat."
"I see." Like learning that nobody lived in country manors nowadays or had servants. "Speaking of," he said, "how's Lord Randy?"
"I haven't heard from him. I'm a bit worried for Literature Live's future, really."
"You should be." Omar pulled a newspaper from his pile of stuff. Rifling through the pages, he found the section he looked for and tossed it to me. "Have a look."
"What's this?" I scanned photographs of people in evening attire, society types posing for the camera. "What am I looking for?"
"Your Randy Lord." Omar pointed to a picture in the middle of the page and folded his arms across his chest.
There, posing in aristocratic understatement, stood my Randolph with a demure socialite. The caption read, Lord Weston and Sara Stormont at the Benefit for the Sick Dentists' Trust. I studied the picture, wondering who she was, how serious their relationship might be; another Someone Else.
Omar wagged a finger at me. "You're not letting Vera use you, are you?"
"I don't think so."
"Good. Don't let her pump you up so you can't think for yourself. You can't save Literature Live for Nigel, so don't let her convince you it all hangs on you snuggling up with the lord of the manor. It doesn't."
"No?"
"Look at Vera. Look at her life. Lonely as can be, married to a gay man, no family to call her own." Omar leaned forward. "I know how charming she is, but you need to only connect yourself."
"Let's talk about something else," I said. "When are you leaving?"
He looked at his watch. "Midnight, why?"
"No," I said. "When are you going home—to Michigan?"
"Friday," he said, opening his laptop.
"You're not staying through the end?" I asked.
"It's over," he said.
I sat back and folded my hands.
Omar removed his glasses and asked me, "Why don't you come with me?"
"And do what?"
"Continue your work connecting disjointed personalities; the university is full of them." He smiled. "And spend evenings amusing me with your stories."
I rolled my eyes.
"No, really. Why don't you come to Michigan? Go back to school." Omar leaned back on his chair's hind legs. "Get your MFA."
"No money." I bit my lip.
"You can work on campus. Human resources, isn't it?" He wiped the lens on his shirt.
"I don't remember."
"You can stay with me until you get your act together."
I took a deep breath and looked at him. Without glasses, he appeared younger and more vulnerable. "That's a very tempting offer, Omar."
He rested on all four chair legs. "Think about it," he said.
"I'll think about it."
With less than a week of literary festival left to me, I sat on my bed, holding Magda's book, staring at Bets's mattress. I'd stripped her bed, folding the matching bedspread and stuffing it in her closet. The naked ticking satisfied in a mildly punitive ascetic sense. Bets's side of the bureau was bare, as well as her side of the sink and table. I'd removed the things she'd stored under my bed and stuffed all of it in her closet and forced the door shut. I wanted to be completely alone.
I'd spent all day Monday and Tuesday, festival days off, reading in my room. Books accumulated in stacks around my bed. Not novels, but critical essays about Jane Austen and Mansfield Park, the type of thing Vera had encouraged me to read back in June. I discovered back issues of Persuasions, a scholarly journal published by JASNA, the existence of which blurred my understanding of the distinction between academics and Janeites. Essays about Mansfield Park referenced names I'd heard in Nigel's conversations and in lectures, and I worked backward to the primary sources listed in bibliographies. Most books were on our shelves, and the deeper I read, the better I understood what I'd been doing all summer.
I survived by eating Bets's leftover cheese crackers and drinking water from the sink in my room. By Tuesday evening, when I began reading the slavery essays in the book Magda had left me, a week had passed since Randolph said he'd call. So tired, yet unable to sleep, I struggled to understand how anyone could believe that Jane Austen was complicit with slave-owning society. No way.
But then I read, and reread, that Jane Austen's father was trustee of a plantation in Antigua. The godfather of Jane's oldest brother owned the plantation, and details of his life bear striking similarity to those of the Bertram family. Jane Austen drew on details from her family to create Mansfield Park. This information wasn't in anything else I'd read about her life. Jane Austen had secrets. Or maybe her father had secrets. But she discovered them. And she never told me. I would have told her something that important. I told her everything. Perhaps we weren't as close as I thought. Perhaps the person in my peripheral vision wasn't Jane Austen at all.
I answered my phone that evening, the last Tuesday of the season. "Hello?" I said, groggy, hung over from the reading binge.
"Hullo?" A male voice. Not Willis.
"Randolph?" The depth of his voice stirred me. Vera would be relieved at the news of his call.
"I've been meaning to call you," he said.
I should be careful. Hold back.
"Can you have dinner tonight?"
Don't do it, I told myself. "Um, yes," I answered.
"There's a small problem," he said. "I'm afraid I'm engaged, but should be free by seven. Any chance you can meet me at my hotel?"
I responded without thinking. "Yes, of course."
"Seven then?"
"Yes."
"Excellent. See you then."
My Jane Austen dimmed in the corner.