A third reason existed for Jane wanting a husband: more of an idle want than a reason, a feeling of such silliness she dared not mention it to anyone.
It was love.
But as she reminded herself daily, love was a luxury for a woman in her position, and whenever this third item returned to her mind—persistent little annoyance that it was—she pushed it out of her brain. It did no one good to mull over wishes.
She pushed it away again now as she leapt over a boxwood hedge and into the next field. The mud splatter now reached above her middle, while a piece of hedge rested in her hair. She performed an excellent impression of a speckled egg. Measures needed to be taken to ensure the best possible chance of securing this Mr. Withers as her husband. Nothing could be done about her poverty or age, but if she could conceal her true nature, at least for an hour, she might have a small chance.
Jane fetched a quill and a scrap of paper from her pocket and compiled a list.
Silence appeared to be an excellent tactic. She wrote that down. Her cleverness disquieted. If forced to communicate, she’d restrict her comments to the weather or, better still, perform feminine noises in his general direction.
Smiling was also a virtue in this environ. When she was thinking, her face tended to fix itself in a scowl. Ahh. She added no thinking to her list.
With her directives complete, she placed the scrap of paper in her pocket and left the fields of Somerset. She sighted the spires of St. Swithin’s church and returned to the edge of Bath, already late. As she stepped onto the cobblestones, Jane spotted the back of an old man with white hair. “Papa, what business have you in this part of town?” she asked, pushing the paper further into her pocket.
Her father turned, his blue eyes shining. “I was sampling the fine Somerset air,” he said. “I must have lost my way. Will you escort an old man back to his house?”
“With pleasure,” she replied, taking his arm and patting it. Years of preaching in freezing churches had ruined his spine—he could not walk more than fifty yards without cursing—so Jane knew he had not been taking a stroll, but had come to find her, probably to make sure she did not deteriorate in a field somewhere.
He did not rush her or say anything about their upcoming appointment with Mr. Withers. Her father’s age surpassed seventy, but he remained as handsome as in his portrait as a young parson. His long white hair was tied back with a ribbon of duck-egg blue that Jane had bought for him on a trip to Kent. He rarely wore it, claiming it too nice to spoil with everyday wear, and Jane was hurt more than she let on. But he wore the ribbon now. Jane sensed he did it to win her favor that morning, and he succeeded.
As Jane and her father made their way back to the house, they passed the Pump Room on Stall Street. Giant honeystone columns soared into the air at the grand building’s entrance, welcoming people as though they were entering a Grecian temple. A woman cloaked in an emerald pelisse paused before them and turned her head up at the building’s facade with reverence, as though she was sending up a prayer. Jane scowled. Performances like this happened often in Bath, for the Pump Room was indeed a church, deserving of worship. Aside from the tea-taking, sacred water–imbibing, and intrigue that went on there, some of the most spectacular marriage contracts in England had been agreed in its assembly room. Jane never went inside; as a single woman, rapidly aging, she would be welcomed by its guests with the same reception they might offer a leper.
Jane did not entirely love the town she lived in. Her parents had moved there upon her father’s retirement from the church, uprooting their comfortable life in a country parsonage in Hampshire. Jane’s parents claimed the benefits to her father’s health had prompted the move west—every neighbor and newspaper raved about the healing properties of Bath’s spa waters—but Jane suspected another reason. George and Cassandra Austen had themselves met in Bath, and with two daughters speeding toward spinsterhood, they had relocated their family not to improve Reverend Austen’s digestion, but for one last-ditch attempt to marry off their female children. Where else to make these happy events occur but Bath, the marriage capital of England, and the place where Jane’s parents themselves had wed. In the move to Somerset Jane observed no changes to her life but one: where green fields and quiet once filled her days, now fog and gossip replaced them.
Still, she could not abhor Bath completely. After all, without its scandal and silly people, its intrigue and nonsense, she might have nothing to write about.
Jane stepped around the woman in the green coat who continued to pray to the Pump Room and avoided her eye. At least Jane was not as odd as she—or so she hoped.
Chapter Two
Of all the things that delighted Jane about Bath, her living arrangement pleased her most. The other residents of Sydney House were an assortment of kind people, always ready to relate the misfortunes of the building’s inhabitants. One such person, Lady Johnstone, greeted Jane and her father in the foyer.
“You are expecting Mr. Withers of Kent and his son this morning,” the woman announced. She wore a long, draped pelisse. If the intention was to advertise her husband’s wealth through the amount of fabric required to cover her, Lady Johnstone succeeded. She fiddled with her reticule, fashioned from French silk, which she held at an angle to reflect the light. “Mr. Withers wears a blue coat. The buttons are smaller than I expected. My concern is that you are so
