“If you will observe, Mr. Withers, I see the bud of a rose by the garden wall,” Mrs. Austen said.
“I see no buds, Mrs. Austen,” Mr. Withers Senior replied. “We might struggle, for it is March.”
The gardens resembled a graveyard of bare earth and sticks, but Jane’s mother persisted with her scheme. “Perhaps you are right,” Mrs. Austen said. “Will you join me for a closer inspection? Then we may settle the matter.”
Mrs. Austen led him and the Reverend away, leaving Jane and her suitor alone, filling Jane with terror. Jane felt grateful for her mother’s plotting but now the situation would force her to say something, whereupon she’d ruin everything.
As Jane and Mr. Withers walked up the path in silence, Jane recalled her mother’s earlier instructions and strained for something coquettish to say. The weather? It appeared the rain had ceased. She thought of the most flirtatious way to comment on precipitation, perched on the verge of despair, when Charles Withers himself turned his head and smiled. “Have you taken the waters, Miss Jane?” he asked her.
She struggled for a way to reply without speaking. “I have not, sir,” she answered at last, defeated into verbalization. He referred to the famous ancient spa waters that bubbled up from the earth’s center and collected in a pool in the center of Bath. King George had drunk the water and been cured of his gout. People flocked from far and wide to imbibe the pool’s magical liquid after the miracle. John Baldwin built a grand tearoom, the Pump Room, adjacent to the mystical site so people might drink it in style. The only person Jane knew who’d been inside was Margaret, the Austens’ housemaid. After much prodding, Margaret had confessed to paying a week’s wages to drink a teaspoon of sulfurous water, which she spat out when her friends turned their backs. She assured Jane it had done her good in the brief time it sat in her mouth.
“Do you know what it is, to take the waters?” Mr. Withers asked. “I have walked around Bath for three days now pretending to know what it means. With the performance gone on for so long, I am too afraid to ask anyone.” He adjusted his coat button.
Jane stopped. Did this handsome man make a joke? Jane tested him. “What do you think it means, sir?”
“From what I can gather, one breaks into the Pump Room under the cover of darkness, gathers up as much water as he can carry in his pockets, then runs back out again.” He smiled again.
Jane swallowed. “You are modest in professing your ignorance, Mr. Withers. That is precisely how it is done.”
“May I take my own water from the bathtub or repossess it from an obliging puddle, or is it only the water from the Pump Room tap that is magical?” he asked.
“I regret the sorcery is limited to the water you must pay for.”
“Oh, but I intend to steal it.”
“Of course.” Jane could not contain a small smile.
“I shall need an accomplice, if you will do me the honor.”
So much time had passed since a man last requested Jane’s company that she almost missed the invitation. “With pleasure,” she said with another smile. She elected to stop smiling then; two sufficed. Any more and she might be accused of having a nice time.
“Tomorrow I have business in Bristol, but perhaps the day after,” he said.
Further conversation revealed, to her horror, that he admired Cecilia, Jane’s favorite book. Jane was worried, for now she enjoyed this man’s company, respected his opinions, and shared his mockery of Bath. With his one great defect being the smallness of his coat buttons, Jane had no choice but to like Mr. Withers.
They reunited with their parents and returned to the house. Jane and her mother agreed to attend the Pump Room in two days’ time. Charles Withers and his father took their leave with felicity and goodwill and, as the Austens bade them farewell by their gig, Mrs. Austen enjoyed the happy opportunity to wave at Lady Johnstone, who spied at them from behind her sitting room curtain.
Chapter Three
The next morning, a letter arrived for Jane from Cassandra. My dear Jane, it read. It seems so long since we last spoke. I trust I have missed much while I have been away, and Bath misses me as much as I it.
Her sister made this joke often, for their lives in Bath were duller than their brother James’s Sunday sermons. A parade of vapor and nothings filled their time, meeting silly people who stayed for a week and then returned home, never thought of again once they departed Stall Street. However, today Jane did have news. She longed for Cassandra now, but her sister had travelled east twelve days ago to help Edward’s wife birth her eighth child. Cassandra had expressed reluctance to leave Jane, observing that Jane may have slumped into one of her fogs, as she did from time to time. But Jane insisted she go, for her own struggles of the mind were ridiculous compared to the safe delivery of a spare Austen heir. Her sister would delight in reading Jane’s news.
Jane took a place at the small desk by the drawing room window, where Mr. Withers had stood the day before, and drafted her reply. My dear Cassandra, she scratched onto the paper with her father’s quill. Steady the buffs, sweet sister. I have news from Bath. She dipped the quill, composing a few lines in her head about Mr. Withers, his coat buttons, Lady Johnstone, but found she could write none. A drop of ink fell from the pen to the page.
Jane felt silly. In the new day, it all appeared a flight of fancy. Mr. Withers had smiled at her and invited her to
