My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

the future of this organization. We cannot afford a misstep.' Vera looked at her watch. 'Speaking of go, it's time,' she said, and then glanced at me. 'What is it, Lily?'

*   *   *

As soon as Claire was out of range I told Vera about my wish to take Bets's part.

'You'll have to act quickly,' Vera said as we hurried to my room. 'Believe it or not,' she said, 'Magda is on the roof of Newton Priors at the moment.'

'The roof?'

'John Owen has persuaded everyone the chimney is on the verge of collapse and Magda is meeting the building inspector on the roof, asking him not to shut down the house before the opening. Your best chance is to get permission from Archie while Magda is still on the roof.'

Vera helped me slip one of Bets's dresses over my head, our hands running into each other and catching in folds, my pulse racing.

'What was all that about Mary Wollstonecraft?' I asked, standing as Vera zipped.

'Nothing more than Claire demonstrating she's read her latest assignment in Lit 403. She's taking classes, you know. Wants to be Magda when she grows up.'

Still, I wondered what the point had been; perhaps I should read Claire's assignments.

'Ah,' Vera said, 'it fits you perfectly.' She fluffed the sleeves. I skipped on the Regency underwear, opting for my own, and grabbed a pair of knee-high stockings out of Bets's drawer, remembering her generous offer to help myself to anything of hers—her opening day acting assignment, for example. The Banks Family Grant must have been colossal.

'Where's your bonnet?' Vera asked, finishing my sash.

We grabbed Bets's bonnet and flew down the hall and out the door, the dress rustling between my legs. 'The script,' I said, as Vera handed it through the window of the carriage, the old horses attracting flies. Too late to walk, I would have to pay the carriage, a private local business operated separately from Literature Live, to transport me to Newton Priors.

'When you get there, sit in the Freezer and calm yourself,' Vera said, handing the driver my fare. 'You'll be fine, don't worry.'

'Aren't you coming?' I asked, afraid to go without her.

'I'll be over in a bit—with Nigel.'

A surprisingly long line of patrons waiting in line with tickets watched me rush off, fingers pointing, speaking to each other in French and Japanese. I looked out the window; this was my first journey into a novel, as my carriage traveled through space and time. I looked at my eighteenth-century shoes peeking from beneath my muslin hem, and tried to believe. I looked at the trees and sky framed by my carriage window and tried to believe. I remembered how it felt to read Mansfield Park and I tried to feel myself traveling among characters in Jane Austen's world. But something gnawed at the edges that I never thought about when I pictured this moment. The trees and the sky and my shoes refused to stop being real; they wouldn't transform. Everything about me was the same as always, and I couldn't feel any different, too worried to leave my worldly concerns. I didn't know the blocking. Where was I supposed to stand on the stage? Indeed, I feared failure and pain today. Just like real life.

*   *   *

'Have you seen Archie?' I asked an actor in the Freezer.

'Probably in his smoking jacket,' Alex said, without looking up from his crossword puzzle. 'Look behind the Carriage House.'

I ran, but a family of five blocked my path: a blond Texas Hair woman holding a map, followed by a man and three rambunctious children, progressed in a tangle of limbs and barks like naughty puppies.

'Excuse me,' the hair woman flagged me down.

I turned my upper body to answer her question, still speed-walking, imagining Magda had sent her to keep me from talking to Archie in her absence, hired them to load me into their monster SUV and take me back to my gray cubicle world of colossal freeway billboards and Nike swoosh sensibilities; a place where My Jane Austen would not thrive.

'Can you tell me where to find the candle-making demonstration?' she asked.

Patrons detoured around us, camera bags slung over their shoulders, maps and guidebooks open in their hands. A Muslim woman wearing a severely modest black outfit, pants and an overdress, strutted—not a bit oppressed—alongside her man in Western dress. I must focus or Archie would disappear before I could find him. I didn't have a chance if he was with Magda. Shading my eyes, I looked up and saw the group still huddled around the chimney, but who knew how much longer they'd stay up there?

'The candle-making demonstration is over there,' I said, a bit heavy on the plums. Ovah theh.

'Ovah theh?' The woman looked at her map, and then in the direction I pointed, as if she didn't understand. I ran toward the Carriage House.

Two enormous old mares parked outside swished flies with their tails. The dirty Carriage House windows concealed a graveyard for broken antiques: tables on end, chairs without upholstery, bed frames and slats, stacked in all directions. No room for horses or carriages in the Carriage House. And no Archie. Walking around the side of the building, I encountered a well-worn path through the high hedge. I followed the path, squeezing sideways through the bushes, and suddenly found myself looking into the sheepish grin on Archie Porter's face, one arm stretching to reach a ledge high above his head.

'You smoke?' he asked, lowering his arm and shaking out a cigarette in one practiced motion.

I started to say no reflexively, and then considered my case. 'Actually, yes, please.'

As Archie shook out another cigarette from a pack of Camels, not even the filtered kind, I began to hope I would get what I wanted. Putting it to my lips, he lit a match. 'Getting on okay?' he asked.

'Swimmingly,' I said, returning the long look, examining the crow's feet around his eyes and the gray in his ponytail. I imagined I was smoking with John while Yoko met lawyers. I'd never seen him so relaxed. 'Where's Magda?' I asked innocently.

'Patching the roof.' He smiled as if we knew each other. 'One of an assistant director's many and varied festival responsibilities.'

'Well then. Since she's busy, I'll ask you.' Just one puff had made me dizzy; I couldn't inhale these things. The smoke sat on me, lodging in the pores of my skin, permeating hair follicles.

'Ask me.' Archie blew dragon smoke out his nostrils as the American children from the lawn barged into our hiding place, giggled, and ran out. The little girl loudly reported what she'd seen.

I said, 'You may not be aware that Bets—the actress playing Mary Crawford—is not here.'

'No, she is not here.' Archie smiled, lifting a branch of one of the bushes that concealed us, nearly brushing My Jane Austen's skirt.

'No, I mean, not in Hedingham. Not at Newton Priors. She's in London.'

He took another long drag. 'I see. You were supposed to keep track of her?'

'Yes.' I looked him in the eye.

'A case of Magda putting the fox in charge of the hen-house.'

'I'd like to take her part in the scene today.'

He gave me an extra long sideways glance. 'Who else knows about this?'

I took a short but dramatic drag, sensing what I once sensed when Martin was about to kiss me. 'Does anyone else need to know?' I asked, smoke curling around my face.

Archie pulled on his cigarette, his eyes closing. 'Nobody I know of needs to know about anything.'

I threw my cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. 'Then we're all set.'

'You know the part?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

I had turned, just about to leave the enclosure, when Archie said, 'You know what?'

'What?' I twisted to see his face and braced myself.

'You worry too much.'

'Me?'