My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

hour.

'Here's a good one,' he said, marking the place with his finger. His exquisite voice conveyed the poet's apology over the grave of a lover who'd been dead fifteen years. As the last syllable resonated, a lovely minor tone, I knew exactly how the poet felt. ''Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again?''

'Beautiful,' I said. 'You made me forget where I am.'

'Emily Bronte.' He closed the book. 'I know how to reach you,' he said, smiling, activating his dimples. 'Have you ever been in love?' he asked. 'Rather personal question, no?' He paused. 'You needn't answer. Just curious.' He reached for my hand but I stayed where I was. My feelings existed between me and Willis and no one else. Private and serious, deep and considered, to speak of them with Sixby would be a profanity. I didn't answer.

'As for me,' he said, 'I'm afraid I'm too much a master of my emotions to experience the spontaneity of love.'

'That's so sad,' I said, employing mild sarcasm so My Jane Austen would know I was not falling for his line.

'Oh, it's very sad.' Sixby laughed. 'I can't tell you how many women have offered to help me.'

My Jane Austen put her list down and stood, as if she would leave.

'But you, Lily.' He gestured with both hands. 'You're different. Let's try something,' he said. 'Stand up while I read. Close your eyes and feel a character, an alter ego building in your imagination.'

I closed my eyes, conjuring Willis while Sixby read, sounding more and more like Willis. The delivery was so beautiful that I let go, carried away to the roof, the wind in my hair, the escape to the music room, and the presentation of the cookie. Willis stepped toward me, his hand outstretched; I felt Sixby's lips on mine yet the footsteps continued. And then the worst possible thing. Willis looked in at the door. Willis, who never ventured into the office. Our eyes met. My face burned.

'Oops. Wrong room,' Willis said, vanishing as quickly as he'd appeared.

'Oh God,' I said, hitting my head.

'We seem to have a knack for that,' Sixby said, finally releasing me, oblivious to my distress. 'That wasn't me by the way.' Sixby cleared his throat.

'Who then?' I asked, angry.

'I confess; I was the dead guy in Emily Bronte's poem.' He picked up his book. 'But you see; this may work,' he added. 'Next time you must borrow one of your roommate's lovely gowns and meet me in my room for some wicked improv.'

*   *   *

I climbed the stairs to the attic, mentally rehearsing the explanation I'd been kissing Emily Bronte's dead guy, each step a reprimand. When I saw Willis, he was sitting at his desk, staring into space. When he saw me, he lifted the cover of his laptop.

'Did he bite her?' I asked.

He straightened and looked just past me. 'Yes, he did.'

I stood in front of him, his desk between us. 'Where have you been?' I asked.

'London,' he said, feigning preoccupation with his keyboard although he hadn't turned it on yet. 'I've got a lot of work to do.' He pushed the laptop's power button. His expansive reading selections sat abandoned in a stack on the floor, replaced on the shelf by serious spines that said Thomas Merton, Soren Kierkegaard, and Bishop N. T. Wright. Luminaries gathered, I assumed, to support him in the resumption of his thesis. I watched him pretend to be interested in his screen until he squinted, hands still poised on the keyboard, and looked up. 'Why?' he asked.

I could resolve this simple comedy of errors by articulating a calm response. But I shivered, and surging emotion threatened to overwhelm the place my voice should control. 'Willis,' I said, borrowing poise from My Jane Austen, who looked more dead than usual at the moment. Willis continued staring into space. My Jane Austen opened one eye and waited for me to speak. 'What you don't know about what you just saw in the office'—I inhaled, my voice slipping—'is that Sixby and I were rehearsing for the Founder's Night Follies.'

Willis grimaced, glancing down immediately. I crossed my arms. Priests should be more forgiving. 'I have no interest in Sixby,' I said, wishing to see his screen, unable to believe that he could type anything other than random keys under the circumstances. 'Willis, this is important to me. There is nothing between me and Sixby. What you saw was theatre.'

Willis stopped typing. 'I believe you.' He shrugged.

He didn't believe me at all. 'Why are you doing this?' My protagonist voice got shoved aside, bullied by my default tendency to break down and cry.

'Doing what?' he asked, feigning perfect calm, utter reserve.

'Being so cold.' Clearly, I could walk out. Part of me wanted to leave him, the early rumbling of thunder beat in my chest and I considered allowing the conflict to escalate, the pain to tear into me. Where were the people who found such happiness in the music room?

'What were you doing in London?' I asked.

Willis sighed, pushing his chair back. He looked different; he'd gotten his hair cut. He reluctantly raised his head; his expression revealed someone stuck in a difficulty. 'Same things I always do,' he said. 'Collect mail, pay bills, water plants.'

He hadn't been breaking up with his Someone Else. 'Willis,' I said.

He looked up briefly, the chair creaking. 'Don't,' he said, slowly shaking his head, closing his eyes. He was leaving me, closing doors we'd just opened. He'd gone to London for the big dose of her, necessary to counteract the effect of his great indulgence with me. And now he needed a reason to pull back from me. If he could just get a foothold in the opposite direction, he could backtrack and regroup, and my apparent bad behavior with Sixby provided the traction he needed. How could he be so indecisive?

'It doesn't matter,' he said.

How could anything between us not matter? As if floods didn't matter. Or murder. 'What doesn't matter?' I asked. 'When you go, you take the air with you.' I swallowed. 'Color and light follow you out the door. When you're gone, my world is dead. That doesn't matter?'

He slumped in his chair, folding arms across his chest.

I couldn't keep the words down; they erupted like nature, out of my control. I sighed, speaking to the top of his head. 'Willis, I love you.'

In the ensuing silence, I pulled the green plastic chair opposite Willis and sat, my knees touching his legs, and took his hand. He offered his other hand, not speaking, not professing love he couldn't deliver. The torn expression on his face made me realize his struggle wasn't entirely about me. His conflict existed before he met me. He'd come to Newton Priors to resolve his issues in the solitude of this attic. I distracted him. The vampire novel and I together provided a safe haven where Willis could relax and forget the strife for a time. But cosmic soul mate notwithstanding, I'd managed to miss the iron wall dividing him. 'What's her name?' I stopped breathing. Willis took his hands back and I braced myself, sensing that even in this foreign country where I barely knew anyone, I would recognize her name.

He looked me straight in the eyes for the first time. 'Philippa Lockwood.'

Not just a name but a whole world of obstacles.

'That explains a lot,' I said. 'Did you think I'd never find out?'

Willis breathed deeply and I sensed his relief. His arms reached for me, lighter, having shifted some of their heavy burden onto my shoulders. He pulled me onto his lap and when he kissed me, I felt not only his affection, but gratitude.

Fifteen

I set aside the lease I'd prepared for the next day's trip to the hospital as Omar walked into the office. 'Go