Jane Bites Back

“If it helps, I’m a wreck on the inside,” Jane assured him. “But I’m British. We have no visible emotions, you know. They were bred out of us centuries ago.”

Kelly laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “So now that I’ve told you our big plans, I should probably tell you what our offer is.”

Jane listened as Kelly explained the terms of the contract. In truth, she didn’t really care about the advance or the royalty percentage or the subsidiary rights. But she pretended to listen intently, nodding at the appropriate points and even hesitating long enough at one point that Kelly increased the amount of her advance by 10 percent.

“Of course, you’ll probably want to talk to your lawyer before agreeing,” he concluded. “But I hope you’ll say yes.”

“Yes,” Jane said.

Kelly seemed to be holding his breath. “You’re sure?” he asked. “You don’t want to discuss it with anyone first?”

“Are you saying I should be worried?” Jane said. “I took you for a most trustworthy man, but perhaps I should rethink my opinion.” She was teasing him, but Kelly apparently mistook her remark for hesitation.

“I’ll increase the royalty to fifteen percent,” he said. “But that’s as high as I can go. Honestly.”

Jane reached out and patted his hand. His nervousness was charming, particularly as until then he’d seemed unflappable. “Relax,” she said. “You sound like a first-time publisher.”

Kelly chuckled and shook his head. “You had me worried for a second,” he admitted.

“Just to be clear, I’ll sign the contract,” Jane said. “We have a deal.”

“Good,” said Kelly. “Now I can eat.”

Jane scanned the menu. As usual, she wasn’t hungry, but she knew she had to order something. She considered the chocolate mousse, but settled on French onion soup and a small salad. There was no sense in airing all her peculiarities to Kelly at once.

The waiter arrived, they placed their orders, and their conversation resumed. With the book talk out of the way, Kelly asked Jane questions about herself, all of which she answered with as little detail as possible. As soon as she was able to she turned the topic around to him. By the time their food arrived, she’d learned that he had grown up in Pennsylvania, attended school in Chicago, and moved to New York immediately upon graduating to work in publishing.

“My parents were very disappointed,” he told Jane. “They were hoping I’d become an investment banker or, as my father once put it, something useful. I’m afraid books are not held in much esteem in the Littlejohn house.”

Jane wanted to ask him more questions, but she felt it wasn’t fair to pry too much when she was keeping so much of herself from him. It was a situation with which she was more than familiar after two hundred years of practicing the art of evasion. Instead, she asked about the other authors Kelly worked with. She recognized several of the names he mentioned, although she had read none of their books. She made a mental note to do so as soon as she was home.

When lunch was over she and Kelly returned to the office, where Kelly presented her with four copies of a contract. After once again reminding Jane that she was free to have someone look them over, he watched anxiously as she signed the final page of each copy. When she handed them back to him, he beamed.

“Do you want to go over the manuscript?” Jane asked.

Kelly nodded. “But first I have a little surprise.” He picked up the phone and dialed. “Joanna, I have Jane Fairfax here. Could you come in, please?”

He hung up. “I think you’ll love this,” he told Jane. “At least I hope so.”

A moment later a young woman walked into the office carrying a large piece of cardboard.

“Jane, this is Joanna Clarke. Joanna is the head of the design department.”

Joanna and Jane exchanged greetings. Then Kelly said, “I was so excited about your book that I emailed Joanna from Paris so she could work on this.”

He nodded at Joanna, who turned the piece of cardboard around, revealing a mock-up cover for Jane’s book. It featured a photograph of a farmhouse at twilight. In one of the upstairs windows a light glowed, and through the open curtains a woman was visible, her back to the window. From the lower right-hand corner of the cover a man stood looking up at her, holding a bouquet of daisies in his hand.

“Constance,” Jane read the title. “Jane Fairfax.”

“I wasn’t sure what name you wanted to use, so I went with what you used on your letter,” Kelly said. “Do you like it?”

Jane continued to stare at the cover. That’s my book, she told herself. She was so used to the drab covers publishers put on her older novels—boring paintings of English cottages and girls in white dresses—that she’d expected the same thing. But this cover was different. It was modern yet timeless.

“I do like it,” she said. “I think it’s lovely.”

Joanna smiled. “I’m pretty pleased with it myself. Of course there will be some tweaking once marketing puts their two cents in, but I think this is pretty much it.”

“Would you like a copy to take home with you?” Kelly asked Jane. “We can have one printed out.”

“Really?” Jane asked. “Of course I’d love one.”

“I’ll go get one for you,” said Joanna.

“Thank you,” Jane said as Joanna left the office. “I really do love it.”

She looked at Kelly. “I can hardly believe this is happening,” she said. “It’s all a bit like a dream.”

“We’ll see if you think so once we’ve gone through my editing suggestions,” Kelly said. “Shall we begin?”

Jane hesitated only a moment before nodding. “Yes, let’s,” she said as Kelly turned over the first page.

Chapter 9

She had promised herself that she would not fall in love with him. Experience—not love—was her objective. She reminded herself that a worldly woman should easily be able to distinguish between the two. Yet she could not pretend that Jonathan was not simultaneously everything she disliked and everything she desired in a man. Despite what she knew of him, she found herself wishing he would take her in his arms.

—Jane Austen, Constance, manuscript

Jane stood at the window, looking down on Times Square. It was one in the morning, and she was not the least bit tired. She still couldn’t quite believe that her day had actually occurred. That morning she had been in Brakeston. Now she was in New York City, having signed a book contract and gone over the edits with her editor. Her handsome, funny, smart editor.

She brushed the thought from her mind. It was true that Kelly was all of those things. But thinking about him in that way was hardly professional. Still, over the dinner they’d shared following their work on the manuscript, she had found herself behaving more and more like a besotted schoolgirl and less like a woman of 234. It was during the performance of Gypsy, to which Kelly had taken her after dinner, that she had realized that he reminded her very much of Richard Mansfield, the enchanting nineteenth-century actor and star of the D’Oyly Carte opera company. She had attended seventeen consecutive performances of The Mikado just to see Mansfield, and her devotion to him had not faltered even during the nasty Jack the Ripper business, when he was one of the prime suspects. (She’d known the Ripper, and although charming, he was not nearly as handsome as Mansfield.)

Her crush on Mansfield had eventually faded, and she suspected this one would as well. It was just the excitement of once again being a published author. She turned and looked at the cover of her book, the poster of which she had taped to the mirror above the room’s dresser. It hardly seemed possible that it was really her book. “Constance,” she said aloud. “By Jane Fairfax.” She giggled, embarrassed by how thrilling it was to say her name like that.

The title of the book, she had to admit, was not her best. She preferred something pithy. After all, could