“As I’m unfamiliar with the teahouse you mention, you will have to escort me,” Jane replied, frustrated. She looked at his face again. He breathed a little heavily, though he was standing still. This Fred person was nothing like Mr. Withers—nothing at all. Mr. Withers laughed and conversed with ease and smoothness. This man’s manner resembled more her own: awkward. Jane shook her head. She did not want to go somewhere with this individual; she wanted to go somewhere with Mr. Withers. She was stepping out with the wrong person! But she had already agreed now, and after her grand speech earlier about the importance of keeping one’s engagements, she had no choice but to go through with the infernal plan.
He shrugged. “I’ll go change out of my costume, then,” he said. “Do you want to change out of yours?”
Jane looked down at her attire. “Change, sir? I have no other clothes.”
He scoffed. “You’re going to walk around dressed like that?”
Jane shrugged. “Yes? Do my clothes offend you?”
“No,” he said with a resigned sigh.
Jane scowled at him. He was such a strange person.
“Back in a sec,” he said, walking away quickly. By the time Jane had deciphered the meaning of the hyperbolic and inaccurate sentence, he had moved halfway across the hall—in the direction of his other clothes, she supposed—cutting a lean silhouette across the floor. The tails of his coat moved back and forth as he walked. He wore his brown hair short; a few light tufts rested on the back of his collar, messy and rebellious. She tutted at the sight. He resembled a naval man in his coat. She wondered if he sailed the seas, like her brothers did. It would be the only thing to recommend him among a multitude of flaws.
He moved behind the curtains. Jane shook her head. She had never seen him at any of the Bath assemblies, though Mama had dragged her to many. She did not recognize anyone here from the usual Bath crowd, in fact, though she supposed these comprised another group on holiday.
She glanced around the room again. The confusion of waking up in the curtains had departed, but still, certain objects did not sit right with her senses. This ball’s guests were such an odd assortment of people, her dance partner included. Their speech differed—not in accents, which remained as she knew, hailing from the south of England, Kent, Somerset, London—but more in the words they chose. These people employed an assortment of contractions and idioms that she could grasp if she thought about them but had never heard before. One dancer beside her said Cheryl “was on the warpath tonight,” which she liked, though did not fully understand.
The decor of the assembly hall alarmed her, too. One of the paintings on the wall, for instance. A man smiled in front of what appeared to be Bath Abbey. The painter had rendered the expression of the man, the light, and the landscape in so lifelike a fashion she thought the subject might sit up and talk to her. She still could not figure where the music had come from; she viewed not a single violin, or cello or piano, though the sounds of each still rung in her ears, the music having been so loud it could have originated only from inside the room. The room also smelled of paraffin or some lethal disinfecting agent; it was the cleanest air she’d ever smelled. No fireplace or smoke blemished the air, yet the room was warm. She raised an eyebrow in confusion.
A man dressed in undershorts walked up to Jane and offered her some paper. “Well done, love,” he said to her. “Call sheet for tomorrow. Another dress rehearsal.”
Jane accepted the page and scoured it. It was a list made by a very good printing press of names and places and numbers. The date printed at the top of the page contained an absurd, make-believe number. “I do not know what this is, sir,” she said. She handed it back to him. “For what am I rehearsing?”
He turned back to her and frowned. “What is your name?” He consulted some list that rested in his hand.
“As I told the others. It’s Jane Austen.”
“Your real name, thanks.”
Jane shrugged and said nothing.
“What agency are you with?” he asked, squinting at her with suspicious eyes.
“I do not know what that means,” Jane said in a friendly voice.
The man checked his piece of paper. He shook his head. “Are you supposed to be here? How did you get in?”
“I came from the wings,” Jane said. “I am unsure how I got inside the building.”
That seemed to enrage him, for he grabbed her arm. “You’re another one of those Austen loons, aren’t you? Here to tell us we’ve sewed the costumes wrong. You’re wasting the time of busy people. This is the most ambitious production in years. You need to leave.”
“But I must wait for my dance partner,” she said reluctantly. While she certainly did not care about leaving Fred so rudely, she was not a barbarian, and even an obnoxious person such as he deserved an explanation before she disappeared on him.
“I don’t care about that,” the man replied. “You’re lucky it’s just minor cast and extras here tonight. If Jack Travers were here, I’d call the police. You’d best bugger off before I ring security.” He pushed her toward the door.
Jane shuddered. No one had ever addressed her so, let alone put their hands on her! “Please. I must tell my . . . companion,” she tried. But the man tipped her out the door and into the darkness. The door shut behind her and the click of a lock echoed in the dark. Jane turned back and knocked on the door but received no reply. She turned out to face the night air and looked around. She walked a loop around the building and found another door at the front; she tried but could not open it. She waited
