“I still do not know what that means,” Jane said, “but I agree with the sentiment.”
While the portrait in the book was cropped at the shoulders, this larger reproduction showed more of Jane’s figure. Jane saw now she wore the bone-white muslin dress from Maison Du Bois: the one that made her eyes shine, the one Mr. Withers never saw her in. A new detail drew Jane’s eye downward. In the portrait, she wore a ring. A band made of gold wrapped around her ring finger, and a turquoise stone sat upon it. The oval stone shone in a creamy blue. She inhaled. She felt the ring draw her closer, as though it had a soul. It confused her, too. She did not own, nor had she ever owned, such a piece of jewelry. It stood out on her finger in the painting, not out of place, but a new addition. She put it down to yet another bizarre detail of her hallucination, but she heard herself asking the woman in the white bonnet, against her better judgment, about the stone’s origin. “Do you know whose ring that is?” Jane asked her.
“It is Austen’s ring. She always wore it,” the woman said with a huff, as though the answer were obvious.
Jane scratched her head. “Where did she get it?” she pressed. “Who gave it to her?”
The woman shrugged. “No one knows where that ring came from, actually. No one knows how it came into her possession. Its origins remain a mystery.”
Jane shook her head and added it to the list of unsettling items she had encountered in her reverie of the insane. She stared at the ring and found herself unable to pry her gaze from it, even when Sofia tugged her arm and gently pulled her away. More urgent issues existed to worry about, but the appearance of this ring, on her finger, in this watercolor portrait in the building with her name on the outside, was the one strange item in a cacophony of strange items her mind could not put away.
“The Jane Austen Experience is about to begin,” the bonneted woman announced. “Please form a queue at the double doors.” Jane and Sofia walked over. They were the only people on the tour. “Welcome to the Jane Austen Experience,” the woman said. She was apparently also the tour guide. “And welcome to Bath,” she continued, “the home of Jane Austen.”
Jane snorted. “My favorite thing about Bath is the road out.” The woman glared at Jane again.
“Please be quiet,” Sofia whispered to Jane, “or we’ll get kicked off the tour.”
The woman continued. “My name is Marjorie Martin and I shall be your guide as we travel on a journey back to the time of Regency England and the greatest writer that ever lived.”
“I give you leave to like this woman,” Jane said to Sofia. Marjorie turned to face the double doors. She threw them open with ceremony. A dark room greeted them. “I don’t see anything,” Jane said.
“Sit. Both of you,” said Marjorie. She gestured toward a small train of open carriages. Jane and Sofia fumbled around in the dark and eventually found seats together in the third carriage. Marjorie sat in the front. She pressed a button and the train moved forward.
“Heavens!” Jane said at the sudden motion.
“Indeed,” said Marjorie. She pushed back her shoulders. “We are the only Jane Austen attraction in Bath with a built-in roller coaster.”
“Is the train going to jerk around the whole time?” Sofia asked. “I feel bilious.”
“If you vomit, there is a fifty-pound cleaning fee,” Marjorie said.
“Fifty pounds!” Jane said. “That’s a year’s wages.”
“Yeah, that’s unfair,” Sofia said. “I can’t be held responsible for the security of my stomach contents! I only had a mimosa for breakfast.”
The train entered the next room, which was lined on both sides with glass cases. Marjorie pointed to the first case as the train moved past. “Behold,” she said. “We begin at the beginning. Jane Austen’s christening bonnet.” A tiny muslin cap smocked with grub roses sat on a wooden plinth.
“That is not my christening bonnet,” Jane declared. Marjorie turned around and scowled at Jane. Sofia elbowed Jane in the ribs.
“Control yourself,” Sofia said. “This woman is not an actor. She’s a real person. She could boot us out of here.” Jane scratched her head and agreed to stay quiet.
“One of Jane’s favorite pastimes was tea-making,” Marjorie pressed on. The train moved on to the next glass case. It displayed a china tea set.
“Untrue again,” Jane said, more quietly this time. “And that is not my tea set, either.” She knew this was all some grand fantasy her mind had concocted, but still, she objected to so many details of her life being arranged so inaccurately and haphazardly.
The remaining glass cases contained an assortment of hats and gloves, James’s writing desk, a pair of Cassandra’s stockings, a prayer book of her father’s, and more spoons and teacups.
“Do you recognize anything?” Sofia said.
“Yes. Not a single thing is mine. Wait,” Jane said. “Excuse me please, Marjorie. What is that ribbon?”
A two-foot length of inch-thick silk ribbon, once pink but now yellowed with time, hung from a wooden bar in the final glass cabinet.
“A hair ribbon.” Marjorie shrugged. “It is of no great significance. Women wore hair ribbons.”
How wrong she was. Jane recognized the ribbon in an instant. Black soot charred the ends of the ribbon that had once tied the manuscript for First Impressions. The ribbon had caught the edge of the flames before Jane hauled it out from the inferno. In this charlatan shrine of Jane’s fantasy, this one
